Filling Your Own Bucket
Hello, beautiful one.
Years ago, my mom, an elementary school librarian, sent me a children’s book called “Have You Filled A Bucket Today?” by Carol McCloud. Along with the book, she included a cute little purple bucket filled with handcrafted notes of all the things she loved about me.
The concept of the book is that we all have invisible buckets we carry around. Your bucket only has one purpose. It is to hold your good thoughts and feelings about yourself. All of our buckets need to be filled. When you do and say kind things, it fills someone’s bucket. In turn, you become a bucket filler. Doing or saying unkind things dips from someone’s bucket. You become a bucket dipper.
I loved the concept of this book so much I used it as a guiding principle with my own kids when they were little and I still use it with them as teens! And, I use it in my own personal and professional interactions too! There is something to be said about using your power to lift someone up.
Being a bucket filler is being the best version of yourself. It is tapping into a part of you that serves your highest good all while uplifting someone else.
And you know what, you’re probably really good at filling other people’s buckets. It comes so easy to highlight someone else’s value and worth.
But, when was the last time you filled your own bucket?
Have you talked to yourself in a kind and loving way lately?
Do you routinely remind yourself of all the things you’re doing as best as you can, with what you have where you’re at right now?
When life knocks us off our center we do a really good job of finding everything that is going wrong.
Your kiddo is struggling with his/her behavior and you start beating yourself up about every single thing you think you’ve done wrong as a parent instead of taking a good long look at every single thing you’ve done right as a parent and implementing more of that.
You’re struggling with the loss of connection to someone significant in your life and you begin listing every single thing you could have done differently in the course of that relationship instead of highlighting all the beautiful interactions you made happen.
You’re sick and tired of being sick and tired in this thing called life and you ruminate about why you’re so miserable and stuck. You focus your energy on all the ways you can't seem to pull yourself out of the muck instead of giving yourself credit for recognizing and acknowledging that you want to be somewhere different in your life.
Today, start to fill your own bucket. Catch yourself when you dip from your bucket and shift into being a bucket filler instead.
You are the creator of your life. You get to choose what you want. You have the power to define what matters most to you - what serves your highest good. You get to focus on all the gorgeous things about you that make you, you.
And, guess what happens when you start to be a bucket filler? You feel lighter. Hopeful. Ready.
You start to create more of what you want in this life. People, places and circumstances start presenting themselves to you.
This is where movement begins. This is how we start moving from Point A to Point B.
Always sending light and love your way,