No. Anyone can give drops. As long as your message is positive, sincere, individualized, specific and deserved, we encourage you to send drops to fill others’ buckets. To get the most benefit and meaning from drops, we do recommend reading How Full Is Your Bucket? (book must be purchased separately).

Yes. We also offer a set of 150 drops in a cool palette: blue, cream, purple, green and teal. Like the drops in the warm palette, you get 30 drops of each color and 150 drop envelopes.

Don Clifton, Father of Strengths Psychology and Inventor of CliftonStrengths, created this theory in the 1960s based on a simple metaphor of a dipper and a bucket:

The Theory of the Dipper and the Bucket

Each of us has an invisible bucket. It is constantly emptied or filled, depending on what others say or do to us. When our bucket is full, we feel great. When it’s empty, we feel awful.

Each of us also has an invisible dipper. When we use that dipper to fill other people’s buckets -- by saying or doing things to increase their positive emotions -- we also fill our own bucket. But when we use that dipper to dip from others’ buckets -- by saying or doing things that decrease their positive emotions -- we diminish ourselves.

Like the cup that runneth over, a full bucket gives us a positive outlook and renewed energy. Every drop in that bucket makes us stronger and more optimistic.

But an empty bucket poisons our outlook, saps our energy and undermines our will. That’s why every time someone dips from our bucket, it hurts us.

So we face a choice every moment of every day: We can fill one another’s buckets, or we can dip from them. It’s an important choice -- one that profoundly influences our relationships, productivity, health and happiness.