You know that feeling, when you are working, studying, or stuck at your parents house, and you feel that you are missing out? That party you can’t go to, that friends gathering you passed because you wanted to watch TV, that friend of yours which is in the beach right now having fun…
Since I remember myself as a kid, I had the Fear Of Missing Out. I remember a specific Friday night when my parents insisted on taking me with them to their friends, and I missed that friends party. I was only ten, but I remember that day as if it was yesterday. I cried, and had a strong belief that after this missing out I will have no friends anymore… I thought about how much fun they have without me… how the girl I loved is in this very moment falling in love with another kid from my class. He got blue eyes, mine are just boring brown…
That fear of missing out (FOMO) is a natural human being fear. And as we grow up we learn to respond better to it, but still it’s always somewhere in our minds. Now, the smartphone app developers are very much aware of this fear we all have. Some of those apps – which I refer to as “Junk Apps” – are feeding us with this fear. By sending us push notifications, or just refreshing the Facebook feed – they make us feel we are missing the good life. So we should come back now and again to recheck what’s going on.
Stay calm and say no to FOMO
Let’s face it – most of the items on the Facebook feed show the good life, not the real life. Same in Instagram. So even if I’m in a nice coffee shop with my friend, Facebook wants me to feel as if I miss out a roof party. If I’m in that party, I will fill that I miss out an even bigger party taking place at the park – looking so perfect behind the filters of Instagram…
Since I became aware of FOMO, it helps me cope with it. I’m trying to enjoy my “here and now” more and more, knowing that it doesn’t matter what is going on somewhere else, my life is here. If I’m at work, I should enjoy work, and if I visit a friend – this is what I should concentrate on right now. So I check my smartphone less and less, knowing how deceiving it can be.
UNDIGITIZE.ME 
Reblogged this on xtremelust.