I’ve had a busy week at work. The kind of week where you leave at the end of the day feeling like you are swimming upstream. So, today when I got home to a sink full of dishes and laundry I hadn’t put away, I realized that I was feeling like my bucket was empty: like I had poured out all of my emotional energy and hadn’t gotten anything in return to fill my bucket back up.
There is a great book that elementary educators often use called Have You Filled a Bucket Today by Carol McCloud to teach kids about the power of bucket filling and bucket dipping. When you do something nice or helpful or considerate for someone else, that is filling their bucket. And when you do something inconsiderate or hurtful to someone, that is being a bucket dipper.
This is an overly simplistic look at this concept, but it works for Kindergarten students, and I really believe that everything we need to know we learned in Kindergarten, so I will go with it.
In our work, we can often feel like we are giving more than we are getting back in return. And while it would be wonderful if we could all be truly altruistic about the service-oriented nature of our work, we all need to feel appreciated, valued, and just plain liked while we are at work.
So, I asked myself what I could do to fill my own bucket and here is a list of five things that we can do to make sure we are all getting as much as we give.
- Leave yourself love notes at home and at work. Leave post-it notes, cards, or sticker reminders that you are a freaking rockstar even if no one else noticed today in your desk drawer, inside a cupboard, on your computer screen, or even on the bathroom mirror. Even if you don’t remember where you put them, you will appreciate it when you finally open that file and say, “oh yeah! I am crushing it today!”
- Phone or text a friend to tell them how amazing they are. Filling someone else’s bucket is just about as awesome as having someone fill your bucket. And I would bet that if you need to hear that you make a difference today, your friend probably does too.
- Laugh. Tell a joke, play a game, dance a dance, or join the Ministry of Silly Walks. Laughing gets us back into a positive mindset (thanks, seratonin!) and can help us reframe our frustration so we can see how awesome we really are!
- Write about it. There is research that shows that writing can actually make us feel better. The process of writing helps us to process and problem-solve simultaneously, which can be incredibly positive. And whether you write in a journal, write a blog, or are working on your next novel, writing is something that allows us to think freely and express our thoughts and feelings – like therapy!
- Get creative! Let yourself get out the paints, write poetry, try out for that play, or sing in the community chorus. Creativity lights up all kinds of happiness in our brains and it’s fun to give ourselves permission to do something completely different!
What do you do to fill your own bucket? Has someone done something that filled your bucket today or this week? Share it in the comments!