Member-only story
Who Says You Can’t Find Wisdom on TikTok?
My husband adores TikTok. Whenever he finds a short video he thinks I’d like, he texts it to me. During a recent rough patch, he got in the habit of texting me a funny video first thing in the morning. Since he gets up before me, he could do it before I was awake. I’d grab my phone while still in bed and laugh at whatever he sent me. It helped ease me into my day.
Once in a while, though, he also sends me a TikTok from which I can learn something. The other day, he attached a clip of someone asking the Dalai Lama how to get rid of negative thoughts. The wise man said that negative thoughts result from two things. One, a self-centered attitude where we’re too focused on our own wants, needs, goals, opinions, etc. Two, we accept that reality is as it appears to us in the moment, and that is rarely true. He advised turning toward altruism and not automatically “accepting” the negative thought.
Those of us working in creative fields know a lot about negative thinking. We can be our own worst critics, for example. And we often feel slighted, taken advantage of, overlooked, misunderstood, underpaid, undervalued, underappreciated, and so on. We spend a lot of time wishing the systems and industries we work within were different. When it comes to our fellow artists, we sometimes dip into jealousy, envy, resentment, and judgment. We might then hate…
