Everyone suffers from FOMO from time to time. Here are 3 easy ways to deal with it.

Whenever I catch up with younger friends, they tell me what they’ve been up to but also what they’ve missed out on. Debilitating FOMO - the fear of missing out - is a very millennial trait, but everyone suffers with pangs of it from time to time. No matter where you are, the place where you aren’t is more fun.

Social media has given everyone the acute and painful ability to peer out to every social event their friends are enjoying that they haven’t been invited to or were not able to attend. It’s a panopticon of pain. What a cruel invention and yet somehow we are addicted; somehow we can’t look away. If you were born after 1985, it has always been this way, whereas at least people who grew up in the 1990s were able to go to parties, and not look at their phones and see other better parties going on that they were not invited to. In the past, without phones and social media, they had a better chance of enjoying themselves where they were.

The FOMO is real, and can often end up running their lives. People attend things they don’t want to because of FOMO or are eaten up with envy when they see an image of a place or party where they are not. FOMO pulls people out of the enjoyment of the present moment and places them in a state of agitation about what they should or could have been doing. 

Then there is social exclusion. We are pack animals; we thrive in communities and belonging is tied deeply to wellbeing. Social media and the subsequent FOMO it provokes is in part a response from being excised from the group, not included and perhaps not fitting in. The fear of being left out of the tribe or excluded from the ceremony (or depending on your period of history - excluded from the ball, or from harvest festival or from the concert) is an ancient fear. But we are now in a moveable Hall of Mirrors (thankyou, Instagram) where the fear follows us, and distorts everything.

FOMO has always been around, and the Stoic philosophers had methods of dealing with it. They eerily predicted and planned for an age where feeling slighted and left out would be a regular occurrence. The main thing with the Stoic lessons around FOMO is that although some of them may seem a little artificial, they were designed to ensure that we maintain our tranquillity and not get agitated when we feel FOMO coming on.

When you’re not invited. 

The first lesson is a bit of a hard one to pull off... It involves being the bigger person—and generous with others.

Summing up the essence of FOMO, Epictetus asked, ‘Is anyone preferred before you at an entertainment, or in a compliment, or in being admitted to a consultation?’ To translate: is someone at the party you’re not at, or been praised or socialised with some VIPs?

Epictetus advised: ‘If these things are good, you ought to be glad that he has gotten them; and if they are evil, don’t be grieved that you have not got them.’

Essentially, if someone has been invited to a party, and you haven’t, you should be glad for them. That’s a sign of good character that you can be pleased for others, even while missing out yourself.

The second part of this is: if the things you want but have been excluded from are not good for you (another bottle of wine), then you should be glad that you are missing out. This is because the thing you are missing out on could harm your character—the big no-no for the Stoics.

The trade-off. 

When it comes to FOMO, the Stoics also raised the spectre of the trade-off. One of your friends may have gone to the music festival, and you have FOMO looking at their pictures on social media—but look at what you have: an extra 200 dollars in your pocket by not buying a ticket, the chance to have a good night’s sleep and the next morning without a hangover.

So, in short, when you feel a pang of FOMO, remember this advice from the Ancients. Firstly, by not going to the event you are possibly missing out on things that will compromise your character, such as getting too drunk at the party and making a dick of yourself. Secondly, by missing out on one thing, you gain the time and space to occupy yourself with another thing (or at least save some money); and, thirdly, by not attending an event, you avoid having to suck up to or hang out with people you mightn’t like very much.

Avoid making comparisons. 

Closely related to FOMO is the horror of comparisons. Comparing yourself to others is a sure road to unhappiness.

Think about when you were at school, then university. At school everyone was in the same boat, wore the same uniforms, did the same classes together each day and had roughly the same sorts of lives. You might peel away from each other and go to university - but at university, you have a similar experience to your peers. The trouble starts when you graduate. Some may travel or go work in a bar for a few years, while others take high-paying corporate jobs, while others marry young and have families. Suddenly you are not on the same track as your friends. Maybe you feel like you’ve taken a wrong turn in life. You might feel like you’ve made dud choices. You get FOMO.

It would be great if you could give up the comparison game and instead focus on your own race. You can celebrate other people. Your ego is the enemy in this, but it can be tamed and brought under control. We need to be able to find joy in the success of other people. If we can let go, negativity loses its hold on us, and we are free to live the life we want.

Our goal is to define success for ourselves: that is the only thing that we can control. 

This is an edited extract of Brigid Delaney’s Reasons Not to Worry: How to be Stoic in chaotic times (Allen and Unwin, $24.99), out now.

Feature Image: Getty