Latest news with #FearofMissingOut
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Lifestyle
- Yahoo
Indecisive? Experts Share How to Stop the Debate-A-Thon and Take Action
Coffee or tea? Break up or stay together? Look for a new job or stay put? We're constantly confronted with choices, both big and small. In fact, research shows we make a staggering 35,000 decisions every day. With so much pressure on our shoulders, it's easy to start second-guessing ourselves and feel overwhelmed with 'decision fatigue.' Here, top experts share simple, stress-taming strategies to help us make better decisions, including when to listen to our gut and how to narrow our choices to the ideal number. Debating a big decision? For the next 24 hours, pretend you've already decided, urges Emily P. Freeman, author of The Next Right Thing: A Simple, Soulful Practice for Making Life Decisions and host of The Next Right Thing podcast. 'This mental exercise clarifies your values,' she says, recalling how it helped her decide whether to go back to graduate school. 'I let myself feel everything, from the elation of starting a new chapter to the anxiety of paying for school.' Then she flipped the script, acting as if she decided not to enroll. 'Going down this imaginary path makes your decision feel real.' Spoiler alert: She went back to school. You've heard of FOMO, fear of missing out, but you may not be familiar with its cousin, FOBO: fear of better options. Entrepreneur Patrick J. McGinnis, author of the The 10 Percent Entrepreneur and Fear of Missing Out, who coined both terms, says the latter explains why we often have trouble making everyday decisions. 'We're drowning in choices; it's easy to become paralyzed with indecision,' he says. His fix: When you're deliberating over something minor, like what to have for dinner, just look at your watch and tell yourself: If the second hand is on the right, I'll have chicken; if it's on the left, pasta. Asking the watch, as McGinnis calls it, puts small decisions on autopilot, melting stress. Reflect on past decisions, says Freeman. 'At the end of the week, I make a list of my life-giving yeses and nos, as well as my life-draining yeses and nos.' This ritual helped her recognize surprising patterns. 'One thing that showed up in the life-giving column was saying yes to dinner with friends. In the past, I often declined because I assumed it would be draining, but this list made me aware of how much I need my community.' Gearing up to make a big purchase? One proven way to feel more secure in your decision is to consult an expert, be it a friend or salesperson, says psychologist and decision-making expert Ashley S. Otto, PhD. Another strategy is to look for 'social proof.' This means tapping into the wisdom of the tribe: If a certain product is nearly sold out, for example, it's likely sought after for a reason, boosting your confidence in choosing this item to buy. Our brain can only handle about five options, what scientists call your 'consideration set,' before becoming overwhelmed, reveals psychologist Art B. Markman, PhD, author of Smart Change: Five Tools to Create New and Sustainable Habits in Yourself and Others. That's why he suggests recruiting a friend to help narrow down your choices. 'If you want to go on vacation, say, and can't decide where, ask a pal who loves traveling for her top three to five picks,' he says. 'Shrinking your consideration set helps you think calmly and rationally about decisions. One of the biggest debates around decision-making is whether it's best to go with your gut or consult a pro-con list. Turns out, it's both! 'If you want to make a decision quickly, listen to your intuition,' says Otto, adding that this typically works best when you're facing a situation with which you have a lot of experience. That's because intuition taps a deep reservoir of subconscious knowledge without the need for a lot of cognitive 'checks and balances,' like doing a ton of research. When you're less well-versed in a subject, however, take your time to weigh your options. In the end, you are your own wisest council. The biggest gremlin holding us back from making big decisions is fear of being wrong, observes Freeman. 'We often dread how much we're going to beat ourselves up in the future,' she says. The antidote to such 'pre-regret' is what she calls relentless self-kindness. 'I set a timer every morning for five minutes and allow myself to sit in silence releasing negative thoughts and quieting my mind,' Freeman says. 'Small moments of self-compassion take away the 'mic' from your inner critic, boosting faith in yourself.' 'Some of the hardest choices are between two good options,' notes Freeman. 'If you're debating between going back to school or staying at your job, for instance, what's one small thing you can do today? Maybe it's gathering books from the library or speaking with a mentor. When facing a fork in the road, taking one small step is often all that's needed to build momentum.' Spending some quality time with your pillow recharges your brain's emotional center, allowing you to think more clearly about abstract decisions that affect the future, explains Markman. And if you can't sleep on it? 'Activities that let your mind wander, such as taking a walk, are shown to give you the mental break you need to make better long-term choices, boosting both your confidence and resilience!' More on making better decisions: Napping Before a Big Decision Could Help You Make the Right Choice, Study Suggests How To Know When It's Time To Quit : Experts Reveal 5 Ways to Move on + Start Fresh Experts Share Insights on the Science Behind Decision-Making: Tips for Doing What's Best for You
Yahoo
20-03-2025
- Lifestyle
- Yahoo
Mary Castillo: Never heard of JOMO? It's a cure for FOMO
Have you ever felt that nagging urge to buy something just so you don't miss out? Whether it's the latest gadget, hot vacation spot, trendy clothing brand, or even a new car or home, financial decisions often stem more from emotions than logic. This urge, known as the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO), arises from the feeling of falling behind. FOMO can seriously affect your financial well-being, as the pressure to keep up with family, friends, neighbours, and strangers can be more intense than the classic 'keeping up with the Joneses.' You can, however, counter FOMO. It takes effort, but shifting your mindset to embrace a Joy of Missing Out, or JOMO, is absolutely possible. Here is how FOMO has an impact on your spending and some tips to embrace JOMO to ensure your financial well-being. FOMO is a powerful psychological trigger that often leads to impulsive financial choices. Seeing friends flaunt their latest purchases or influencers enjoying five-star resorts and high-end shopping can make our everyday lives seem dull and create pressure to spend. Unplanned spending on non-essential items — especially during uncertain economic times — can lead to costly credit card bills that are challenging to pay off. As your career progresses and income increases, you may feel pressure to upgrade your lifestyle to match your peers. Instead of saving your pay increases toward financial goals or retirement, lifestyle inflation can lead to dining at pricier restaurants, purchasing a luxury car, or moving into a larger home, potentially causing strain on your budget. FOMO can also manifest through subscription services, becoming a significant drain on your budget. Engaging with multiple streaming platforms or subscribing to meal kits endorsed by influencers can rapidly accumulate costs, leading to substantial debt and an overload of subscriptions that often aren't fully utilized. In essence, FOMO can create anxiety and dissatisfaction, often managed through retail therapy. While buying something new offers a temporary boost, it comes with lasting financial consequences and can perpetuate a cycle of dissatisfaction, straining finances and failing to address underlying emotional needs. If you struggle with FOMO, embracing JOMO can change your life. The Joy of Missing Out helps you find contentment in living within your means and making financial choices that align with your goals. Imagine the relief of not worrying about credit card bills or the freedom you would have if you weren't constantly playing financial catch-up. By embracing JOMO, you stop comparing yourself to others and focus on what truly makes you happy. Instead of chasing fleeting validation through spending, you cultivate a mindset of financial peace and personal fulfillment. One of the best ways to counteract FOMO is to appreciate what you already have. Practice gratitude by regularly acknowledging the positive aspects of your life, such as the support of loved ones, the beauty of nature, kind gestures or personal achievements. Keeping a gratitude journal can reinforce positive feelings and help you connect with what is most important to you. Additionally, expressing gratitude to others can strengthen relationships and foster a sense of community. Reflecting on the goodness in your life shifts your mindset from scarcity to abundance, leading to greater happiness and well-being. Having a strong sense of purpose with your money makes it easier to resist unnecessary spending. Create a household budget to plan your spending and establish clear financial goals, such as saving for a home, retiring early or eliminating debt. A physical vision board can help you focus on your goals and create the life you imagine; place it where you see it often. For a virtual vision board, use a photo app to create a collage and save it as your smartphone or laptop wallpaper. Stickers can also remind you of what's important, such as an airplane for future travel, a house if you're saving for a down payment, or a freedom sticker to imagine life without debt. Place them on your bank card, credit card, rearview mirror or bathroom mirror. These reminders will help you stay on track when the temptation to spend arises. Social media is a major driver of FOMO, so conducting a social media audit can help. Unfollow or mute accounts that make you feel inadequate and curate your feed with content that aligns with your values, such as positivity, personal growth and financial wisdom. Be mindful of your social media use and engage with uplifting content to create a healthier digital environment that supports your well-being and goals. Off-line, surround yourself with like-minded people who value financial responsibility and frugal living. Having a supportive community makes it easier to embrace JOMO and find contentment in your choices. When we lose a loved one their expensive belongings are rarely mentioned. True happiness is found in experiences and simple pleasures such as a walk in nature, a cozy night with a book or a homemade meal with loved ones. When FOMO strikes, give yourself a cooling-off period. For some, a few hours is enough; for others, 48 hours works better to decide if you really need the item and if it will add long-term value to your life. Often, the answer is no. Paycheque planning helps cover expenses, save and reduce stress How to plan for emergency expenses Success isn't about owning the most expensive things; it's about financial security, freedom, and peace of mind. If you have children, help them learn to live intentionally and leave them with a priceless financial legacy. Ultimately, JOMO isn't about what you are giving up. It is about the freedom, control, safety, relief, peace of mind and happiness you are gaining. Mary Castillo is a Saskatoon-based credit counsellor at Credit Counselling Society, a non-profit organization that has helped Canadians manage debt since 1996. Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
30-01-2025
- General
- Yahoo
FOMO Is Good for You
I have a joke I like to make—though it's not funny, and it's not really a joke. Whenever I know I won't be able to join my friends the next time they hang out, I make everyone promise to not have fun without me. Sometimes I have us go around in a circle so that each person can individually pledge to have a bad time. If I check in after my absence and ask how the night was, I expect a shrug, perhaps an assurance that It was fine, but you didn't miss much. If someone says the time without me was great, I actually find that rude. I don't think I'm the center of the universe, nor do I want to get in the way of my friends' happiness. No—I just have chronic FOMO: 'fear of missing out.' I feel deeply haunted by the thought that if I don't go to the party or the dinner or the coffee stroll, my one wild and precious life will be void of a joyful, transformative event—one I'd surely still be thinking about on my deathbed, a friend at my side tenderly holding my hand and whispering, Remember? That time we went bowling and the guy in the next lane over said that funny thing? Every year, my New Year's resolution is to keep one night of the week free from social plans. Almost every week, I fail. This is no way to live, you might be thinking. FOMO tends to be described as a dark impulse, something that keeps you from being present as you worry instead about what better option could be around the corner, or scroll miserably through the online evidence of what fun everyone is having without you. A quick Google search yields results nearly all about overcoming or dealing with or coping with the fear of missing out—usually by talking yourself out of it. But I suspect my FOMO may have served me well. Sometimes you need a little anxiety to push you into doing something positive. And if you don't go on the hike or the beach trip or the roller coaster, you quite literally will miss out. Why are we all so set on pretending that's not the case? [Read: Americans need to party more] When the author and speaker Patrick McGinnis coined the term FOMO, he didn't consider the fear a sinister force. He was a wide-eyed business-school student from a small town, surrounded by intellectual, career, and social opportunities. He wanted to say yes to everything, he told me. Once, he tried to go to seven birthday parties in one night. Then 9/11 happened, and he felt an even greater urge to take advantage of every minute. FOMO was a sign of abundant potential—that he could learn, that he could have meaningful experiences, that each day might be different from the one before. 'If you don't believe there's possibility,' he said, 'why would you have FOMO?' The 2004 op-ed in which he named the phenomenon gently poked fun at his fellow business students madly juggling invites. He never guessed that more than a decade later, people would be talking about FOMO with such seriousness (nor, I imagine, studying it with grim rigor, publishing studies with titles such as 'Fear of Missing Out, Need for Touch, Anxiety and Depression Are Related to Problematic Smartphone Use'). The world has changed since 2004, though. Social media began feeding the feeling of always being left out of something. Optimization-and-productivity culture encouraged the idea that one can engineer their schedule to accommodate the ideal number of enlightening, spiritually fulfilling plans. Then, naturally, a backlash arrived. It might be best summed up by a newer term: JOMO, or the 'joy of missing out.' The idea is that you should savor your solitude, fully embrace the choice to do what you want to do rather than what others are doing. Sounds reasonable. And yet, as an introvert, I know that socializing often sounds unappealing before I actually start doing it. What I'm in the mood for isn't a very good gauge of what I should do, or what future me will enjoy. (Let's face it—she's a stranger!) What is a helpful indicator is FOMO: whether I have the uneasy suspicion that if I do what's comfortable, I might not undergo something that would have stretched me or brought me closer to people. Without it, I never would have jumped into the frigid ocean last February for a polar plunge, or gone camping in September with a group of more than 30 people, most of whom I didn't know. I would never do anything after work, when I'm reliably exhausted. That's not to say you should run yourself into the ground trying to do everything. FOMO isn't a master you need to obediently follow but, as McGinnis put it, a 'tap on the shoulder' reminding you that your existence is transient and you need to decide how to spend it. He distinguishes between two types of FOMO. One is 'aspirational FOMO,' which is when you identify an exciting or interesting experience—one that might make your life fuller. Simply imagining that potential reward can lead to the release of dopamine in the brain. The other is 'herd FOMO,' which is the fear of getting left out of a collective encounter—a prospect so appalling that it can trigger a fight-or-flight response, complete with a rushing heartbeat and sweaty palms. 'Part of the brain goes berserk,' McGinnis told me. He thinks that people should lean into the first type, the kind that's about embracing possibility, not avoiding pain. [Read: The easiest way to keep your friends] Each time you act on aspirational FOMO, you get more data about what you enjoy, what matters to you, what's worth making time for. In that sense, FOMO-driven action might lead you to feel less FOMO overall. Many college students, McGinnis said, fear missing out when they first arrive on campus—but this is what can lead them to meet people, discover interests, and ultimately have a better sense of what they don't mind skipping. 'When you're 30 and somebody invites you to a bar and you've been to 4,000 bars,' he told me, 'you have such perfect information about this thing that you can make a decision without even fretting.' I am, admittedly, a FOMO extremist; on the precipice of turning 30, I still feel the need to go to the bar for the 4,001st time. Maybe that's my herd FOMO talking. But I also think that I will never have enough data to know what any given night will be like. Every time, the conversation is a little different; every time, my knowledge of a friend is deepened or complicated, even if that change is barely perceptible. Every so often it turns out that someone really needed me there. The activity isn't the point, after all; I'm not looking to stack my social résumé with pastimes that make it sound like I had fun. I'm trying to spend the time I have with people I love. And I do fear missing out on that. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
30-01-2025
- General
- Atlantic
FOMO Is Good for You
I have a joke I like to make—though it's not funny, and it's not really a joke. Whenever I know I won't be able to join my friends the next time they hang out, I make everyone promise to not have fun without me. Sometimes I have us go around in a circle so that each person can individually pledge to have a bad time. If I check in after my absence and ask how the night was, I expect a shrug, perhaps an assurance that It was fine, but you didn't miss much. If someone says the time without me was great, I actually find that rude. I don't think I'm the center of the universe, nor do I want to get in the way of my friends' happiness. No—I just have chronic FOMO: 'fear of missing out.' I feel deeply haunted by the thought that if I don't go to the party or the dinner or the coffee stroll, my one wild and precious life will be void of a joyful, transformative event—one I'd surely still be thinking about on my deathbed, a friend at my side tenderly holding my hand and whispering, Remember? That time we went bowling and the guy in the next lane over said that funny thing? Every year, my New Year's resolution is to keep one night of the week free from social plans. Almost every week, I fail. This is no way to live, you might be thinking. FOMO tends to be described as a dark impulse, something that keeps you from being present as you worry instead about what better option could be around the corner, or scroll miserably through the online evidence of what fun everyone is having without you. A quick Google search yields results nearly all about overcoming or dealing with or coping with the fear of missing out—usually by talking yourself out of it. But I suspect my FOMO may have served me well. Sometimes you need a little anxiety to push you into doing something positive. And if you don't go on the hike or the beach trip or the roller coaster, you quite literally will miss out. Why are we all so set on pretending that's not the case? When the author and speaker Patrick McGinnis coined the term FOMO, he didn't consider the fear a sinister force. He was a wide-eyed business-school student from a small town, surrounded by intellectual, career, and social opportunities. He wanted to say yes to everything, he told me. Once, he tried to go to seven birthday parties in one night. Then 9/11 happened, and he felt an even greater urge to take advantage of every minute. FOMO was a sign of abundant potential—that he could learn, that he could have meaningful experiences, that each day might be different from the one before. 'If you don't believe there's possibility,' he said, 'why would you have FOMO?' The 2004 op-ed in which he named the phenomenon gently poked fun at his fellow business students madly juggling invites. He never guessed that more than a decade later, people would be talking about FOMO with such seriousness (nor, I imagine, studying it with grim rigor, publishing studies with titles such as 'Fear of Missing Out, Need for Touch, Anxiety and Depression Are Related to Problematic Smartphone Use'). The world has changed since 2004, though. Social media began feeding the feeling of always being left out of something. Optimization-and-productivity culture encouraged the idea that one can engineer their schedule to accommodate the ideal number of enlightening, spiritually fulfilling plans. Then, naturally, a backlash arrived. It might be best summed up by a newer term: JOMO, or the 'joy of missing out.' The idea is that you should savor your solitude, fully embrace the choice to do what you want to do rather than what others are doing. Sounds reasonable. And yet, as an introvert, I know that socializing often sounds unappealing before I actually start doing it. What I'm in the mood for isn't a very good gauge of what I should do, or what future me will enjoy. (Let's face it—she's a stranger!) What is a helpful indicator is FOMO: whether I have the uneasy suspicion that if I do what's comfortable, I might not undergo something that would have stretched me or brought me closer to people. Without it, I never would have jumped into the frigid ocean last February for a polar plunge, or gone camping in September with a group of more than 30 people, most of whom I didn't know. I would never do anything after work, when I'm reliably exhausted. That's not to say you should run yourself into the ground trying to do everything. FOMO isn't a master you need to obediently follow but, as McGinnis put it, a 'tap on the shoulder' reminding you that your existence is transient and you need to decide how to spend it. He distinguishes between two types of FOMO. One is 'aspirational FOMO,' which is when you identify an exciting or interesting experience—one that might make your life fuller. Simply imagining that potential reward can lead to the release of dopamine in the brain. The other is 'herd FOMO,' which is the fear of getting left out of a collective encounter—a prospect so appalling that it can trigger a fight-or-flight response, complete with a rushing heartbeat and sweaty palms. 'Part of the brain goes berserk,' McGinnis told me. He thinks that people should lean into the first type, the kind that's about embracing possibility, not avoiding pain. Each time you act on aspirational FOMO, you get more data about what you enjoy, what matters to you, what's worth making time for. In that sense, FOMO-driven action might lead you to feel less FOMO overall. Many college students, McGinnis said, fear missing out when they first arrive on campus—but this is what can lead them to meet people, discover interests, and ultimately have a better sense of what they don't mind skipping. 'When you're 30 and somebody invites you to a bar and you've been to 4,000 bars,' he told me, 'you have such perfect information about this thing that you can make a decision without even fretting.' I am, admittedly, a FOMO extremist; on the precipice of turning 30, I still feel the need to go to the bar for the 4,001st time. Maybe that's my herd FOMO talking. But I also think that I will never have enough data to know what any given night will be like. Every time, the conversation is a little different; every time, my knowledge of a friend is deepened or complicated, even if that change is barely perceptible. Every so often it turns out that someone really needed me there. The activity isn't the point, after all; I'm not looking to stack my social résumé with pastimes that make it sound like I had fun. I'm trying to spend the time I have with people I love. And I do fear missing out on that.
