Leaky Bucket Syndrome: Balancing gratitude and growth

Be thankful for what you have; you'll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don't have, you will never, ever have enough.

Oprah Winfrey

Would you be excited if every week for the rest of your life was the same as a normal week in your life today?

Most of us would answer this question with a resounding no.

We always believe our lives will be better in the future than they are today.

This drives us to improve and strive for great things, but it makes it harder to appreciate our lives as they are today.

Even if we wrote a list of everything we ever wanted and magically achieved it within the next year we still wouldn’t be satisfied. Once we get used to our new normal, it’s human nature to continue striving and accomplish more.

No matter how hard we try, focusing only on appreciating what we have or only on striving towards improvement will never be enough to satisfy us.

Our focus shouldn’t be solely on gratitude for the present or improvement in the future.

Striving without gratitude and gratitude without striving result in the same thing: unhappiness

Balancing gratitude for our current circumstances and striving to improve for the future lets us be happy and improve simultaneously.

Plugging the holes

Striving for improvement is human nature, but focusing on improvement without being grateful for our current circumstances is like trying to fill a leaky bucket.

Everything that we pour into the bucket will leak right back out.

If we can’t find a way to be grateful for what we have today, it’s unlikely we’ll be grateful for anything we accomplish in the future.

No matter how much we pour into the bucket, we can’t raise the water level until the holes are taken care of.

Learning to appreciate what we have today plugs the holes and provides a foundation to build on.

To fill our buckets, we have to plug the holes at the bottom first.

Only after we become grateful for the basics in our lives like food, shelter, and job security, can we start pouring in more water and worrying about plugging holes that are higher up on the bucket like financial stability, recreation, and emotional well-being.

Filling our buckets

After plugging holes, we have the opportunity to work on improving ourselves and adding more water to our bucket, but we should be careful with how we do this.

If we’ve met our basic needs but continue to pursue further improvements in the same areas of life, we’ll get stuck focused on the bottom of the bucket instead of steadily filling it up.

Money is the best example of this.

We all know someone who has enough but is only focused on getting more. They’re hung up on improving one area of their life at the expense of progressing to higher-order needs.

Neglecting to focus on higher levels of improvement creates the same leaky bucket problem; all of the effort we put in is futile because we haven’t moved our focus to the holes higher up on the bucket.

Focusing only on gratitude means we won’t add any water to our bucket. Focusing only on improvement means the water we add will leak out the holes. And focusing only on a single area of life will get us stuck at the same water level.

The balance of gratitude and striving keeps us happy where we are, excited about the future, and directing our efforts at higher-order needs means we will steadily improve every day.

Prompts

1. Are you more focused on plugging the holes in your bucket or pouring in new water?

2. How filled is your bucket today? Are you focused on your basic needs or are you focused on higher order problems?

3. What is one hole you need to plug and one area of improvement you need to focus on in the next month?

Deep Dive

• The Slight Edge - Jeff Olson
  • Turning Simple Disciplines into Massive Success and Happiness

This post is part of Prompted, a Series on IH.

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