# Whose Cup Are You Filling?

An episode of [Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1082244480), 22 Feb 2026, 16 min.

Audio: https://mgln.ai/e/187/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/fa326977-3de5-4283-9b8b-af3500c58607/b69b2795-5503-4de1-ac91-af460017906e/aba5d063-8501-400d-9ca8-b3f30178d342/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=a05f1702-0c0e-4b0f-8014-af460017907c

You are pouring yourself out every single day. But into whose cup? In this powerful conversation inspired by Derek Thompson, Justin and Kylie explore a simple metaphor that will stop you mid-scroll: every morning you wake with a full jug of water. By night, it’s empty. The only question that matters is where it went. Work. News. Regret. Netflix. Anxiety. Group chats. Your kids. Your marriage. Attention never lies. It reveals what we truly value. If you’ve been feeling depleted, resentful, stretched thin — this episode will gently realign you with what actually matters. Because tomorrow morning? The jug refills. KEY POINTS • The “Cup Game” metaphor and why you’re playing it whether you realise it or not • Why attention is your most honest measure of values • The hidden cost of pouring into cups that don’t matter • Why good things can still drain you • A simple end-of-day question that changes everything • How to reset — even if you’ve been “losing” the game for years QUOTE OF THE EPISODE “Attention never lies. It reveals what we truly value.” RESOURCES MENTIONED • Derek Thompson Substack article: Whose Cup Are You Filling? • Stephen Covey – “The things that matter most should never be at the mercy of the things that matter least.” ACTION STEPS FOR PARENTS • At the end of today, ask: Whose cup did I fill? • Notice one cup that received too much water. • Choose one relationship that gets first pour tomorrow. • When you feel depleted at 4pm, take one small intentional step toward connection. • Remember: the jug refills in the morning. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:05] Speaker 1: Today. Welcome to the Happy Families Podcast. Today, the last
[0:09] Speaker 1: week of summer.
[0:10] Speaker 2: Don't say that that's really sad.
[0:12] Speaker 1: I'm feeling so excited about it. I'm tired of sitting
[0:14] Speaker 1: in my office and sweating in the air conditioning not working.
[0:17] Speaker 1: I'm really looking forward to the end of summer, cool weather, Autumn.
[0:21] Speaker 1: Here we go. This is why we live in Queensland, right,
[0:23] Speaker 1: It's just ten weeks twelve weeks of real heat and
[0:26] Speaker 1: then we get that beautiful weather for the rest of
[0:28] Speaker 1: the year. Okay, all right, I appreciate you being so
[0:31] Speaker 1: accommodating to my preferences. Hey, today on the pod, we're
[0:35] Speaker 1: going to have a conversation about an article that I
[0:37] Speaker 1: read back in October last year, and it's just it's
[0:41] Speaker 1: that grain of sand in my shoe. It's the provocation.
[0:45] Speaker 1: I heard a great quote recently came from a school
[0:47] Speaker 1: leader who said, contented cows give milk, agitated oysters give pearls.
[0:53] Speaker 1: And I've been agitated and I feel like it's time
[0:56] Speaker 1: for the pearl to come out today. So Derek Thompson
[0:59] Speaker 1: is a former Atlantic staffer who now has his own substack.
[1:04] Speaker 1: Just look up Derek Thompson on substack and you'll find him.
[1:08] Speaker 1: We will link to the article on the show notes.
[1:10] Speaker 1: But I read this back in October and I can't
[1:12] Speaker 1: let go of it. It has been a sand in
[1:15] Speaker 1: my shoe that has become a pearl in my oyster.
[1:18] Speaker 1: And today we have a look at whose cup we
[1:20] Speaker 1: are filling by Derek Thompson. Because it's just too good
[1:23] Speaker 1: to not share as widely as possible. Stay with us.
[1:28] Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to the Happy Family podcast, where you
[1:30] Speaker 1: get real parenting solutions every single day. This is Australia's
[1:33] Speaker 1: most download a parenting podcast. We so appreciate that you
[1:36] Speaker 1: choose to make us that. Thank you for listening. We
[1:38] Speaker 1: hope that you're getting great value from it. We ad
[1:40] Speaker 1: Justin and Kylie course my the parents have six kids.
[1:42] Speaker 1: And today Kylie, I'm going to just share some thoughts
[1:45] Speaker 1: from this substack article from Derek Thompson that he shared
[1:49] Speaker 1: last year that has not let me go. I keep
[1:52] Speaker 1: coming back to it again and again and again, usually
[1:54] Speaker 1: in a guilty way because I'm doing it wrong. And
[1:57] Speaker 1: the substack is a really positive way of realigning values,
[2:01] Speaker 1: realigning intention and I just love for you interrupt me
[2:05] Speaker 1: if anything strikes you as I'm reading is that.
[2:08] Speaker 2: Okay, Okay, hit me.
[2:10] Speaker 1: The post is called Whose Cup Are You Filling? It's
[2:13] Speaker 1: a Sunday Morning post about attention, finitude, and a game
[2:17] Speaker 1: of life. He says, I'm thinking of a game. The
[2:20] Speaker 1: rules are simple. Every morning you have a full picture
[2:24] Speaker 1: of water and many empty cups. By day's end, you
[2:27] Speaker 1: pour all the water from the picture into the cups.
[2:30] Speaker 1: The goal of the game is to pour the water
[2:33] Speaker 1: into the right cups.
[2:34] Speaker 2: Okay, so I'm going to stop you right there. Okay,
[2:37] Speaker 2: this is so hard, like you haven't even got into it.
[2:41] Speaker 2: And I'm thinking about all of my cups. I'm a daughter,
[2:46] Speaker 2: I'm a sister, I'm a wife, I'm a mother to
[2:48] Speaker 2: six really unique individual kids.
[2:51] Speaker 1: So that is six cups right there.
[2:52] Speaker 2: Right, So lots of people think that our kids are
[2:56] Speaker 2: kind of cookie cutter when you look at them, that
[2:58] Speaker 2: they they look the same. But yeah, to parent them,
[3:02] Speaker 2: they are not.
[3:03] Speaker 1: All you have to do is have a second child,
[3:04] Speaker 1: and you realize this, right, and once you have six,
[3:06] Speaker 1: I want to six, and I just I'm never endingly
[3:10] Speaker 1: surprised at how different I am to my siblings, and
[3:11] Speaker 1: they are from one another. And so we would expect
[3:13] Speaker 1: that would happen with our kids too, and it has.
[3:15] Speaker 2: I'm a mother in law, I'm a grandmother, I'm a teacher,
[3:18] Speaker 2: I'm a taxi driver, I'm a nurse, I'm a therapist.
[3:21] Speaker 2: But then there's also all of the facets that make
[3:23] Speaker 2: up me, what's going to me, and it is a
[3:25] Speaker 2: mental met and the emotional me, Like there is so
[3:28] Speaker 2: many cups, and the idea that we can find balance
[3:32] Speaker 2: and all of that is kind of a bit of
[3:35] Speaker 2: a fallacy.
[3:36] Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't believe in balance. We've had this conversation
[3:38] Speaker 1: on the pod before.
[3:39] Speaker 2: You just think about any one of those relationships and
[3:42] Speaker 2: when one of them is in crisis.
[3:44] Speaker 1: Then all of the water goes into that cup.
[3:46] Speaker 2: That's right, Yeah, keep reading, but I'm just well, before
[3:49] Speaker 2: I keep reading, let's just I've lost count of how
[3:51] Speaker 2: many cups are sitting in front of me.
[3:52] Speaker 1: Right now, You've mainly been talking about the roles that
[3:55] Speaker 1: you feel, but then you added and I think it's
[3:57] Speaker 1: worth fleshing it out. In fact, he does it in
[3:59] Speaker 1: the next paragraph. There's also the things you do that
[4:02] Speaker 1: you're tipping water into, whether it's watching Netflix or going
[4:06] Speaker 1: and exercising or spending some time in faith and devotion
[4:11] Speaker 1: and putting your energy into reading uplifting literature. Like all
[4:15] Speaker 1: of these things also are emptying that picture of water
[4:18] Speaker 1: every single second of every single day.
[4:20] Speaker 2: My table is big enough.
[4:21] Speaker 1: No, no, there's a lot of cups. All right, here's
[4:23] Speaker 1: what he says. He says sounds like it's a weird game.
[4:26] Speaker 1: I know, But there's a catch. You have been playing
[4:28] Speaker 1: this game your whole life, and I think that's worth
[4:31] Speaker 1: pointing out. Whether you opt in or not, you're still
[4:32] Speaker 1: playing the game. This is a non optional game. This
[4:36] Speaker 1: is what our life is. The game is attention. You
[4:39] Speaker 1: are the picture. The water is your time, your daily
[4:42] Speaker 1: sixteen or seventeen hours of waking consciousness, all your care
[4:44] Speaker 1: and focus and feeling. The cups represent everything you pour
[4:48] Speaker 1: your thoughts and attention into. They're abled, work, TikTok, wife
[4:54] Speaker 1: or husband dishes, exercise, regret, parents, anxiety. God. I just
[5:02] Speaker 1: want to pause there for a sec because attention. I
[5:06] Speaker 1: love how you said this. If you're focused on this regret,
[5:10] Speaker 1: something happens, I don't know, a week ago, or a
[5:12] Speaker 1: month ago, or five seven years ago, five years ago,
[5:15] Speaker 1: that's exactly right. And you wake up and once the
[5:18] Speaker 1: morning rushes over and you sit down, and then it
[5:20] Speaker 1: just pops back into your head and you spend five
[5:22] Speaker 1: or ten minutes thinking about that regret, and maybe you
[5:25] Speaker 1: journal a bit about it, or maybe you ring somebody
[5:27] Speaker 1: and talk to them about the regret and how this
[5:28] Speaker 1: thing just won't get shaken, or maybe you go and
[5:30] Speaker 1: spend hours and an enormous amount of money in a
[5:33] Speaker 1: therapist's office talking about this regret. This is pouring water
[5:38] Speaker 1: out of you into that glass. And here's what he says.
[5:43] Speaker 1: By its nature, water cannot go into two cups simultaneously.
[5:46] Speaker 1: When you're listening to a podcast, you aren't listening to
[5:48] Speaker 1: your husband, when you're thinking about politics, you aren't thinking
[5:51] Speaker 1: about your sister. When you're working, you aren't praying. It's
[5:56] Speaker 1: easy to lie to ourselves about our values and our priorities.
[5:58] Speaker 1: But attention doesn't tell lies. Attention reveals the preferences that
[6:04] Speaker 1: we have our values.
[6:06] Speaker 2: Well, there's that kind of well known saying that where
[6:10] Speaker 2: your attention goes, your energy flows. So wherever I'm putting
[6:14] Speaker 2: my attention, that's where my water is going. Right.
[6:16] Speaker 1: Yeah, this is another way of kind of saying what
[6:19] Speaker 1: Stephen Covey said, the things that matter most should never
[6:23] Speaker 1: be at the mercy of the things that matter least.
[6:26] Speaker 1: And so if you're getting a nickers in a not
[6:28] Speaker 1: about things that on a global scale, really do matter,
[6:33] Speaker 1: right like the stuff that's on the front page of
[6:34] Speaker 1: the news, I'm not going to talk about anything there
[6:36] Speaker 1: because it might offend somebody who really does care about
[6:38] Speaker 1: those things. The reality is, you can't do anything about
[6:41] Speaker 1: that stuff. Well, most of us can't do anything about
[6:44] Speaker 1: that stuff. Maybe a few of us in some strange
[6:47] Speaker 1: circumstances can, But we can do something about the fact
[6:50] Speaker 1: that our daughter is coming home and crying every afternoon,
[6:54] Speaker 1: or that we've got a husband who feels disconnected and
[6:58] Speaker 1: the way that he demonstrates that disconnection is to dispair
[7:01] Speaker 1: into his bedroom and watch Netflix rather than coming out
[7:03] Speaker 1: and communicating with the family. We can focus on things
[7:06] Speaker 1: that we're concerned about, or we can focus on things
[7:10] Speaker 1: that we have some power to control. Where we put
[7:13] Speaker 1: our water, where we tip our water out of our
[7:15] Speaker 1: finite resource each day has a huge impact on what
[7:20] Speaker 1: the rest of our life feels like and whether we
[7:22] Speaker 1: feel like we're in control or not. And Derek Thompson
[7:24] Speaker 1: says many people spend their whole lives emptying themselves without
[7:30] Speaker 1: taking stock of the water levels of the cups into
[7:32] Speaker 1: which they pour their existence. They spend hours, days, and
[7:36] Speaker 1: decades watering cups that they never meant to water, and
[7:40] Speaker 1: leaving empty other vessels they always meant to fill.
[7:45] Speaker 2: Clearly, I only have my perspective to go from. But
[7:48] Speaker 2: I talk to too many women who feel like their
[7:50] Speaker 2: pitch is empty, but they've gotten nothing out of the experience.
[7:56] Speaker 2: They're just constantly pouring into other people's cups or or
[8:00] Speaker 2: other things and feeling depleted from the process.
[8:05] Speaker 1: This is a question of where we're going to focus.
[8:09] Speaker 1: I do this activity when I'm talking to staff or
[8:11] Speaker 1: parents sometimes or students where I get them to put
[8:14] Speaker 1: a broomstick on their fingertips and they look at their
[8:16] Speaker 1: fingertips and the broomstick falls over. It usually hits them
[8:19] Speaker 1: in the head. But instead of looking at their fingertips,
[8:21] Speaker 1: if they look at the top of the broomstick, they
[8:23] Speaker 1: can balance it on their fingertips. So when I hear
[8:25] Speaker 1: you say that, I'm thinking the attention is there regardless,
[8:31] Speaker 1: but sometimes we're putting our attention in less effective places,
[8:37] Speaker 1: and that is depleting. If we're putting our attention to
[8:40] Speaker 1: something that depletes us. We are going to feel empty,
[8:43] Speaker 1: We're going to feel horrible. I'll give you a really
[8:45] Speaker 1: simple example. Every now and again, I will write a
[8:49] Speaker 1: piece for social media, and then I get caught up
[8:53] Speaker 1: in what I'm seeing in the comments, and all my
[8:58] Speaker 1: attention gets poured into too spending a long time responding
[9:03] Speaker 1: to people that I don't know and that I don't
[9:05] Speaker 1: need to impress, and that often have been brought in
[9:07] Speaker 1: by the algorithm. They're not actually followers of what we do.
[9:11] Speaker 1: And I sit down at the table and I'm angry.
[9:13] Speaker 1: You know that I'm angry, and you'll be like, oh,
[9:15] Speaker 1: you've been on social media. There's so much so that
[9:17] Speaker 1: I've stopped. I've given all my social media to my team.
[9:20] Speaker 1: I just write this stuff and I walk away. I
[9:22] Speaker 1: don't even look at it anymore. I don't even know
[9:24] Speaker 1: how to log in anymore. My team posts it all
[9:26] Speaker 1: for me and does it because I don't want to
[9:29] Speaker 1: put my attention on it. I made the decision because
[9:32] Speaker 1: a little while ago, like I'm talking in the last
[9:34] Speaker 1: six months, I made a post about something that was
[9:38] Speaker 1: pretty provocative, and somebody came at me pretty hard, and
[9:42] Speaker 1: they were just in retrospect. They were thoughtful, but they
[9:46] Speaker 1: were impolite, and I just called them a goose on
[9:49] Speaker 1: social media, not in my mind. I actually said you're
[9:51] Speaker 1: a goose. And then they screened shouldered and said, oh,
[9:54] Speaker 1: we've got screen sholders. Justin Coulson called me a goose,
[9:56] Speaker 1: and that they carried on and I apologized them at
[9:59] Speaker 1: it right, But I was putting my attention into something
[10:02] Speaker 1: that wasn't helpful, and it had flow and effects because
[10:06] Speaker 1: I had less capacity to put attention into you and
[10:08] Speaker 1: the kids that day, that night, that evening, as we
[10:12] Speaker 1: spend time together.
[10:14] Speaker 2: On my side of the coin. Then at the moment,
[10:17] Speaker 2: I'm putting a lot of energy into my physical health
[10:19] Speaker 2: and moving my body and exercising, and that is having
[10:25] Speaker 2: a huge toll on my capacity to be as presidents.
[10:29] Speaker 2: I would like come the afternoon time when I'm ready
[10:32] Speaker 2: for bed four o'clock. But the challenge is, as most
[10:39] Speaker 2: of us will experience, what I'm doing is not bad.
[10:43] Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah.
[10:44] Speaker 2: And if we recognize and know that balance isn't an like,
[10:47] Speaker 2: it's just not it's not achievable, then how do we
[10:52] Speaker 2: make the decision about where our energy needs to go
[10:56] Speaker 2: and our attention needs to go. If all of these
[11:00] Speaker 2: things are good, I have six children, they're all good, right,
[11:02] Speaker 2: and have a grand baby she's good.
[11:04] Speaker 1: How do you find the energy to put the attention
[11:07] Speaker 1: into it if you've depleted your energy even though you've
[11:08] Speaker 1: still you've still got the minutes and the hours in
[11:11] Speaker 1: the day, but there's no energy left to direct the
[11:13] Speaker 1: attention productively. Yeah. Yeah, let's talk about it after the break.
[11:17] Speaker 1: Stay with this, We're back into Happy Families podcast. Kylie,
[11:27] Speaker 1: you've asked this really hard question. I don't know that
[11:29] Speaker 1: I've got a great answer for you, but I think
[11:31] Speaker 1: it would be worth stepping back into the Derek Thompson
[11:34] Speaker 1: piece because he does say something that I think really
[11:37] Speaker 1: matters here. He says the game of cups is a
[11:40] Speaker 1: useful allegory because it recommends a clear action. Think of
[11:45] Speaker 1: it as a waterline inventory. At the end of the day,
[11:47] Speaker 1: you can ask yourself, who got my water today? Did
[11:50] Speaker 1: I save my attention for my priorities or do I
[11:53] Speaker 1: consistently pour myself into activities and media that I would
[11:57] Speaker 1: never say I valued. And I feel a little pad
[12:00] Speaker 1: of guilt there because I probably only need to check
[12:02] Speaker 1: the news headlines two or three times a day, but
[12:04] Speaker 1: I probably checked them eight times a day, and therefore
[12:07] Speaker 1: I'm pouring water into the wrong spot. And often I'll
[12:10] Speaker 1: do it because I'm feeling depleted and I'm not sure
[12:12] Speaker 1: that I have the energy to do the stuff that
[12:14] Speaker 1: I want to do. Anyway, let me jump back in,
[12:16] Speaker 1: he says. One can be quite precise about this waterline inventory.
[12:20] Speaker 1: If you're a white collar worker, for example, you'll have
[12:22] Speaker 1: typed hundreds or thousands of words in a given day.
[12:25] Speaker 1: Who or what got your words? Projects you care about
[12:28] Speaker 1: or projects you wish never existed, colleagues or family, group
[12:32] Speaker 1: chats with people you don't really care about, or group
[12:35] Speaker 1: chats with people you love and want to see more of,
[12:38] Speaker 1: he says, if I'm being strictly honest with myself, there
[12:40] Speaker 1: are too many weeks when looking back, I sent hundreds
[12:42] Speaker 1: of words to slack channels and group chats I don't
[12:45] Speaker 1: really care about without sending a word to a friend
[12:48] Speaker 1: I care about and haven't contacted in a while.
[12:52] Speaker 2: So at the beginning of the year, we shared the
[12:54] Speaker 2: three words that we picked to focus on this.
[12:58] Speaker 1: Year, Connection, vitality, intention.
[13:01] Speaker 2: And as we're talking to me. This is really just
[13:04] Speaker 2: about intention. Yeah, attention is about what our intention is. Like,
[13:10] Speaker 2: if we want to be intentional, then our attention is
[13:12] Speaker 2: going to go to the places that we believe need
[13:16] Speaker 2: our focus.
[13:18] Speaker 1: And I'm thinking about that question that you asked. What
[13:20] Speaker 1: happens at four o'clock in the afternoon when you are
[13:22] Speaker 1: out on your feet. You've been going all day, You've
[13:23] Speaker 1: put a whole lot of energy into other activities, productive activities.
[13:28] Speaker 1: You've been really good. You haven't even snacked, like you've
[13:30] Speaker 1: been really really good and focused on all the right things.
[13:32] Speaker 1: But you've still got another three to four hours to go,
[13:35] Speaker 1: and you're kind of thinking, hmmm, I don't think I
[13:37] Speaker 1: want to Something that I've discovered is that if you
[13:40] Speaker 1: just take that first or second step, just take a
[13:42] Speaker 1: couple of steps and get some momentuments and progress, it
[13:46] Speaker 1: starts to feel good again. So you might think, I
[13:48] Speaker 1: don't want to spend time with the kids, or I
[13:49] Speaker 1: don't want to go on cook dinner. But if you
[13:51] Speaker 1: can pull yourself off the couch or pull yourself off
[13:53] Speaker 1: the bed or wherever it is that you're laying down
[13:55] Speaker 1: and trying to get that little breather, because you really
[13:57] Speaker 1: do feel like you need it if you can switch
[13:59] Speaker 1: netflick off, or stop scrolling the Instagram reels. And this
[14:02] Speaker 1: isn't about you, This is a general comment. What happens
[14:05] Speaker 1: is you take those steps into the kitchen, you open
[14:07] Speaker 1: the fridge, you pull the ingredients out, you start chopping,
[14:08] Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, you're there. You're putting your
[14:12] Speaker 1: attention into it. Or you notice that your daughter is
[14:14] Speaker 1: not looking very happy, and you're there. You start to
[14:17] Speaker 1: put your attention into it. My experience has been that
[14:21] Speaker 1: that attention picture goes from sun up to sundown, from
[14:25] Speaker 1: when we wake to when we sleep. We've just got
[14:28] Speaker 1: to be intentional about pouring the water into the right cups.
[14:35] Speaker 1: And this is how Derek Thompson finishes the piece. He says,
[14:38] Speaker 1: the whole project might sound like a major guilt trip,
[14:42] Speaker 1: but I choose to see it differently. Our attention is
[14:44] Speaker 1: a unique resource. Bodies degrade, wealth rises and falls, reputations
[14:49] Speaker 1: come and go, but attention refreshes daily. The morning's picture
[14:55] Speaker 1: is always full, the morning's cups are always the game
[15:01] Speaker 1: begins again, and it's a game you can win today
[15:03] Speaker 1: no matter how many times you've lost. So this week,
[15:07] Speaker 1: I wrote myself a note and taped it to my
[15:08] Speaker 1: desk where I can't miss it. Whose cup did you
[15:11] Speaker 1: fill today?
[15:13] Speaker 2: I really like that ending. It's so simple, it's so profound,
[15:17] Speaker 2: the idea that you don't actually have to think about
[15:21] Speaker 2: the hundreds of cups in front of you, because That's
[15:25] Speaker 2: what I've been focusing on, but the one cup you
[15:29] Speaker 2: intend to focus on.
[15:31] Speaker 1: We will link to Derek Thompson's article and his entire
[15:34] Speaker 1: substack in the show notes because I think it's great.
[15:37] Speaker 1: It's one of my favorites. Even though I don't always
[15:38] Speaker 1: agree with it. I just think he's so provocative and
[15:40] Speaker 1: so oh my goodness, he's so articulate. Derrek Thompson substack
[15:44] Speaker 1: will link to that. The Happy Family's podcast is produced
[15:47] Speaker 1: by Justin Ruland from Bridge Media. Mim Hammon's provides our
[15:50] Speaker 1: admin and other support. If you would like more info
[15:53] Speaker 1: to make your family happier, we'd love for you to
[15:55] Speaker 1: visit us at Happy families dot com dot au

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