Filling Your Bucket

When one of my nieces was very young, she learned a concept from one of her nursery school teachers that I have found very useful over the years. She was about three or four years old at the time, but the lesson is timeless for both children and adults. I remember her telling me in her tiny sweet child's voice that she had a love bucket inside her.

Whenever someone did something nice for her or gave her a compliment or expressed love to her, that filled up her love bucket. But when someone ignored her or hurt her or made her feel small in some way, that punched holes in her love bucket. Even though she was only a preschooler, she already had an excellent picture of how her emotions worked.

The Love Bucket

The love bucket is a helpful concept because it gives us a concrete specific example to use when we think about our feelings. It's easy to imagine your love bucket filled to the brim and overflowing inside you. It's how you felt on your wedding day, or when your child was born, or when you were reunited with a loved one after a long separation.

And your love bucket isn't only filled by your relationships, it can also be filled up and overflow when you spend time hiking in the woods, or tending a garden, or giving your dog a scritch behind the ears. Cooking or surfing or fishing may fill your love bucket. So may getting and doing the job of your dreams.

If you've been listening closely to my examples and thinking about the things that fill your love bucket, it's probably a little fuller now than it was just a few minutes ago. And isn't that a wonderful feeling?

Patching the Holes

I'm sorry to do this to you, but now I'm going to ask you to think about the things that punch holes in your love bucket. These can be big things like finding out your partner's cheating on you, or your child has a serious illness, or a parent has passed away. There are all kinds of medium things that can punch holes in your love bucket too, such as someone else getting credit for your work, or not passing the exam you studied so hard for, or having your spouse ignore you in favor of the phone or the TV or the kids.

There are also small things, like a thoughtless remark from a friend, or feeling left out when your work colleagues don't invite you to join them for a drink after work, or stepping on the scale to discover you've gained another couple of pounds. You know that feeling too. You just feel deflated, drained. Having a love bucket that is leaking heavily is a terrible feeling.

My examples of things that can take a sharp ice pick to your love bucket fall into three areas. They can be life events brought to you by external factors. They can be actions that others take, and they can be actions that you take. And actions include thinking.

The things that patch the holes in your love bucket also come from these same three areas, life events brought to you by external factors, actions that others take, and actions that you take, including thinking. And only one of these areas is under your control. But if you take control of it, your love bucket will be fuller on a regular basis.

So let's take a moment and look at these areas. Obviously, you can't control the external world. You just have to absorb the blow and deal with it the best way you can. Your attitude toward and response to these external events can make a huge difference. You will feel better if you focus on the positives you can control or create. And making that choice is one way you can patch and refill your own love bucket.

Your attitude and response are also the only things you can control when it comes to the actions of other people. You can't make someone love you. You can't make them treat you with respect. You don't decide what others do. You only decide how to view their actions and how to respond to them.

I don't want to minimize this. It feels terrible when someone you care about hurts you. Whether it's as small as a cutting remark during an argument or as big as total abandonment. I've been married to two husbands, and both of them left my love bucket so leaky, I had no choice but to end the marriages. And that's painful.

But no one can completely destroy your love bucket unless you allow them to do it. The actions you take can also either fill your love bucket or drain it.

You're In Charge of Your Bucket

How do you treat yourself? Do you think kind thoughts and have empathy for yourself as you go through the challenges of your life? Do you encourage yourself? Or are you the worst enemy you have?

I've talked before about the negativity bias we humans have inherited from our ancestors. It's the survival tool that helps us spot danger and avoid it. But we often turn it against ourselves. And when we do, always looking for the negative, our bodies may survive, but our spirits can be crushed.

If you are the one poking holes in your own love bucket, you can choose to stop doing that right now. And it's important to think about doing positive things rather than just stopping the negative ones, because you don't really stop behavior as much as you replace it with something else.

Allow me to say that I am still working on this myself. Every single day. It's easy for me to become critical of my own actions and to wallow in that criticism. It's easy to get discouraged and think life will never feel normal again. But thinking your thoughts is a choice.

The Choice Is Yours

Here's a short story I heard from the motivational speaker Jim Rohn that illustrates the difference our decisions make. The story goes like this: There were two brothers. They grew up in a family where the father was an alcoholic. The father would get drunk every night and was violent and angry towards his family. This went on for years as the sons grew up.

When the brothers became adults, one went on to become an alcoholic who got drunk every night and who became verbally and physically abusive to others. The other brother became an educated, kind, successful family man.

When the brothers were asked why they thought they turned out the way they did, the first one said, "My father was an alcoholic, so what else would you expect? I had no choice in the matter. Alcoholism runs in our family. I watched what my father did, and then I did the same."

The second brother said, "My father was an alcoholic, and I decided early on, I did not want to be like him. I watched what he did, and then I did the opposite." Jim Rohn used that story to illustrate the power of making a decision and then choosing your actions to support that decision.

Doing this doesn't mean you will always succeed, but you can choose to absorb your failures, pick yourself up, and continue on your chosen path. You can choose to patch your own love bucket when it is punctured and when it's leaking like crazy. You do that by acknowledging that life brings the ice pick to everyone's love bucket, but refusing to let yours run completely dry.

You can fill your own love bucket by choosing to think kind thoughts about yourself, expressing the same compassion, empathy, and encouragement you would express towards someone you love.

And when you approach others, you can do it with the intention of filling their love buckets. It doesn't take much effort to do these things. A kind word of encouragement, a compliment, a pat on the back. This week, let yourself do something that brings you joy, just because it brings you joy. And looking forward to doing it will also help to fill your love bucket.

No matter how many holes have been punched, you can always patch your bucket with positive inputs. And that also includes positive actions toward others. Go ahead, commit an act of kindness today.