There are various flavours of CBT. Behavioral Activation therapy focuses on activities that cause happiness and/or a sense of accomplishment. Essentially identifying where these areas are and increasing them once they are identified, while dealing with any obstacles that come up. That sounds pretty basic, but it’s essentially a treatment for depression, and for someone caught in that loop then this basic thing that most people do on some level can actually disappear from life without one noticing. But even if there isn’t a clinical depression present, the essential idea of this is easily incorporated into a daily practice, which is focused around writing and journaling.
CBT and Mindfulness
When we’re mapping the contents of the mind then, as well as dealing with the healing and negative thoughts, we need to note when we are actually nailing it and are happy for a moment. Also, when we learn to create happiness within, then the scheduling is really important. Most people kind of do that on a daily basis unconsciously. Perhaps a high point of someone’s day is a quick coffee after work at a cafe before going home, to ‘unwind’, which is nice. But if this is done mindfully, then one can really get to understand the mechanics of ‘happiness’. What is that contentment? So in the cafe it might be triggered by the environment, nice pictures, comfortable chair, quiet jazz playing or whatever, and the result on behaviour is slowing and slouching and relaxing. The sensations of the body quiet down and the mental-pictures can be dreamy and positive, although not always. When you look mindfully, then there can often still be something “winding you up” on some level, perhaps something seen in the media that riled you. But if this is specifically scheduled as a “happy time”, this segment of the day, then it’s almost like a mindfulness meditation, and while sitting in the cafe mindfully, the choice of happiness is made moment-to-moment, and anything arising spontaneously is dealt with, by thought resetting or journaling or whatever it takes. There is this specific time for happiness. A happy segment of the day.
Someone might say, “Yes, but I can’t really be happy right now, when I’m facing this and this and whatever is going on in life”, but then this really is the key. There’s a moment, of deep insight, when you really understand that mood is independent of senses. If you segment this day to actively be happy and remove any barrier to that mentally, whatever comes up in your mind, or whatever the senses perceive (say a person at the next table using a speaker phone) is dealt with, becomes irrelevant, and mindfulness can observe a constant period of joy/contentment, then this is a jewel. That might be a strange way to put it, but I’m recalling a story about a Zen master telling his student that the mind is a treasure chest, but you need to open the chest and use the treasures. There is also a line in the Dhammapada (sayings of the Buddha) that a disciplined mind is the highest gift in life.