Because I’m happy

And happiness is the truth. We all have one, that song that jumps into your head when your really (and i mean really) happy. Pharrell Williams song ‘Happy’ has always been an indicator of my full, overflowing happy (not the most original I know). But what happens when we don’t pay attention to that internal happy meter, when we don’t spend time filling ourselves up with things that make us happy ? We start feeling sad, low, blue. In preschool my kids were taught that every person is born with an invisible, internal bucket. Yep a bucket (mine’s red and yellow with green stripes just so you know). This bucket would fill up when you were kind to a friend, did a good deed or helped out a parent and when you filled up your bucket you also filled up the buckets of those people that you helped. When you were mean or hurtful your bucket would empty as would the person you hurt making you both sad or angry or both.

This bucket is like your happy meter, it requires us to input good stuff to fill it up and reduce the bad stuff so it doesn’t go empty. This metaphor made perfect sense but i still had some questions, so I put this idea to them- how can your bucket only fill or empty if your doing something for others. And what happens if your bucket is emptying without you being unkind to those around you. My son suggested that maybe you needed to help fill your bucket by doing nice things for yourself and maybe if you didn’t, your bucket wouldn’t fill as quickly (kids really are perceptive). However, bad things made it empty faster then it could fill, like when buckets have holes and water drips out the bottom without you noticing. What bad things I asked? ‘You know like when you break something, or hurt yourself or there is no more ice cream left in the freezer”. This made total sense to me and got me to thinking about my own internal bucket.

I want you to think about the last time you did something just for you, something that made you really happy. Got it- now think about how that made you feel. Relaxed, energised, calm, excited, ashamed…. guilty ? Yep, sadly for some of us doing things that make us happy can come with a whole lot of guilt and shame. Why? I mean we’re supposed to be filling up our buckets right ? but often were led to believe that making ourselves happy comes from helping make other happy. Personally, I used to feel that if i had time to spend on myself then there was something that I obviously wasn’t doing for my family, or friends and somewhere, somehow I was letting someone down.

Until I burned out! I had dropped my bucket, let my happy run to empty. I mean i was helping other out and adding to my bucket but stress and anxiety was making it run out faster then it could fill. So i had to slow down, learn how to fill my own bucket without the help of others. And this forced slowdown, this retreating inwards offered me an interesting change of perspective. My bucket was my bucket to fill as much as it was for those who helped me fill it. I needed to care for me so i could care for others. So i learnt how to do things for me, I felt renewed, renergised and with an overflowing bucket ‘Happy’ was stuck in my head for months!! So moral of the story here- know your bucket. Know when it needs filling by others and when it needs filling by you- no guilt, no shame. And lastly when you hear your song, in your head or on the radio, raise your voice and share your happy - it might just add a little extra to your bucket.