picture this you log into social media
and you see this picture of some friends
at a party
scroll down and here's a video of a
friend cliff diving in Cancun a number
of friends are talking about garden cop
and you haven't seen it yet and now you
start feeling something called FOMO or
fear of missing out FOMO is the anxiety
we experience when we feel there's
something exciting happening elsewhere
and we're not a part of it
it's been around for a long time but
these days it's triggered mostly by
posts on social media social media gives
us instant access to the activity of our
friends that's what it's there for and
this can be a good thing but it also
makes it all too easy for us to compare
our lives to theirs this can lead us to
second-guessing our decisions and
feeling insecure in general it can even
get to the point when there's a looming
sense of FOMO even when we're not online
so how do we kick this FOMO an answer
that might quickly spring to mind is to
simply quit social media but that's not
practical for a lot of people instead of
quitting you can try limiting your time
on it or even just taking a few days off
this can give you a chance to focus on
what's important in your life
and enjoy the things that you are doing
without comparing them to others the
lives of our friends do sometimes look
pretty exciting online but let's put
some quotation marks around the word
lives there social media activity isn't
their actual life per se it's more of a
highlight reel of exciting things
they've posted to contribute to their
online identity it's easy to see these
highlights and think my life just isn't
as exciting as theirs
but what we're usually not seeing is
what's going on behind the scenes the
negative things or the boring routine of
their day-to-day lives they may post
something awesome but in the grand
scheme of things it's just a short
snippet of their day the odds are when
they're not out doing these awesome
things they probably experience just as
much FOMO as you do GCF global creating
opportunities for a better life