This is the best way to overcome your fear of missing out

This is the best way to overcome yur fear of missing outThis is the best way to overcome your fear of missing outYouhear about FOMO a lot these days. In fact, the wordwelches added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2013.What does it really mean? A recentstudyon the subject defined it asthe uneasy and sometimes all-consuming feeling that youre missing out that your peers are doing, in the know about, or in possession of mora or something better than you. Under this framing of FoMO, nearly three quarters of young adults reported they experienced the phenomenon.Its certainly not a good thing. And it leads you tocheck social media again and again and again so you dont feel out of the loop. So you know youre doing okay. So you dont feel left out.Sometimes that alleviates the anxiety - but often it doesnt. And either way it drives you to keep running around the digital hamster wheel to feel okay with yourself.Is this just a symptom of modern life? Is it no big deal? Or is it telling us something we need to know? And is there anything we can do to break the vicious cycle?Research has answers. And you can fix this problem. But first, the badeanstalt news FOMO is a lot worse than you thinkFOMO comes from unhappinessCaught in the FOMO cycle? Youre probably not feeling too great about your life. FOMO often originates inunhappinessOur findings show those with low levels of satisfaction of the fundamental needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness tend towards higher levels of fear of missing out as do those with lower levels of general mood and overall life satisfaction.So youre not feeling so hot about things. Or youre wondering if everyone else is having more fun than you. How do you scratch the itch? Check facebook inc, of courseAcross all three mediation models results FoMO welches robustly associated with social media engagement, b = .40, p .001 (B path)Study 2 showed that fear of missing played a key and robust role in explaining social media engagement ove r and above the other factors we considered.In fact, FOMO leads people to check social media right after they wake up, before they go to bed and during mealsResults conceptually replicated findings from Study 2, those high in FoMO tended to use facebook inc more often immediately after waking, before going to sleep, and during meals.Um, sounds uncomfortably like addiction to me(To learn the four things neuroscience says will keep your brain happy, clickhere.)So youre not feeling so great- whether you realize it or not - and you turn to social media to make you feel better. Only one problem there it actually makes you feel worseThe facebook inc illusionWe all know that Facebook doesnt provide a very well-rounded picture of peoples lives. Its more like the cherry-picked perfection version.Often it seems like if bragging and showing off were banned, some people wouldnt post anything at all.But despite knowing this,studiessay we cant help but compare our lives to theirsAfter controlli ng for the possibility of reverse causality, our results suggest that (Social Network Site)users have a higher probability to compare their achievements with those of others.Andresearchshows this is the happiness equivalent of taking someone with a nut allergy and putting them on an all-cashew dietAccording to Burke, passive consumption of Facebook also correlates to a marginal increase in depression. If two women each talk to their friends the same amount of time, but one of them spends more time reading about friends on Facebook as well, the one reading tends to grow slightly more depressed, Burke saysAgain and again the happiness research shows comparisons to lives that seem better than yours, well,thats some bad juju, hombre.AsMontesquieuonce saidIf one only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are.As Swarthmore professorBarry Schwartzwrites i n his excellent book,The Paradox of Choice Why More Is LessStop paying so much attention to how others around you are doing is easy advice to give, but hard to follow, because the evidence of how others are doing is pervasive, because fruchtwein of us seem to care a great deal about status, and finally, because access to some of the fruchtwein important things in life (for example, the best colleges, the best jobs, the best houses in the best neighborhoods) is granted only to those who do better than their peers. Nonetheless, social comparison seems sufficiently destructive to our sense of well-being that it is worthwhile to remind ourselves to do it less.So youre wondering if your life measures up and you turn to everyone elses deliberately sculpted illusion of lifestyle perfection This is the happiness equivalent of readingyour bank statement after looking atthe Forbes 400 list.As Erica Jong once saidJealousy is all the fun you think they had.Even if we logically know Facebookisnt an accurate depiction of peoples lives, well, confronting your seeming inadequacy 24/7 against an unachievable false realitycan hammer your already vulnerable self-esteem.You just cant compete with their highly-edited topiary of lifestyle awesomeness - especially when youre feeling a little down or anxious to begin with.So whats the most common response? To post something. As if to sayLook at me Im cool, tooBut thisonly strengthens the cycle. As internet maven and co-founder of Flickr, Caterina Fake,once saidSocial software is both the creator and the cure of FOMO.Its cyclical.And the research agrees. People with FOMO have ambivalent feelings toward Facebook. It brings them up and slams them back downTo evaluate our prediction that FoMO would be associated with high levels of ambivalent emotions when using Facebook use we regressed positive affect, b=.31, p.001, and negative affect, b = .40, p .001, on FoMO scores. This pattern of relations indicated those high in FoMO were more likely to experienced mixed feelings when using social media.A roller coaster of emotion. Just like the highs and lows of addiction, eh?But posting to alleviate your discomfortalso has an important secondary effect by presenting your carefully edited versionof life awesomeness, you just made anyone who sees it feel worse.Youre spreading the virus.Good for Facebook. Good for Haagen Dazs sales. Bad for happiness.(To learn what Harvard research says will make you happier and more successful, clickhere.)So this is how FOMO comes about and why its so awful. But how do we break the cycle?The Problem isattentionLooking at social media for happiness is a bad idea. You wont find it out there. Sounds cliche, but theresearchsays you need to look insideThe problem with FOMO is the individuals it impacts are looking outward instead of inward, McLaughlin said. When youre so tuned in to the other, or the better (in your mind), you lose your authentic sense of self. This constant fear of missing ou t means you are not participating as a real person in your own world.Facebook isnt real life.Its obviously not life. And itscertainlynot real. Only real life is real life. But youre comparing yourself tofake life. (Someone cue the music from The Matrix, please.)And the key to happiness really comes down to one wordAttention.We all have bad things we could think about. But they dont bother us when we pay them no mind.Look on the bright side is a cliche, but its also scientifically valid.Paul Dolan teaches at the London School of Economics and was a visiting scholar at Princeton where he worked with Nobel-Prize winner Daniel Kahneman.He explains the importance of attention in his book,Happiness by Design Change What You Do, bedrngnis How You ThinkYour happiness is determined by how you allocate your attention. What you attend to drives your behavior and it determines your happiness. Attention is the glue that holds your life together The scarcity of attentional resources means that yo u must consider how you can make and facilitate better decisions about what to pay attention to and in what ways. If you are not as happy as you could be, then you must be misallocating your attention So changing behavior and enhancing happiness is as much about withdrawing attention from the negative as it is about attending to the positive.But when youre caught in the loop of FOMO you tune out the real world and tune in to the fake one - Facebook.And thats what the research shows people with FOMO stop paying attention to life and turn to social media for their happiness cure.Students withFOMO pay less attention in school and are even more likely to check their phone when theyre drivingThis analysis showed that students high in FoMO were more liable to use Facebook during university lecturesYoung adults who were high in fear of missing out paid greater attention to emails, text messages, and their mobile phones when driving compared to those lower on FoMO.(To learn more about how to focus your attention and be happy, clickhere.)Buthow do you focus your attention so that you appreciate the real world and dont turn to Facebook (which is only going to make you feel worse)? What can you pay attention to when life is, frankly, kinda sad or boring?Its deceptively simple, reallyTry gratitudeSounds sappy, I know. But try a simple experimentLook around. What good things mightyou be taking for granted? Home? Family? Friends?Now take a couple seconds to imagine thosewere taken away from you. How would you feel? Bad things happen to us randomly, right? So to some degree, you areluckyto have what you do.Does this exercise sound silly?Researchshows it works. Mentally subtracting cherished moments from your life makes you appreciate them more, makes you grateful and makes you happier.In fact,gratitudeis arguably the king of happiness. Whats the research say? Cant be more clearthan thisthe more a person is inclined to gratitude, the less likely he or she is to be depressed, anxious, lonely, envious, or neurotic.And feeling gratitude doesnt just make you happier. Its correlated with anobjectively better lifewe found thatgratitude, controlling for materialism, uniquely predicts all outcomes considered higher grade point average, life satisfaction, social integration, and absorption, as well as lower envy and depression.The inevitable comparisons to the fake lives on Facebook makes you feel you haveless. Contemplating what you are lucky to already possess makes you feel you havemore.Somaybe its time to look atthe good things you take for grantedin life rather than your Facebook wall. Turn notifications off. As the author of the FOMO studysaidFor people who feel very secure in their relationships, their relationships are important to them, but they dont feel compelled to always be connected, Przybylski said. Social media may not create the tendency, he said, but it likely exacerbates it by making sharing so easy. Sometimes, he said, its good to insulate y ourself from the world of possibilities.(To learn more about how you can use gratitude to make yourself happy all the time, clickhere.)Alright, lets round up what weve learned about FOMO and find out the best way to make sure you keep feeling good when you hear the siren song of social mediaSum upHeres where FOMO comes from and how to beat itFOMO starts with sadness.For the best way to feel better and stop the problem before it starts, clickhere.Social media makes it worse, not better.Facebook isnt evil - but relying on it for happiness is.Happiness is about attention.Focus on the good and you will feel good.Gratitude is essential.Imagine losing thethings youre lucky to have and you willappreciate them.Social media isnt the devil. But were wired to compare ourselves to others and you know where that leads on a medium where everyone is cutting cornersto look their best.And Facebookcanhelp you be happy. But dont scroll and compare.Use it toplan face-to-face get togethers.University of Chicago professorJohn Cacioppo, the leading researcher on loneliness, says doing that canmake your life betterFacebook is merely a tool, he says, and like any tool, its effectiveness will depend on its user. If you use Facebook to increase face-to-face contact, he says, it increases social capital. So if social media lets you organize a game of football among your friends, thats healthy. If you turn to social media instead of playing football, however, thats unhealthy.And when youre with friends,put that phone away. Seeing friends and family regularly is the happiness equivalent of an extra$97,265 a year. Whatever you want to check on social mediaaint worth a hundred grand, bubba.Forget the fake perfect lives of Facebook that lead to FOMO. Instead, try JOMO the joy of missing out on all those illusions.When you spend all that time staring in envy at the oh-so-cool pictures of cleverly crafted bliss on Facebook, keepone thingin mindIts your life youre missing out on.Join over 260,00 0 readers.Get a free weekly update via emailhere.Related postsHow To Get People To Like You 7 Ways From An FBI Behavior ExpertNew Neuroscience Reveals 4 Rituals That Will Make You HappyNew Harvard Research Reveals A Fun Way To Be More SuccessfulThis article originally appeared at Barking Up the Wrong Tree.This is the best way to overcome your fear of missing outYouhear about FOMO a lot these days. In fact, the wordwas added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2013.What does it really mean? A recentstudyon the subject defined it asthe uneasy and sometimes all-consuming feeling that youre missing out that your peers are doing, in the know about, or in possession of more or something better than you. Under this framing of FoMO, nearly three quarters of young adults reported they experienced the phenomenon.Its certainly not a good thing. And it leads you tocheck social media again and again and again so you dont feel out of the loop. So you know youre doing okay. So you dont feel left out.Sometimes that alleviates the anxiety - but often it doesnt. And either way it drives you to keep running around the digital hamster wheel to feel okay with yourself.Is this just a symptom of modern life? Is it no big deal? Or is it telling us something we need to know? And is there anything we can do to break the vicious cycle?Research has answers. And you can fix this problem. But first, the bad news FOMO is a lot worse than you thinkFOMO comes from unhappinessCaught in the FOMO cycle? Youre probably not feeling too great about your life. FOMO often originates inunhappinessOur findings show those with low levels of satisfaction of the fundamental needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness tend towards higher levels of fear of missing out as do those with lower levels of general mood and overall life satisfaction.So youre not feeling so hot about things. Or youre wondering if everyone else is having more fun than you. How do you scratch the itch? Check Facebook, of course Across all three mediation models results FoMO was robustly associated with social media engagement, b = .40, p .001 (B path)Study 2 showed that fear of missing played a key and robust role in explaining social media engagement over and above the other factors we considered.In fact, FOMO leads people to check social media right after they wake up, before they go to bed and during mealsResults conceptually replicated findings from Study 2, those high in FoMO tended to use Facebook more often immediately after waking, before going to sleep, and during meals.Um, sounds uncomfortably like addiction to me(To learn the four things neuroscience says will keep your brain happy, clickhere.)So youre not feeling so great- whether you realize it or not - and you turn to social media to make you feel better. Only one problem there it actually makes you feel worseThe Facebook illusionWe all know that Facebook doesnt provide a very well-rounded picture of peoples lives. Its more like the cherry -picked perfection version.Often it seems like if bragging and showing off were banned, some people wouldnt post anything at all.But despite knowing this,studiessay we cant help but compare our lives to theirsAfter controlling for the possibility of reverse causality, our results suggest that (Social Network Site)users have a higher probability to compare their achievements with those of others.Andresearchshows this is the happiness equivalent of taking someone with a nut allergy and putting them on an all-cashew dietAccording to Burke, passive consumption of Facebook also correlates to a marginal increase in depression. If two women each talk to their friends the same amount of time, but one of them spends more time reading about friends on Facebook as well, the one reading tends to grow slightly more depressed, Burke saysAgain and again the happiness research shows comparisons to lives that seem better than yours, well,thats some bad juju, hombre.AsMontesquieuonce saidIf one only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are.As Swarthmore professorBarry Schwartzwrites in his excellent book,The Paradox of Choice Why More Is LessStop paying so much attention to how others around you are doing is easy advice to give, but hard to follow, because the evidence of how others are doing is pervasive, because most of us seem to care a great deal about status, and finally, because access to some of the most important things in life (for example, the best colleges, the best jobs, the best houses in the best neighborhoods) is granted only to those who do better than their peers. Nonetheless, social comparison seems sufficiently destructive to our sense of well-being that it is worthwhile to remind ourselves to do it less.So youre wondering if your life measures up and you turn to everyone elses deliberately sculpted illusion of lifestyle pe rfection This is the happiness equivalent of readingyour bank statement after looking atthe Forbes 400 list.As Erica Jong once saidJealousy is all the fun you think they had.Even if we logically know Facebookisnt an accurate depiction of peoples lives, well, confronting your seeming inadequacy 24/7 against an unachievable false realitycan hammer your already vulnerable self-esteem.You just cant compete with their highly-edited topiary of lifestyle awesomeness - especially when youre feeling a little down or anxious to begin with.So whats the most common response? To post something. As if to sayLook at me Im cool, tooBut thisonly strengthens the cycle. As internet maven and co-founder of Flickr, Caterina Fake,once saidSocial software is both the creator and the cure of FOMO.Its cyclical.And the research agrees. People with FOMO have ambivalent feelings toward Facebook. It brings them up and slams them back downTo evaluate our prediction that FoMO would be associated with high levels of ambivalent emotions when using Facebook use we regressed positive affect, b=.31, p.001, and negative affect, b = .40, p .001, on FoMO scores. This pattern of relations indicated those high in FoMO were more likely to experienced mixed feelings when using social media.A roller coaster of emotion. Just like the highs and lows of addiction, eh?But posting to alleviate your discomfortalso has an important secondary effect by presenting your carefully edited versionof life awesomeness, you just made anyone who sees it feel worse.Youre spreading the virus.Good for Facebook. Good for Haagen Dazs sales. Bad for happiness.(To learn what Harvard research says will make you happier and more successful, clickhere.)So this is how FOMO comes about and why its so awful. But how do we break the cycle?The Problem isattentionLooking at social media for happiness is a bad idea. You wont find it out there. Sounds cliche, but theresearchsays you need to look insideThe problem with FOMO is the indiv iduals it impacts are looking outward instead of inward, McLaughlin said. When youre so tuned in to the other, or the better (in your mind), you lose your authentic sense of self. This constant fear of missing out means you are not participating as a real person in your own world.Facebook isnt real life.Its obviously not life. And itscertainlynot real. Only real life is real life. But youre comparing yourself tofake life. (Someone cue the music from The Matrix, please.)And the key to happiness really comes down to one wordAttention.We all have bad things we could think about. But they dont bother us when we pay them no mind.Look on the bright side is a cliche, but its also scientifically valid.Paul Dolan teaches at the London School of Economics and was a visiting scholar at Princeton where he worked with Nobel-Prize winner Daniel Kahneman.He explains the importance of attention in his book,Happiness by Design Change What You Do, Not How You ThinkYour happiness is determined by how you allocate your attention. What you attend to drives your behavior and it determines your happiness. Attention is the glue that holds your life together The scarcity of attentional resources means that you must consider how you can make and facilitate better decisions about what to pay attention to and in what ways. If you are not as happy as you could be, then you must be misallocating your attention So changing behavior and enhancing happiness is as much about withdrawing attention from the negative as it is about attending to the positive.But when youre caught in the loop of FOMO you tune out the real world and tune in to the fake one - Facebook.And thats what the research shows people with FOMO stop paying attention to life and turn to social media for their happiness cure.Students withFOMO pay less attention in school and are even more likely to check their phone when theyre drivingThis analysis showed that students high in FoMO were more liable to use Facebook during univer sity lecturesYoung adults who were high in fear of missing out paid greater attention to emails, text messages, and their mobile phones when driving compared to those lower on FoMO.(To learn more about how to focus your attention and be happy, clickhere.)Buthow do you focus your attention so that you appreciate the real world and dont turn to Facebook (which is only going to make you feel worse)? What can you pay attention to when life is, frankly, kinda sad or boring?Its deceptively simple, reallyTry gratitudeSounds sappy, I know. But try a simple experimentLook around. What good things mightyou be taking for granted? Home? Family? Friends?Now take a couple seconds to imagine thosewere taken away from you. How would you feel? Bad things happen to us randomly, right? So to some degree, you areluckyto have what you do.Does this exercise sound silly?Researchshows it works. Mentally subtracting cherished moments from your life makes you appreciate them more, makes you grateful and make s you happier.In fact,gratitudeis arguably the king of happiness. Whats the research say? Cant be more clearthan thisthe more a person is inclined to gratitude, the less likely he or she is to be depressed, anxious, lonely, envious, or neurotic.And feeling gratitude doesnt just make you happier. Its correlated with anobjectively better lifewe found thatgratitude, controlling for materialism, uniquely predicts all outcomes considered higher grade point average, life satisfaction, social integration, and absorption, as well as lower envy and depression.The inevitable comparisons to the fake lives on Facebook makes you feel you haveless. Contemplating what you are lucky to already possess makes you feel you havemore.Somaybe its time to look atthe good things you take for grantedin life rather than your Facebook wall. Turn notifications off. As the author of the FOMO studysaidFor people who feel very secure in their relationships, their relationships are important to them, but they dont feel compelled to always be connected, Przybylski said. Social media may not create the tendency, he said, but it likely exacerbates it by making sharing so easy. Sometimes, he said, its good to insulate yourself from the world of possibilities.(To learn more about how you can use gratitude to make yourself happy all the time, clickhere.)Alright, lets round up what weve learned about FOMO and find out the best way to make sure you keep feeling good when you hear the siren song of social mediaSum upHeres where FOMO comes from and how to beat itFOMO starts with sadness.For the best way to feel better and stop the problem before it starts, clickhere.Social media makes it worse, not better.Facebook isnt evil - but relying on it for happiness is.Happiness is about attention.Focus on the good and you will feel good.Gratitude is essential.Imagine losing thethings youre lucky to have and you willappreciate them.Social media isnt the devil. But were wired to compare ourselves to others and you know where that leads on a medium where everyone is cutting cornersto look their best.And Facebookcanhelp you be happy. But dont scroll and compare.Use it toplan face-to-face get togethers.University of Chicago professorJohn Cacioppo, the leading researcher on loneliness, says doing that canmake your life betterFacebook is merely a tool, he says, and like any tool, its effectiveness will depend on its user. If you use Facebook to increase face-to-face contact, he says, it increases social capital. So if social media lets you organize a game of football among your friends, thats healthy. If you turn to social media instead of playing football, however, thats unhealthy.And when youre with friends,put that phone away. Seeing friends and family regularly is the happiness equivalent of an extra$97,265 a year. Whatever you want to check on social mediaaint worth a hundred grand, bubba.Forget the fake perfect lives of Facebook that lead to FOMO. Instead, try JOMO the joy of missing out on all those illusions.When you spend all that time staring in envy at the oh-so-cool pictures of cleverly crafted bliss on Facebook, keepone thingin mindIts your life youre missing out on.Join over 260,000 readers.Get a free weekly update via emailhere.Related postsHow To Get People To Like You 7 Ways From An FBI Behavior ExpertNew Neuroscience Reveals 4 Rituals That Will Make You HappyNew Harvard Research Reveals A Fun Way To Be More SuccessfulThis article originally appeared at Barking Up the Wrong Tree.