Bouncing Forward

Think back to your childhood. What were some of your favorite things related to bouncing? I can recall when my cousins got their trampoline and we all experienced our first time bouncing high in the air together. What a thrill it was to bounce. I felt like one of my favorite childhood animated characters, Tigger, from Winnie the Pooh. Tigger loved to bounce, and when I first bounced on the trampoline as a kid I understood the joy, excitement and thrill of bouncing. Your whole body was engaged, and it felt good to bounce, increasing your sense of joy and happiness.

Now, as adults, we rarely get the opportunity to enjoy the thrill and positive benefits of bouncing like we did in our youth. That is unless you visit a trampoline park or have your own personal trampoline at home. We are never too big or too old to enjoy playing, including bouncing. As a matter of fact, play is an important thing to continue engaging in adulthood for our well-being. But as adults, when we talk about bouncing, we often are talking about “bouncing back” from a difficult or challenging situation in our lives and careers or being resilient. As a coach specializing in transitions (life and career) and resilience coaching, I often talk about effectively navigating challenging transitions and change and bouncing back after difficult situations. However, recently in my conversations as a coach with another colleague and friend, I learned more about the concept of Post Traumatic Growth (PTG). The difference or relationship between resilience and Post Traumatic Growth (PTG) can best be summed up as resilience focuses on bouncing back whereas PTG takes it up another level and focuses on bouncing forward. While resilience helps manage stress, PTG occurs when that struggle leads to positive personal transformation. The key differences being:

Resilience: Focuses on survival, maintaining stability, and “normal” functioning after traumatic events.

PTG: Focuses on transformation, finding new purpose, and increased appreciation for life, often involving a significant shift in worldview and meaning for life.

After a major traumatic life and/or career event, people may ask “how to I get back to who I was before?” And the answer often is, you don’t. You aren’t the same person you were before. You are changed by the experience of the traumatic event(s). It’s better to ask, who am I now and who and what do I want to become? And ask yourself, how can I use this experience to define who and what I want to become?

After a traumatic or challenging experience, you may be in a life chapter you didn’t expect. But your story isn’t finished. And you still get to participate in writing the next chapter. As always, I encourage you to reflect on your own stories and experiences with traumatic and challenging life events. Did you bounce back or bounce forward and experience transformation? What helped you with your resilience to bounce back and your post traumatic growth to bounce forward? Stay tuned for separate detailed newsletters on this topic and much more from my upcoming additional newsletter series, Your Story Matters: Coaching Corner, that will share some recommendations I use with my coaching clients. There will also be more content related to the topic of bouncing forward and much more.

I like the concept of bouncing forward because no matter how big or small a challenging situation is that forces us into a level of unexpected transition and change, we are inherently different for having gone through the experience. And therefore, we aren’t the same person we were before. We have evolved. And the thought of using that experience to bounce forward to an improved best version of ourselves and who we want to be and to become sounds as exciting and fun as bouncing on a trampoline as a kid. So, don’t just bounce back, bounce forward and write the next chapter in your life that you want, because as always, your story matters.