FOMO - the fear of missing out

For all of us, there are things which we have not done... When we stood in front of a Y intersection, so to say, and we had to choose if go left or right... If we chose right, we would not have known what the left path would have had in store for us and vice-versa.

Today I want to talk about the fear of missing out, in short FOMO.

I want to begin with saying that I am not a psychologist nor I have any sociological degrees, I only want to state my point of view on the topic:

I believe that FOMO is strong related to the fear of making bad or wrong decisions or maybe also to not know which could be the best decision to make for ourselves.

I will now bring you an example from the 15-years old Arianna:
With my English class, we had the opportunity to take a trip and go to Bournemouth, England. The conditions for the trip were a bit too "adventurous" for my taste back then and so I decided not to go although I would have missed this experience... let me tell you something: I did not suffer of FOMO in this case! And in my opinion, I did not as I was completely convinced that that was not the kind of experience I wanted to make! I have been other two times in England since then aaaand I have to say that the circumstances were probably much better!

Now for the negative example and how I dealt with it:
I will now talk of a sensation I have had these days. Do you remember the blog post I have written about Clubhouse? Meanwhile, I have not only been on stage, but also been a moderator, created a room with other people, had fun and and and... But! I here - and let me say this: I feel kind of strange for it - I experienced FOMO. You know, how Clubhouse functions, you register yourself with your interests and then many rooms appear. Maybe if you follow people, you may get a notification when they will start a room and so on... Well, as I work, I do not have all the time spare as maybe other people which may be confined at home in lockdown. So, I cannot participate and listen to all the interesting topics which I read in the room titles! I have to say that it has been annoying the one or other time! 

But in the end, you know what? I did not care too much because in the end, listening to this room would have distracted me from my work and I would have taken longer there... I decided that I wanted to schedule my time in a certain way and stop!

Maybe one could also get FOMO when he or she is on Instagram and sees all the wonderful travel blogger or something like that but here I come back to my original thesis: It is about decisions and choices to make! A travel blogger travels as part of his job, if you have chose to have another job and have decided that your time is best spent otherwise, you might have your reasonings!
So... for the next time, you might have FOMO think about what you are choosing right now and what is most important for you - if you see an incongruence, maybe you can adapt!