Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / Whose Cup Are You Filling?

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Whose Cup Are You Filling? · Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families

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Speaker 1: Gooday, Welcome to The Happy Family's podcast. Today on the pod,
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Speaker 1: we're going to have a conversation about an article that
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Speaker 1: I read last year, and it's just it's that grain
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Speaker 1: of sand in my shoe. It's the provocation. I heard
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Speaker 1: A great quote recently came from a school leader who said,
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Speaker 1: contented cows give milk, agitated oysters give pearls. I've been agitated,
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Speaker 1: and I feel like it's time for the pearl to
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Speaker 1: come out today. So Derek Thompson is a former Atlantic
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Speaker 1: staffer who now has his own substack. Just look up
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Speaker 1: Derek Thompson on substack and you'll find him. We will
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Speaker 1: link to the article on the show notes. But I
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Speaker 1: read this back in October and I can't let go
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Speaker 1: of it. It has been a sand in my shoe
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Speaker 1: that has become a pearl in my oyster. And today
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Speaker 1: we have a look at whose cup we are filling
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Speaker 1: by Derek Thompson because it's just too good to not
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Speaker 1: share as widely as possible. Stay with us. Hello and
1:03
Speaker 1: welcome to the Happy Family podcast, where you get real
1:05
Speaker 1: parenting solutions every single day. This is Australia's most download
1:07
Speaker 1: a parenting podcast. We so appreciate that you choose to
1:10
Speaker 1: make us that. Thank you for listening. We hope that
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Speaker 1: you're getting great value from it. We are justin and Kylie.
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Speaker 1: Course by the parents have six kids, and today, Kylie,
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Speaker 1: I'm going to just share some thoughts from this substack
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Speaker 1: article from Derek Thompson that he shared last year that
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Speaker 1: has not let me go. I keep coming back to
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Speaker 1: it again and again and again, usually in a guilty
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Speaker 1: way because I'm doing it wrong. And the substack is
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Speaker 1: a really positive way of realigning values, realigning intention, And
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Speaker 1: I just love for you interrupt me if anything strikes
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Speaker 1: you as I'm reading. Is that? Okay, Okay, hit me.
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Speaker 1: The post is called Whose Cup Are You Filling? It's
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Speaker 1: a Sunday Morning post about attention, finitude, and a game
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Speaker 1: of life. He says, I'm thinking of a game. The
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Speaker 1: rules are simple. Every morning you have a full picture
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Speaker 1: of water and many empty cups. By day's end, you
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Speaker 1: pour all the water from the picture into the cups.
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Speaker 1: The goal of the game is to pour the water
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Speaker 1: into the right cups.
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Speaker 2: Okay, so I'm going to stop you right there. Okay,
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Speaker 2: this is so hard, like you haven't even got into
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Speaker 2: it and I'm thinking about all of my cups. I'm
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Speaker 2: a daughter, I'm a sister, I'm a wife, I'm a
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Speaker 2: mother to six really unique individual kids.
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Speaker 1: So that is six cups right there.
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Speaker 2: Right, So lots of people think that our kids are
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Speaker 2: kind of cookie cutter when you look at them, that
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Speaker 2: they look the same, but to parent them, they are not.
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Speaker 1: All you have to do is have a second child
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Speaker 1: and you realize this, right, and once you have six,
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Speaker 1: I want to six, And I just I'm never endingly
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Speaker 1: surprised at how different I am to my siblings, and
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Speaker 1: they are from one another, and so we would expect
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Speaker 1: that would happen with our kids too, and it has.
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Speaker 2: I'm a mother in law, I'm a grandmother, I'm a teacher,
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Speaker 2: I'm a taxi driver, I'm a nurse, I'm a therapist.
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Speaker 2: But then there's also all of the facets that make
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Speaker 2: up me me, and it is a mental meat and
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Speaker 2: the emotional me, Like, there is so many cups, and
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Speaker 2: the idea that we can find balance and all of
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Speaker 2: that is kind of a bit of a fallacy.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't believe in balance. We've had this conversation
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Speaker 1: on the pod before.
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Speaker 2: You just think about any one of those relationships, and
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Speaker 2: when one of them is in crisis.
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Speaker 1: Then all of the water goes into that cup.
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Speaker 2: That's right, yeah, keep reading, but.
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Speaker 1: I just well, before I keep reading, let's just I've lost.
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Speaker 2: Count of how many cups are sitting in front of me.
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Speaker 2: Right now.
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Speaker 1: You've mainly been talking about the roles that you feel,
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Speaker 1: but then you added and I think it's worth fleshing
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Speaker 1: it out. In fact, he does it in the next paragraph.
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Speaker 1: There's also the things you do that you're tipping water into,
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Speaker 1: whether it's watching Netflix, or going and exercising, or spending
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Speaker 1: some time in faith and devotion and putting your energy
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Speaker 1: into reading uplifting literature. Like all of these things also
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Speaker 1: are emptying that picture of water every single second of every.
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Speaker 2: Single My table is big enough.
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Speaker 1: There's a lot of cups, all right. Here's what he says.
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Speaker 1: He says sounds like there's it's a weird I know,
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Speaker 1: but there's a catch. You have been playing this game
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Speaker 1: your whole life, and I think that's worth pointing out.
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Speaker 1: Whether you opt in or not, you're still playing the game.
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Speaker 1: This is the non optional game. This is this is
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Speaker 1: what our life is. The game is attention. You are
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Speaker 1: the picture. The water is your time, your daily sixteen
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Speaker 1: or seventeen hours of waking consciousness, all your care and
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Speaker 1: focus and feeling. The cups represent everything you pour your
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Speaker 1: thoughts and attention into. They're abled, work, TikTok, wife or
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Speaker 1: husband dishes, exercise, regret, parents, anxiety. God. I just want
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Speaker 1: to pause there for a sec because attention. I love
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Speaker 1: how you said this, Like, if you're focused on this regret,
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Speaker 1: something happens, I don't know, a week ago, or a
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Speaker 1: month ago, or seven years ago, five years ago, that's
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Speaker 1: exactly right. And you wake up and once the morning
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Speaker 1: rushes over and you sit down, and then it just
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Speaker 1: pops back into your head and you spend five or
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Speaker 1: ten minutes thinking about that regret, and maybe you journal
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Speaker 1: a bit about it, or maybe you ring somebody and
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Speaker 1: talk to them about the regret and how this thing
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Speaker 1: just won't get shaken, or maybe you go and spend
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Speaker 1: hours and an enormous amount of money in a therapist's
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Speaker 1: office talking about this regret. This is pouring water out
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Speaker 1: of you into that glass. And here's what he says.
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Speaker 1: By its nature, water cannot go into two cups simultaneously.
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Speaker 1: When you're listening to a podcast. You aren't listening to
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Speaker 1: your husband when you're thinking about politics. You aren't thinking
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Speaker 1: about your sister. When you're working, you aren't praying. It's
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Speaker 1: easy to lie to ourselves about our values and our priorities.
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Speaker 1: But attention doesn't tell lies. Attention reveals the preferences that
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Speaker 1: we have our values.
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Speaker 2: Well, there's that kind of well known saying that where
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Speaker 2: your attention goes, your energy flows. So wherever I'm putting
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Speaker 2: my attention, that's where my water is going. Right.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, this is another way of kind of saying what
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Speaker 1: Stephen Covey said, The things that matter most should never
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Speaker 1: be at the mercy of the things that matter leaks.
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Speaker 1: And so if you're getting a nickers in or not
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Speaker 1: about things that on a global scale really do matter, right,
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Speaker 1: like the stuff that's on the front page of the news,
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Speaker 1: I'm not going to talk about anything there because it
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Speaker 1: might offend somebody who really does care about those things.
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Speaker 1: The reality is you can't do anything about that stuff. Well,
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Speaker 1: most of us can't do anything about that stuff. Maybe
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Speaker 1: a few of us in some strange circumstances can, But
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Speaker 1: we can do something about the fact that our daughter
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Speaker 1: is coming home and crying every afternoon, or that we've
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Speaker 1: got a husband who feels disconnected and the way that
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Speaker 1: he demonstrates that disconnection is to dispaar into his bedroom
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Speaker 1: and watch Netflix rather than coming out and communicating with
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Speaker 1: the family. We can focus on things that we're concerned about,
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Speaker 1: or we can focus on things that we have some
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Speaker 1: power to control. Where we put our water, where we
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Speaker 1: tip our water out of our finite resource each day
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Speaker 1: has a huge impact on what the rest of our
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Speaker 1: life feels like and whether we feel like we're in
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Speaker 1: control or not. And Derek Thompson says many people spend
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Speaker 1: their whole lives emptying themselves without taking stock of the
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Speaker 1: water levels of the cups into which they pour their existence.
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Speaker 1: They spend hours, days, and decades watering cups that they
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Speaker 1: never meant to water, and leaving empty other vessels they
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Speaker 1: always meant to fill.
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Speaker 2: Clearly, I only have my perspective to go from, But
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Speaker 2: I talk to too many women who feel like their
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Speaker 2: pitture is empty, but they've gotten nothing out of the experience.
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Speaker 2: They're just constantly pouring into other people's cups or other
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Speaker 2: things and feeling depleted from the process.
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Speaker 1: This is a question of where we're going to focus.
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Speaker 1: I do this activity when I'm talking to staff or
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Speaker 1: parents sometimes or students, where I get them to put
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Speaker 1: a broomstick on their fingertips and they look at their
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Speaker 1: fingertips and the broomstick falls over. It usually hits them
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Speaker 1: in the head. But instead of looking at their fingertips,
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Speaker 1: if they look at the top of the broomstick, they
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Speaker 1: can balance it on their fingertips. So when I hear
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Speaker 1: you say that, I'm thinking the attention is there regardless,
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Speaker 1: but sometimes we're putting our attention in less effective places,
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Speaker 1: and that is depleting. If we're putting our attention to
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Speaker 1: something that depletes us, we are going to feel empty.
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Speaker 1: We're going to feel horrible. I'll give you a really
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Speaker 1: simple example. Every now and again, I will write a
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Speaker 1: piece for social media, and then I get caught up
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Speaker 1: in what I'm seeing in the comments, and all my
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Speaker 1: attention gets poured into spending a long time responding to
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Speaker 1: people that I don't know and that I don't need
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Speaker 1: to impress, and that often have been brought in by
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Speaker 1: the algorithm. They're not actually followers of what we do.
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Speaker 1: And I sit down at the table and I'm angry.
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Speaker 1: You know that I'm angry, and you'll be like, oh,
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Speaker 1: you've been on social media. There's so much so that
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Speaker 1: I've stopped. I've given all my social media to my team.
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Speaker 1: I just write the stuff and I walk away. I
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Speaker 1: don't even look at it anymore. I don't even know
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Speaker 1: how to log in anymore. My team post it or
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Speaker 1: for me and does it because I don't want to
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Speaker 1: put my attention on it.
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Speaker 2: On my side of the coin, then at the moment,
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Speaker 2: I'm putting a lot of energy into my physical health
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Speaker 2: and moving my body and exercising, and that is having
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Speaker 2: a huge toll on my capacity to be as president
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Speaker 2: as I would like come the afternoon time when I'm
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Speaker 2: ready for bed four o'clock. But the challenge is, as
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Speaker 2: most of us will experience, what.
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Speaker 1: I'm doing is not bad.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, And if we recognize and know that balance isn't
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Speaker 2: an like, it's just not it's not achievable, then how
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Speaker 2: do we make the decision about where our energy needs
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Speaker 2: to go and our attention needs to go. If all
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Speaker 2: of these things are good. I have six children they're
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Speaker 2: all good, right, and have a grandbaby she's good.
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Speaker 1: How do you find the energy to put the attention
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Speaker 1: into it if you've depleted your energy even though you've
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Speaker 1: still got He's still got the minutes and the hours
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Speaker 1: in the day, but there's no energy left to direct
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Speaker 1: the attention productively. Yeah. Yeah, let's talk about it after break.
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Speaker 1: Stay with this, We're back into Happy Families podcast. Kylie,
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Speaker 1: you've asked this really hard question. I don't know that
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Speaker 1: I've got a great answer for you, but I think
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Speaker 1: it would be worth stepping back into the Derek Thompson
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Speaker 1: piece because he does say something that I think really
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Speaker 1: matters here. He says the game of cups is a
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Speaker 1: useful allegory because it recommends a clear action. Think of
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Speaker 1: it as a waterline inventory. At the end of the day,
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Speaker 1: you can ask yourself, who got my water today? Did
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Speaker 1: I save my attention for my priorities or do I
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Speaker 1: consistently pour myself into activities and media that I would
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Speaker 1: never say I valued. And I feel a little pang
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Speaker 1: of guilt there because I probably only need to check
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Speaker 1: the news headlines two or three times a day, but
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Speaker 1: I probably checked them eight times a day, and therefore
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Speaker 1: I'm pouring water into the wrong spot. And often I'll
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Speaker 1: do it because I'm feeling depleted and I'm not sure
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Speaker 1: that I have the energy to do the stuff that
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Speaker 1: I want to do. Anyway, let me jump back in,
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Speaker 1: he says. One can be quite precise about this waterline inventory.
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Speaker 1: If you're a white collar worker, for example, you'll have
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Speaker 1: typed hundreds or thousands of words in a given day.
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Speaker 1: Who or what got your words? Projects you care about
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Speaker 1: or projects you wish never existed, colleagues or family group
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Speaker 1: chats with people you don't really care about, or group
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Speaker 1: chats with people you love and want to see more of.
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Speaker 1: He says, if I'm being strictly honest with myself, there
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Speaker 1: are too many weeks when looking back, I sent hundreds
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Speaker 1: of words to slack channels and group chats I don't
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Speaker 1: really care about, without sending a word to a friend
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Speaker 1: I care about and haven't contacted in a while.
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Speaker 2: As we're talking to me. This is really just about intention. Yeah,
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Speaker 2: attention is about what our intention is like. If we
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Speaker 2: want to be intentional, then our attention is going to
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Speaker 2: go to the places that we believe need our focus.
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Speaker 1: And I'm thinking about that question that you asked. What
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Speaker 1: happens at four o'clock in the afternoon when you are
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Speaker 1: out on your feet you've been going all day, You've
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Speaker 1: put a whole lot of energy into other activities, productive activities.
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Speaker 1: You've been really good, you haven't even snacked, like you've
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Speaker 1: been really really good and focused on all the right things.
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Speaker 1: But you've still got another three to four hours to go,
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Speaker 1: and you're kind of thinking, hmm, I don't think I
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Speaker 1: want to. Something that I've discovered is that if you
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Speaker 1: just take that first or second step, just take a
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Speaker 1: couple of steps and get some momentument and progress, it
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Speaker 1: starts to feel good again. So you might think, I
12:29
Speaker 1: don't want to spend time with the kids, or I
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Speaker 1: don't want to go on cook dinner. But if you
12:32
Speaker 1: can pull yourself off the couch or pull yourself off
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Speaker 1: the bed or where it is that you're laying down
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Speaker 1: and trying to get that little breather because you really
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Speaker 1: do feel like you need it, if you can switch
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Speaker 1: Netflix off or stop scrolling the Instagram reels. And this
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Speaker 1: isn't about you, this is a general comment. What happens
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Speaker 1: is you take those steps into the kitchen, you open
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Speaker 1: the fridge, you pull the ingredients out, you start chopping,
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Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, you're there. You're putting your
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Speaker 1: attention into it, or you notice that your daughter's not
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Speaker 1: looking very happy and you're there, you start to put
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Speaker 1: your attention into it. My experience has been that that
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Speaker 1: attention picture goes from sun up to sundown, from when
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Speaker 1: we wait till when we sleep. We've just got to
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Speaker 1: be intentional about pouring the water into the right cups.
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Speaker 1: And this is how Derek Thompson finishes the piece. He says,
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Speaker 1: the whole project might sound like a major guilt trip,
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Speaker 1: but I chose to see it differently. Our attention is
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Speaker 1: a unique resource. Bodies degrade, wealth rises and falls, reputations
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Speaker 1: come and go, but attention refreshes daily. The morning's picture
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Speaker 1: is always full, The morning's cups are always empty. The
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Speaker 1: game begins again, and it's a game you can win today,
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Speaker 1: no matter how many times you've lost. So this week
13:48
Speaker 1: I wrote myself a note and taped it to my
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Speaker 1: desk where I can't miss it. Whose cup did you
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Speaker 1: fill today?
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Speaker 2: I really like that ending. It's so simple, it's so profound,
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Speaker 2: the idea that you don't actually have to think about
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Speaker 2: the hundreds of cups in front of you, because that's
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Speaker 2: what I've been focusing on. But the one cup that
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Speaker 2: you intend to focus on.
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Speaker 1: We will link to Derek Thompson's article and his entire
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Speaker 1: substack in the show notes because I think it's great.
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Speaker 1: It's one of my favorites, even though I don't always
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Speaker 1: agree with it. I just think he's so provocative and
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Speaker 1: so oh my goodness, he's so articulate. Derrek Thompson substack
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Speaker 1: will linked that. The Happy Family's podcast is produced by
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Speaker 1: Justin Ruland from Bridge Media. Mim Hammon's provides our admin
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Speaker 1: and other support. If you would like more info to
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Speaker 1: make your family happier, we'd love for you to visit
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