How Full is Your Bucket?

"How do you feel when you get a compliment or a nice word from someone? Conversely, how do you feel when someone puts you down or ignores you? These concepts are the basis for the grandfather-grandson team of Tom Rath and Donald O. Clifton’s bookHow Full is Your Bucket? Positive Strategies for Work and Life. The book is based on the concept that each of us has an invisible bucket. We are happiest when our buckets are overflowing and unhappy when our buckets are empty. Each of us also has an invisible dipper. With this dipper, we can either fill or dip from each other’s buckets. Rath and Clifton show how much happier and productive each of us is when we are filling each other’s (and, in turn, our own) buckets."curledup.com

"One of the striking aspects of this book is thatRath and Clifton come from the side of psychology that looks at what is ‘right’ with people, rather than what often seems the traditional approach of psychology, of looking at what is ‘wrong’ with people.In fact, Donald O. Clifton PhD was recognized by the American Psychological Association as ‘The Father of Strengths Psychology’. So, while positive psychology as a field is growing in significance and acceptance, we’re reading from one of the founding sources of this important area of research." Athlete Assessments

"Based on a simple metaphor of a bucket and a dipper, Tom Rath and his grandfather, Donald Clifton, a psychology professor, co-authored a book focused on our interactions with others. Their observations and research determined, “our lives are shaped by our interactions with others. The results of our encounters are rarely neutral; they are almost always positive or negative. They accumulate and profoundly affect our lives.” The bucket and dipper theory is based upon the assumption that everyone has an invisible bucket, which is constantly emptied or filled, depending on what others say or do to us. We also have an invisible dipper. We can use this dipper to fill the buckets of others to increase their positive feelings and when we do that it also fills our own bucket. When we say or do things that create negativity, we dip from other’s buckets and also deplete our own." Strategies