As most of my counseling students and clients can attest, I am a storyteller; a raconteur. Hopefully, my stories make some point about the craft of counseling with my future clinicians. Ideally, the stories I share with clients will serve as an image or reminder of some principle that was reviewed in the course of their treatment sessions.
One of my favorite stories is the image of the “two buckets.” The metaphor of this very concrete visual picture is drawn from a far more elegant and spiritual verse, The Serenity Prayer,” composed by an American theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr in 1934. In subsequent years, the prayer was adopted into popularity by Bill Wilson, the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. It is listed below:
God grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The Courage to change the things I can, and
The Wisdom to know the difference
While anyone can see its obvious application to those in recovery from alcoholism (or any other addiction), I believe the basic logic of the verse has a far more universal application. For that reason, I have reduced its lyrical tone to the more basic image of the “two buckets.”
As I explain the concept to my students and clients, I hold my two hands out at either side, suggesting the image of a man holding two buckets. I then explain, courtesy of the “serenity prayer,” that we all have two buckets in our lives. Extending the imaginary bucket as I hold my left hand forward slightly, I narrate that this bucket holds elements of our life that we cannot change. This “bucket” may hold within it a disagreeable boss that we have no power to replace. Or, it may hold a spouse with some painful habit, perhaps even an addiction. Or it may hold something as annoying as a winter which persists well into spring. (This example is directed at my Michigan readers.) In any case, it reminds us that we lack the power to improve our boss’s disposition, to compel our spouse to quit drinking, or to will the Michigan skies to cease being so gray.
Having established that concept, I then return my left hand to its original position and move my right hand forward. I suggest that this bucket holds aspects of life that we can influence, shape, or change. This bucket may hold a strategy to relate to the boss more effectively by chatting about hockey if he/she is a Red Wings fan. This bucket could contain a plan to attend an Al Anon meeting to learn ways of coping with an alcoholic spouse. Or, this bucket may possess the decision to take up skiing or plan a winter vacation to warmer climes.
Extending the two bucket metaphor further, I explain to my clients that much of our personal frustration and unhappiness flows from mixing up the two buckets. I place my hands across my chest to position the left bucket where the right had been, and vice versa. This illustrates to my clients that many of us invest so much time worrying and stressing about situations in the “left bucket” (the one with aspects of life that are out of our control) that we then ignore the situations in the “right bucket” (elements of life we can influence). In so doing, we are left with only worries and negative emotions and no plan for remediation or coping strategies.
We all have the two buckets in our lives. Our personal happiness, our sense of accomplishment, empowerment, success, and our belief in self-efficacy are the result of keeping our eyes on the right bucket. Serenity comes to us by accepting the left bucket as out of our control. As the author of the prayer tells us, wisdom lies in recognizing what each bucket holds for us. And, courage is addressing those issues over which we do have control.