Fill Your Bucket

Reflect on the last twenty-four (24) hours, now forty-eight (48), now seventy-two (72). Within these spans of time, how often have you affected someone in a positve way? Before you answer that question, think of how many times you smiled at someone, greeted them, complimented them, rewarded them, or gave praise and recognition to them. Now, how many times have you affected someone in a negative way? Maybe you wore a frown, complained about something, criticized, teased, yelled or hollared at someone, or even punished.

I read the book entitled, How Full is Your Bucket by Tom Rath and Donald Clifton. This book explains that everyone has an imaginary bucket. The objective is to fill your bucket so that it is constantly overflowing. Buckets are filled by others pouring into them. Buckets can also be reduced by "dipping" into others buckets. The book also mentions that everyone has an imaginary dipper. The dipper is used to pour or dip into other buckets. Therefore, I believe it's safe to conclude that pourers are "givers" and dippers are "takers".

Now that you understand what the bucket is, I'll explain the concept. This book focuses on maximizing your ability to be a positive person. Simple right? In this circumstance, it appears this is a black & white topic. Every action, thought, gesture, ect is either positive or negative.

When you say "Good morning!" to a co-worker, you are pouring into their bucket. Now, the first thing one might ask is, how will I fill my bucket if I'm always pouring into others? Well, what do you think your co-worker will say afterwards, "Good morning!" back right? Simple. Okay so why is this book so important to blog about.

Throughout life you were probably taught to do these things, like greeting people as you pass them, but this book teaches you the impact of bucket filling. The ability to identify the impact of your actions (whether positive or negative) allows you to improve them. It's the smaller things that we need to focus more to our attention. Divide your daily actions into percentages. Do you complain 45% of the day, compliment/praise 5 % of the day, frown 20%, smile 2%... The smaller things amount to much more than what we would consider the larger gestures.

At http://www.bucketbook.com/ there is a "Positive Impact Test". This assessment will provide you with a "Positive Impact Report". The report will list your postive impact as a percentile score and rank you into one of three categories: Low Impact, Some Impact or High Impact. After completing the assessment my Positive Impact Report ranked me in the 70 percentile which is in the "Some Impact" category. Of course, now I'm going to try and improve my score.

I strongly encourage you to read How Full is Your Bucket, it' a little over 100 pages in length, I read it in 2 days. This book is filled with concepts and ancedotes, supported by Gallup research.

So my question is, How Full is Your Bucket?