Fill your bucket

Yesterday we had an all staff holiday party. I really enjoy events such as this because I can talk face-to-face to my co-workers that I don’t see on a daily basis. Yesterday, our Executive Director, Chad Wilkins, and our Direct of Independent Living, Rosie Cooper, did a presentation on the book, How Full is Your Bucket?The presentation was based on Tom Rath’s book, which is focused on the concept that if you have positive interactions it adds to your “bucket” and negative interactions take away from your “bucket”. I thought this presentation was fabulous! They asked us to write down all of our positive interactions from the previous day on green water drops and all of our negative interactions on yellow ladles (to represent dipping from our bucket). I did and ended up with nine positive and five negatives and a feeling that the day was just an “okay day.” Others had between six positive and no negatives to six negatives and no positives.

I mentioned to the group that I think the time of day the negatives occurred would also determine how you felt about the overall day. If your negative interaction happened first thing in the morning and you had five positives after that, maybe you ended the day feeling great. Whereas, if you had five positive interactions, but as you were going home you had a negative interaction, your day could have seemed horrible.

Chad and Rosie also mentioned that it takes five positive interactions to overcome one negative one. I think this is very important to making sure your “bucket” is full and makes complete sense as a good way to live your life. Please keep this in mind as you are having interactions with people this week and really try to make sure your bucket (and those of the people around you) is full!