Thinking intrigues me.
After graduate school, I became quite interested in a counseling approach called cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). The “cognitive” part is about how people think in ways that may be helpful (adaptive) or not as helpful (maladaptive) to them. It posits that people can think about their thinking (known as metacognition) and modify their thinking to have a healthier lifestyle. [Dr. Aaron Beck is one of the preeminent developers of CBT. For more information, please visit the website for the Beck Institute, a page of which can be found at https://beckinstitute.org/get-informed/tools-and-resources/cbt-store/]
The word floating in your mind as you read that last paragraph might be “attitude” or “outlook” or “perspective.” If so, you’d be right in large part.
In CBT, the key word is “interpretation.” How a person interprets an event is reflective of their thinking. You and I could watch the same tennis match, game, or musical and “view” it differently. In a soccer match, for instance, we could be at the same game, sitting next to each other, but have two completely different experiences based perhaps on which team won or lost the game.
So…people continually think as they try to make sense of the world and influence it. Thoughts percolate throughout our waking days, some of which we attend to with great zest (i.e. focusing on a work project) and others of which we let slip by. As much as we would like to turn off our brains at times, it can be difficult to do.
The point around our thinking is we have brain money each and every day. We wake each morning and have the opportunity to think. These thoughts may be entirely new, creative thoughts or recycled thoughts from the previous days, weeks, or years (yes, a type of “Groundhog’s Day” in the brain).
This notion of thinking relates closely to creativity. I’ll discuss this more in the next post…