Our Mission
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Our Mission:
Mission: The mission of Watch Me Bounce is twofold. One, we aim to inspire people be more resilient in life through the use of story. And two, we serve as a platform and an outlet to recognize and validate people’s stories about coping with and overcoming stress and adversity.
Why Resilience:
You can’t always control what happens to you. But you usually can control how you respond.
Stress. Trauma. Adversity. These are normal challenges in life. They can strike anyone, anytime and anywhere. How do we respond? Usually, we bounce back. But some times, our resilience is shattered, and stress overwhelms us.
Resilience helps people deal with stress or major set backs, and helps them stay in control. Resilience is what determines whether someone will remain a victim or bounce back to survive and thrive. Resilience is what allows us to keep going through life, no matter what happens.
This is why resilience is so important. And powerful.
Everyone can use resilience. And everybody has the potential for resilience. But not everyone can access it.
How can we help people be more resilient in the face of stress and bounce back from setbacks? How can we support and validate people’s experiences of coping with and overcoming stress and adversity? And how can we support those who are struggling with resilience?
By using stories. Fiction. Poetry. Real-life accounts. Any type of story that deals with resilience.
Why Stories: A Tool For Inspiration and for Validation
Stories inspire and empower people. They strengthen our beliefs in ourselves and society at large. By recording and publishing successful responses to adversity by ourselves and other people, stories also work to strengthen self-efficacy as well communal efficacy, or our belief that people in general can be resilient. Self-efficacy alone has been found to be an important factor determining someone’s resilience. Our stories serve as examples for other people struggling with similar challenges. Stories are universal, and bring communities together by creating connections. They enable us to share experiences that anyone can relate to.
Giving people a platform and an outlet to share their stories of coping with and bouncing back from adversity also serves as a medium for social support By publishing people’s stories, we offer recognition for what they have they have endured and bounced back from. We also serve as a tool for validating people and their experiences in times of need. Besides being a kind response, validation and especially social support are key factors in building and maintaining psychological resilience.
Stories can also help change our way of thinking about adversity. And the way we think about adversity affects the emotions we feel in response even more than the objective nature of the adversity itself. This, how we think about a challenging event, is key to building resilience.
Stories posses a narrative style that fits very well with the pattern in which humans think, and can therefore make moments like triumph against adversity more memorable.
Resilience is natural. But sometimes, we need a vehicle to tap into our emotions, help us see our inner strength, and motivate us to access our natural resilience.
Which is why we created Watch Me Bounce. Watch Me Bounce publishes content that tells stories in fiction, nonfiction and poetry forms. Our stories serve as a vehicle for driving resilience, by engaging to, connecting to and inspiring the inner resilience in us all.
Stories help their writers as well as readers. Stories allow us to express stressful, challenging moments in our lives-or our imagination-in an entertaining, memorable manner. By letting writers and survivors share their stories, Watch Me Bounce helps people gain recognition for what they have been through. We also act as a form of social support, by having their stories featured on our website. And by allowing them to use what they learned to help others, we help them find meaning in their stories and empower them to help themselves and others.
One story may not be enough to change the world, but it can change a world–or someone’s life. Your story could change a life, or your own. Want to bounce back better? Or help someone else bounce back better? You are not alone. Watch Me Bounce lets you do just that: become resilient and stay resilient. Because resilience isn’t just a way of surviving. It’s a way of thriving.
Where does the name “Watch Me Bounce” come from?
Let’s start from the end with this one. When someone returns back to normal functioning and is resilient after facing adversity, one term for describing this individual is that they “bounced” back. This told us to have “bounce” in the name, but it was only the start. Next we tried “me,” which makes it personal (as in “watch me bounce”). If we want people to share their stories of resilience, and to learn about resilience from other people’s stories, why not address people personally? The last kicker was getting the word to start the name off. We wanted something simple, like the rest of the name, but also something that was active and grabbed people’s attention. Thus was born the “watch” of our name. Together, Watch Me Bounce is not just a name. It is a message with a meaning: watch me bounce back from this adversity. It is both simple and empowering to the person reading it, whether they be a reader or writer sharing their tale of resilience.
History:
Watch Me Bounce was founded in the summer of 2011 by Rocky Reichman, who was originally Editor-in-Chief and founder of Literary Magic, an online literary magazine that published stories and articles on the English language. From this evolved Watch Me Bounce, a place to publish stories that inspire resilience.
Read more about Literary Magic and the original staff at www.LiteraryMagic.com. Rocky Reichman currently serve as Editor-in-Chief. Charles Brooks III serves as Poetry Editor. Read more on their bio pages.
Watch Me Bounce was founded in summer 2011 by Rocky Reichman, as a venture aimed at inspiring global resilience through the power of story.
Watch Me Bounce is a publication of Reichman Media™.
