Let's talk about Fear of Missing Out - FOMO

From my experience in personal and professional life, thee fear of missing out is all about having this panic or anxiety that life will pass you by, that you are on your deathbed and you regret not having taken enough from life, so you end up filling it up with a thousand things to do, to try to suck out the best you can out of life in any way possible. Can you relate? Whilst before this might have happened when we compared ourselves to our friends nowadays people compare themselves to megalomaniacs.

Also because our idea of success and fulfillment has changed, whilst before we looked at success as having your own farm and raising your own family, nowadays fulfillment is coming from the idea of being successful at work, having certain social status, having a number of cars or having a certain brand of phone. We get divorced not because we are not happy but because we could be happier, we wait for the one because I have a list of criteria and my partner needs to fulfill it and there is no way I am going to settle because then I would not be fulfilled. And the longer I wait the more important the criteria becomes.

And therefore we rely on this idea of success to fulfill us, to make us feel whole, to fill in that void in a any shape, way or form. But if you really and truly think about it, all of these are external ways to try to access that happiness, the cars, the brands, the work, the status, even the idea of soul mates.

Now before you freak out, I am not saying these do not offer joy, but they're also temporary contentment, they're there and then they're not. Whilst external factors also bring some sense fulfillment it is very different from internal peacefulness. In fact research says that both people who experience something extremely positive, such as winning a lottery or extremely painful, such as a loss of a closed one, eventually we all go to our base line of happiness and peacefulness. It is that base line that we need to focus on. This is why books like the subtle art of not giving a fuck become famous, because it is quite difficult in a globalised world to not care, it is a world that constantly compares us and hinges on insecurities and fear. And so what can we do?

Just because you didn't go to that party it doesn't mean you're going to look back on your life and regret not going, it simply means that you prioritised yourself and your needs over a fear.