How Full is Your Bucket?
How Full is Your Bucket?
By: Dr. Roger Landry, MD, MPH
Before you speak, ask yourself this question: will your words improve the silence?”
~From the book, Words Can Change Your Brain
My friend and colleague, Danielle Palli, recently shared an excellent bit of wisdom with me that I’d like to pass along to you…
Did you know that according to Nobel Prize-winning scientist Daniel Kahneman, we experience approximately 20,000 individual moments each day? Each moment lasts several seconds, and presents us with an opportunity to leave a positive, negative or neutral impact. Neutral experiences are rare, and often forgotten. But, positive and negative experiences linger and can leave a lasting impression on us.
Did you also know that positive emotions can lengthen a lifespan by 10 years? Researchers who studied a group of Mayo Clinic patients over a 30-year period linked optimism with greater longevity, and one Harvard study revealed that the way in which a group of men described a negative event (pessimistically or optimistically) predicted physical health outcomes decades later … It was found that a positive attitude translated into good health in later life.
In Tom Rath and Dr. Donald Clifton’s book, How Full is Your Bucket?, the author’s introduce the theory of the Dipper and the Bucket. According to this concept, we each have an invisible dipper and an equally invisible bucket. A full bucket means that we feel vibrant, healthy and positive about life; while an empty bucket leaves us feeling depressed and unhappy. With each encounter throughout the day, we have to make a choice – do we speak positively and constructively to others, thereby adding positive drops to other people’s buckets and therefore filling our own bucket as well? Or, do we say something that will decrease someone’s positive emotions and diminish ourselves in the process? We have the power to make these moments matter.
A Different “Bucket Challenge”
I have a challenge for you. Over the next three days, pause after each interaction and ask yourself if you are adding to or taking away from another person’s bucket. Whenever possible, reframe potentially hurtful words into more empowering ones. Everyone will be happier and healthier for it.
Live Long. Live Well. May Your Bucket Be Always Full.