Forget FOMO and start living instead of surviving

Dhwani Vora | Apr 24, 2019, 16:04 IST
With the kind of busy lives that our generation lives, it becomes very easy to miss out on the good parts. The parts where we take a trip with our best friends. The parts where we spend some quality time with your family members. The parts where we simply take some time out for our hobbies. And this is when we get envious of the very many people on social media spending their life the way we would want to spend, doing what we would want to do and Intagramming all of it while we sit staring at those pictures wishing on it and not actually doing it. All of this, be it traveling, cooking, fitness and even career that someone else is showing off fancily over their social media becomes nothing but a kind of envy for us. And just because we get to see it all over the Internet, it makes us less happy and more envious. And maybe that's when the term the "age of envy" makes all the sense.

So many stories on people's social media feed might talk about how important mental health is, but it is actually the social media that is taking away every bit of it. It is even more addictive than cigarettes and alcohol. This in turn results in stress, anxiety, depression, isolation and low self-esteem. All of it can easily be described as the Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO).

A term that people now very freely keep throwing here and there more like a slang than an actual threat to the minds. Did you even know that half of the mental health conditions begin by the age of 14? Also, 75% of the mental health conditions are developed by the age of 24, majority of which results in depression. People ranging from the age between 18-33 are the ones who experience major FOMO because of their social media platforms.

Says a research: the ability to easily and constantly see other people’s “highlight reels” has created a sense of inadequacy and dissatisfaction in our own lives, leading to an increase in mental health disorders.

This is why it should be all the more important for you to understand how it is so necessary to get yourself out of this disorder called FOMO. You need to take back control of your life and also create some mental guardrails in order to find peace and stability through all of it.

How do you do this? For starters, step outside your comfort zone and actually go on an exploration. Get off that couch and take an adventure. Watching someone else's feed is only going to put you in a dull zone. Might as well do it all yourself while you can and not let the FOMO affect you at all. Find a balance between the time you spend for earning a living and the time you spend doing what you love. This way, you'd never have to feel envious of someone living life king size since you'd yourself be very much able to do the same.
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