The Curse of FOMO and How To Work Towards Eliminating It

She: Are you going to have dinner?

He: What are the options?

She: Yes & No

He: !!!!!

We are living in an age spoilt with choices. There’s no single option to anything anymore. There’s always an assortment, numerous varieties of each of them.

Back in the year 1996, when I first entered a Baskin Robin’s outlet, the kid in me squealed in joy seeing the different options available. Today, the kid inside hasn’t died but is now confused at the variety in ice-creams that’s offered. French/ Gluten Free/ No Sugar/ Vegan/ Low Fat and the list goes on. And this is just one thing among the many aspects one can point to.

I personally have nothing against whatever ethical marketing strategies anyone employs to sell their product but what irks me is how I fall a prey to FOMO. Those neatly photoshopped, beautifully filtered, spotlessly clean picturesque photos of people traveling the globe or dining out in dreamy locations is a handful of cases in the otherwise long list of what makes me feel like gosh, what did I lose out on.

What is FOMO?

Most of us would be familiar with this jargon FOMO (Fear OF Missing Out), that uneasy, intense, frantic feeling of missing important events. It’s like an obsessive desire to be somewhere or do something only to avoid that emotion of fear. However, doing those activities may not necessarily bring in any joy. Simply put, the sadness associated with not doing something > the happiness associated with doing it.

Why Do We Experience FOMO? What Triggers FOMO?

The basis for FOMO is that as individuals we think everyone else around is having more fun than I am. Others are living their best times, enjoying all the goodness that the world has to offer and the grass is definitely much greener on the other side of the fence. It’s a psychological reaction to some subjective feeling.

Research suggests that people are twice as affected by losses as they are by gains. There’s an asymmetry in the manner our feelings operate when it comes to complaining about negative events while not praising positive events too much.

Also, thanks to all the developments that have been made, with the number of choices we have while purchasing things today, the flipside is that it all comes at a great cost. As someone brilliantly put it, “Learning to choose is hard. Learning to choose well is harder. And learning to choose well in a world of unlimited possibilities is harder still, perhaps too hard.”

How FOMO Impacts our Mental Health

At a time when we are being wholly consumed by social media, the aspect of FOMO can only get worse. With time, it brings upon a person to develop learned helplessness and a pessimistic approach to life. The thing with FOMO is that we direct our attention outwards rather than inwards leading to lower satisfaction and impacting both our professional and personal lives.

It gets us started on a loop of regret as we are only focused on what others are doing and missing out aspects of what we love doing.

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How To Overcome FOMO

First and foremost is to accept that with every decision there’s a certain degree of loss. There’s no other way to do it. At every stage you are missing out something. Every choice comes with a gain and an inherent loss. Weigh your options about what you are letting go off when you are comparing it to what you are benefitting.

So much of what makes life “good” or “bad” is unpredictable and outside our control. It’s time we learn to get comfortable with the idea of doing what we actually want to do instead of what we feel like we should do. You don’t necessarily have to like a certain genre of music or book or food taste only because that’s the fad. You listen/ read/ eat whatever you want because it’s your preference.

FOMO gets you to fit in to a crowd that’s necessarily not yours. Instead, connect with your tribe. It may not be the coolest it doesn’t even have to be. But, it’s something that will make your heart feel warm, make you feel home.

In my case, I bought an Audible subscription and am making monthly payments for it. But I’m unable to make the best use of it because I’m not a person who likes to consume books on tape.

I like holding books, underlining stuff, being lost in the world that the author has created for me. Fiction or non-fiction, I go for physical copies. I hesitatingly moved to Kindle and that’s better but audio is not my cup of tea. There’s no harm in trying different things and at the same time knowing that certain things are not yours to have. It may be what’s recommended to save time or better utilize time but if it’s not helping it ain’t useful anymore. When I walk, I prefer music, not books. I was struggling thinking I was losing out on the joy of listening to a book.

No damn it! It’s information, it’s knowledge out there. Absorb it the way you like. Podcasts are good, but for books it’s no-no for me. Eventually, I realized I’m simply reading lesser books because I had changed the medium and how is that even helping me.

There’s nothing old school about anything. Take ownership in your choices. Certain people like things one way and the others like it the other way. And, a few others create their own way. Stick to what works for you.

We may not get the “best’ of everything in life and it’s in acknowledging “the good enough” that makes our days more worthwhile.

Do you struggle with FOMO too? Do let me know in the comments how do you tackle it.

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