5 Ways FOMO Will Literally Ruin Your Life (If You Let It)

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FOMO is something we can let destroy us if we let it. There are so many ways to see things we aren’t participating in through social media. We follow our friends to keep tabs on their lives and adventures. We follow strangers we’ve never meet because they have an awesome collection of Instagram pictures that instantly make us want to stalk their lives from a safe distance behind our iPhone screens. We add celebs on Snapchat to endlessly click through their stories to see what their everyday lives are like.

The thing with social media is that people only should us what they want us to see. They don’t show us the heartbreaks they are going through, they don’t show us the everyday struggles they are tackling.

You don’t see the traveler photographer posting pictures of how they’re barely getting by picking up random jobs. Or all the hard work they are doing to be able to maintain that life style. You only see their glamorous pictures of great beaches and beautiful cities because that is what is attractive to us; the reward, not the hustle.

We want everything instant. We want instant results; we don’t want to do the work. We don’t want to climb the mountain; we only want the picture on top because that is what is Instagram worthy.

FOMO is real, but it is also something we can stop letting take over our lives.

1. FOMO will make you feel like you’re not doing enough.

FOMO has a nasty way to make us feel like were constantly missing out on all the fun things in life. It makes us feel like everyone is living such a better life than us but 99 percent of the time people only put things they want you to see on social media. (The other one percent comes from accidental nudes on snapstories.)

2. It will make you feel bummed out.

Whether it is that Instagram picture you scroll past that you instantly feel a stab in the back because you didn’t get invited. Or even if you did get invited and couldn’t go it makes you see all the fun you’re missing out on. Even if their day or night didn’t turn out to be as great as planned you still feel sad/upset/frustrated/left out because you weren’t there to experience everything that happened.

3. It will distract you from what you should be doing.

If you did the right thing and chose to stay in on a weekend to study or get something finished you’ve been putting off until the last minute you can’t help but be thinking of what your friends are doing. You are constantly checking your phone, trying to tell yourself you made the right decision to stay in and get work done (you did) but it’s hard to miss out on things.

4. It makes you feel like you don’t fit in.

You think of all the stories your friends will tell and all the inside jokes you wont understand because you didn’t go out with them and that is tearing you apart. You ask your best friend how fun things were and she tries to dull it down to make you feel like you didn’t miss out while everyone else is yelling about how great of a time they had.

5. It makes you do things you don’t really want to be doing.

We often find ourselves doing things for the sole reason that we won’t miss out. Even if it’s not something we really want to be at or doing, we still go because being there and unhappy is better than being home and wondering.

Of all the things FOMO does and makes us feel, we need to stop letting it ruin our lives. Put down your phone, stop obsessing over what other people are doing and start living for what will make you happy.

If I had to guess I would say you’ve done thing just because you felt obligated, just because all your friends were, just because you didn’t want to miss out and I’d also guess half of those times you would have rather been at home.

Stop watching the snapstories you know will make you upset, get off of Twitter for the day and don’t scroll through Instagram double tapping everything for once. Stop pondering what you life would be like if you could do this or that. The only thing you should be concerned with is yourself and what makes you happy.

FOMO is real, but you don’t have to let it consume you because you will only start feeling badly about all the things you’re not part of and sooner or later you won’t even remember that one night you didn’t go out because everything starts to blend together.