Crabs in a Bucket Stay in a Bucket: How to Climb Out Anyway

Have you ever watched crabs in a bucket? The minute one starts climbing toward the rim, the others reach up, grab hold, and drag it right back down into the pile. Any one of them could get out on its own, but together they make sure none of them ever do.

That picture has stayed with me for a long time, because crabs in a bucket mentality happens to women the minute they start building a business of their own. You decide to start a blog, or a small business alongside your full time job, and suddenly the people around you have opinions about it. A few of them are loud, but most of them are quiet and sound almost kind, which is exactly why they are so hard to shake.

What crabs in a bucket mentality looks like when you start a business

What does crabs in a bucket mean?

Crabs in a bucket describes people who pull someone back down when that person starts to rise above the group. A single crab could climb out of a bucket, but the others grab it and drag it back. With people, it looks like doubt, teasing, or “helpful” criticism aimed at the one who is trying to change.

In your business, the crabs rarely announce themselves. They are the strangers who message you to “help you out” with your website when the two of you have never met. They are the people who skip right past what you wrote to point out a misspelled word or a comma where a period belonged. They smile while they say it and cut you down softly, and your gut feels the difference even when your head is trying to be polite about it.

How do you know if someone is a crab?

You can usually tell by how you feel afterward. A real friend or mentor leaves you clearer about your next step, even when the truth stings a little. A crab leaves you doubting the whole idea and replaying the conversation long after it ended. If a comment gives you a little tug inside, that was a crab.

Why people pull you back when you start to change

Why do people pull you down when you try to change?

Most people are not trying to hurt you. When you change, it reminds them of what they have not changed, and that feels uncomfortable. Psychologist Loretta Breuning explains in Psychology Today that this pull often comes from a deep instinct to protect our place in the group, so your growth can feel like a threat to theirs.

People get nervous when your language starts to change. You used to talk about the same weekend plans as everyone else, and now you are talking about blog posts and email lists and where you are headed next. They take the time to point out what you are doing wrong because it settles their own nerves, and to them it feels like help, but it is really the bucket pulling you back toward the middle.

This is the reason so many women quit before their blog ever has a real chance to work. It is not usually the writing or the learning curve that stops them. It is the comments from people they love, or from people they barely know, the moment a change starts to look possible.

A Saturday night of people watching from the back wall

One Saturday night I leaned against the wall of a smoky bar next to my son, my husband, and my mother, listening to my cousin sing his heart out with his new band, ShotgunJack. I was sipping a flat beer that had lost every bit of its flavor and doing what I love to do in a crowd, which is watch people.

He stood on that stage nervous and sweating, completely sober and drinking pineapple juice, singing to a room full of people who did not know his story. After enough nights on the road with a band, he has seen plenty of crabs from that stage, people concerned only with what would serve them in the moment and not one bit concerned with the person standing next to them.

From the back wall I watched people surrounded by a crowd and still alone. Many of them were on their phones, lost in their own thoughts, and you could tell that Saturday night was the same routine they lived every week, with their minds already on whatever tomorrow would bring. It does not have to be that way for you, even though the crabs will tell you it does.

How to climb out of the bucket and keep building

How do you deal with crabs in a bucket mentality?

Decide ahead of time whose opinion gets a vote in your business, and keep that list short. Thank everyone else and move on without explaining yourself. Block strangers who offer help you never asked for, step away from conversations that leave you uneasy, and put your energy into the work instead of defending it.

I stopped keeping a bucket for the crabs to live in. When someone I have no personal connection with wants to “help me out,” they get blocked and sent on their way. When a conversation around me starts to feel uncomfortable, I take that as my cue to move on rather than stay and argue my case.

Never be too embarrassed to start small. Every blog you admire began with one plain first post, and because you started, you are already ahead of everyone standing still in the bucket telling you it will never work. If you are building around a full time job, my post on how to blog while working full time walks through fitting it into the hours you actually have, and if you are still deciding where your blog should begin, my Start Here page lays out the first steps in order so you are not guessing.

Do this tonight: take fifteen minutes and write down the names of the two people whose advice you will actually take about your blog. Under those names, write the last comment that gave you that little tug. Ask yourself whether it came from someone on your list, and if it did not, cross it out and let it go for good.

If you want someone in your corner who is not a crab, every Tuesday I send one letter with one piece you can use on your blog that week, written for the woman building around a full life. Get the Tuesday letter here.

When you are ready to stop guessing what to write and want your content planned so Google can find it and readers find their way to you, The Content Map walks you through it step by step.

You get to make choices, and some of them will feel hard at first and so freeing once you make them. If you have been holding a stick to keep your crabs at a safe distance, it may be time to dump the bucket and keep climbing.

Be unpolished,
Angela