Saturday night, you can smell the vodka pour, the booming speaker’s sound, the taste in the air of the final perfume spritz; everyone’s getting ready to go out, and you’re stuck – putting on your work uniform, or worse – only 100 words into your 3000-word essay…and its due Monday. That pit in your stomach, the rising nausea of jealousy, and the defeated hunch of your shoulders, all undeniable symptoms of the “FOMO Fever.”
At such a vital point – where everyone seems to be out and about, drinking, partying, eating and meeting friends on friends on friends. It feels self-sacrificial to miss these experiences, to abandon chances of trying new things, meeting new people and facing new environments, and so the “Fear of Missing Out” grows in power, its symptoms worsening.
To overcome the fever, to move past the negativity it breeds, we must learn to enjoy the moment- to fight the fever by seeing the fulfilment in our own time; that shift at work may seem wasteful, but the financial stability or even the pocket money you can spend on yourself by the end of the month is arguably priceless. Even that essay you feel forced to write will account for a higher desire for productivity, and your degree profits as a result; you’ve made the mature decision to focus on your studies, rather than the idea of “missing out” on a night out that could take place even years after you’ve gained yourself a deserved degree.
Taking a different approach to FOMO could be the change we need; to think of missing out as a shift of priorities rather than a loss of experience, and sometimes social media impairs that ability. Scrolling through endless TikTok and Instagram posts, wishing you were able to buy every item promoted, visit every holiday destination depicted, and experience every digitalised part of this supposed young person’s “dream life” captured superficially online. Take into account the backgrounds of these posts- made by influencers paid to promote and endorse unrealistic lifestyles, who didn’t have to work to support themselves or put every breath into a successful degree. Feel free to some time away from the toxicity of social media, to place less focus on comparing your situation with another’s; you may never live the life you see online or experience the same environment as everyone else that exact night that you’ve missed out on, but there will be another night.
Instead of falling deep into FOMO, we should fight back through JOMO – the “Joy of Missing Out;” make the most out of the present, no matter what you’re doing or would rather be doing, and become mindful of yourself.
Even if you’d rather be heading on that night out, I can trust that in the morning, your future self will not regret spending your night on something productive, or that makes money, rather than a night that -while guaranteed fun- would cost money and leave you with a case of the dreaded hangover!
Photo by Tajmia Loiacono on Unsplash