How Full Is Your Bucket?

I used to stay at my grandmother’s house in Summers. She did not have a working bathroom inside her house. She had an outhouse. But in a small room inside the house, there was a bucket. It was a poop bucket. At the end of the day, it was somebody’s job to empty the bucket to start the day fresh the next morning. If you didn’t, it would stink up the whole house.
Back in my Army days, my drill sergeant used to refer to our helmets as a brain-buckets. I’ve come to appreciate that phrase as I believe everyone has a brain-bucket that fills up as we go throughout the day. Some of our buckets fill faster than others. We fill them with worry, regret, disappointment and many other forms of anxiety.
Everybody starts their day with a bucket. I’m curious how full is your bucket when you start your day and how fast does it fill up? Sometimes throughout the day, other people want to dump into your bucket and make you carry their load.  And then, there are those special people that come along beside you help you carry your load and empty your bucket without a flitch. Which person do you want to hang out with?
Sadly, some people start their day with their bucket half full, and yet others start with their bucket three-quarters full. Do you know how to empty your brain-bucket at the end of the day? Meditation, journalling praying, and reflecting is an effective way of emptying your bucket at the end of the day. Otherwise, you carry that crap into your dreams. It will infect you.
Dr. Dave
administrator
Dr. Dave Jenkins, DMin, LMFT is a marriage and family therapist in the Northern Virginia area; retired US Army counselor/medic. He's the founder of Fredericksburg Relationship Center. He's been married to the same woman for more than 30 years and has four children, a daughter-in-law and son-in-law.