Permission to Begin Again: Who You’re Becoming After the Bounce

Resilience and reinvention aren’t a straight line; instead, they spiral, intersect, and repeat as we grow. In this episode of Boss Yourself First, Robyn White, PCC, explores how recovery and redesign often unfold side by side. Inspired by Nellie Bly, a woman fired for wanting more, you’ll learn to extract wisdom from difficulty, define healthy boundaries, and decide who you’ll become next. With neuroscience, narrative, and heart, Robyn helps you reframe every ending as the beginning of your next design.

Want a weekly quick hit of self-leadership straight to your inbox?

Join my email list: https://bossyourselffirst.kit.com/three-on-thursday 

Want to dive deeper into resilience, recovery, and redesign?

Check out my book, Three Permissions: https://bossyourselffirst.com/three-permissions/

Chapters

• 0:00 ByF Episode 17
• 8:22 Marker

Transcript

You are listening to The Boss Yourself First podcast, Season 3, Episode 17.

In 1887, a 23-year-old reporter named Elizabeth Cochran, or you may be a little more familiar with her pen name, Nellie Bly was fired from her job at the Pittsburgh Dispatch. Not for failing, but for wanting more. She'd been writing serious stories about factory conditions and women's wages and shining light on injustice.

In a time when women were expected to just write about fashion and flowers and gossip. Her editors told her to tone it down to stay in her lane, and when she refused, they showed her the door - fired. No savings. No safety net.

So she packed her suitcase and, she bought a one-way train ticket with a fierce refusal to shrink back from the things she thought were important, the things that mattered to her. She left Pittsburgh for New York City and she spent six months being told no by every editor in town, but she kept knocking.

Finally, the New York World gave her a chance and she changed journalism forever. Her undercover reporting at a women's asylum sparked major reform and made her a household name. Like I said, I suspect you've probably heard, even if you didn't know the context, I suspect you've heard of Nellie Bly. But the moment that interests me most is the quiet one in between. The pause after being fired and before being hired again. And her pause sounds like it was about six months. But, honestly, even that, that smaller moment when she decided to buy the ticket to New York, the space where she could have gone back or shrunk herself into this ideal of how women were supposed to show up at that time, particularly in the field of journalism. Instead, she chose to begin again. That was her permission moment. It wasn't a comeback, but a bounce forward. Welcome back to The Boss Yourself First podcast. I'm your host and coach Robyn White. In our last episode, Permission to Bounce Back (or not?)

We talked about what happens when life knocks us sideways. We explored the truth that resilience isn't about snapping back to who you were before the setback. It's about finding what steadies you, your anchors, and using that stability to rise in a new direction. We named the anchors that help you bounce forward: faith, perspective, connection, and purpose.

And I reminded you that bouncing back isn't the goal. Bouncing forward is. Well, today we take that next step because after you've bounced. After the initial setback storm calms, there's that quiet moment where you say, okay, what Now? That's where permission to begin again begins. It's the chapter that comes hot on the heels of your initial resilience practices.

The part where you start to rebuild, redefine, and decide who you are becoming. And that's why I started this off with Nellie Bly as inspiration because once the dust settles, you have to lead yourself forward, not the kind where you're hustling to prove you're okay,

you are not trying to prove yourself, but the kind where you're starting to move into the deeper questions. Who am I now? What do I want to carry forward, And how do I want to show up in this new chapter? Maybe your story includes a firing, a fallout, a finish line you didn't choose or anticipate.

It's tempting to label those moments as failures by your own hand or as a victim of others. But what if they're actually redirections that they're not against you, but for you, every setback offers data for becoming. It's not why did this happen to me? It's what is this trying to make of me? Do you hear the shift?

Not a victim, but a creator of the next version of you. That's self-leadership. You move from being a character, reacting to the plot, to becoming the author writing the next line. And here's what's happening in your brain when you make that shift. Neuroscientists call it neuroplasticity, and we've talked about it before.

It's your brain's ability to rewire based on what you're focused on. When you reflect on meaning and possibility, the prefrontal cortex or your decision center demands energy and the amygdala, your fear center has to power down to send energy to the prefrontal cortex. In simple terms, reflection, rewrites your story at a cellular level.

So ask yourself now, what might this experience be growing in me, even if it's uncomfortable? That's where resilience turns into reinvention. Nellie Bly didn't let being fired define her. She let it refine her. So let's walk through a short self-leadership audit together. You don't need a notebook. You do need honest attention.

So if you are multitasking, lean in here for a few minutes as we work through this.

Let's talk about identity and who you want to be in this next chapter. Imagine meeting your future self a year from now. And I know that we've talked about this before, even in this season, but it's an exercise I do with most of my clients and long-term clients. We usually check in with future self once a year or so.

It is so powerful, and I encourage you to take a few moments for this work. Imagine you're meeting up with your future self at a favorite cafe. They're sitting at a table so excited to see you. They can't wait to tell you how well they're doing and the way that they're thriving. They also wanna thank you for the choices that you're actually making right now.

That's created the life that they're living. They're sitting across from you, smiling and calm. Think about what they're saying about how they spend their days. Who are they with? What's bringing them joy? And notice how they look. Just, just take a minute and study them. What's different? What's different about them?

How do they carry themselves? And you can take as long as you want in this exercise, but at some point in your noticing, I want you to give that version of you three words. And, and they can be whatever fits. Maybe it's brave or wise or peaceful, but I want these words to be words that describe their way of being and not what they're doing.

Even if they told you what they're doing, what three words captured their presence. Maybe hopeful or kind or courageous, whatever comes forward for you. In my book, I talk about identity, specifically about doing identity markers versus being identity markers. You'll want both, but because we're in the phase of beginning again, I'd like you to focus on the being identity.

This isn't about goals, it's about direction. So grab those three words and we'll talk about how to leverage them in just a few minutes. But identity shapes your decisions and decisions shape your destiny. So it's really important to do identity work.

The second part of our audit is boundaries. And I think we often think of boundaries as lines for how others treat us, and that's true how we're gonna respond if others cross our boundaries. But in self-leadership boundaries also define how you treat yourself.

They protect the energy you need to grow. One client told me once: old me said yes to everything so I wouldn't disappoint anyone. And new me says yes when it aligns with my values. And that's not a wall. That's a wisdom line. To measure how we're progressing in our becoming. We need those wisdom lines to guide us. 

So I want you to notice, to leverage these wisdom lines, these boundaries as measuring stakes, you need to notice how often you're honoring them. How often are you crossing them? That's how you'll start seeing your progress in your becoming. So think of your boundaries as living data points.

Every time you hold a boundary that used to wobble your self-trust gets stronger. Every time you overstep one. It's not failure. It's feedback.

For example, maybe one of your wisdom lines is this, I don't explain my worth to people who've already decided not to see it. You can notice how that line gets tested when you begin again, your new job, your new circle, your new season. . Each time you choose to stay grounded, instead of over proving, over explaining, you are honoring that boundary. It's not about keeping others out, it's about keeping yourself aligned. So we're talking about these internal boundaries. Every time you cross that line, when you over justify or over apologize or overperform, it's not failure, it's data.

You're gonna notice it, you're not gonna beat yourself up over it, but you are going to notice it. Crossing a boundary - It's not a source of shame. It is a signal. Your nervous system is giving you information, just showing you, this is where I defaulted to my old version of me.

This is an area where I still slip into that. It's where my old identity is still tugging me. So, just a couple more examples because I, I want to give you some inspiration. To create your own. Yours may or may not sound like this, and that's totally fine, but I just wanna get those juices flowing.

So here's one. When self-doubt shows up, I'll listen to its data, but not its verdict. Or I no longer chase people or opportunities that require me to shrink. I hear that one in the Nellie Bly story, or one more. I say yes only to what aligns with who I'm becoming, even when it's uncomfortable.

All right. So when you articulate your internal boundaries and recalibrate you're training yourself in self-trust, the prefrontal cortex loves measurable progress.

The more you see yourself follow through, the more dopamine you release around that identity. That's how confidence grows. Not from perfection, but from consistency with your wisdom lines. So this week, choose one, just one boundary that represents who you're becoming. Track how often you honor it.

Use it not as a whip, but as a mirror, a reflection of your progress in real time. Boundaries don't just protect your energy. They measure your growth. Every time you hold one, you reinforce the message. I can trust myself to lead myself.

Now we've talked about, our identity. We talked about our boundaries. Internal boundaries specifically, so let's put it together. It's integration time. Integration is where insight becomes embodiment. It's the practice of living out what you've learned.

Self-leadership, it's not about erasing the past, it's about extracting its wisdom and weaving it into how you show up now and next. So remember those three words that you gave your future self. Integration is how you start behaving like her today. Not waiting for some ideal moment, but using those words as daily cues.

Let's say a couple of your words for your future self were let's say, brave and calm. Start using 'em now as you navigate toward that future. So ask yourself, if I were living as brave, if I were living my braver self, what would I choose right now? See how you're leading yourself. Let's try this one. If I were embodying calm, how would I respond in this conversation?

Micro choices. They are neural repetitions that build your new identity. Each time you act In alignment, you're strengthening the circuitry of who you're becoming. And remember your wisdom lines. Those boundaries you set between who you were and who you're becoming. Integration is how you measure your growth through them.

So when you hold that boundary line that used to slip, your brain records a win, you get a little dopamine, your confidence grows when you cross a boundary line data not defeat. Invitation to realign. Integration is self-leadership in motion. It's seeing your three words and your wisdom lines, not as ideals, but as instructions for how to begin again.

So think about Nellie Bly. Let's circle back to her. Six months of rejection, and she still kept showing up as the woman she was becoming. Persistent, purposeful, brave. That's integration in real time, not perfection, repetition that rewires you forward. So remember, you are not starting from scratch.

You're starting from experience. Every challenge you've faced has been training you for this moment. So now you've done the reflection. You've named who you're becoming. You've drawn your wisdom lines and started living them in real time. So now comes the simple but powerful question. How will I keep beginning again on purpose? Did you catch that? This whole process is not a once and done event. The word becoming has always meant movement to come into being, to grow into what fits.

It's not static, it's active. It suggests that we're never finished, only unfolding. So when you talk about who you're becoming, we're really talking about your ongoing participation in your own evolution. You are not chasing perfection. You're arriving over and over again as yourself, the newer version. So as a practice, I want to wrap up this episode with a simple framework I share with clients that's not about designing the perfect next chapter.

It's about staying in rhythm with your becoming. So step one with this little simple framework is recommit to purpose, not the big picture. This is my life purpose that can feel too far away, can get overwhelming, but instead, today's purpose with a clear vision of what matters most. One sentence that starts with, I want to use my gifts today to... and follow that up with how you can move toward what matters most today. Purpose doesn't always roar loud and long with all the answers, but it does resonate with aligning to your values with a steady pulse beneath your becoming. Step two, choose a 90 day focus instead of trying to rebuild everything at once.

Again, we're, working to be intentionally not in overwhelm, so instead of trying to rebuild everything at once, ask what's one area of my life that needs the new me most? Confidence, health relationships. Pick just one and let your three words from your future self continue to show up there. Continue to do that work in that specific one area for 90 days. Measure your progress as you go. Celebrate that progress too. And then step three, and this sounds a little repetitive, but it's not, it's a little bit different. I want you to embrace a compass word. It still supports you just a little differently than the three words from your future self.

So while your three words describe who you're becoming, they set your direction of growth. Your compass word is what can keep you oriented today. When life gets noisy, distracting, or uncertain, think of it as your reset point, a single word that helps you return to alignment in the moment. And you can use one of your three future self-identity markers, one of those three words that you've already kind of identified, but you don't have to.

You could also use a word that is a values word for you, so think steady, open, courage, grace, creative, curious. Any of those or any that you have come forward with, but I want you to narrow it down to one, because instead of having to automatically recall your three that are kind of how you're trying to grow, I want you to have this one word that's your reset word.

So when your inbox floods or your confidence dips, or you feel yourself tempted to cross your boundary, pause, take a breath, and call your compass word to mind. So let's pretend that your compass word was steady. Okay. What does steady look like right now? Just taking a breath. My compass word is steady.

What does that look like? Or if it was open, okay, how can I stay open in this conversation instead of defensive? Or if your word is grace, what would grace do here toward myself, toward this person? It's a self-leadership micro moment tuning intention into instinct each time you use your compass word as a cue for behavior.

You're reinforcing your neural pathways for emotional regulation and decision making. I would invite you to create a structure for your compass word. This is how many of my clients lean into their compass word. And if when I say structure, it's just a physical reminder of that word. And it can be a note, like It could be a post-it stuck in the middle of your, your steering wheel. It could be, your home screen on your phone, or it could be an item, like a, a particular bracelet or a charm that you wear, that reminds you of that word. And. Every time you see that item, I want you to speak your compass word so that you remember it. So that it reminds you, so that it's a symbol. It's not. So when you're, let's say that it was my bracelet that I'm wearing and that my word was steady and I wanted to feel steady. So I would remember even in a moment that I'm not feeling unsteady when I see my bracelet, because I'm wearing it all the time.

I'm gonna say, okay, steady, I see you. Yeah, we got this. So that you're just deepening those pathways and reminding yourself of that word. It will become your go-to. And soon it won't even have to be so intentional. So again, over time, your compass word becomes more than a reminder. It becomes muscle memory and it honors and aligns with your values.

So the world is always gonna get loud. Your compass word is how you find your internal quiet. It's the grounded space where you can lead yourself again. And remember, you are not racing to make up for lost time. You're learning to live in alignment with who you're becoming. Remember, that's a dynamic process. Think of Nellie Bly again. Her new beginning wasn't a perfect plan, but it was persistence in motion.

She didn't know how the story would end. We get the, the benefit of hindsight. We can look back and see the difference she made. She didn't know that at the time. She just knew she deserved to begin again. I want you to hear this clearly. You are not a victim of your setback. You are the leader. Walking yourself through it, self-leadership doesn't mean you never fail again.

It means you notice sooner, you recover faster, and you rebuild wiser. You extract the gold and leave the gravel and keep climbing. Even being fired can become a favor when it frees you to pursue what's next. Every setback. Ask you two questions, will you stay the same or will you begin again? Will you bounce back or will you bounce forward?

Give yourself permission to choose the second. You don't have to have the whole plan. You don't have to prove that you've recovered. You just have to take one honest step that aligns with who you're becoming. Begin again, not with pressure, but with presence. Let your three words guide your posture. Let your wisdom lines guard your energy and let your compass word bring you back to calm when the world gets loud.

Every time you honor those things, you're beginning again on purpose. We are just about ready to wrap the season of permission, and I will miss this ritual close for our episodes. Here is your permission slip for this week. I give myself permission to begin again, not perfectly, but with intention. If you've been listening and thinking, this is exactly the season I'm in, I think you'll love my new book, three Permissions. It's full of stories and strategies and practices to help you lead yourself through change with more clarity and kindness. And if you'd like a good dose of encouragement in your inbox. Reflections, neuroscience, little small wisdom nuggets for self-leadership.

Join my email community. It's where we grow together between the episodes. You can sign up at bossyourselffirst.com or follow the link in the show notes. Thanks for spending time with me today. Remember, beginning again isn't weakness. It's wisdom in motion. I'll see you next week. Until then, take care.