How full is your bucket?

``At a time of so much negativity, I'd like to talk about positive attitudes from the book, How Full is Your Bucket?, written by Tom Rath and Donald O. Clifton.''

``Good,'' said my co-host. ``Donald Clifton co-wrote Now Discover Your Strengths with Marcus Buckingham. He's a great guy.''

``Yes, he was,'' I replied. ``Donald Clifton was the grandfather of positive psychology before he passed away in September 2003.''

``So, what messages from the book do you plan to talk about?'' M.L. Chaivat asked.

``This book, about a positive mental attitude, probably has the most research to back it up,'' I began. ``Both authors worked for the Gallup Organization, which is a leading global consulting firm and research house.

``The authors use an `invisible bucket' metaphor. It empties or fills, depending on what others say or do to us. When our bucket is full, we feel great. When it's empty, we feel awful.''

``Khun Kriengsak, can you mention any statistics?'' M.L. Chaivat asked.

``Yes, let me start with a scary figure from the USA. Negative attitudes are estimated to affect more than 22 million workers in the United States alone. These are people who are `actively disengaged', to use Gallup terminology. It costs the US economy $1 trillion per year, or nearly 10% of US GDP,'' I said.

These costs are not specific to the United States; they exist to a varying degree in every country, industry and organisation Gallup has studied.

A study of health-care workers found that when employees were working for a boss they disliked, they had significantly higher blood pressure. According to British scientist George Fieldman, this ``boss-induced hypertension'' could increase the risk of coronary heart disease by one-sixth and the risk of stroke by one-third.

``So the statement `My boss is killing me' is true,'' M.L. Chaivat teased.

``Could be,'' I replied. ``Another statistic is about longevity. Researchers who studied 839 Mayo Clinic patients over a 30-year period found that there was a link between pessimistic attitudes and early death. A landmark study of 180 elderly Catholic nuns revealed that nuns with more positive emotions lived significantly longer than nuns with fewer positive emotions, by about 10 years.

``To put this in perspective, consider that cigarette smoking has been shown to reduce life expectancy by 5.5 years for males and seven years for females. Negative emotions might cut more years off one's life than smoking. There's no surgeon's warning about negative emotions, but there should be.''

M.L. Chaivat prompted me to continue.

``According to Nobel Prize-winning scientist Daniel Kahneman, we experience approximately 20,000 individual moments in a working day. Each moment lasts a few seconds. If you'll consider any strong memory _ positive or negative _ you'll notice that the imagery in your mind is actually defined by your recollection of a precise point in time.

``A neutral encounter rarely stays in your mind _ the memorable moments are almost always positive or negative. In some cases, a single encounter can change your life forever.

``There is a magic ratio. A recent study found that work groups with positive-to-negative interaction ratios _ greater than three to one _ were significantly more productive than teams that did not have this ratio,'' I said.

Frederickson and Losada's mathematical modelling of positive-to-negative ratios, however, also suggests the existence of an upper limit: things can get worse if the ratio goes higher than 13 to 1.

``Sounds scary, what are the solutions?'' M.L. Chaivat asked.

I explained that there were five strategies to filling buckets:

1. Prevent bucket dipping: For the next few days, try to catch yourself in the act of bucket dipping _ then stop it. Consider your most recent interactions. Have you poked fun at someone? Touched on an insecurity? Blatantly pointed out something that person does wrong? If so, try and push the pause button in your head next time.

2. Shine a light on what is right. Consider this: If you fill two buckets a day, and the owners of those two buckets go on to fill two new buckets, more than a thousand buckets will have been filled at the end of 10 days. If each of these same people filled in five buckets instead of two, more than 19 million buckets would be filled in just 10 days.

3. Make best friends.

4. Give unexpectedly.

5. Reverse the Golden Rule: In the case of bucket filling, ``Do unto others as you would have them do unto you'' doesn't apply. Instead, ``Do unto others as they would have you do unto them.''

Kriengsak Niratpattanasai is the founder of TheCoach, specialising in executive coaching in leadership and cross-cultural skills. Copies of previous columns are available at www.thaicoach.com. He can be reached at 02-517-3126 or coachkriengsak@yahoo.com