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3 Buckets to Deal with Challenges

Three colorful buckets isolated on white background.
 

As lead­ers, we often waste too much emo­tional energy wor­ry­ing about things we can­not con­trol. The sooner we come to under­stand what is in our con­trol and what is not, the bet­ter deci­sions we can make and the bet­ter we can deal with challenges.

A while back I was reminded by a client of mine about the “3 Bucket” way of think­ing. Ray­mond Glea­son, my fel­low coach here at Build­ing Cham­pi­ons, first shared this with me years ago, and it can really help us when fac­ing chal­leng­ing situations.

So here it is. The three buck­ets are:

1. Con­trol - my think­ing and actions can directly change the outcome

2. Influ­ence — my think­ing and actions can impact oth­ers to affect the outcome

3. No Con­trol — there is noth­ing I can do to imme­di­ately change the outcome

We are wise to spend our energy on the issues we can con­trol and influ­ence. We are even wiser to under­stand that how we go about both is often dif­fer­ent. And of course, it just makes sense to let go of the sit­u­a­tions we have no con­trol over.

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This entry was posted on Friday, April 22nd, 2011 at 6:18 am and is filed under Self-Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

(5 Responses to “3 Buckets to Deal with Challenges”)

  1. Dan Foster says:
    April 22, 2011 at 10:19 am

    Daniel, this was the per­fect post for me today. I’ve been strug­gling all week with how to man­age things that were out of my con­trol. I need to put them in the right bucket and re-focus my time and energy on the things I can con­trol and influ­ence. Thanks and Happy Easter my friend.

    Reply
    • Daniel Harkavy says:
      April 22, 2011 at 10:38 am

      Hey Dan,

      I am glad the buck­ets helped you today. I can’t tell you how many times this think­ing model has helped me. I wish you and yours a won­der­ful Easter week­end as well!

      Daniel

      Reply
  2. Weekender Links – 4/23/11 | MyOneResolution says:
    April 22, 2011 at 12:39 pm

    […] 3 buck­ets to deal with chal­lenges: harkavy. […]

    Reply
  3. John Gallagher says:
    April 22, 2011 at 4:36 pm

    Daniel, Imag­ine that. Wis­dom from RG! In my new role coach­ing and con­sult­ing in Health Care, we use a tool ask­ing them to draw their “Ideal State”. From there, we encour­age them to list the bar­ri­ers that keep them from get­ting to their ideal state…NOW. THen, we look at the list and use a ‘pie’ to ask them how much con­trol they have over the bar­rier. Any­thing over 50%, we encour­age them to work on those bar­ri­ers and leave the oth­ers alone. Hope you are welll, brother! John

    Reply
    • Daniel Harkavy says:
      April 22, 2011 at 5:10 pm

      Thanks John. RG helps me all the time! I like your model. It sounds effec­tive. You and yours have a super Easter weekend.

      Daniel

      Reply

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