2021’s Reflections
“For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Over the past year, many things happened, experienced various emotions, and felt the uncertainty of life. After all that happened, one noteworthy reflection in my mind is FOMO and how to deal with it.
Many would have known the term FOMO earlier and would have faced it at some point in their life even when not knowing the word. Here, I will share my experiences concerning FOMO and some insights on the same.
What is FOMO?
FOMO, i.e., Fear of Missing Out, is the feeling we humans get when we tend not to know or miss out on something others do. The something could be events, decisions, information, and so on. Social media made FOMO more familiar with many individuals and accelerated the feeling. For example, FOMO generally kicks when someone sees a picture of their group of friends without them.
Why so much concern for FOMO?
If you ask someone whether they have FOMO, the general answer is nope, but many faces FOMO due to various incidents without their realization, and they don’t care much about that. FOMO is a fear that often leads to dissatisfaction, mood swings, extreme anxiety, and low self-esteem. These behaviors affect mental health, which deteriorates physical health.
Okay, so what all could be the incidents leading to FOMO?
FOMO can happen at any point in life due to any incident affecting an individual’s mind. It is more prone to teens and young adults. The pandemic made the FOMO prevalent.
One of the incidents that made me realize many of us have FOMO is when people talk about their vacations. It is common in the school days compared to later stages of life. After the holidays, we hear statements such as, “We went to trip to place A,” “We ate in restaurant of items of blah, blah, blah,” “We watched movie B in some famous theatre,” and this list continues. When we hear such words, many compare what we did and others did. Before the holidays, we tell friends thinking we might do the statement C, but we don’t get the situation, and we complain that I told my friends and now I want to do that before the holiday is over. Also, before the holidays, we hear statement D, and during holidays just because someone told us, we end up doing it whether we like it or not. The list of such situations related to holidays and fun goes on and on, which differs from various people.
I remember some situations in childhood where I did certain things just because others did. In those, only a few were likable. As time passed, I gave up the ones I didn’t like. At that time, I didn’t realize I did stuff because I felt FOMO. Now, thinking back on those moments, I can tell the fear compelled me to do. Again in the pandemic, I was about to fall into the trap of doing things due to fear. It was hard, but I somehow managed.
Another significant situation where FOMO kicks in is choosing your career, mainly during college. We get a lot of confusion, whether to go for a master’s or start working. This confusion continues until we have a firm decision in our career. In general, when we read success stories on many platforms tending to consider whether our choice is appropriate. When close friends achieve something, but there is no progress in oneself, we feel so happy for the friend and pathetic about ourselves. When we couldn’t find many options in the area, you want to, but when multiple options are there in other fields, you think I am missing it out. Various scenarios like this lead to FOMO and related thoughts concerning career.
During this year, I felt whether my career choice was wrong, not working properly to achieve something, and so on, and in fact, FOMO kicked in. These thoughts were in peak when many things around me, including my career path, didn’t go well. As days passed, it gave more negative feelings. Accepting that something was wrong made me check out how to overcome it. Despite self-efforts to overcome the FOMO, I felt that I needed support. I spoke out to a few people who are my support system about the FOMO feelings initially helped me feel a little optimistic since I couldn’t understand what was wrong and felt devastated. (P.S. In general, people can be anyone from friends to family to professional help, and it’s your choice) After that, I took self-time to process their views on FOMO. Then, I thought about why I made the career choice and so many other questions.
Now, what can be the possible ways that can help to overcome FOMO?
Social media is one of the causes of giving a FOMO. Take breaks from social media apps and concentrate on other things you love to do. It is challenging because now the world is connected with social media, but doing this provides relief. Here, I would like to remind the online representation of a person isn’t the same as their real life.
Maintaining a journal helps a lot to regulate your thoughts, not just the FOMO but in general. Sitting for 5 to 10 minutes daily to write out the feelings gives much more realization to us than we know and helps track the things that went wrong.
Maintain your boundaries when you feel necessary. It’s okay to have limits on everything you do in general, not to find it exhausting. It’s okay to have self-time to do things that you want to do alone.
Breaks are necessary from everything to keep the mind lively. Create the fun that you feel you are missing.
Gratitude is highly essential to understand what you value the most. Investing in the ones you love and appreciating them, you tend to realize you are not missing out on people or anything else.
Missing an opportunity would hit hard. It is hard to accept when you miss something you want to, feel guilty, and every sad feeling comes. Just a gentle reminder, you can’t change the past, but definitely, you can figure out the mistakes, work on them and succeed in the new opportunity. There are plenty of options out in the world that we are unaware of, and find the right one for you.
Avoid multitasking to avoid the thoughts of FOMO. In general, performing one task would provide mental peace during stressful times. If you are a multitasker, it’s okay to do one job at a time until you feel mentally stable. Try to focus on the current one you are doing, be it work or recreation.
Meditation helps in letting the mind free from thoughts. It is not necessary to follow meditation as the spiritual person does. Just sitting in some quiet place and closing your eyes, taking deep breaths without thinking anything would work. If you are interested in yoga, doing that would help a lot.
Accept the fear, let your feelings out in the way you want to, then check out your source of FOMO, try to understand why you feel, looking out for other opportunities you can do. It might hurt you but analyzing this helps to find a way to overcome the fear.
Sometimes acknowledging that you are not feeling good and seeking help or suggestions from people who can help you out will answer your worries. It’s okay to ask for help from someone you know or some professionals.
To the readers: The points mentioned above are from my experience and perspective. These might or might not be helpful to you. There can be more alternatives than the mentioned ones.
Over the past year, the reflections that helped me to overcome my feeling of FOMO are,
- The success stories that we see are their happiness. We don’t see the struggles and pain behind success. They would have faced more failures and struggles than we know. Putting efforts at the right time and way would bring an achievement for us, and now we need to figure out things than feeling worried.
- The clear choices make us not have FOMO. But how to get that clear choice? Ask yourself about the options, clarify what you decide, think about whether you are genuinely interested in it and why you want to do that. For instance, if you wish to do Highers or not.
- It’s okay if you don’t know something in tech or any other field. If you want to, you can learn and do that anytime. Never too late to start learning something new.
- If someone judges you for the decisions, it’s alright. They don’t know why you have decided that, and sometimes they don’t witness the value behind your choice.
- Exploring the options around us and doing things that we like avoids FOMO. There are vast options than what I know, and if we put effort and analyzing them, we will get a better opportunity and the one that is more suitable than what I missed. The one that I missed hurt me, but analyzing why and rectifying the mistakes, helped me stay positive to get something good.
- As time passed, I learned that you have your definition of fun and do things that impress own self but not others. Another question popped here, so is it not okay to try it out, which others do? When someone says that they are doing statement E, exploring them is fine, but continuing it further is in your hands.
- The realization that holidays are not just vacations, but they help you keep your mental health well and free from pressure made me take breaks, keep boundaries.
As the time passed, I started doing a few things that I mentioned above after analyzing my thoughts. There was slow progress, but I was happy that I made some progress. The little progress gave me happiness which motivated me to come out of FOMO. It gave me the headway to try my best to figure out the other voids that I feel at my own pace.
The takeaway of the year 2021 for me and that I want to convey to everyone is that please prioritize mental health.
