What is FOMO?
There's a term you may have heard of - ‘FOMO’
FOMO stands for ‘fear of missing out’
It’s yet another one of the acronyms that Gen Z uses as a second language.
Although FOMO may not have existed until recently, I suppose the fear of missing out has surely existed for most of history.
What is the fear of missing out?
It speaks for itself, doesn't it? well, the way I see it, it’s not quite that simple.
let’s use myself as an example. I myself am plagued with the fear of missing out. What it means to have FOMO is to want to be involved in quite literally everything.
anyone with FOMO including myself would try and contradict that statement and say, " I don't want to be involved in 'EVERYTHING', only things directly related to me or my surroundings"
To be honest, coming from someone who has a huge FOMO, this counter was my first thought as well, but then another thought occurred to me.
As long as you are alive and you exist, there is always a handful of things that you are part of and a boatload of things that you aren't a part of. It may be scary to think about it but, you are never not missing out on something fun, important, beneficial, etc.
There are always some inside jokes you will miss, some memories you won’t be a part of or some secrets you will never know. And to be blunt the fact is that you couldn’t be a part of all these things as hard as you try. Because to make some memories you will have to miss out on some others, and thus you will have FOMO no matter what.
Is there a way around FOMO?
And so here's the bad news. you have to make a choice, without knowing the outcome of either option. This can be dizzying for indecisive people, (I speak from experience)
but fear not as there is also a solution I’d like to offer, more like a mindset that I use to escape feeling left out all the time.
There’s no solace in ruminating over inevitable FOMO but what if there was a way around it? For a moment visualize the following situation:
There are 3 events you've been invited to on the same evening. The timings are overlapping a little but if you were to make it to all the events you would get to spend an hour at each one.
Sounds like a satisfactory solution? It helps to completely avoid our FOMO problem too. Win-win. But by dividing your time between 3 events you have now ended up experiencing snippets of each one of them, which still leaves you with something you’ve missed out on, only now you’ve missed out on 3 little somethings rather than just 2.
This goes to say, that the better decision would be to have attended one entire event and experienced it to the fullest. This implements the mindset that the event that you attend is the memory that should matter to you and that, years from that day, you won't remember the 2 events you missed out on, but you probably will remember that one event that you made memorable by being fully present rather than dwelling on what you've been missing.
This mindset makes memories that are much more special knowing that you were in it with all your heart and it applies for so much more than just events.
Conclusion
So to conclude,
for every memory that you don't make, for every missed opportunity, for every inside joke you find yourself clueless about, you always have your memories and jokes that someone else isn't a part of.
Like I said at the start of this article, FOMO hasn’t been a thing till recently, and fear of missing out goes way back, but I’d like to now add, that both these things are felt in our heads. This fear cultivates in our heads more than we would like to admit. If we use the mindset that the things we experience are far more important and memorable than the things we miss out on, trust me, our FOMO won’t vanish, but we’ll be putting up a good fight.
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