The Power of Gratitude Journals in Fostering Flexible Self-Concept Reconstruction

Have you ever kept a gratitude journal? I did, from October 2020 to April 2023, writing down at least one thing I was grateful for each day. I seemed to write in it more diligently during a challenging period in my career. After regaining stability, I wrote less frequently, but still managed to maintain the habit about three times a month until March of this year.

Every time you focus on something positive, you subtly tweak your conceptual system to strengthen the concept of this positive event and make it more prominent in your mental model of the world. It's even better to write down positive experiences. As I've mentioned several times, words promote concept development, which in turn allows you to better anticipate new moments that cultivate the positive aspects of life.

Lisa Feldman Barrett, a world-renowned neuroscientist, makes this statement in [[How Emotions Are Made]]. If people keep walking on a path where no one has walked before, a road is eventually formed. Humans have evolved to easily focus on negative things, so the path of gratitude might be like a rarely-traveled forest trail. I believe that by walking this path more often to experience gratitude more readily, we can help ourselves to flexibly reconstruct our self-concept in a rapidly changing world.

The Story of Kyung-sook Jung Kim, Former Google Korea Executive

The story of former Google Korea executive Kyung-sook Jung Kim, who also appeared on the popular Korean TV show You Quiz on the Block, resonates with me. In early 2023, during a wave of layoffs in Silicon Valley, Kyung-sook Jung Kim received a layoff notice via email one morning. She had worked as a director at Google's Silicon Valley headquarters for four years and suddenly found herself unemployed. However, instead of being discouraged, she seems to have experimented with various role transformations, including working as a cashier at Trader Joe's, a barista at Starbucks, and a driver for the ride-sharing service Lyft. She wanted to interact with customers directly, and this seems to have been part of her 'Meeting 10,000 People' project. I was curious about the mindset behind this, so I searched online and found the following passage in a book she wrote:

To those who are reeling from life's transitions, I want to say this: 'Be kinder to yourself. Don't push yourself too hard. Find what you enjoy and let your energy naturally flow towards new curiosities.' With that mindset, I continue to stack fruit pyramids at the neighborhood supermarket, practice making lattes with beautiful hearts at a coffee shop, and drive, anticipating which customer will need my services. I fill my curiosity by meeting new people and nurture my life transitions in this way. - Source

I believe one of the reasons she was able to adapt flexibly during her transition was that she maintained kindness towards herself and focused her attention on things she liked and found interesting. It's a vivid example of cultivating the positive aspects of life by focusing on positive things, as Lisa Feldman Barrett suggests.

The Fluidity and Reconstruction of Self-Concept

It's remarkable that she moved from being an executive in Korea to working at Google headquarters for four years, but it's even more impressive that after being laid off, she was still able to build her career based on her own vision. If concepts like honor, power, and wealth had been a significant part of her self-concept, it would have been difficult for her to act in this way. Feldman believes that people experience suffering because they cling to these concepts and "try to solidify their sense of self."

In Buddhism, it is believed that meditation can help people detach from their attachment to their self-concept. Meditation allows you to step back and observe the concepts that bind you. While not impossible, this is a very difficult thing for ordinary people to do. However, it is possible to make your self-concept more flexible simply by shifting your focus from negative to positive things. This enables you to reconstruct your self-concept in a way that is appropriate to the changing circumstances.

The brain forms a worldview based on what we pay attention to. (Omitted) Gallagher points out that "who you are, what you think, feel, do, and love is the sum total of what you focus on." - [[Deep Work (Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World)]]

As Cal Newport states in Deep Work, it's no exaggeration to say that the sum total of what our attention is directed towards is our Self. Kyung-sook Jung Kim provides a case study that deeply resonates with me, as she successfully reconstructed her self-concept by moving away from a self-concept tied to past glory (executive, Google headquarters director, etc.) and focusing her attention on things she enjoyed and found interesting.

However, it's not easy to reconstruct your self-concept in this way. I believe that it was possible for her because she had built her identity in various ways through activities like exercise and English study. So, what can we, ordinary people, do?

The Effectiveness of Gratitude Journals in Reconstructing Self-Concept

Finding at least one thing to be grateful for each day has the effect of constantly correcting your perspective on life. - [[The Elegance of the Hedgehog]]

Both Lisa Feldman Barrett and Cal Newport emphasize that what we pay attention to becomes our reality. Even in uncertain and bleak situations, writing a gratitude journal can help us better focus on the positive aspects of life, and by correcting our perspective on life through this, we gain the potential to reinterpret negative experiences like job loss. In essence, it creates a fertile ground for reconstructing our self-concept, similar to Kyung-sook Jung Kim's example.

Conclusion

Keeping a gratitude journal is a powerful tool that anyone can easily use to build a more adaptive self-concept. Through gratitude journaling, we can experience a change in our perspective on the world and ourselves. We can pay attention to small joys, reinterpret hardships with a fresh perspective, and use this to build a flexible self-concept. In a world that is changing rapidly and where uncertainty prevails, gratitude journaling will help us develop a more adaptive perspective and self-concept.