FOMO - Fear Of Missing Out

In this episode, we dive into FOMO, which is: anxiety that an exciting or interesting event may currently be happening elsewhere. We'll explore how this affects our daily lives and prevents us from living our best life!

Transcript

Welcome to Life,

Lessons and Laughter with your host Glenn Ambrose.

Hey,

Hello everyone.

Welcome to the podcast.

Let's bring in Benjamin.

Bam.

Just like that.

It's like magic.

It is.

It's like magic,

Except it's not because I'm just hitting a button.

See now I can go full screen.

Cool.

Hey everybody.

Welcome to Life,

Lessons and Laughter with Ben Barber.

And now it's just you and now it's both of us.

All right.

And if you have no idea what that was just because.

.

.

Those listening to the audio version,

Trust us,

It was amazingly awesome.

So today we are talking about FOMO.

Oh yeah.

FOMO in the house.

Yeah,

Absolutely.

The fear of missing out is what FOMO means if you are wondering.

Do you like this camera angle?

No.

No,

Neither.

No.

Weird.

Yeah,

It's very close.

So anyway,

The fear of missing out.

Yeah,

FOMO.

Fear of missing out.

You want to tell us a little bit about it?

Yeah.

I was.

.

.

A while ago I was talking with a client of mine and she had mentioned.

.

.

I was talking about something.

I don't remember exactly how it played out,

But we're talking about something and then she's like,

Yeah,

That's FOMO.

And I was like,

She's like,

Fear of missing out.

I'm like,

Yeah.

I go,

Why?

Is that a thing?

I mean,

I've had FOMO since I was young.

So I just kind of thought some people.

.

.

I didn't know it had become a thing for the millennials.

Millennials.

Millennials.

So apparently it's a thing now for the millennials.

I don't know.

I mean,

I'm not a millennial.

I completely had it.

I mean,

When I was younger,

I was always in high school and stuff,

I was going to parties all the time.

So I was like,

I mean,

If there was two big parties on the same night,

I was anxiety ridden.

I mean,

If something big happened and I wasn't smack dab in the middle of it,

That's not good.

I mean,

I had to be there.

I mean,

You know?

Yeah,

Totally.

I get that all the time.

On a low level,

I'm in a group chat right now with some people,

With like a ton of people that are making a big push for something politically.

So there's politicians and there's business leaders and stuff in this big group chat.

And I've moved for the last week.

I've been in the process of moving.

And I had to just completely ignore that group chat.

And when I say there's a lot of stuff happening,

I mean,

There's probably 300 text messages a day happening in that group chat.

And they're all important policy related issues that involve our state and stuff.

So it's information that I should know and is pertinent to my job and my business and all of that.

And I just couldn't look at it because I was way too busy.

And every single time I got a text,

I went 30 more text messages.

Oh my God.

No way.

I couldn't.

I am so like,

I think I'm pretty removed from the FOMO now.

I think the more grounded you get,

The less FOMO you have.

I guess that remains to be seen.

But that's kind of my inclination because I definitely completely had it when I was younger and I don't really feel I have it now.

So what's the difference?

So to me,

Even as you were talking,

It reminds me of when I first woke up,

As probably everybody knows by now,

It was through recovery.

So when I was in recovery,

One of the things that I heard was in AA,

As well as other organizations,

They have business meetings.

So I heard like,

Okay,

Well,

You have to be involved in AA and you have to go to these business meetings once a month or whatever.

And fortunately my sponsor was of the opinion that there's many ways to give back.

Business meetings are one of them.

It's not mandatory.

So I was like,

Well,

I got to check out these business meetings,

See what these things are about.

And if it's part of AA and I'm really trying to be involved and get sober here,

I better.

.

.

So I go in there and like I had just started experiencing a little bit of sobriety and my head was clearing up a little bit.

And I sat there and I watched people argue about stuff that was going on in meetings for an hour or so.

And I was like,

Oh my God,

The whole time I was just thinking,

This is exactly why,

This is exactly what I'm trying to get away from by getting sober.

My life,

This like looks like my life.

Like my life is just constant arguing and just bickering about little things.

I don't want any of this.

And at the end of the meeting,

Everybody knew that I was like the newbie there.

So they kind of,

I don't know if they went around the room,

I don't remember,

But they asked me,

So this was your first business meeting.

What did you think?

And I said,

Well,

I think that I'm never going to another one if I can help it,

Because this is exactly the stuff that I'm not interested in.

But the cool part about that was that the opinion of many other people in AA,

As well as my sponsor said,

If you don't go to business meetings,

If you do not take part in the responsibility of coming to decisions,

Then you must fall back and agree to go with group conscience,

What they call group conscience,

Which is whatever everybody else decides.

If you're not going to go stick your nose in there and give your opinion,

Then you can't sit back in the meeting and say,

They shouldn't be doing this.

If you want to have a say,

You better get your butt to a business meeting.

If you don't get your butt to a business meeting,

Then keep your mouth shut about what decision they made.

And I was like,

Okay,

I will keep my mouth shut about whatever group conscience says is fine by me.

And the amount of freedom that I felt was immense.

So that was like my beginning of going,

Yeah,

Most of the stuff in life,

As well as in those business meetings didn't really affect me.

If it got bad enough where it was so warped that it was just ridiculous and I didn't want to be part of that meeting anymore,

I'll just leave and go to another meeting.

Just stop going to that one.

And that's kind of how I've lived my life a lot since then.

It's like,

I don't get involved with complaining about and fighting over little things.

And I can't not say this.

I want to not say this because it sounds like I'm making a judgment on what you're doing and I'm not.

I think everybody has a right to choose whatever they want.

Because if I have the choice to choose what I want,

Everybody else has a choice.

So I'm not saying everybody should do what I'm doing.

That's what I want to make clear.

What I do though includes politics.

This is why I stay out of politics.

Because once I got sober,

I looked into it and I saw the same people,

Sometimes the exact same people,

But people arguing over the same things 20 years later and 30 years later.

And I went,

Oh,

I'm just going to stay out of that stuff.

And I mean,

It's more to it than that.

It has to do with my personality too.

Like if I lean into something,

I'm very opinionated and I'm very passionate.

So if I lean into a political situation and get involved,

I'm going to be smack dab in the middle.

I'm going to be shooting my mouth off left and right because that's what I do.

And I have to be ready for that.

I don't participate kindly.

Like I'm either all in or not.

It's like my personality.

So I don't do well in those circumstances.

So my personality mixed with my spirituality made me decide to stay out of that.

Like I said,

I'm not implying that everybody should do that.

I think it's important that some people are in the political circles because it's a reflection of our society.

And I think it's a necessary part in life where we are.

I'm not the one to be in the middle of it,

That's all.

So we have to make our own choices is what I'm saying.

But yeah,

I'm fine.

Like 90% of what happens in the world,

I'm fine with the general consensus because most of it doesn't affect me.

If they say,

Oh,

We're going to raise your taxes 1% and you didn't vote so you didn't get a say.

All right.

I guess my taxes are going up 1%.

I would rather pay 1% tax increase than go spend my energy arguing over the 1% tax increase.

And it doesn't matter whether I agree with it or not.

I just don't want to spend my energy arguing over it.

And I'll adjust on the other end.

But what I found is most things in life are like that.

Most things are.

Most things that people argue over and put their attention and their energy towards,

It never changes anything.

They just argue about it because nobody's interested in change.

They are interested in being right and arguing over it.

So they get caught up.

So once I started understanding that this fear of missing out on things,

Once I started seeing that,

Like most of the stuff that wasn't,

There wasn't even anything to it.

Like I'm not missing out on anything.

It's an illusion.

Most of it doesn't affect my life.

Most of it,

You know,

It's,

It just doesn't.

And like,

What if,

What if somebody has a different opinion than me?

Well,

I have to,

I have to voice my opinion.

No,

I don't.

I don't.

Like it's okay.

They're probably going to go home thinking the way they think,

Whether I voice my opinion or whether I don't voice my opinion.

So like there's so many little things that are like that,

That it's just,

I think the more we learn to take our hands off things and start looking at them closely and starting determining whether do they,

Does my input,

Is my input relevant here?

Is it necessary here?

Can I make a difference here?

Does it affect me if it goes either way?

Not really.

Okay.

Then save that energy to put it towards something,

You know,

That's important to you.

We spread our attention to things that aren't important to us,

You know?

Yeah,

Absolutely.

Let's talk about some of the bigger,

You know,

Because of the,

Because of the term FOMO,

It's kind of cute,

You know?

Yes.

Like it looks good on a meme.

Yeah.

So,

So therefore it's sort of downplayed as,

And it's,

And it's a lot of what we've been talking about is,

You know,

There's two parties or like,

I can't,

I can't go out tonight.

And I,

And like,

That's the,

That's the millennial thing of the like hashtag FOMO,

But the fear of missing out,

Right?

When you,

When you actually put that out as a full sentence and you,

And you think about it,

There's a lot of things in life that are deep seated fears of missing out.

Right?

So like children,

Not having children,

You know when you get to a certain age and you start to really think that that's not going to happen for you or or not finding someone or not following the avenue that you wish that you did career wise,

You know,

These are some big things that people struggle with on an everyday basis that are the same.

It's the,

It's,

It is the fear of missing out.

But it's not as cute as FOMO.

Right.

Yeah.

And I think that that's a great point.

It's not only do,

You know,

It does look cute on a meme and that's why people don't,

They don't get upset when they identify themselves.

Like,

Like if you know,

If you were like,

Hey,

You're,

You're,

You're filled with fear.

People be like,

No,

I'm not.

Or,

Or,

Or if they,

If they agreed with it,

They'd be like,

Yeah,

I know I,

It's horrible.

You know,

Like,

But if you say it in a cute way,

You know,

FOMO,

Yeah.

You know,

Then all of a sudden it's cool and it sounds cute and they don't have to take responsibility for it.

And what it is,

Is it's fear.

It's literally fear.

It's in the word.

It's in the red title,

Fear and fear expands.

If you allow fear to live,

It takes over more of you.

If you allow an aspect of fear to be within you and you say,

Ah,

It's not that big of a deal.

It's just,

It's taking over a portion of you and it has residents in you and fear knows one thing,

Expansion.

It just knows more.

So it tries to get more of you and more of you.

Then it goes,

Well,

You're also scared of leaving the stove on now.

Yeah,

But that's not that big of a deal.

I just checked the stove three times before I go to bed,

Whatever.

It hasn't affected my life.

Okay,

So you let that slide.

Then it affects how many times did I lock my door?

Then it affects,

You know,

And it just takes over more and more and more of you.

That's why when you see fear,

You should,

If it's small,

Attack it then.

Get it out of you then.

Don't allow it because as soon as you allow it,

It starts trying to expand to another area,

You know?

So it's,

You know,

We have to,

I think it's important to do that and if we live life like that,

Then it doesn't get to the point where the big things have the ability to take us over because we didn't allow the small things to take us over.

So it doesn't have a good enough foothold on you.

Like if somebody comes up to me and says,

Like we talked about this one time years ago.

Like my mom said one time,

You know,

She's like,

Oh,

You know,

You should start dating.

You know,

Don't you want to find somebody to spend the rest of your life with?

And like,

You know,

I just get scared that,

You know,

You might be alone for the rest of your life.

And I burst out laughing.

I literally burst it out laughing because I just,

It was funny to me.

Like I had no fear of that.

You know,

I just don't look at it that way.

And here I am years later after that conversation and I'm still alone.

I still don't have that fear.

I just don't have the fear.

Why?

Because I haven't let that,

Those fearful types of thoughts take root.

It's not that they've never passed through my head.

It's not that,

You know,

I've never had moments where I went,

Oh my God,

Like,

Geez,

I wonder if I'm going to find somebody.

Of course I've had those moments,

But they don't have any place to take root and to latch on and I don't feed them.

If I,

When they do come up,

I look at them and go,

Okay,

Well wait a minute now.

Is this real?

Like dude,

You know,

Like I don't have somebody in my life right now.

So does that mean that I'm going to not have somebody,

I'm never going to have somebody in my life and well,

No,

Of course not.

We live in an ever changing reality.

And like for me,

What helps is always getting to the core of stuff,

Getting to the core of stuff.

What I want is this is a mentality that I think is important.

We need to understand that what we want is to feel love,

To feel happiness and to feel peace.

That's what we want.

And we have to stop thinking that it comes from somewhere other than within us because it doesn't,

You know,

And one,

When I anchor onto that and then I connect to my source of unconditional love.

Now all of a sudden I don't feel lonely.

Why?

Because I'm a source of unconditional love.

And I realize,

Is there a part of me that still wants to be in a relationship?

Yeah.

There's a part of me that says,

You know what?

I've been in relationships before.

I enjoy being in relationships.

I think I do pretty well in relationships.

It feels comfortable and natural to me.

So therefore I think that I would probably be in relationships.

I don't think we have heartfelt desires for things that we're not going to fulfill.

I think we're given the capability of fulfilling any heartfelt desire.

Otherwise,

Why would we have a heartfelt desire?

It's just cruel to give somebody a heartfelt desire without the capability of fulfilling that.

And I don't think we live in a cruel world.

So I think that I probably will be in a relationship moving forward.

But let's just say for the sake of argument,

I'm not.

Let's say for the sake of argument,

I focus on happiness,

Peace,

Joy,

Love,

And feeling it within.

And then all of a sudden I get to a place one day where I'm so filled with love.

I am so happy.

I'm so content.

I'm so joyful.

And I look around and I go,

You know what?

All that desire to have a romantic partner in my life was completely ego-based.

I couldn't tell it at the time because I was identified with ego.

But that's where the desire was coming from.

And now that I'm completely content,

Peaceful,

And happy,

I could care less if I have a romantic partner in my life to share the rest of my life with.

I have other.

I'm connected to all and that's fine for me and blah,

Blah,

Blah.

Maybe I'll come to that realization one day.

And if I do,

That doesn't mean that I'm sacrificing or I lost.

See subconsciously in our brain,

We think that if we get really happy and we let go of something that we think is going to make us happy,

Then we lost.

It's like,

No,

If you're so flipping happy that you don't need anything,

It's okay.

You're not going to miss it because remember the foundation of what you just said,

You're completely happy.

So what we need to do is,

And this is kind of like a manifesting chart that Mike Dooley has,

Which is really cool,

Is he has all the small things moving.

I don't even want to say left to right because I don't even know what my hand's doing on the screen because it's backwards.

But everything moving this way with small things over here and large things over here and the ultimate end is happiness.

And he says,

When you focus on this side,

You get everything to this side of it.

So if you focus on something small like a car,

That's all you're going to get.

But if you focus on something like a job and you need a car to get the job,

Then you'll get the job and the car because it's smaller to the side of it.

So he says,

Focus on happiness way over here and whatever it takes,

All the little things it takes to make you happy,

You will get because you're focused on your happiness.

So if we just focus on our happiness,

We don't have to go,

Oh,

What if I miss out on this?

What if I miss out on that?

What if I miss out on this?

It doesn't matter.

Focus on your happiness.

If one of those things is going to enhance your happiness,

You will get them.

And if you don't get them,

That means they won't,

You didn't need them in the first place.

You just thought you did.

You feel me,

Ben?

I feel you,

Glenn.

You hear me barking,

Big dog?

I do.

There's literally buds in my ears that control the sound of your bark.

Woof woof.

Yeah,

Man.

I think opportunity too.

What about opportunity?

Well,

I think it's a misconception,

Which I think breeds our FOMO.

It's this mentality that opportunity only knocks once.

No,

It doesn't.

No,

It doesn't.

That's all opportunity does,

Is knock constantly,

Consistently,

Over and over and over and over again forever.

It's only job.

If opportunity only knocked once,

It'd be out of a job.

It wouldn't even exist anymore.

It'd be like,

Well,

I don't know.

I walked around knocking everybody once and now I'm done.

I guess I'll retire.

There'd be no such thing as opportunity anymore.

Every time somebody was born,

They'd be like,

Oh,

I get to knock once.

All right,

I'm going to go take a nap.

Opportunity consistently knocks.

So we don't have to be fearful that we're missing out on an opportunity.

Of course,

We want to keep our head on a swivel and look around for opportunities and capitalize on them when they come.

But if we don't,

Look around tomorrow,

There'll be another opportunity.

Another one the day after that and another one the day after that.

I mean,

We live in an abundant world.

There's always opportunities.

The universe is always setting up.

It's always changing instantly.

So as soon as we make a choice or we choose not to decide,

The universe sets up a whole bunch of choices based on that.

And then it's like,

Okay,

Well,

We are never in a place where we don't have a way out or we're never in a place where we don't have an opportunity to move up.

We always have those opportunities.

They're always there.

Yeah,

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Opportunity would be out of a job.

Should that be a quote?

Yeah,

It should.

Think about how you want to word it.

Because it's hilarious.

I just don't know.

You went on for about three minutes.

I don't know if it would fit on a meme.

Yeah,

I'll have to shorten it.

Absolutely.

So big and small,

Is it all the same?

Is it?

It is.

It's the same because it's the same energy.

And that's what,

Which is of course a good point.

We have this tendency that if something's small or something's large,

Well,

Yeah,

It works in the small things,

But not the big thing.

So no,

It's all the same.

Because everything's energy based.

So it's like if you're in a dysfunctional relationship and somebody throws a spoon at your head one day and then they throw a dish at your head the next day,

It's the same thing.

That's an issue.

It doesn't matter if one makes you bleed and the other one only causes a bruise.

The fact is you have things being thrown at your head.

That's a problem.

So the size of it doesn't matter.

It just matters what energy it is.

So the fear of missing out,

Manage the small stuff and then you'll be able to manage the big stuff.

It's hard if you're riddled with little fears and then you go try to take on a big one.

I'm not saying that you can't do it.

It's just hard because it's,

You are one,

Your energy is vibrating at the rate of fearful.

So fear has a greater hold on you.

And of course we can do it backwards.

There's more ways to do things than one.

So we can go attack the big one and all the smaller ones fall away a lot easier.

We can do that.

But I think the other piece is understanding that we're not,

The other part of FOMO is we subconsciously or unconsciously think that we are going to be more of ourselves if we experience something.

Like we're going to be a better version of ourselves or something if we're,

And this is usually subconsciously because when you start saying it out loud,

It starts sounding silly,

But it makes sense in our heads.

Like,

Well,

I experienced that.

So that's,

Now I'm one who experienced that.

So like,

How does that make you a better person?

Yeah,

Absolutely.

I just thought about this.

I have been experiencing FOMO in a specific topic,

Area,

Genre of my life for about three months for a long time,

But in a specific situation that you're aware of because you're my life coach.

But there was definitely a fear of missing out on something because of what you just said.

You have expectations,

Like you think that something is supposed to be a certain way.

So you have a fear that you're missing out on that thing.

And then what you don't realize is that you're focusing on what you think you're missing out on and you're missing the thing that's in front of you.

And I had a wonderful opportunity to get clarity on that a couple of times in the last week or so.

And it's completely that.

Once the fears were out in the open on every aspect of that,

And I mean like deep fears that don't get talked about,

Once the big fears were talked about,

The little fears went away.

And the FOMO for the most part went away.

And what was left was happiness and peace and joy and appreciation for what is there.

Yes.

And this is exactly what we're talking about.

This is why the illusion that we're missing out on something,

We think we need something outside of us to fulfill us.

And we don't because,

And fear does not,

Fear can't stand the light of truth.

So you open,

When you bring your fears out into the light,

They disintegrate.

They're no longer there.

And then what you are left with is the true happiness and peace that comes from within.

So like,

You're not going to be,

And I'm a big experiential guy.

Like I love experiences.

You know,

I love jumping out of planes and all kinds,

You know,

I'm looking forward to traveling and I love experiences and I think experiences can change you when they're done in the right way.

But it's just like everything else.

If I think that me going to,

On a safari in Africa is going to make me a cool person,

I'm wrong.

It's not.

It's not going to make me a better version of myself,

But if I want to go there because I want the experience and I don't think that that's going to make me happy,

But it can be an expression of my happiness.

Okay.

Now I can't,

I can't ever put anything in front of what I'm hoping to experience,

Which comes from within.

So if I anchor on my happiness and then I go experience something as an expression of that happiness,

Secondarily,

Now it's an expression of that happiness and I could even expand more.

But if I go and I go,

That thing's going to make me a better person.

No it's not because it's external.

It can't make you a better person.

It's not part of you.

You know,

Everything that's needed to make a mighty oak is contained within the seed.

It's that acorn man.

It has everything.

We have everything.

We are self-contained units and you know,

So we can't miss out on anything because it's not what the only things that are actually important and eternal and sacred are within us.

So anchor into that and then experience.

Your experiences are so much more rich when you're experiencing them in a vibration of love and happiness.

It really does now all of a sudden it's an expression and you can't expand out of them.

But nothing outside of us is going to make us happy and it doesn't matter if it's an experience or a car or a date.

It doesn't matter.

It's not going to bring happiness into us because happiness comes from within and flows out.

Reviews

Some great points, thanks gentlemen. Love and blessings 💖 x

Very interesting talk guys! Thank you!