Are You A Bucket Filler Or A Dipper

You have heard of the cup that overflowed. This is a story of a bucket
that is like the cup, only larger, it is an invisible bucket. Everyone
has one. It determines how we feel about ourselves, about others, and
how we get along with people. Have you ever experienced a series of
very favorable things which made you want to be good to people for a
week? At that time, your bucket was full.

A bucket can be filled by a lot of things that happen. When a person
speaks to you, recognizing you as a human being, your bucket is filled
a little. Even more if he calls you by name, especially if it is the
name you like to be called. If he compliments you on your dress or on a
job well done, the level in your bucket goes up still higher. There
must be a million ways to raise the level in another's bucket. Writing
a friendly letter, remembering something that is special to him,
knowing the names of his children, expressing sympathy for his loss,
giving him a hand when his work is heavy, taking time for conversation,
or, perhaps more important, listing to him.

When one's bucket is full of this emotional support, one can express
warmth and friendliness to people. But, remember, this is a theory
about a bucket and a dipper. Other people have dippers and they can get
their dippers in your bucket. This, too, can be done in a million ways.

Let's say I am at a dinner and inadvertently upset a glass of thick,
sticky chocolate milk that spills over the table cloth, on a lady's
skirt, down onto the carpet. I am embarrassed. "Bright Eyes" across the
table says, "You upset that glass of chocolate milk." I made a mistake,
I know I did, and then he told me about it! He got his dipper in my
bucket! Think of the times a person makes a mistake, feels terrible
about it, only to have someone tell him about the known mistake ["Red
pencil" mentality!]

Buckets are filled and buckets are emptied? Emptied many times because
people don't really think about what are doing. When a person's bucket
is emptied, he is very different than when it is full. You say to a
person whose bucket is empty, "That is a pretty tie you have," and he
may reply in a very irritated, defensive manner.

Although there is a limit to such an analogy, there are people who seem
to have holes in their buckets. When a person has a hole in his bucket,
he irritates lots of people by trying to get his dipper in their
buckets. This is when he really needs somebody to pour it in his bucket
because he keeps losing.

The story of our lives is the interplay of the bucket and the dipper.
Everyone has both. The unyielding secret of the bucket and the dipper
is that when you fill another's bucket it does not take anything out of
your own bucket. The level in our own bucket gets higher when we fill
another's, and, on the other hand, when we dip into another's bucket we
do not fill our own ... we lose a little.

For a variety of reasons, people hesitate filling the bucket of another
and consequently do not experience the fun, joy, happiness,
fulfillment, and satisfaction connected with making another person
happy. Some reasons for this hesitancy are that people think it
sounds "fake," or the other person will be suspicious of the motive, or
it is "brown-nosing."

Therefore, let us put aside our dipper and resolve to touch someone's
life in order to fill their bucket.