Imagine each of us has a great big invisible bucket. When your bucket is empty, you feel horrible. When it is full, you feel fantastic! Imagine each of us has a great big invisible dipper. If you use your dipper to fill another’s bucket, your bucket is also filled. When you use your dipper to empty another’s bucket, you draw from your own bucket as well. (Tom Rath, 2011) We face the choices of bucket filling and bucket dipping everyday, the decisions we make in a moment can leave us enriched or depleted. I know some of you are saying, what the buck-et is she talking about? Whether you call it The Golden Rule, Kharma, Fruits of the Spirit, or the Dipper and the Bucket, it is all about giving what you would like to receive. When we say or do things to increase another’s positivity, it also increases your own. This gives you a positive outlook and makes you stronger, more optimistic and produces better outcomes. When you say or do something to decrease another’s positive energy or intentionally increase negativity, you in turn decrease your own positivity. This decreases your strength, poisons your perspective and produces less than desirable outcomes.
I realized that my list is simply bucket filling. If it doesn’t fill a bucket, especially the bucket of another, it is not list worthy. I begin this journey with an overflowing bucket. My birthday morning began too early, and I do not embrace morning. I was interrupted with buzzing and buzzing of my phone, annoying me as I was trying to pay attention to a work planning session. I was surprised with notification after notification of facebook birthday wishes. Texts, calls, cards, songs, smiles, fun and sparkly gifts followed all the way through the meeting, into an evening of youth basketball and continuing into the next day. May your next move, and mine, be a drop in a bucket.
Tom Rath. (2011). The theory of the dipper and the bucket. Retrieved from http://strengths.gallup.com/114082/Theory-Dipper-Bucket.aspx
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