The Joy Of Missing Out

FOMO… What if we have been doing it wrong?

You open up Instagram:

“Oh wow, Lenny and Ella are sipping cocktails on a beach in Bali! They’re always having a good time these days.”

Which quickly turns sour as you scroll on:

“What! Are they on a birthday trip with new friends?!? Why wasn’t I invited?”

The mulling over continues:

“Jeez, here I am, stuck in my cubicle, endlessly grinding it out. Maybe I wouldn’t have gone, but surely they could have invited me?”

Craving a distraction, you swipe up and then tap LinkedIn:

“Whoa, Donna made partner!”

This triggers the next wave of negative emotions:

“F*ck, why can’t I just figure out my career. I chop and change like the wind. I never stick to one thing. I just can’t decide what is right. If only I found that “right thing”, I’m sure I would be the equivalent of “partner” by now. Why can’t I figure it out? Am I doomed to be a failure?”

Then you sigh as you recall the thing you know deep down you would love to be doing:

“I wish I had the courage to go for what I really wanted.”

“But ohhhhh... They would all laugh at me.”

Ding! A calendar alert pops up.

“Uh oh, I’m gonna be late for my next meeting now.”

And so you frantically pack your bag and rush off to catch a bus. You clamp your firsts together and bang them on your thighs in frustration as you realise:

“I wasted the last 1 hour and 45 minutes running these made-up FOMO stories over and over in my head.”

This hurts even more as you dwell a little longer:

“And so they’re all off having the time of their lives living it up in Bali, while I’m here trapped in this pathetic existence, stupidly thinking about them. Do you think they are thinking about me? NO!”

You were caught in a web of FOMO.

I’m sure you’ve heard of the ‘fear of missing out’, or FOMO as they say:

“The feeling of apprehension that one is either not in the know about or missing out on information, events, experiences, or life decisions that could make one’s life better.”

— Wikipedia

It’s deeply wired into us as social creatures. We don’t like to be left out. I assume this has evolved over the years as in the past, missing out could have led to:

Death.

Yep, I went there.

But it’s true when you get down to the bottom of it. Being thrown out into a social desert usually doesn’t end well. We rely on each other to survive. And thrive.

Thankfully, we don’t have to worry so much about our potential doom today.

I say “don’t have to”, but that doesn’t actually mean we don’t. And what is this FOMO often triggered by today?

Social media.

Yep... You guessed it. I’m sure our little example above got you squirming in your chair as you recalled some of your own examples.

Technology was promised to “make our lives better”.

And often it does:

• Google Maps was a saviour when a taxi dropped me off in a dark side alley in Rome, which happened to be the wrong neighbourhood.

• I love the ability to instantly capture my son’s first steps on video.

• Without Apple Notes for collecting and forming ideas, I wouldn’t have made progress towards calling myself a writer.

I could go on and on...

But there is also a dark side of tech. Today’s conversation is about the dreaded FOMO triggered by social media.

The problem with being so “connected” to everyone is we find out about all the things we are missing out on.

And there is an endless supply of things to miss out on.

We can never do it all.

It can hurt to truly face up to this:

• “Maybe I never will get to see Mexico.”

• “Maybe I won’t get to write that book.”

• “Maybe this is the last time I pick up this guitar.”

Devastating…

Rather than burying your head in the sand and pretending you can “do it all” one day, why not flip the script and embrace your finitude?

Why not embrace the choices you DO make?

Back to our intro story on our troubled FOMO office worker:

• Maybe they drifted away from their partying friends because they chose to care for an elderly parent battling a long-term illness.

• Maybe they haven’t been “ahead” in their career because they chose to vagabond across the world in their mid-20s.

• Maybe they haven’t pursued their dream yet because they prioritised quality time with their precious baby daughters during their first five years.

See the meaning in their choices now?

Suddenly, the choices don’t seem “wrong” at all.

This is the joy of missing out.

I first head about this idea in Oliver Bukeman’s wonderful book, Four Thousand Weeks.

You know how you never know if you make the best decisions with your time?

Burkeman described some of the difficult choices we face in life and how they can cripple us with indecision and fear of regret.

But what if, instead, we learned to appreciate the choice, without the FOMO?

“In this situation, making a choice – picking one item from the menu – far from representing some kind of defeat, becomes an affirmation.

It’s a positive commitment to spend a given portion of time doing this instead of that – actually, instead of an infinite number of other ‘thats’ – because this, you’ve decided, is what counts the most right now.

In other words, it’s precisely the fact that I could have chosen a different and perhaps equally valuable way to spend this afternoon that bestows meaning on the choice I did make.”

There is meaning in the choices you make.

Why not focus on the goodness in that instead?

Burkeman continues:

“And the same applies, of course, to an entire lifetime. For instance, it’s precisely the fact that getting married forecloses the possibility of meeting someone else – someone who might genuinely have been a better marriage partner; who could ever say? – that makes marriage meaningful.”

He continues with the joy of missing out:

“The exhilaration that sometimes arises when you grasp this truth about finitude has been called the ‘joy of missing out’, by way of a deliberate contrast with the idea of the ‘fear of missing out’.

It is the thrilling recognition that you wouldn’t even really want to be able to do everything, since if you didn’t have to decide what to miss out on, your choices couldn’t truly mean anything.

In this state of mind, you can embrace the fact that you’re forgoing certain pleasures, or neglecting certain obligations, because whatever you’ve decided to do instead – earn money to support your family, write your novel, bath the toddler, pause on a hiking trail to watch a pale winter sun sink below the horizon at dusk – is how you’ve chosen to spend a portion of time that you never had any right to expect.”

Powerful, isn’t it?

I recently chose to say no to some “opportunities” to instead focus on what better supports my family.

Now, I could beat myself up about what I could miss out on.

Or, I could receive the tremendous feeling of joy that comes from being a present father supporting his family.

I’ve chosen to spend time on what really matters right now.

That should be celebrated.

Reflection

• Where is the hidden joy in a recent choice you made?