Crabs in a bucket: Climbing your way to the top

Julie Murphy • September 15, 2010

Coming to Boston to speak at the 2010 Diva Toolbox Conference for Women in Business and thinking about the delicious seafood I’ll be eating made me think of the crabs in a bucket expression.  What the heck do crabs in a bucket have to do with personal finance you ask?  If you’ve ever been to the shore , you know exactly where the metaphor comes from.  If you put one crab in a bucket, it can climb out by itself, no problem.  But if you fill the bucket with twenty crabs, just as one reaches the top, the other crabs pull it back down.

If you’re in the process of regaining your personal power over money, you’re in the process of changing old behaviors.  You may find that people in “your bucket” are uncomfortable by these changes because it may cause them to examine their own lives.  Those people closest to you may become your “crabs” and try and pull you down as you climb out of the financial rut you found yourself in.  Don’t let them!  Choose to love yourself to regain your personal power over money, climb out of that bucket, and live a life that thrives!

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