How to Stop Feeling FOMO So You Can Enjoy The Life You Already Have
Your personal highlight reel > Everyone else’s highlight reels
All your friends are going to a concert next weekend. Or an amazing party with an open bar and free Rolex’s. They’re planning a vacation to Tulum and making a pit stop in Cancun, just cause. They rented the Airbnb for an epic writer’s conference in Austin and are staying an extra few days to attend the Formula 1 race.
You can’t go.
You have other commitments to attend to. Whether it be commitments to yourself, your work, your family, or your partner. They’re restricting you from attending all the above.
You dread when they’ll jet off together for loads of fun, knowing that day will be wasted for you. Your thoughts will be filled with all the fun they’re having while you’re…. not. You’ll scroll through social media for proof of this fun. And get more upset when you witness it.
You put so much energy and effort into the experience you’re not living; you don’t even enjoy your own current experience.
FOMO is a monster that you must learn to tame. You probably won’t be able to abolish it for good. But you can deal with it in healthier ways and appreciate where you are and why you’re there.
It requires practicing self-control and loads of gratitude for where you currently are in life.
You’ll learn to enjoy the moment you’ve been given and the life you’re living.
You will stop feeding the monster and start filling your soul.
Check-in with your general levels of happiness
Our findings show those with low levels of satisfaction of the fundamental needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness tend towards higher levels of fear of missing out, as do those with lower levels of general mood and overall life satisfaction.
— Eric Baker, Time Magazine
How are you feeling about yourself and your current life circumstances right now? How do you feel about your job, your passions, your living situation, your relationships, friendships, and your health? Are certain areas of your life flourishing and certain ones lacking? Are you taking care of your six essential needs in life?
Can you identify where your sources of happiness or lack thereof are coming from?
I know a woman who is intelligent, in shape, and has great style. She’s in touch with her passions and is pursuing them. She has a boyfriend who is stable and secure.
If an opportunity to hang out with her group of girlfriends arises, she will rearrange her entire schedule to make sure she can attend. She will put herself in a completely inconvenient situation to be there. And when she’s not able to attend, she experiences genuine distress.
Whenever she’s recounted these feelings of intense FOMO, I’ve always wondered how she would describe her general levels of happiness. What she feels is missing elsewhere in her life that gets filled by this time with her friends.
Where is the desire to stay continually connected to others coming from? To where it affects your current life experience so you’re not even capable of enjoying the moment you’re in.
A contributing factor to your general levels of happiness could be the amount you’re on social media. The more you’re consuming it, the more you’re probably giving weight and energy to what you’re seeing.
Another person’s highlight reel is highlighting how shitty you feel about your life right now.
When intense feelings of FOMO arise, take a pause on social media. Do not feed the monster. Create some self-awareness to know if you’re in a good enough emotional place to handle the images you’re seeing. Are you able to process them for what they are and not let them hold any stock in your own life?
Your happiness is important. Take the time to check in with yourself and assess where you’re currently at in your general level of happiness.
What you’re showing up for is what you’re committed to
What you’re showing up for physically, you’re committed to. What you’re showing up for mentally, spiritually, and emotionally, you’re committed to.
Are you committing to the things you want to?
This was a major eye-opener for me a few years ago. I kept saying “yes” to attending events that were energy zapping and unfulfilling. Every time I was committing to them, I was choosing to not show up for something else.
Don’t say yes to attending out of the fear of missing out. And if you have to miss out on it, do not mentally commit your entire day to be there and abandon where you’re actually at.
Really ask yourself as you’re deciding about how you want to spend your time.
Commit to what you truly want. Commit to people who will grow your general levels of happiness. Commit to things that will further your growth.
What’s the cost of you trying to make it happen?
What’s it costing you financially, spiritually, physically, and emotionally to attend?
When I was in debt, I had to say no a lot. I had to commit to getting my finances in a healthier place.
When I didn’t feel empowered by some people I was hanging out with and kept attending events because I didn’t want to miss out… It was costing me emotionally.
Every opportunity has a cost. How much are you willing to pay to make it happen?
Do not pay more than it’s worth. If you’re in a bad financial spot and you can’t attend, let your friends know. Good friends would be happy to bring over a box of wine and a few pounds of cheese and sit on your living room floor chatting.
If you’re in a stage of growth and are more sensitive to being around people, don’t put yourself in a situation where you’re going to have to be super extroverted. It’s going to cost you too much emotionally.
Is the opportunity cost worth the price you will pay?
Will you care about this in a week, a month, a year?
When we’re in the thick of making a decision, the FOMO monster can intensify our emotions. Leading us to decide something we will later regret.
If you’re about to commit to something because of FOMO, ask yourself how much you’ll care in a week, a month, or a year? Will you even care?
Future you will look back on this moment and feel some type of way. Will they feel shitty because you let FOMO rule your mind? Or will they feel okay because you did your best to embrace the present moment, even if it wasn’t as shiny or fun?
Reallocate your attention
Your attention is going towards all that you’re “losing” from not being there. But can you shift your attention to see all that you’re “gaining” from being where you are? If you open yourself up to the present moment, you’ll see all that’s there for you to gain.
My family went on a cruise a few years ago. All 18 of us. My cousin Livy was 13 and popular. The thought of being at sea with no cell service, trapped with a bunch of her weird cousins, did not sound appealing. Her friends were all hanging out, and she desperately wanted to be there.
My aunt gave her some ground rules for when she could use her phone and when she had to spend time with the rest of us losers (in her eyes at least). And I’ll be damned, but once she had no choice but to be present with all of us, she had a great time. If given the chance to still be on her phone, she would’ve. If given the chance to focus on all that she was missing out on with her friends, she wouldn’t have gained all the wonderful time we spent together as a family.
Her dad, my Uncle Jeff, unexpectedly passed away less than a year later. It’s moments like this I look back on and I’m so happy she was fully there. Dancing, laughing, and loving where she was. She gained so much more by being there than mentally trying to be somewhere else.
Be grateful for what you’re gaining by being where you are.
Are you truly sad about missing out, or are you afraid you’re no longer relevant if you’re not there?
Definition of Relevant:
“Closely connected or appropriate to what is being done or considered.”
Me and two of my friends have moved out of Los Angeles in the past few years for various reasons. We’ve all experienced intense FOMO spirals for not being in LA. We’ve had the message beaten into us that if we’re not in LA, we’re not relevant. We’re quitters, we gave up, we couldn’t hack it.
At times, we have totally shit on the wonderful places we’re at. We had deemed LA to be more important than the cities we currently inhabited.
Then something funny happened.
We all chose to not let a zip code define our relevancy or success.
We stopped caring about what we were missing out on and decided what we were experiencing was relevant to our life story. And what’s truly more relevant than that? It’s the only thing we’ll be worried about when the time comes to go to the big pizza pie in the sky.
You are relevant wherever you show up, and you’re even relevant when you can’t show up to certain things.
You’re relevant in any room you grace and city you put your stamp on. You’re even relevant in the ones that you leave.
Take-Aways
What will your life look like when you stop feeding the FOMO monster?
Can you imagine being so in love with where you’re at in life, that you completely forget about the concert your friends are at?
When you no longer crave outward validation for how well your life is going, but you genuinely are excited to focus on yourself and your own happiness?
When you scroll through social media and don’t let someone else’s highlight reel highlight what’s missing in your life?
Choosing to deal with your FOMO will give you the freedom to enjoy your life. Where you are right here and right now.
Challenge yourself to feed your soul for your own overall happiness, instead of feeding the FOMO monster.
Maddie is a certified coach, writer, and voice-over artist. Self-declared boxed wine aficionado.