Bouncing Forwards

What's this episode about?

Lee and Michelle take a look at "bouncing back" and ask whether getting back to where we were before is really the goal. Often, it isn't.

Instead, they talk about "bouncing forward": using setbacks to move on rather than slipping back into old habits and old versions of ourselves.

Key topics covered:

• Why "bouncing back" can keep us stuck in unhelpful loops
• How lessons we learned when we were younger can hold us back as adults
• Lee's experience when a house move fell through, and what she gained from it
• Michelle's story of breaking a pre-exam stress habit that was doing more harm than good
• The difference between intentional rest and unproductive downtime
• How self-awareness and evidence of our own capabilities help us move forward
• Kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken ceramics with gold, as a way of thinking about bouncing forward
• Why bouncing forward takes courage, confidence and honest self-reflection

Mentioned in this episode:

• FutureLearn (futurelearn.com), the online learning platform where Michelle first came across the "bounce forward" idea, on a professional resilience course from Deakin University
• Kintsugi / Kintsukuroi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold lacquer
• William Morris: "Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful"

Quotes from the episode:

• "Bouncing back suggests that where we were before was the right place." Michelle Rogers
• "Bouncing forwards makes me feel excited. The possibilities are endless." Lee Iggulden
• "We're not ignoring our struggles. We're using them. Valuing the lessons learned from them to make something even better." Michelle Rogers
• "It's not broken. It's just been put back together, filled with gold." Lee Iggulden

Reflection question for listeners:

Think of a time you bounced back from something difficult. Does the idea of bouncing forward fill you with dread, or with excitement and optimism?

If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who needs to hear it, and leave us a comment. We'd love to hear from you.

Laura Cave:

Instagram: Just Trade and Nice Flowers London

Website: Just Trade

Find Lee at:

• Website: https://welshotimaging.co.uk/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leeatwelshot/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lee.iggulden

Find Michelle at:

• Web: https://www.thinkingspacecoaching.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thinkingspacecoaching/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cmichellerogers/

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to season three of Courage and Confidence with Lee Iggledon and Michelle Rogers, the podcast in which Lee and I build up our own courage and confidence while helping you to do the same thing with some handy tips, techniques, and some inspiring stories from some very special guests. One of these giant pigeons might land on my roof and make me jump again. That sometimes happens. We've got blue sky now.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

I've got the heating on though.

SPEAKER_00 0:29

I've got must admit I've put the heating on in here because I'm freezing.

SPEAKER_01 0:33

It's ridiculous, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 0:47

Hello and welcome to our latest episode of Courage and Confidence. And today's episode is entitled Bouncing Forward. Now we all know the phrase bouncing back. We talk about bouncing back from failure or from the hard stuff that life throws at us. And it sounds like quite a good thing, doesn't it? But what if there is something better than bouncing back, Lee?

SPEAKER_01 1:17

Well, I've always called it bouncing back, but when you called it bouncing forwards, you know, because I think I had a disappointment, and I said, doesn't matter, I'm gonna bounce back. You said bounce forward, and I loved it. Why have I never called it bouncing forwards before?

SPEAKER_00 1:37

Ah, well, the thing is, it might ask a bit more of us to bounce forward. Um, but I think it can help change how we think about stress and anxiety and those things that we worry about. Um, and I think uh today we can explore the lessons that we kind of maybe learnt as younger people that helped us to survive back then, but maybe they're holding us back a bit now. So let's talk about bouncing forward. Um, so uh I'm Michelle Rogers and my co-host is Lee Igledon. Hello. That was a good hello. So Lee, if you uh if you have a think back to uh the conversation we were having when we were talking about bouncing back, do you remember why I didn't I didn't love that phrase bouncing back?

SPEAKER_01 2:36

Um I can't remember per se, but I think you were trying to encourage me to be maybe think forwards, to think, to think about the future more than thinking about what had happened. Yeah. Think about things you know going forwards.

SPEAKER_00 3:02

In a future sense, yeah. I mean, I think the issue I've got with bouncing back is it suggests that where we were before was the right place. Oh you know, if we if I'm saying let's take a step back, let's go back to where we were and start again. Now, there are some instances where that's true. I mean, if you think about um, if you think about you're going on a journey, say you're going for a walk through some woodland and there's lots of different paths, okay? And you're going for a couple of minutes and you think, I'm not sure this is right. I think we might have taken a wrong turn here. Often the most useful thing is to go back to where you started from because you know that was right, you know, you know that you were outside the visitor center or whatever, and there was a signpost, and you and you can try again. So that in that instance makes absolute sense to go back to where you were before. But sometimes when there's hard stuff going on in our work or hard stuff going on in our life, returning back to where we were at the beginning of that isn't always helpful.

SPEAKER_01 4:09

Oh my gosh, I I can't believe I never saw it like that. Because I don't want to bounce back to where I was at the beginning of this year. No way, you know. Okay. Um so that makes total sense. Good. Okay. I want new stuff, not the old stuff.

SPEAKER_00 4:34

Yeah, exactly. So bouncing back suggests that we're going back to a kind of baseline that might in itself not have been terribly helpful. Yeah. So is there something that you could tell us about where that would be relevant for something you said sort of you wouldn't want to go back to where you were earlier this year?

SPEAKER_01 4:53

Well, for those who have listened to the last few episodes, there was a couple of really big things I was dealing with on a personal level. Um, one was um the estate of a good friend of ours who died last year, um, was in the process of being sorted, and my my husband basically um was part of that. But it um it was crappy stuff, yeah, to have to deal with. But we also had the opportunity to move into a house, um, which I was very, very excited about. Everything all was was perfect about it, the location, um, what it would involve, who who who who the house belonged to, um, and we were all really excited about that, but um for one reason and another, it didn't happen. Um, through no fault of anybody, really, but it didn't happen. And um I just decided that I was going to, well, okay, these two big personal things, I'm just gonna concentrate on work, so I'll I'll bounce back. But bouncing forward means that it's almost brings a sense of excitement because it's all gonna be exciting and new and shiny, and I can, you know, I can um really get stuck in. Whereas if I bounce if I was using the phrase bouncing back, I would still be in that state of limbo, you know, not knowing what was happening, not having any control, um, and the disappointment and sadness. And I don't want to return to that again.

SPEAKER_00 6:54

Okay, so let me give you an example from my own life. Um, when I was younger, um I was a pretty academic child, um, but I used to get quite stressed out before exams, um, you know, and um I would get myself all worried and wouldn't sleep very well, and you know, I'd be revising like crazy or whatever. Um but I always did really well in my exams. And after a while, I came to sort of associate those two behaviors. So unless I was worried and unless I was stressing out and doing a ton of last-minute revision, I wouldn't get a good grade. So I found it very difficult to undo that belief. I became almost kind of superstitious about having to get all stressed out before an exam. Wow. Okay. So that was a sort of unhelpful behavior that was in my head, and then I can't remember what happened now, but there was a reason that um I think it was for one of my languages uh uh A levels, there was a reason that something happened at home or whatever, and I couldn't prepare as much as I usually would for the oral exam. And that really I was really freaking out about it because I was thinking, you know, this is this is what I do. I get stressed and I get worried about it anyway. So I just had to turn up and I did this exam and it went absolutely fine, and I did just as well, arguably better than I would than I would have done without all that nervous preparation and not sleeping and you know, last-minute revision, flicking through little index cards with notes on. And so that helped me to realize that my success in an exam didn't depend on having this really negative experience in the run-up to the exam. Okay, so I kind of broke that habit of needing to do that because what I was doing was every time I came up for a new exam, I would bounce back to that behaviour. I would bounce back to poor behavior of kind of not sleeping, not eating properly, whatever. Um, but that one instance where it forced me to do something different helped me realize that actually I was just being kind of superstitious. It's like, you know, always wearing your green socks or whatever, if you're gonna go and play football or whatever. The only way you're gonna score a goal is if you're wearing the right socks. And so actually noticing that behaviour and noticing that it didn't actually make any difference and was just making me feel rubbish and actually making my family feel a bit rubbish as well, because I'm sure I wasn't very nice to live with around exam time. Um, that helped me to sort of bounce forward to a healthier place, to a more positive place, and helped me to sort of grow and to learn that I didn't have to stress myself out, I just needed to um do the preparation. So I realized I did well in my exams because I, you know, prepared all year, not just because of the crazy behaviour in the two or three days before.

SPEAKER_01 10:17

So bouncing forward or and bouncing back isn't necessarily about picking yourself up and dusting yourself off, which is how I always saw it as.

SPEAKER_00 10:32

Yeah. I mean, I think I think that is sort of how we interpret it. But I think when we look at it, when we think about why why do I feel like I have to go back to something, perhaps sometimes because it's something we've come to rely on. That's the way, you know, you imagine sort of when you're a kid and you're disappointed in a friendship or whatever, you're like, Well, I'm better off on my own because nobody likes me or whatever. So you sort of go back to what was before, even if it wasn't fun or healthy or or useful.

SPEAKER_01 11:07

Yeah, and I suppose looking at it from my point of view, from a work um situation with well shot. So, you know, if I was saying um bouncing back, maybe it's me thinking, oh, maybe we should have a membership. Maybe because say something isn't working. I'm not saying it's not working, but say something isn't working. And I think, oh, well, to make it work, I've got to bounce back to what we did have that used to work. Um isn't necessarily the right thing to do, that I should just find another way of making something work that's forwards. You know, it could be totally different to what I'm doing now and what I did in the past. You don't have to go backwards.

SPEAKER_00 12:00

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you think about if we keep bouncing back to behavior that we used to do, we're kind of always in a loop, aren't we? We're just always going round and round in circles. Whereas if we bounce forward, we're moving from that place of this difficult thing that's just happened. We're moving forward to uh another opportunity. So we can keep making forward progress rather than repeating the same thing. Yeah. There's that expression, isn't there, about um how something like, you know, madness is doing the same thing time and time again and expecting a different result.

SPEAKER_01 12:32

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:33

You know, like you just pointed out really uh importantly there that the circumstances in which your business operates have changed. So to bounce back to something that used to work won't necessarily work again.

SPEAKER_01 12:48

Yeah, yeah. Bouncing forward makes me feel really excited. That's good. It makes me feel even better than the oh look, I've had a disappointment, but I'm gonna pick myself up and you know, dust myself off uh off and keep myself going. That just seems a bit meh and a bit this a bit the same. But bouncing forwards, oh, it's like exciting and it's wow, and the possibilities are endless.

SPEAKER_00 13:28

Yeah, exactly. Because that is the thing about bouncing forwards, is you don't necessarily know where you're going to land. Bouncing back is safe, yeah. It might not be good, but it's safe, isn't it? You know, it's because you know where it was and it might have been miserable or it might have been ineffective or whatever, but at least it's not scary. Now, bouncing forward, um, you know, you can describe that as exciting, or you can describe that as scary. Yeah, either way, it's a pretty much the same result. We're not entirely sure it will work out, but the more we know, the more we try that. Yeah, you know, you are you are uh concentrating when you bounce forward, you're concentrating on what have I learned? How can I use that to make progress rather than why am I hurt or frustrated or angry? Let me go back to who I was before.

SPEAKER_01 14:18

Yeah, and also bouncing back seems to have more of a definitive end, whereas bouncing forwards, it's like infinity yeah, more possibilities, yeah. Keep going and going and going, or as bouncing back, there's an end.

SPEAKER_00 14:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:39

Well, in my mind, that's how it works anyway.

SPEAKER_00 14:41

No, I I like I like that, and I think it takes it takes a lot of um uh what's the right word here? It's self-awareness, really, to notice in that moment, you know, I am uncomfortable with this present situation, I'm disappointed, I'm frustrated, I'm anxious, whatever, and say, okay, what can I learn from this? Rather than just regressing to something that was before, what can I learn from this? And then how can I continue to move forward?

SPEAKER_01 15:15

Yeah. Well, I've learned a lot over the last 12 months, especially the last six months, and that's I don't do personal very well.

SPEAKER_00 15:29

Okay, tell me more about that.

SPEAKER_01 15:31

That um I am much happier, calmer, excited, being in a work situation, okay, a work environment. Um I haven't felt comfortable. I mean, it's because one of them was quite sad, but um I haven't felt happy is the word taking lots of time for the personal stuff. It hasn't felt exciting or and I know one of them, one of the situations, obviously, the house was exciting, and you know, the other one, my friend, was very sad. But I'm trying to, I can't really explain this. It's almost like um, oh, it's almost like, right, well, I'm done with all the the time off and the personal stuff, you know, whether it's you know, kit shopping for kitchen products or clothing or whatever, I'm much more productive and happy behind my desk at work. That's my happy place. You know, some you know, really work is my happy place. And and when I'm focused on that, I I get things done and I achieve lots and I'm happy. But having to navigate both personal and work all at the same time and not have any control over the personal stuff is what I haven't enjoyed.

SPEAKER_00 17:26

Yeah, and I think you have had a bit of a perfect storm of work and personal stuff going on recently, and it's really difficult to deal with both of those at the same time. I think it's great that you find work really fulfilling and you know exciting, but I think um it's and this is where this podcast gets really personal. Um, I think you you can't use that as a way of not dealing with your personal life. And and what I do want to draw out is that I I am perfectly aware of a couple of things that you are doing right now to address issues in your personal life that you can take some control over. Um, and before we move on to that, I just wanted to say something that I noticed about you when you were dealing with the disappointment about the house is yeah, you were disappointed you weren't weren't moving into this particular house. But you did also take some time to say, what have I learned from this process about going to the house? So I remember that you were you were really busy uh decluttering um because you didn't want to take a load of rubbish with you.

SPEAKER_02 18:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:43

Um and I remember you said to me, So you were going to move into a much bigger space, and then you know, now you're select you're staying in a smaller space, and you said, I still don't want a load of clutter, I still, you know, I still want to be sort of minimalist, uh, you know, and and have the things that we, you know, know to be useful and believe to be uh beautiful to quote William Morris. And I think what I see from you there is you bounced forward from the disappointment over the house.

SPEAKER_01 19:13

Yeah. Um, so we decluttered when we thought we were moving, and then we actually had all our stuff moved down to the house, and it's that's since come back to where we are now. And I decluttered even more because we'd been living without that stuff. We only we only had the bare minimum, and it yeah, and it has proved to me you do not need lots of stuff. Yeah. And so it's either got to be useful or bring me joy. Yeah. And that's the same with my personal time off. Okay, we'll use that as an example. Um, because people said to me, I've always said to me, you need to take time off, you need to take time off. So I'd take time off and I'd just be at home and I'd be sort of quite bored, really, um, because I didn't have anything intentional to do. So I've decided I'm not gonna take time off unless I have something specific that I intend to do, whether that's cleaning the house or cleaning my home or doing batch cooking or going on an adventure, you know, rather than just oh, I've been told that I have to take time off. So I'm gonna stay home today. Um, when I know that really I'd be more happy and yeah, more happy, happier to be at my desk.

SPEAKER_00 20:53

Yeah, exactly. And to me, that there you're you are challenging my comment, you know, or where I said, you know, I need you not to ignore your personal life because the the the work life is is easier. So you are there demonstrating I'm not ignoring it, I'm just kind of reshaping it. Yeah, um, you know, and I think that's really great. And the other thing that I have really noticed that you have taken some control over, um, and I know we've talked about this before, is but is your you know, your health journey, um, you know, and all the work you are doing there. And, you know, that hasn't always been smooth, and things haven't, you know, every week hasn't delivered the results that you might have been hoping for. But at no point have I seen you say, Well, I'm just gonna, I'm I'm just gonna dust myself off and go back to how I used to live because that was okay.

SPEAKER_01 21:46

I've made a really conscious decision not to think like that. Yeah. And I stop myself and I and I think, what do I want more? Do I want this packet of crisps or the sausage roll? Or you know, and and I'm starting to see results now, not just in the weight loss, but the way I move. It's easier, it's getting easier every day. But that's another thing too. I can I'm more likely to stick at my healthy progress and goals and challenges if I am at work. Because if I was at home and I was didn't have any specific thing to do and I was bored, I would probably eat and not move as much. You know, I'm not talking about, you know, never taking any time off work again. I'm talking about that taking time off to to not not necessarily to achieve something, but it has to be not just to always stay under the under the duvet cover or in front of the television.

SPEAKER_00 23:06

Yeah. And you know what? If at some point you feel like you need that day, you need a duvet day, then I know that you will have chosen to have that day. Yeah, and now you would say I absolutely intend to have a restful day reading my book under the duvet.

SPEAKER_01 23:20

Because that will be intentional.

SPEAKER_00 23:23

Exactly. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 23:25

Yeah, not because oh, I don't know how to, I don't know what to do, or procrastinating, or resisting. You know, I'm putting a lot more thought and effort into what I think about, what I tell myself, those limiting beliefs again.

SPEAKER_00 23:47

Yeah. And I think a key part of bouncing forward is learning to recognise and use the concrete evidence of your own competences or your own sort of abilities and capabilities. And I think sometimes when we get in stuck in a cycle of overthinking, that's that we struggle to do that. We struggle to learn from the evidence. So we kind of regress to what worked before. But if you can actually say to yourself, okay, when I look at you know, this couple of days I took off, what does the way I behaved in those two days tell me about how I use my time off? That gives you the evidence to kind of break that cycle of I take time off, I just waste it procrastinating, resisting, vegging out, however, however you want to describe it. The evidence suggests to you that when you take some time off because you're gonna go and visit a friend, or you're gonna go, you know, on a day out with your husband or something, or you know, you're gonna do a task, you're gonna clean the house from top to bottom, then time off works for you.

SPEAKER_01 24:55

Yeah. And you know, sometimes I know that I need a duvet day. I'm gonna call it a duvet day. I'm not necessarily underneath the duvet, but I'm gonna call it a duvet day. Just sometimes I know, especially if I'm trying to work through a problem that I'm trying to find a solution for. I work very different to my husband and very different to my business partner. They think and solve problems in a completely different way to me. I need quiet space and time to think. And quite often, that is underneath the do having a duvet day. Yeah. Um that's how I think and I've and I figure out a solution. And it and it always works. It it really does always work, but yet if I came to work, I would get busy doing things, and I wouldn't be trying to solve the solution unless I was talking to somebody like you, or you know, my my other people that I work closely with who I can, you know, I've I talk to think.

SPEAKER_02 26:07

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 26:08

So if I'm talking to you, I can come up with a solution, or if I'm at home underneath the duvet, I'm talking to myself.

SPEAKER_00 26:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:18

Yeah. So and I think again, that's intentional, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 26:23

Yeah, you you're you're making a decision rather than being on autopilot, uh, you know, where you just kind of return to the position you were in before all the time, you're actually interrupting that cycle and saying, okay, what's working here? What isn't working? What would I like to be doing differently? You know, and you're taking a kind of conscious action, particularly when you do have like a limiting belief. Like, you know, you talked about them, like I said, about I you got into this thing where I had to get myself in an absolute tizzy for three days before an exam, otherwise I wouldn't do well. It's really important that we interrupt those kind of old lessons which just come back into our minds and say, hang on a second, is that useful? Is that true? Does this help me? Does this serve me anymore? And you know, the more we do that, the more we kind of wake ourselves up in the middle of that autopilot response, the more likely we are to be able to take that evidence to learn that lesson and bounce forward rather than just kind of it's it's great to dust yourself down and get back up and start again. But wouldn't it be great to do that with a bit more forward energy?

SPEAKER_01 27:36

Yeah. So one thing I want to know, I've never heard that phrase bouncing forward, and everything that you've talked about, I've not read or heard about this before. Is this a Michelle ism or is this something you've learned from somewhere?

SPEAKER_00 27:57

Uh so a few years ago, ages ago now, I did a um a course. Um, have you had a future learn? They do um so it's a website, and you can do loads of different courses on there. And and some of them, if you want to get audited for it, you have to pay, but you can do a load of stuff for free. And there was a course on there, I think it was Deakin University, and they did a course on professional resilience. Um, and as part of when you do courses with Future Learn, you have to sort of participate in um various kind of chat forums, and they will ask you certain questions. And um somebody asked, I think the question was, how do we define resilience? And a lot of people defined resilience as the ability to bounce back. And then I read one comment, and uh somebody had written, I'm not a fan of bounce back. That suggests to me that the resilience ball brings you back to where you were, but I don't think it does. Hopefully, you face the future more able and wiser by building up your resilience. Um, and I just thought that was a really lovely way of describing it. And then somebody else then said when you do that, you can use those circumstances, so taking an exam or losing out in a house or whatever, not to be sort of things that trip you up, but actually stepping stones that you can kind of move forward on. And I just found that a really helpful thing. So since then, sort of eight or nine years ago, I've been trying to use that idea of bouncing forward rather than bouncing back. It's I think it's brilliant, and so I take absolutely no credit for coming up with that concept, but you know, I love to spread that concept. Whoever that person was, I wish I'd made a note of their name, but thank you very much because we've made a defense. But you know that thing, have you ever seen that uh Japanese art um with the broken ceramic when they put it back together with with gold? Yeah, okay, it's called something like Kinsakori or Kintsugi, I think is another name for it. And I love that. So if you imagine this, this you know, bowl that's been broken, but you've stuck it back together with this this lacquer that or glue that's got gold in it, you've now got something that looked even more beautiful than before. And so I think for me, that kind of visually sums up this idea of bouncing forward. So we're not ignoring our struggles or ignoring the challenges we've had in the past, but we're using them, we're kind of valuing the lessons that we learned from them to make something even better.

SPEAKER_01 30:51

Yeah, and that's a really perfect analogy to the house because I absolutely love, I mean, love where we live now and how we live. Okay. I love it. There was, I wouldn't have even have contemplated moving apart from where this house was. You know, it was only just down the road. It was um it was perfect for my husband, and and we could have still carried on um being involved with the people who we, you know, live and work with now. But it so it was perfect, but now that it's not happening, I'm not sad anymore because I'm I'm still happy with where we live and how we live. So it's not broken, it's just been put back together, filled with gold. Um, and yeah, bouncing forwards.

SPEAKER_00 31:53

Yeah. That makes me feel quite emotional to hear you say that, actually. I think that's a really lovely um reflection on the process. Because obviously, you know, I've been sort of witnessing the whole house process as your friend. And there was a time when it was really tough for you, wasn't it? But to hear you say now that you know you're you're staying where where you live and that it's kind of filled with gold now, I think that's a really lovely, really lovely image to have. Thank you for sharing that.

SPEAKER_01 32:24

Yeah, so you know, um I've just told my husband that um he needs to hurry up and sort my veggie garden out again.

SPEAKER_00 32:34

Yeah, that's true. So you can get back into doing that. Yeah. So I think I think that bouncing forwards, it may be in the moment, it may be more difficult. Okay. It takes some self-awareness, it takes you being honest with yourself and challenging sort of thoughts you've had in the past. It takes courage and confidence. It does indeed, it does indeed, and and it takes the recognition that you sometimes you just need to stop for a few seconds and think, what's actually going on here? What am I learning? How am I gonna react to this? You know, how can I move forward rather than just go back to a previous situation? Yeah. So if you're listening to this right now and you can think of an example where in the past you bounced back and you've been really pleased to bounce back because you know you've been demonstrating resilience. Um, I'd like to ask you whether or not this idea of bouncing forward fills you with dread or whether it fills you with uh a bit of optimism or excitement, as uh as Lee described. Um, if there's somebody you know that you think needs to hear this, um maybe you'd share the episode with them and and leave us a review or leave us a comment. But um I think Lee has just summed that up lovely in a lovely way with her uh uh her house filled with gold. So I think we should probably leave it there for today. What do you think, Lee?

SPEAKER_01 34:11

I think that that's perfect, and thank you so much for coming up with that phrase because I'm gonna use it and think about it almost daily, I'd say. And I'm gonna I'm going to tell other people or suggest to other people that you know when that whenever I hear somebody saying the words bounce back, I'm saying no, you should be bouncing forwards.

SPEAKER_00 34:41

Well, on that note, everybody, take care of yourselves and keep bouncing forward. Goodbye. Bye-bye.