Do You Let The Fear of Missing Out Control Your Life?
FOMO – the fear of missing out
The term FOMO, fear of missing out, describes the anxiety that arises with thoughts that there may be a better, more fulling experience than we are having right here, right now.
Patrick McGinnis first used the word FOMO and wrote a book called “The Fear of Missing Out”. His book (click HERE) will give you a solution that is based on decision-making.
My reflections on this subject come not from research, however, but from personal experience.
How do we acquire FOMO?
I can’t speak for the rest of the world except by extrapolation (or projection) from my own life.
Although I had a happy childhood with loving parents, I do know my mother was an adherent to ‘letting him cry it out’ when a baby cried.
No personal memories of my own but I watched her turn her back on her infant grandchildren with this brutal response to a basic need to be held, to be fed, to be acknowledged.
I suspect that such early conditioning is a seed for FOMO.
My first vivid school memory was in first grade when the teacher passed out some paper and told everyone to take their pencils and write something.
My problem was I had no pencil.
I watched as everyone around me was busy printing their names at the top of the page and I couldn’t. The tears began to fall.
My first real FOMO attack. It wasn’t pretty. It never is.
Today when I go to an office supply store I struggle not to come home with pens, pencils, and journals I will most likely never use.
But I certainly don’t want to miss out because I am not prepared with the right tools!
When I got to junior high I was becoming a first-class introvert.
My mother insisted I go to every school dance.
I hated dances.
Could I have been the victim of her FOMO?
She didn’t have the chance to go to social events like that when she was young, and she wasn’t about to have me miss out.
Could FOMO be contagious? Or genetic?
At eighteen I started college and was faced with the decision of what to study. I loved science.
I’ll study medicine, I thought and started on a track of biology and chemistry.
And then I met a tall red-headed senior who stole my heart.
Was FOMO the reason I said yes in my sophomore year when he asked me to marry him?
I hadn’t lived long enough to acquire the evidence that everything changes and that there is more than one path to my goals.
No, I could only see one path that began at the altar.
When I showed my parents my engagement ring on Christmas Eve, my mother burst into tears.
Not happy tears.
She knew I would be missing out if I dropped out of school.
Once more, FOMO, was impacting my life, and it wasn’t even my FOMO.
Fear of missing out is universal
I never considered that missing out happens to everybody.
Although making good choices depends on letting go of one thing to do another, my problem is the sequential thing. If I take a few years of my life to ________(fill in the blank) I’ll never get to _________ .
And so I take it all on, sometimes tearing myself asunder in the process.
I suppose people who have overcome FOMO could write more articulately about their process.
Given that I am still staring this beast in the face I may not be the one you want to listen to.
Living without FOMO
If I didn’t have FOMO I wouldn’t hesitate to skip chapters as I read a thick book or to ignore sale ads.
I find by tracking my life experiences with missing out, there’s a legitimate reason for my anxiety.
If I had inherited FOMO I could learn to live with it.
If Fear Of Missing Out were a hidden ingredient in my food I could go on an elimination diet.
If it had any value I could trade it for something useful.
But alas, this affliction, if I can call it that, found its way into my life through my family, my relationships, and my education.
I can deny its existence and continue to blame everything from weather to religion for FOMO.
If I don’t go for a walk while the sun is out, it may rain and I’ll never get to go. If I don’t do what my religion is telling me I will not get to heaven.
Religion and FOMO
Ooooh!! Religion is a BIG factor in acquiring FOMO, because of an existential fear of what might follow life.
The reality of fear, whether from religious teaching or not, is stored in much more primitive wiring than our cerebral cortex.
The urge to survive is found in all of creation. Could it be that FOMO is part of that reptilian response to death?
I truly don’t know what will happen after I die but I definitely don’t want to miss out on anything good that heaven may offer.
So might it be accurate to say FOMO has redemptive qualities?
With that circuitous thinking, I am going to leave this train of thought for you to add your two cents worth. After all, you don’t want to be left out of the conversation.
