TOP DRAWER BOOK REVIEW
by
HL Carpenter

 

How Full is Your Bucket?
by Tom Rath and Donald Clifton
ISBN 1-59562-003-6
127 pages; hardcover; $19.95
Gallup Press, New York, 2004

Has anyone ever told you what was right with you?

If so, you probably felt uplifted and appreciated. Authors Tom Rath and Donald Clifton believe all of us should experience that kind of positive reinforcement – what they call bucket filling - on a daily basis.

The idea is this: Everyone has an invisible bucket that’s either filled or emptied during daily interactions. Positive interactions, such as giving or receiving a sincere compliment, fill your bucket. Negative interactions drain it.

More importantly, the authors say, you should be thinking about your influence on the buckets of others. How you fill or drain their buckets affects the level of your own. Perhaps surprisingly, adding to someone else’s bucket removes nothing from yours. In fact, your bucket becomes even more full.

How Full is Your Bucket? offers no deep insights. But it contains a simple reminder: You are part of the flow.

So go ahead. Pour a little happiness on someone else. The backwash might just splash joy into your own life.

 

Review originally published April 2005.