Suffer from FOMO?
…just let the anxiety go and be joyful in the moment
I am the type of person who goes to a party and then instantly regrets it. I spend most of my time wondering how I can escape.
I might have inherited this from my mother who would attend a family wedding, with flat shoes in her handbag and then, sometime between the cocktail hour and dinner, make a run for it.
But when you have “fear of missing out,” access, not exit, is your goal
People with full blown FOMO smell of quiet desperation. They RSVP quickly and stay at a gathering way too long. They want to be in the know and drop names and post their presence on social media.
And it doesn’t stop there.
Folks with FOMO are transparent to the point of annoyance, telling you the details of their lives and expect you to mirror these disclosures.
All this sharing is to ensure your life and experiences are not more satisfying than their own. The constant comparison often leads to anxiety and depression.
In fact, FOMO has become a mental health epidemic, even though the earliest references only date back to the early 2000s. Clearly this is related to the compulsive overuse of technology, particularly the smart phone.
While I like to scroll through popular sites to peak into the lives of celebrities, it is a lazy past time, not an urgent need.
Following the crowd never appealed to me. I would rather be an outlier.
Those who are fiercely independent live without checking into others’ whereabouts or actions. They strike out and call their own shots.
To me that means freedom, without the tethers of comparisons and distractions.
So serve up some JOMO : “joy of missing out.” I would like two helpings please.
