We all want to be confident and raise confident children. In my workshops, when I ask parents to grant their kids four wishes, confidence is high on their list. Confidence is the faith we have that things will happen in a certain way or that we’ll manage whatever happens. It is a sense of satisfaction or happiness about things that happened or about to happen.
Most parents are very surprised when I tell them that kindness is a fantastic way to boost our confidence, so, let me show you what the connection is.
In his book “How full is your bucket?” Tom Rath explained a beautiful concept that is highly relevant to confidence.
I find the model in the book a beautiful way of explaining to kids how they can feel better by making others feel good about themselves. Napoleon Hill wrote about it many years ago and there are many theories that follow the same formula.
If you want to feel something, give it to others gracefully, and what you give will come back to you in abundance.
The bucket filling model is so simple that there is even an illustrated version for kids. “How full is your bucket? For kids”
Think of confidence as a container, a bucket, and the fuller it is, the more confident you feel. You go through life and all you do is accumulate experiences hoping to fill up the bucket. Every experience either fills up the bucket or empties it. Good feelings fill the buckets. Bad feelings empty the bucket.
Our body is a bio-chemical machine. Everything is done chemically with the help of hormones and nutrients. Emotions are just what we experience as a result of this chemical symphony.
We can’t possibly tell which hormone is activated at any moment in time and in which dosage, but we can use emotions for that.
Emotions are the way to measure if the bucket is fuller or emptier now. It is important to understand that emptier or fuller are relative “feelings” and our body checks for it chemically at any second of time, in order to decide what it needs to produce more of or less of.
If we feel good about an event, the bucket just added another drop of confidence in ourselves, in the world around us, in our place, in our abilities, in people…
If we don’t feel so good about an event, then there is a small hole in our bucket and the confidence level drops. Our confidence bucket has a leak.
Simple! Right?!
Well, this is just a way to check how full is our bucket and you might be asking yourself, “OK, what do I need to do to fill up my bucket?”
The answer is: You just fill up other people’s buckets.
Giving is receiving
When we make others feel good about themselves, we feel good too.
When we make others not feel good about themselves, we feel not good about ourselves too.
What we give, we receive!
When we fill up other people’s buckets, we fill up ours. Our happiness grows, our trust and confidence in ourselves and the world grows, and it is a win-win situation.
When we take away from others’ buckets, we, in fact, make holes in their bucket and we empty ours as well. Our happiness drops, our trust and confidence start dripping out of the holes in our bucket. Lose-Lose situation.
All events are drops of water
There is a beautiful theory that says that all the good feelings in the world are a form of love, and all the not so good feelings are lack of it.
I like this idea and believe that it is a good match to bucket philosophy. All good events are drops of water and all not so good events are holes in the bucket and are a sign of a leak.
If this bucket is our energy, our confidence, our battery, then when we accumulate good feelings, we charge our battery and can use it to overcome challenges and when we make holes in others’ bucket, we deplete our energy, our confidence and our battery is “leaking”, and we can’t use it very well.
When we consider confidence as a strong energy, then we strengthen our confidence when we have a full bucket or full battery.
All the events in our life are drops of water or energy that are measured by feelings. There are many events happenings outside of our life and don’t affect our buckets/energy level/battery.
Each of us has a bucket inside that is constantly measured and checked. When we become aware of this mechanism, we can actively change the situation. If we find ourselves empty on the energy level, on confidence and trust, then we can act by filling our bucket – by filling up other people’s buckets.
Kindness is the best way to fill up others’ buckets. Research shows that giving is the best way to boost our energy and sense of self-worth. We can be kind with our intentions, kind with our time, kind with our skills, kind with our words, kind with our actions. Kindness has no boundaries.
Over the years, I found out that children understand this model very well. I was able to explain this to a group of four-year-old children. The second they understood this model, they were more kind towards themselves and others.
I believe children have this understanding naturally and when I showed them how they benefit from being kind, they suddenly had the power to change their life, by being kind to others.
Pay it forward!
This philosophy is very good for any group. It is helpful in families, it is helpful in classes, in schools, in the workplace and in our community.
The amazing bit about being kind and bucket filling is that it is contagious. When your bucket is filled up by someone else, you tend to fill up buckets as well. Something like “paying it forward.”
Much like the law of attraction says that like attracts like, when we are kind, we attract to our life, like-minded people. When we develop a bucket-filling mentality, we’ll attract into our life bucket filling people and slowly, our whole community can develop a filling bucket mentality, which will result in a confident community.
Kindness works like a ripple. We do one act of kindness and that ripples slowly to more and more people.
The biggest challenge that people have around this model is the misconception that when I give, I’ll have less or when I use “force” to make others do what I want them to do, it’ll make me feel better.
It won’t!
If the other person didn’t feel good about this interaction, you won’t feel good, no matter what!
People with this distorted mindset make fun of others, they express disappointment and shame in others, they are critical, aggressive, judgmental and they don’t understand that all those behaviors are leaking behaviors. They rob others of their confidence level and at the same time, rob themselves of the exact same thing.
The best way to make this ripple travel fast is to start with developing a filling bucket mentality in the family. Any kind word, any kind gesture, offers help, smile, support, encouragement, can help people of the family feel better about themselves and it is much easier to live in a house when all members of the house have full buckets.
Below is a beautiful video that shares this in an easy way:
If at dinner time, everyone shares his/her acts of kindness for the day, after only three days, the sense of self-worth and confidence increases.
If you help your children develop this mentality and they use a journal, you can ask them to write down 3 acts of kindness they have done throughout the day.
The second place to work on it is in classrooms. Children spend many hours in their classrooms, and it is important if they promote bucket fillings. There are many classrooms that actively count bucket-filling points and the atmosphere in those classrooms is positive and allows the children to pursue academic achievements with much more confidence.
If you are a teacher, use it in your class. If you are a parent, offer the teacher to do it in class. As I said, children are very accepting of the model and work with it brilliantly.
The third place to use this strategy is in the workforce. It is wise to bring this to any group and discuss the different ideas of filling up buckets and dipping so people learn to fill up their confidence bucket by filling up others. In organizations using this strategy, relationships are better, and productivity increases significantly.
And regardless of age and which stage of your life you are in. Stop every hour and ask yourself, “how full is my bucket?” and if it isn’t full enough in your opinion, start filling up others’ buckets and watch yours filling up quickly.
Be Happy by filling up buckets!
Ronit
