Gratitude Stone

Gratitude is the memory of the heart.~Jean Baptiste Massieu, French deaf educator (1772-1846).

Flipping your feelings with a gratitude stone is a great strategy when you are having trouble remembering the good things in your life. Sometimes, even though Americans have a specific November holiday dedicated to it, remembering to be thankful can feel burdensome. Especially if the inner critic is getting the upper hand by scolding you for not being grateful enough. A gratitude rock is a simple, comforting solution to help restore your equanimity and appreciation of what is going right in your life.

I have a dark gray Mexican beach pebble that serves as a gratitude stone on my desk that fits in the palm of my hand and feels good to the touch; smooth and slightly cool. It’s ovoid, and about 1” across. Picking it up immediately makes me feel better.

Some of you may remember the worry stones fad. Those stones had an indentation in them to rub your thumb along when feeling worried as a form of self-soothing for anxiety. Gratitude rocks or gratitude stones are similar but generally without an indentation, and with a slightly different purpose: to help you remember what you are grateful for, especially when you are not feeling particularly grateful for anything or in a place where you are hurting.

From complaint to gratitude

From complaint to gratitude seems like it would be a hard slog, but it can literally be done in seconds by turning the stone over. You might be feeling unhappy about having a large number of papers to grade. When you flip your gratitude stone, you can remind yourself, “it’s only part of the job,” or “grading gives me a chance to help students do better.” Or, you might feel exhausted by your commute, and irritated by the time it takes out of your day. Flipping your rock to gratitude might be thinking instead, “This is the time I use to separate my work and home life,” or “This is my time to listen to music,” or even, “This is my time to reflect on what went right in my class today,” or “I’ve learned what I want to do differently.”

Gratitude stones can pull you back into the present moment, and what is literally happening to you right now. Even holding the stone in your hand without flipping it over while you name things you are immediately grateful for, like a cup of coffee, a warm sweater, a cat on the rug, or the view from wherever you are, can be helpful.

How to make a gratitude stone

Gratitude stones can be made of almost any type of hard rock that can fit in the palm of your hand and be rubbed for a long time without wearing away. Quartz, sea stone, river rocks, and semiprecious stones like agate, azurite, carnelian, jasper, lapis lazuli, or obsidian, can all be used for the creation of a gratitude rock. Some people even use cut crystals, but I find those not smooth or large enough for the purpose. Most gratitude stones are ovoid and slightly flat.

You certainly do not need to purchase a stone. Get a free one by picking up a stone wherever you are. I collect rocks wherever I go, including walking along the beach, so finding a small smooth stone was easy. Most people want the stone to be small enough to fit in a pocket and easily held in one hand in order to close the palm of their hand around it when just holding it.

Next, make sure there is some sort of difference between the two sides of your stone. Some people buy rocks with the word “gratitude” etched on one side. Other people go for the homemade version by decorating one side with paint, felt tip markers, or gluing on a symbol such as a heart, flower, dots, or swirls pasted down with mod podge or collage glue.

If you don’t want to carry a rock around with you everywhere you go, you could consider placing it on your desk like I do, or any surface you are likely to see regularly, such as a coffee table, a kitchen counter, or a bed stand. I have a friend that uses a fossil rock in the same way: since the two sides are different, the flatter side is usually face down, but she can flip it over when she is trying to shift her attitude to gratitude. Then flip back later.

Using in community

If you are planning to gather for Thanksgiving this year with family and friends, here’s an idea to make a more communal use of the rock. Pass it around the table as a prop to give each person a chance to say one thing they are currently feeling thankful for. If you have kids to entertain for the holiday, you could even set them up to make some gratitude stones for themselves, or to give them away to the other people at the gathering. Some kids might want to take stones back to classmates or teachers to share after the Thanksgiving holiday.

Why bother with a stone?

Gratitude rocks are remarkably portable and easy to use to shift your perspective from upset to grateful in a heartbeat. Flipping your self-talk will probably make you immediately feel better about your life. I have another friend who says, “I tried that gratitude journal stuff, where you write down three things you are grateful for at the end of each day. Eventually, I was just listing the same things over and over, like kids, jobs, home, partner. The gratitude stone helps me in the moment I feel discouraged. I have used it when I felt unfairly treated by a boss. I was griping about how awful she was. Using the stone helped me quickly move from bitter to better. I realized that a lot of my coworkers supported me, and I felt gratitude for them.  Even though nothing changed immediately, except I felt better, that kept me from just moaning around complaining about how I was so hard done to.”

May you find joy and gratitude as your flip over your attitude using a gratitude stone.

If you are still struggling to find gratitude in your life schedule a FREE 20-minute session with Hillary and work out how to move forward in your life.

 

Tags: , , , ,