A Gratitude Journal, for when you are feeling down

As researchers, we are always dreaming or under pressure to publish in high impact journals to secure our career or even to prove our life is meaningful. So here Let me introduce an open-access, self-reviewed, ultra-high impact (for your life) journal aka ‘Gratitude Journal’ for your mental health.

‘Gratitude Journal’, literally you write down the things you feel thankful for. Even the tiny things or small positive events happen in your daily life. This action of thinking and writing down can boost positivity in your mind. It is a simple concept but a somewhat powerful tool. When you are down (either due to covid or insecurity of your career etc.) I highly recommend you to do this.

2020 April 10, I was in the middle of the 1st national covid-lockdown in France. My laboratory decided to shut down itself completely. As an experiment-based postdoc, total lockdown with an indefinite open-up schedule was unbearable. On top of that, I already had decided that 2020 should be my last year as a postdoc (it was 5th year). I didn’t have big fancy papers published and my first paper from the French lab was getting rejection after rejection. I realized that my postdoc in France was a high-risk high-return gamble and this stock price was going down. I was thinking about the ‘sunk cost’. What should I do? What can I do?

For the first time in my life, I felt something is not okay with my mind. I was anxious, not eating well, no motivation to do physical exercises. Even I did not feel like going out for a short walk and get some sunlight. Maybe one can describe this as early symptoms of depression. Of course, I knew I was not the only one suffering! But knowing that I was not alone did not help. I was struggling.

I could not even start watching ‘watch later list’ on Netflix. Although I was not in a situation to do proper scientific works, I felt guilty about watching something for fun. I was checking covid news constantly, reading covid related medical articles, only clicking short youtube clips which is related to covid news. And as for short term mood-tranquilliser, I constantly browsing some Korean internet humour community (like 9GAG). I was not well.

By chance, I stumbled upon ‘Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell’ youtube channel. And the clips about ‘gratitude journal’ caught my attention.

Ok, the introduction was too long. Below was my gratitude journal on that day. It can be seen as a bit narcissistic or too naively optimistic. But that is the point! This journal is for me exclusively, just mere writing process itself helped me.

1. I am still safe in the middle of the coronavirus outbreak in France. So far, 120,000 people have been infected and 12,000 people have died. 1000 death per day, the intensive care unit is already over the maximum capacity counting over 7000. (April 2020)
2. A Korean grocery shop started delivery service and my first order arrived today. Surprisingly when I am stressed I am craving for Korean taste.
3. I am not alone, I am staying with my girlfriend. I would have been way more depressed if I had been alone.
4. I did a final interview for a permanent research position just before lockdown. Even if I don’t get the job, I would say it was a small miracle that I got to the final round without publishing a big paper recently.
5. In a way, it is more comfortable not to work in the lab. With my paper not being published and I constantly think about quitting postdoc, let’s say it was not as smooth as before at work with my team.
6. France has plenty of food supply. I don’t have to worry about stocking.
7. It’s great that Covid numbers in Korea much lower. At least I don’t have to worry about my mother too much.
8. I have good friends in Korea. (I name each of them)
9. I have a quite healthy body.
10. Today the sunlight is really warm and good. It feels good to just sit by the window. Coming over to my girlfriend’s house with a balcony was a good choice.
11. I am still getting paid, thank god that my job is a fundamental researcher.
12. I got a good brain. This allows me to study, work, and experience the world outside of my own community.
13. Although I am from an extremely poor background, my parents were not an obstacle. Rather, I received surprisingly great support from them.
14. I don’t have particularly any complexes about my look or height.
15. I don’t have particularly any complex about my education. Because I got a degree from a famous university in Korea. I know it sounds weird.. but this is quite a Korean cultural thing.
16. It has been already 3 years and a month since I started living out of Korea. At least for the drinking culture, I am quite free. I guess my liver is much healthier than that of average Korean guys of my age.
17. It’s funny to say, but it’s nice to be born in South Korea, not North Korea.
18. I did my compulsory military service as a research agent. I still think that the decision to be a research agent was one of the best decisions I have made so far. If I did normal armed forces for 2 years, tight lifestyle could alter my mental (and physical) health or could twist my personality to some extent. I feel lucky that I did not have to do dangerous training or harsh duties. Especially after I realised that a private insurance company now sells insurance for men doing compulsory military service in case of physical harm. Because our government has been doing a really great(?) job to take care of our young men when they got injured during the military service. Sad! What a shame!
19. When I was in high school, I decided that I should be good at English. At that moment I didn’t know what kind of exact benefit I would get in the future. It was a great choice. I benefit a lot from being fluent in English (significant enough for non-native speaker).

If this simple tactic sounds convincing for you. You might also want to check out a blog article from Scientific American. A professor talking about how she dealt with all the stress and anxiety came from competitive career development. Even though she talks about the difficulties in life as a faculty professor, I could still find some elements to relate to my situation (postdoc). Anyway the title of the article is ‘The Awesomest 7-Year Postdoc or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Tenure-Track Faculty Life‘. You can find a similar concept in her article ‘I created a “feelgood” email folder’.

Oh yeah, thanks to my self-published journal, finally I got some motivation to take a walk that evening.