Dumping Out the Bucket

All that weight of the world you are carrying around...wouldn't it feel great to put some of it down? 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 00 (00:00):
Do you ever think it would feel really great to slow
your life down a little bit?
Welcome to the Joy fulicityPodcast.
I'm your host, Laura Wakefield.

(00:24):
P Many years ago, I attended aninspirational presentation where
the speaker used a powerfulvisual to highlight his message.
He filled a large bucket upwith rocks to the brim, and then
he asked the audience, is thisbucket full?
Well, we said it was.
It was filled to the brim.
So he proceeded to pull out abag of sand, and he poured the

(00:48):
sand into the bucket over therocks, filling in all those
spaces in between.
And he asked us again, is thisbucket full?
Well, we answered that now, ofcourse, it definitely was full.
He walked over and he filled upa pitcher of water.
And as you can guess, he addedthe water to the bucket and it
soaked all into the nooks andthe crannies of the sand and the
rocks, and he then pronouncedthe bucket to be finally full.

(01:11):
Now, I've seen thispresentation repeated a few
times since, but at differenttimes in my life, it's taught me
very different lessons.
In my 20s and early 30s, Iviewed this as a demonstration
of the power of multitasking andhard work.
Those were my building years.
Everything was about growingand changing and achieving.

(01:33):
I was having babies and gettinga degree, remodeling homes,
creating a nest egg, andbasically wearing myself out,
generally speaking.
It was tiring, but also reallyfun and exciting.
I wanted to push myself to mylimits so I would know where
they were.
The rocks and sand and waterwere proof to me that if I moved

(01:56):
fast and efficiently enough,there was always a little bit
more that I could fit into myday and my life.
No excuses.
Go, go, go.
Not quite full yet.
Well, by my late 30s and 40s, Iwas feeling the effects of this.
I was a multitasking genius bythis time indeed, but I was
beginning to realize that doingtoo many things at once made it

(02:20):
awfully hard to do any of themvery well.
I was managing a household,carpooling nine kids for hours
daily, managing rentalproperties, keeping up with a
busy career, serving in thecommunity, and taking care of
everybody.
Except myself.
Somewhere along the line, I hadstopped having any personal

(02:40):
hobbies or quiet time.
Exercise?
Sleep and eat right?
No way! There simply wasn'ttime.
I was like a juggler scramblingto keep from dropping a ball.
I managed fairly well overall,but the stress was a heavy load
to carry and burnout was loomingon the horizon when I saw the
rocks and sand and waterillustration again.

(03:02):
This time, I gleaned a totallydifferent message from it.
This time, I clearly saw thatwhile it was possible to fit in
all three elements into thebucket, it only worked if you
put in the larger rocks first.
If you reversed the order andtried to go water, sand, rocks,

(03:23):
the rocks would never fit.
I realized that I was trying toput my big rocks of self-care,
spirituality, and relationshipgrowth in after dealing with the
small sand and water stuff.
The daily details of lifealways feel so urgent and
pressing.
The errands, the meetings, thedemands, they never seem to end.

(03:44):
And the truth is, they neverwill.
And they will take as much ofyou as you allow them to, and
they will fill as much time asyou allot them.
Looking back on those days, Iwish I would have understood
sooner that many of life's mostimportant events will never make
it onto the calendar.
They're not urgent in the senseof some of the smaller things,

(04:08):
but they're more importantoverall, if that makes sense.
And if you aren't careful, youcan end up missing them all
together.
There will never be enough timeleft to nurture a relationship
after all the details, so youhave to put that first.
I did make some worthwhilechanges, and I was doing all
good things, mind you, just notalways with the right emphasis.

(04:33):
Now I'm in my 50s, looking backon those days, and when I ponder
again on the bucket stuffedfull of rocks and sand and
water, all I really think aboutnow is how heavy that darn
bucket is and how freeing itwould feel to just dump it out
altogether.
Maybe not entirely.
There's some great stuff inthere that I wouldn't want to

(04:54):
lose.
I still have a full house ofpeople I love and clients that
deserve my time and attention.
Those rocks can stay, but ageand life experience are teaching
me that so much of the otherweight that I've been dragging
around with me just isn'tnecessary at all.
I'd rather take a day at thebeach, kick off my shoes, and

(05:14):
pour about half of those rocks,sand, and water out and let the
waves just take them on away.
Maybe find some pretty newshells to put back in, but only
if I truly love them and theybring me joy.
I don't know that I want thebucket filled all the way to the
top at all.

(05:35):
I want to leave some space forpeace, for reading, for travel,
for walks in nature, for longtalks with my friends and my
family, for listening to therain on the roof while drinking
chamomile tea.
Even space for doing absolutelynothing sometimes.

(05:56):
If there's one lesson that Icould impart back to my younger
self it's to take life a littlebit slower.
To start with the things thatmatter most and fit all the
other details in around that.
So rather than try to fit yourfamily in around your career,

(06:17):
how about evaluating the needsof your family and selecting a
career that accommodates that?
And we want to say, "oh, Ican't.
I can't possibly." Yeah.
Yeah.
You know what?
You can.
And you should.
Now, I'm not about to tell anyindividual person what choices
they ought to individually make.

(06:37):
So my point isn't about that.
My point is to just take a lookat the things you're carrying
around in your life, all of thestuff, how much of it really
matters to you.
Like if you look around yourhouse, I'm looking around my
closet right now because Irecord this podcast in my
closet, but about half of thisstuff I probably could do

(06:59):
without.
And without a lot of the stuffin your closet or in your house,
maybe you could even do with asmaller house.
I'm not saying that you haveto, but if that's something that
would free up money and peacein your life, really take a hard
look at it because you areworking to support and manage
all of the stuff that you own.

(07:20):
Once you own it in a very realway, it begins to own you.
So the importance isn't aboutthe amount, how much you have.
It's about the quality of whatyou have and are the things that
you work so hard to accumulate,to maintain, are they even

(07:42):
things that you care about atall?
And this goes for activitiestoo.
There was a popular publicspeaker.
Her name was Linda Eyre, andshe spoke a lot about parenting.
And I heard her one time speakin a conference that I was
attending, and she told thisstory about how she was this

(08:02):
frazzled young mother.
I think she had, I forget howmany children, but a big family
like mine, maybe seven, eight,nine children.
And she was frazzled all thetime, dragging them back and
forth to all of their activitiesand the sporting events and the
school things and all of thisstuff.
And there was this one day thatshe was just beside herself.
There was a soccer game orsomething that her kids had to

(08:24):
be at and they couldn't find theshoes and they were here and
they were there.
And her kids were prettylittle, I think.
They were young children, butall of her stress was up and she
was kind of, you know,hollering at everybody to hurry
up and find the shoes and dothis, do this, do this.
And feeling all of this weight.
And she saw, I think it was herson.
Forgive me if I'm butcheringthis story, but it's something

(08:45):
along these lines, sitting onthe stairs, kind of with tears
going down his face.
And she said, "what's thematter?
We're on our way to soccer."And her little one looked at her
and said, "Mom, I don't evenlike soccer." And it was a real
eye-opening moment for her thatshe was adopting all of this
stress because other moms weretaking their kids to soccer, not

(09:06):
because her son loved soccer,but because that was a thing
that the good moms did.
And I think she dropped offfrom doing that at that point
and freed up so much time andpeace in their lives by doing
that.
There's nothing wrong withsoccer, by the way.
That's not the point.
Some kids love it and thrivefrom it and learn from it and
grow.
In those cases, it might beworth all of the time and money

(09:28):
and attention to get those kidsto those games.
But it's important to find outfirst before we dive
wholeheartedly into somethingjust because all the other moms
are doing it or all the otherpeople at work are doing it or
successful people on Instagramare doing it or whatever we're
using to measure ourselves by,that, does it matter to us?

(09:49):
Because there's all theseexternal places that we look to
for validation of who we oughtto be and how we ought to think,
what we ought to be reachingfor, where we should be at
different ages of our lives.
And the truth is, all of it isimaginary.
All of those things might beactually really working for

(10:10):
those people, but they don'tsuit our temperament and our
family dynamic at all.
So we shouldn't adopt them,even if they're really good
things in that case.
Or to be honest, a lot of thosepeople might be equally as
unhappy chasing after some ofthat, even though they don't
show it on social media.
So be really careful aboutmeasuring our shoulds against

(10:34):
somebody else's shoulds in termsof the kind of life that we're
trying to build.
Dump out the bucket.
first and foremost, fromexpectations, especially from
external places, because theydon't matter.
And when we build somebodyelse's life, we shouldn't be

(10:55):
entirely surprised if we don'tfeel comfortable and happy in
it.
So that's my message today inthis podcast is to really take
stock of the ways that we'respending our money, the ways
that we're spending our time.
the ways that we're spendingour talents and our energy and

(11:15):
our emotions.
And are they serving us?
Or have they just become areally heavy weight that we're
carrying around with us whensomething else might serve us
better?
The funny thing is, most of thetime when we're saying, "oh,
this is such hard work and Ihate it," it's not because we

(11:37):
don't like hard work.
Most people find hard work verystimulating and exciting and
challenging and wonderful whenthat hard work is being directed
toward something that lightsthem up, that fills their heart,
that they truly feel a passionfor.

(11:58):
Then it's kind of amazing howhard we're willing to work and
we don't feel worn out.
We don't feel exhausted.
We don't feel stressed outafter a day of doing that.
Sometimes our bodies might betired, but our minds and our
hearts and our spirits areactually energized by hard work
that's directed in our chosendirection, in the things that

(12:22):
matter to us.
In the things that perhaps areour destiny on this earth.
We each were given our own setof talents, our own set of
passions.
our own set of things that weare good at, that we enjoy, that
we can bring that to the world.
So when we're focusing on thosethings, not only are we making

(12:46):
our lives better, but we'reprobably serving our families
and our communities at large ina much more powerful way as well
than when we are draggingaround a bucket full of stuff
that we don't even care about.
Now, I know some of you arethinking, yeah, yeah, yeah, I
know, but you just don'tunderstand my situation.

(13:06):
And we're going to talk aboutthose kinds of intrusive
thoughts in later podcastepisodes.
I don't want to go too far offon that tangent now.
But honestly, I'm telling youthat most of what's in your
bucket can probably go if youtake a really good, hard look at
it.
And then just imagine what thatwould feel like to slow life

(13:29):
down, to feel less burden everyday and it's completely within
your power, at least in smallbaby steps.
You may not be able to fixeverything at once, but every
rock that you take out of thatbucket makes it lighter.
So take a look at the smallstuff.
Is there something that you candonate today that frees up

(13:52):
space in your closet?
That's a really good way tostart because it's very
concrete.
And sometimes that'll just kindof get you going with the
momentum and you'll feel alittle bit lighter.
And when you feel how greatthat feels, you're going to want
more of that.
And it might just jumpstart youtoward a massive life change
that happens little by little.

(14:13):
Have a great day, everybody.