Episode:4Bouncing Forward
Guests:Paul Ryan, Founding Director, Australian Resilience Centre
The popular idea that resilience means bouncing back turns out to be flawed. After a bushfire, a pandemic, or any transformative experience, we emerge with knowledge and lived experience we simply did not have before. Going back is impossible. This conversation explores what it means to bounce forward instead, and how that shift in thinking can help us build genuine resilience in ourselves and the communities we are part of.
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Show Notes
The title of this episode – Bouncing Forward – was inspired by a concept shared by Paul Ryan the founding director of the Australian Resilience Centre, and a global leader in resilience, adaptation and transformation practice.
Paul Ryan, founding director of the Australian Resilience Centre, and a global leader in resilience, adaptation and transformation practice.
Paul has been hosting a webinar series on Resilience, with the Goulburn Broken Catchment Management Authority, and the term ‘bouncing forward’ surfaced in the first webisode, in a discussion on how people have been adapting to COVID-19.
Paul joins us today for a ‘Conversation over a Cuppa’ as we look deeper into this idea of ‘bouncing forward’. The term stems from the notion that the popular belief about resilience being our ability to ‘bounce back’ is a flawed concept. This is because when we go through a traumatic experience such as the bushfires and current pandemic conditions, we come out the other end with lived experience and knowledge that we previously didn’t have. It is not only improbable, therefore, but impossible to return back to the state we entered the experience with.
Instead, resilience can be associated with our ability to ‘bounce forward’. What can we learn from the experience, adapt to, and build into our lives going forward?
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