What TikTok Taught Me About Mindfulness
On Anxiety:
So our mind was programmed to be anxious. Anxiety is the apprehension of the future.
In Buddhism, anything that keeps you from staying in the present moment is not good.
Our minds tend to do 2 things:
Recycling of the past — depression
Apprehension of the future — anxiety, thinking that things are going to happen, could happen, will happen when it has not happened yet
Mindfulness meditation is staying in the present moment. Mindfulness is remembering to catch your mind jumping.
If your mind is jumping forward or backward, the fact that you catch that is the first step, the second step is using your breath to stay in the present moment.
I have an on-again, off-again relationship with meditation and mindfulness practice. Over the last few years, I've tried a fair share of meditation apps, programs, and podcasts to help practice mindfulness.
Yesterday, in under 30 seconds, "Buddhism TikTok" taught me the true meaning and purpose of mindfulness that I didn't know after years of exercise. It wasn’t about finding inner peace or calming nerves to help me work more proficiently. It was about presence.
I was the first of many of my friends to true Musical.ly — I chalk it up to occupational hazard. While running Propeller, I downloaded the top 10 new and trending apps in the App Store on a regular basis.
When TikTok launched and eventually absorbed Musical.ly, I was slow to join. I’d been a huge Vine fan, but I didn't see the initial value of dance videos and teenage lip-syncing. Fast-forward more than a few years and people have carved out segments of TikTok for their own — regularly "commenting to stay in [X] TikTok," signaling an active effort to game the feed algorithm.
I browse without an account. I haven't created an account for several purposes — to reduce my propensity to consume content (through notifications) and to reduce feed bias. TikTok does an incredible job at providing trending and new content to me and I've embraced it wholeheartedly. I've created a system to bookmark my favorites with Paste, saving what I like and revisiting at a later date for content in Policy TikTok, Personal Finance TikTok, Fitness TikTok, and even Dog TikTok.
I'm an advocate for anyone on the fence to jump in and make use of a rocketship platform that has matured from the teenage platform for clout chasing.
The 30 seconds of wisdom from Venerable Tri Dao is not the end of my meditation practice, but it definitely helps to put mindfulness and practice into perspective. I have a greater appreciation for what my mind is doing and what I can do to help it out. If Headspace, Ten Percent, or the dozens of other apps are too much for you, UCLA also has a mindfulness meditation app for free that you can download for iOS and Android today.