You Have Unlimited Renewable Energy Within Yourself!

There is an absolutely wonderful book entitled, How Full Is Your Bucket by Tom Rath and Donald O. Clifton, Ph.D. that offers the metaphor of the dipper and the bucket. According to them, we each have an invisible bucket that is constantly being emptied or filled based on what others do and say.

My experience is that a major factor affecting the emptying or filling of that bucket is in our own hands!

 A full bucket inspires a positive outlook and approach to life and work and since its level is in our hands, it becomes an unlimited renewable energy. Each time you fill your own bucket (or someone else’s) you get stronger. On the other hand, an empty bucket poisons our thoughts, zaps our energy and weakens our will to take action.

So, we face a choice on a daily basis.

Do we leave it up to the external world to fill or empty our own bucket or do we take charge of filling it ourselves? Do we fill or empty other’s buckets (which indirectly affects our own)?

You may be thinking how obvious the answers are to those questions but it’s sometimes easier said than done to be a Strengths Hero, to intentionally look for ways to fill our own and others’ buckets.  We each have a profoundly important choice / decision to make. 

Are you going to be someone who builds up yourself and others or not? Your decision will influence the direction of your relationships, productivity, health, confidence, happiness, success and fulfillment.

Enjoy that internal renewable energy you have!

Spread the word, 

P.S. Clifton senior was a teacher of psychology at the University of Nebraska in the early 1950s when he noticed a problem: The field of psychology was based almost entirely on the study of what is wrong with people. So, for the next five decades, he and his colleagues studied what is right with people and discovered that our lives are shaped by our interactions with others and that personal success was built on our strengths, not on fixing our weaknesses. The American Psychological Association cited him as the Father of Strengths Psychology in 2002, one year before his death.