The 5-Step FOMO “Cure” You’re Totally Missing Out On

Read Time: 8 minutes

 

 

Let’s start this with an irrefutable fact: You will miss out on nearly everything life has to offer.

 

That’s happening. That’s inevitable. Snuggle up and get cozy with that idea right now. There are nearly 7.5 billion people in the world and 50,000 different cities. There are millions of different experiences you can pay for, and nearly infinite experiences that you can’t pay for ranging from hiking up a mountain for a perfect view, to getting a pet lizard, all the way to trying a bidet for the first time and liking it a little too much (or is that just me?).

 

 

Even if you stay active into your 90’s, and you visit, and have great stories from every country in the world, you still will have, mathematically speaking, missed out on nearly everything that has ever happened in the years you were alive.

 

You’ll miss out on the sweet rave that was happening in Ecuador while you were in Taiwan, and the amazing street fair in Taiwan when you were in Switzerland, and that total hottie that would have been in a once-in-a-lifetime bang in Switzerland while you were absorbing the culture in Turkey.

 

Beyond that, you’re missing time at home, time with childhood friends, time you could have spent cooking your own meals, time spent reflecting on life, getting to know your neighbors, or seeing the latest Marvel movie.

 

With every moment you’re alive, and everything you’re doing, you’re sacrificing experiencing everything else humanity has to offer.  You’re always missing almost everything.

 

If that idea freaks you out at all, maybe consider stepping back, reexamining yourself, and realizing that you’re being an idiot.

 

Our FOMO Epidemic

 

That’s not to say your problem is uncommon, because it’s not.  There is now a pretty demonstrable link between heavy social media use and society’s recent meteoric rises in depression and anxiety.  There’s a lot to this: the constant feedback loop of peer approval, cyber-bullying, heroin-levels of stimulation, but a lot of it can also be blamed on FOMO–the commonly used term meaning “Fear of Missing Out.”

 

FOMO is primarily thought of as being based on experiences:

 

“Aw man!  My high school frienemy is going ziplining in Costa Rica.  I want to do that.”

 

“Shit!  My ex is at an escape room.  I want to escape rooms!”

 

“OMG Look at her pics! She looks like a gypsy queen.  I should have gone to Coachella! I could have seen…uh…Hogs of Oblivion.  That’s got to be the name of a band, right?”

 

But there is way more to FOMO than this.  FOMO spans the entirety of the human experience.  It’s also about missing out on having someone else’s body, or boning somebody else’s body, or buying a house when they do, or having kids when they do, or doing a well-staged yoga pose on a cliff in Indonesia when they do.  It’s about feeling like you’ve failed at life because you don’t have something–anything–that someone else does.

 

Social media has taken “what everyone else has” from a vague notion that gets kind of half-confirmed every ten years at school reunions to being the primary information we take in every day. This has led to us making the very, very dumb mistake of thinking that it’s important.

 

I’m not entirely sure what to do about this.  The culture is fucked, and nobody really knows how to un-fuck it.  But here are my best guesses at a FOMO cure.

 

1. Accept That You’ll Miss Out on Everything

 

 

So if we want to conquer our FOMO monster, that’s the first step–accept right now that you’re going to miss out on most things–whether that’s a vacation, an activity, looking a certain way, being loved in a certain way, or eating bull testicle soup in Vietnam.  Most things a person could have, be, or experience aren’t happening to you. Every time you see something you feel like you’re missing out on, remember that it’s a drop in the bucket of the literal infinity that you’re actually missing out on.

 

Get cozy with that idea now, fully accept it, and it will lose its power over you.

 

2. Practice Gratitude

 

Of course it’s easy for me to call you a dumbass, but hard to change a dumbass thought process.  After all, it’s perfectly natural to compare ourselves to others. This is leftover monkey brain shit.  Cavemen had total FOMO.  If you saw another tribe had more goods saved up for the winter than yours, it was beneficial to identify that as being bad, so that you’d be motivated to club them over the head while they were sleeping to steal all of their boysenberries and rabbit carcasses.

 

And if you’re truly in a position like that now, it still makes sense.  If you are literally starving to death in a cave, and you look on Instagram, and your ex is giving a thumbs up with the caption, “Just had some #bread,” some degree of FOMO makes sense.

 

 

But if that’s not the case–if you’re a human in the modern first world, and there aren’t any immediate threats to your survival, and you’re just upset that your co-worker went to Tahiti–there’s a good chance you are in fact just being a caveman dipshit.

 

The best way to change our dumbass thought process about wanting what others have is to feel better about what we currently have.  The best way towards that, I think, is to practice gratitude for your food and shelter, for the things that bring you joy, and for the fact that you’re loved–be it by a girlfriend, a parent, or one of those creepy 50-year-old Yogies who claims to love everyone and is a little bit too ready to give massages.

 

Practice gratitude for everything that could warrant it every day  (and I do mean practice it, because you won’t just feel it right away), try to absorb as much joy as you can from everything you experience, and you won’t feel like you’re missing out quite so much.

 

3. Remember: You Know Nothing About Anything and Therefore, Your Jealousy is Dumb

 

Part of our problem stems from the fact that we create a definitive hierarchy of experiences in our head.  Going somewhere photogenic is better than somewhere normal. Being conventionally fuckable is better than being unconventionally fuckable.  Having a Mercedes is better than having a Honda.  Going to Disneyland is better than going to your friend Todd’s house and shooting each other with BB guns.  Wearing trendy clothes while looking down in a meadow, and tucking your hair behind your ear is better than like…smiling.

 

As a result, you register these things as the things that matter in life.  You set up little checklists in your head. Life becomes about accomplishing X, Y, and Z, and experiencing A, B, and C, and when it appears others have done these set things in any way better than you, you feel like an inadequate piece of shit, because you only went to the second best Teriyaki place in Orlando.

 

 

But of course, thinking in these terms is extremely limiting.  Traveling is a great way to expand your horizons, but it’s not the only way.  Having a nice car can make your commutes more enjoyable, but it’s not the only way.  Being thin and pretty is one way to make someone else want to be around you, but it’s not the only way.

 

Along with this, rich people are miserable all the time,  Disneyland, parties, weddings, and vacations can all suck majorly, no matter how nice the pictures look.  People in relationships are often in shitty relationships (no matter how many times they obnoxiously refer to someone as “their person” on Instagram).

 

Experiences are always subjective.  So are possessions, so are children. So are life choices and jobs, and acai bowls.  Nobody’s experience is having the exact impact on them that it would have on you, and you don’t really know how it’s impacting them, so when you think about it, you really have no idea what you’re upset about.

 

Here’s the frustrating part of this: you know these things. You’re a person living on planet earth, and you’ve likely experienced a lot of this.  So for the sake of your own sanity, whenever your envy bug kicks in, remember that the hierarchy of experiences in your head is bullshit.

 

To pile on, here’s something else you know: Instagram is a bullshit factory.  Everyone is fucking lying.  Everything is in some way filtered, which makes it false, which makes you using it as a basis for comparison embarrassing.  You’re comparing yourself to a facade, which means you’re literally comparing yourself to nothing.

 

So maybe moving forward, we should try to remember a couple things: A) You’re not inside of someone’s brain, and therefore have no clue how they’re doing, no matter what their corny-ass caption says, and B) Nobody with a 17-part Insta story from the concert they’re at is actually enjoying the fucking concert.

 

4. Look Forward

 

Could you have done way more, and accomplished way more by now?  Sure. You always could have. You’ve always failed a million times.  But so what? That’s the past, dummy.  The past is and always will be irrelevant for anything but learning. Who gives a shit about things you wish it included? Learn what you need to learn, and then leave that shit in the dumpster.  It’s making you miserable.

 

In order to accomplish this, it’s important to couple this idea with number five, which may be the most important step of all.

5. Remember: There’s So Much Cool Shit Out There

 

I’m not jealous of Eva Mendes at all for being married to Ryan Gosling.   I’m sure he’s a very tender lover, but it’s not my thing, so I feel zero FOMO there.

 

Similarly, I’m not jealous of hot dog eating champions, people who rock climb all the time, or people whose asses look great in yoga pants, because I consider all of those to be irrelevant to my life.

 

The lesson: our FOMO really only exists when we’re convinced the thing we’re missing out on needs to be a part of our journey.

 

Here’s the key: nothing needs to be a part of your journey, and understanding that is vital.  If you don’t feel like you need to accomplish any one thing, or like anyone else’s journey should be your own, your envy evaporates immediately.  So always, always remember that there are infinite paths to a great life, and there is absolutely zero God damn reason anybody else’s path has to be yours.  Becoming a great juggler can be your version of having abs.  Dressing up the dogs at your grooming job can be your version of a fun party.  Liking yourself can be your version of sex with Jon Hamm.

 

So when you see someone vacationing somewhere you’ve always wanted to, or accomplishing something you’ve always wanted, or dating the person you routinely think about when masturbating, the approach isn’t to look at it like they’re getting your experience.  It’s to look around at everything else that could be for you. Because the truth is that your possibilities in life are endless.   Who cares what others have?  Find something else.  Live somewhere else.  Put your dick somewhere else.

 

 

Pursue what you want, sure.  But remain open to what you get.  Don’t be a whiny little bitch just because this reality isn’t the one you saw on Instagram.

 

Remain open, and your comparisons to others will become irrelevant.  You’ll see someone else with a hot body, and think, “Good for that skinny bitch.”  You’ll see someone else being really successful and think, “That’s terrific!” as you eat dry noodles out of a bag.  You’ll see someone else having fun with friends in their Instagram story, and instead of thinking, “I’m so alone! My life is terrible!” you’ll think, “Hmm, maybe I’ll have friends some day.  Until then, I’ll enjoy what I’ve got: my Netflix account and my box of Pop Tarts.”

 

You’re a grown up.  You can aim for more without despairing about what’s in front of you.

 

So stop comparing yourself to a bullshit factory.  Stop setting up requirements for your life.  Stop defining your own happiness before it happens, and instead, enjoy it as it comes.

 

If you don’t do that, you’re going to miss out on a lot.