bucket filling

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Season 1 Summary: Relationships

Image by Photo Mix from Pixabay.

Human beings have evolved to be social creatures. In fact, it’s this social nature that has kept our species alive for millennia.

Today, our social instincts must ride to the rescue once more. This time, the threats are not predators or enemy tribes, but a deteriorating ecosystem and billions of rightfully angry disadvantaged people feeling its effects. 

We will need all our social cooperation prowess to build a sustainable and just society over the 21st century. And it all starts with making each other feel good 🙂

Bucket filling

The bucket analogy is a great tool for improving any relationship. It states that each of us has an emotional bucket and dipper. If our buckets are filled, we feel great. If they’re emptied, less so. 

Our mission is simply to add at least a few drops to the other person’s bucket in every interaction. And the best thing is that filling another bucket also fills our own. 

To make this more tangible, here are three posts delving a little deeper into bucket filling and bucket dipping. 

Personal relationships

The most direct application of bucket filling is in our close personal relationships. Although such relationships no longer have much direct practical value, they are essential for our health and happiness. 

Here are some tips for maintaining sound personal relationships:

  • Be sure to prioritize quality over quantity. You can get all the benefits from only a few great relationships. Poor relationships harm health and happiness, while average relationships dilute life. 
  • Know a quality relationship when you see one. Do you feel good when thinking of the other person? Do you experience joy when they’re happy and discomfort when they’re sad? Do you trust them completely? Three yesses mean you should treasure that relationship!
  • Three keys to smooth relationships: Fill buckets (even if you don’t feel like it) and refuse to empty buckets (even if they deserve it). Avoid getting defensive to keep arguments rare and undramatic. Respect each other’s time to allow space for the rest of life. 

Professional relationships

Getting important things done in today’s complex world requires multidisciplinary teams. And such teams are built on sound professional relationships. 

Good professional relationships arise from the following four steps:

  1. Establish “win-win more” relationships. When gathering collaborators for your initiative, try to ensure that they get even more from the deal than you. 
  2. Collaborate like true pros. Be open to feedback – both the constructive and destructive kinds. Make sure your communication is crystal clear (misunderstandings happen all too easily). 
  3. Take pride in being the dumbest person in the room. Learn from experts by offering to do all the work in return for their guidance. Get a mentor team, either by reading works from best-selling non-fiction authors or by getting real-life mentors. 
  4. Find your networking style. If you’re a natural networker, you could make a career out of bringing the right people together. If not, rather build close relationships with one or two natural networkers and focus more on online networking. 

But no discussion on relationships would be complete without the glue that holds it all together:

Communication

Most people equate more communication with more talking. This is a serious fallacy. In fact, body language and voice tone are much more important.

If these two key communication elements are not in place, your words quickly become worthless or even harmful. These three posts explored the art of communication in more detail: 

  1. Body language: the core of communication. The most important body language signals are those conveying an open or closed attitude. Learning how to unravel defensiveness through open body language can make you a much better communicator. 
  2. Voice tone: more than words. A deep and engaging voice tone is the emotional glue that makes your words stick. Conscious control of voice tone can also help to keep negative emotions from ruining your communication.   
  3. Words: less is more. If you want people to like you and/or take your message to heart, use fewer words, not more. Try to concentrate as much goodness and insight into as few words as possible. 

Team Human faces many intimidating challenges today. We’ll need heaps of bucket filling, emotional nourishment, effective collaboration, and true communication to emerge victorious. 

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Building Nourishing Personal Relationships

So far this week, we’ve established that:

  1. Nourishing personal relationships are crucial for health and happiness,
  2. Quality is much more important than quantity,
  3. Quality relationships are characterized by good feelings, natural empathy, and complete trust. 

Today’s post will complete this little story with some ideas for building and maintaining nourishing relationships. 

Fill buckets (even if you don’t feel like it)

Smile, add humor, compliment, praise, give, express gratitude, listen, and validate.

These simple little tools are guaranteed to bring the best life-enhancing biochemical responses out of the relationship, both for you and the other person. 

And they’re especially important if you don’t feel like it. Remember that filling another bucket fills your own as well. If that other bucket is very dear to you, so much the better. 

Don’t empty buckets (even if they deserve it)

Do not sulk, scream, belittle, neglect, forget, gossip, or destructively criticize.

Sometimes the other person will tick you off, and you’ll feel like they deserve a good bucket dipping. 

Don’t.

Face up and calmly tell them what they did wrong and how it made you feel. Often, you’ll find they didn’t even realize they’re doing something wrong and would happily fix it. 

In the rare event that they were hurting you on purpose, it’s time for a sensible grown-up conversation. The longer you wait, the tougher it’s going to get.

Catch yourself when getting defensive

Any relationship will have times when you don’t see eye-to-eye. To ensure that these times are rare and undramatic, make sure to avoid arguments where one or both parties get defensive. 

Resolving any argument will require that one or, preferably, both parties make a change. A defensive attitude makes it all but impossible to accept such a responsibility to change. 

If you sense strong defensiveness, shift your objective from finding a solution to restoring both attitudes to a point where a solution is actually possible. Postpone the conversation if needed.

Value each other’s time

Relationships take time. There’s no argument that they are an essential priority, but there are many other priorities in life (including other relationships).

In my experience, building good relationships is a lot like building good habits: The number and quality of repetitions matter much more than the duration. 

Try to regularly spend relatively short periods together. And in these periods, be 100% there and 100% engaged. 

Try to avoid talking for hours on end, even if it still feels good. Politely ending the conversation when both parties are still enjoying it ensures that the next one will be even better. 

Be proactive

People often say that relationships are complicated. But perhaps it’s more accurate to say that relationships are complicated when things start going wrong. 

If both parties are in a good place, dedicated to bucket filling, determined to avoid defensiveness, and respectful of each other’s time, relationships become surprisingly simple. 

Proactively getting your closest relationships to this point can add many years to your life and much life to your years. 

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Recap: The Art of Bucket Filling

Relationships happen one interaction at a time. If the vast majority of those interactions are positive, the relationship will blossom. If too many are negative, it will wither and die. 

This week’s posts revolved around a simple concept to help maximize the positivity. 

The checklist

  • How full is your bucket?
    • Each of us has an emotional bucket and dipper. If our buckets are filled, we feel great. If they’re emptied, less so. 
    • Our mission is simply to add at least a few drops to the other person’s bucket in every interaction. 
    • And the best thing is that filling another bucket also fills our own. 
  • 9 great ways to fill a bucket.
    • Smile, add humor, complement, praise, give, express gratitude, listen, show interest, and validate. 
    • Consistently deploying these bucket-fillers needs plenty of practice. 
  • 7 great ways to empty a bucket. 
    • Sulk, scream, belittle, neglect, forget, gossip and destructively criticize. 
    • Mostly, we know all too well when we’re emptying buckets. Stop. 
  • The art of constructive criticism. 
    • Constructive criticism is essential for personal and professional growth. Learning how to give and take it is a crucial life skill. 
    • Get the timing right, don’t get personal, communicate your intent to help, and know when to stop. 

The simplicity of the bucket philosophy makes it quite easy to keep in your awareness as you go through your daily interactions. This awareness is all that’s needed. 

Give it a try, one interaction at a time. 

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9 Great Ways to Fill a Bucket

Yesterday’s post introduced the concept of bucket-filling: Bringing some good vibrations to every interaction. 

Today, we’ll discuss some simple ways for doing just that. 

Smile

It doesn’t have to be any more complicated that this.

A simple smile tells the other person you’re happy to see them. That message is all it takes to fill a bucket. 

Humor

Getting another person to smile or laugh is an excellent way to ensure they go away from the interaction feeling better than before. 

Always be on the lookout for funnies in your conversations. Those where you make fun of yourself are often the most effective. 

Complement

Well-deserved complements are very effective bucket fillers. Whenever someone else makes a good impression on you, let them know – the more spontaneous the better. 

Be careful not to become superficial though. If a complement is not really deserved or feels forced, it can easily have the opposite effect. 

Praise

Similar to complements, praise is a powerful bucket-filler. If someone did a praiseworthy job, be sure to give them the recognition they deserve. 

But praise can also become superficial and methodical. Instead, try to present your praise in unexpected ways with plenty of specifics about what exactly you admire.  

Give

We all like gifts. If done right, even a small gift can have a large impact. 

To boost the impact, ensure that your gift can really add value and try to maximize the element of surprise. 

Gratitude

Whenever someone does something nice for you, you can give back straight away with a bit of bucket filling. 

A simple thank you is often enough. But adding a little something like “that’s so kind of you” or “you made my day” when appropriate can take it to the next level. 

Listen

One of the best ways to fill another person’s bucket doesn’t even require you to say or do anything. Just be there 100% and listen.

If someone else is going through a tough time, this could be the single best way of supporting them.  

Interest

There are few better ways to show you care than to cultivate some interest in topics the other person cares about.

Your listening skills will clearly reveal the best topics. All you need to do is to think a little about what was said, form some balanced opinions, and bring the topic back in a future conversation.

Validation

We all crave validation that we’re on the right track in this complicated journey called life. Delivering this validation is a very powerful bucket-filling tool. 

Whenever the words “I agree” or “you’re right” become relevant, be sure to use them without hesitation. Don’t be a yes-man, but be ready to provide any justified validation. 

Practice

Like any other skill, bucket-filling requires plenty of awareness and practice.

So, be sure to keep the idea of the bucket in mind during your next interaction. The beautiful simplicity of this analogy makes this very easy to do. 

But there are also some bad habits we need to unlearn to become effective bucket fillers. We’ll get to those tomorrow.  

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How Full is Your Bucket?

Today is the start of the penultimate Supermorning chapter where we tackle one of our most complex subjects: Relationships. 

The best place to start is with a simple piece of advice applicable to all human interactions: Become a dedicated bucket filler. 

Let’s see what this means.

The bucket and the dipper

This delightfully simple analogy comes from the little book by Tom Rath that this post is named after. 

It states that each of us has an invisible emotional bucket and dipper. In each interaction, we can choose to fill the other person’s bucket or to dip from it. 

If a bucket is filled, the interaction lifts the spirits of both parties. If a bucket is dipped from, one or both parties feel worse after the interaction. 

Win-win

The best thing about this idea is that filling another person’s bucket does not empty your own.

In fact, the act of bucket filling will reward you with some good feelings too. It really is one of the best habits to develop, both for yourself and for those around you. 

Become a bucket filler

Bucket-filling does not need to cost anything. Neither is there any need for some kind of grand gesture in every interaction. 

Just one little drop will suffice. Consistent small additions to all the buckets you meet along your way will greatly improve your relationships, including the one with yourself. 

Tomorrow’s post will take a closer look at what these drops look like.