I was sitting at the house on Friday night, eating a slice of pizza and taking a brain break on social media, and what to my wondering eyes appear … a group of my besties out to dinner together. The problem: I didn’t get an invite.
FOMO (The Fear Of Missing Out) immediately set in.
What were they doing?
Why didn’t I get an invite?
Who all is there?
How do I feel about this?
The average person spends nearly 2.5 hours PER DAY on social media. As my pastor often says: some of us aren’t average….we are extraordinary (and in this case, being extraordinary is probably not good). Because of this time spent on social media, immersed in minute detail of people’s lives, its hard not to see every party, every event, ever meal, every trip that those around us experience.
In the above example, I had literally ZERO desire to go out that evening. None. Zilch. Nada. Yet even still, that FOMO zinged me in the heart, if ever so briefly.
This steals our joy, our happiness, our contentment and our satisfaction for the beautiful moment standing right in front of us. I was exceedingly happy to have a relaxing evening at home, to veg out, watch a movie, and go to bed early. For a moment, that excitement for my evening home evaporated, replaced by a little jealousy and a fair share of FOMO. Thankfully, I was able to let it go, remind myself that was not what I wanted or intended, shut down the phone, and resume enjoying MY life.
Why FOMO is stealing our joy
FOMO creates feelings that aren’t aligned with what our true desires and dreams for ourself are. There is always something going on in the world, and that doesn’t mean its meant for us, or even right for us. FOMO leads to us saying yes to things that we really don’t care about, because we are worried we may miss out on something grander than we had planned for ourselves.
When you say YES to something, you are saying NO to something else. There is opportunity cost to almost everything in life. Do you remember college? Parties somewhere almost every day of the week. If you said yes to all of them, because you didn’t want to miss out, what would happen? You would end up with poor grades, falling behind, getting kicked out, or even worse, possibly a drinking problem. FOMO can lead us down paths that we really don’t want to go down.
FOMO also causes anxiety, depression, anger and resentment. These are harsh and sometimes dangerous feelings to experience, especially if you are already in a difficult place in life.
But FOMO is more expansive than you even realize. FOMO is often what leads people to obsessively check twitter, or news, or stay glued to the television during a storm or political disruption. We are subtly concerned that we are going to miss out on some revelation, some new detail, and other people are going to hear about it or see it before us.
Living in fear, is not living at all.
We are happiest and most joyful when we are living in the present moment, enjoying the things immediately surrounding us. FOMO takes us out of that, takes us to where others are, instills fear. That’s the opposite of joy.
How to let go of FOMO
Letting go of FOMO is easy.
What if I told you “Getting rid of social media, focusing on the present, rooting into who you are and what you want out of life takes effort, deep thought, and breaking phone habits, but in doing so, you will find so much happiness, you won’t hardly believe it”?
Does that sound amazing? Does it sound doable? It should, because its all true and its all possible.
To overcome FOMO, we really have to put social media down. The mindless scrolling is eating our souls. Set a timer, post or engage, then hop off and log out. Don’t stay logged in, that’s a trap.
Let go of what others are doing. Actively work on keeping your mind in the present, focused on what you are doing and who is around you. Put your phone down. Engage with those. When your mind wanders, bring it back. The more you practice this, the more natural it will become.
But most importantly, be happy for other people. If you hear someone did something exciting or interesting, be happy for them. Every time your friend has an amazing experience, have gratitude for yourself and the life you are living, and then gratitude for them to be able to do something awesome and fun. Having gratitude for others, not jealousy, is the sure-fire way to kill FOMO and increase your own happiness. Gratitude is strongly linked to happiness and satisfaction. Gratitude truly makes you happy. So take all of the jealousy and replace it with gratitude, voila, 10x happier.
Life is what you make it. Don’t allow other peoples’ lives to influence what you want and what you do. Keep true to yourself. Be grateful and live your best life. Delete FOMO from your vocabulary. Otherwise, its your life that you are really missing out on, and wouldn’t it be a tragedy to live someone else’s life?!