Filling Your Bucket

You wake up each morning. Let's pretend you have a bucket that you carry with you throughout the day. Each moment of emotion, duties or responsibilities add a certain amount of weight to the bucket you carry. Let me give you a few examples.

1. Steve and his wife lead a middle-class life. They happen to be of the Christian faith. Steve works in a Christian bookstore in the music department. He likes his job. Due to the image and stock the store sells, they get customers who are mostly of the Christian faith. Most of the customers are there to acquire something to do with enlightening their faith or buying a gift for someone. Steve usually has very pleasant customers who are happy to be there. When Steve helps a customer, his bucket is slightly filled with an air of pleasure. Therefore, Steve's bucket is light. He goes through the day in much the same way. At the end of the day, Steve's bucket is filled with happiness and pleasure for the job he has done. When he gets home from work, his bucket does not feel like a load of stress or anger. In fact, Steve does not even realize his bucket is there.

2. Heather is a twenty-four year old college student. She is basically a good person, but is frustrated because she still lives at home with her parents and has to travel thirty miles each day to attend classes. She also has a part-time job at a dollar store. When Heather wakes up each day, her bucket is already partially filled with the density of her frustration. She carries the bucket to school and because of the classes and homework, she has a lot of stress from attending college. By the time her classes are over, her bucket is half-full of dissatisfaction and quite dense and heavy. Then she has to go to her part-time job, which she dislikes because the customers are messy and often rude and add even more stress to her mind. Her bucket is filled with all the emotions and stress of the day and is quite heavy. When Heather gets home, she empties her bucket on her parents. In other words, she is complaining and angry about the day she had and takes it out on them.

3. Jeff is a forty-year old mechanic who day is filled with repairing automobiles. Jeff's bucket is relatively light in the morning, because he like his job, although it does have its' ups and downs with acquiring parts for vehicles and putting up with mostly complaining customers. Jeff tries to take it all in stride, but his bucket becomes partially filled with the some stress of the day. But due to his fairly positive attitude, Jeff dumps his bucket at the end of the day. He does not take his work home with him. While he is a relatively happy family man, some of the stress from his bucket seeps into his subconscious, which he does not realize. He is slowly building up a stressful situation which reacts to his body and could lead to medical problems later in life.

4. Linda is a divorced mother with three children. Her bucket is already starting to fill when she begins her day. While her job pays well and she would be considered upper middle-class, she struggles to maintain an even balance for her kids. One is in day care, which is expensive, and the other two are in high school. She is a manager at a high-end retail store. Her day is filled with constant meetings and phone calls and a barrage of requests from upper management. She worries about her kids because, as we all know, in today's society the action of our children are always a major stressor. Therefore, Linda's bucket is constantly being filled with anxiety and becomes quite heavy as the day progresses. Fortunately, her teenagers are moderately well-behaved and help out around the house and with taking care of her pre-school child. But by the time Linda finally gets home, the day has taken its' toll and her bucket is overflowing. She tries to empty it with a positive attitude, but that is not always the case. She has moments of anger that need not happen if she would take other courses of action to simplify her life. This is not an easy task, but it is necessary if she is to lead a happy life.

5. Ralph is poor. He is uneducated and stuck in a job at a fast-food restaurant which he hates. His bucket remains half-full just as his day is beginning. He has a rotten attitude toward life and does not like other people very much. This is brought on by his own doing. He lives in a run-down house, drives a car that is a clunker and lives on a meager income. He has done nothing his entire life to better himself or his situation. Ralph's bucket is always full of hatred, disgust and his personal view of the world. Ralph takes his frustration out on everyone and has no friends. If he does not change his personal views of life, he will remain this way the rest of his life.

These are real people that I know. What is in your bucket?