YOLO, FOMO, JOMO, & LOL

Almost daily, I see someone wearing a t-shirt or I see a car with a bumper sticker that says, YOLO (You Only Live Once), FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), JOMO (Joy Of Missing Out), or LOL (Laugh Out Loud). While these are catchy, are they true?

Many people, including me, feel we live more than once. What if we reincarnate and live more than one life? Then, YOLO is not true for scores of us This phrase is both misleading and encourages casually excusing harmful decisions/actions.

What about FOMO? What’s wrong with that? Consider that one of the aspects of modern life that causes anxiety in so many people is the ‘Fear Of Missing Out.’ Author, Timo Kiander, identified five symptoms of FOMO that often lead to ineffective living: “Procrastinating - being unfocused and stressed, losing out on money, self-hatred, feeling overwhelmed, and information overload… It’s obvious that when the temptation to say ‘yes’ to a request is too big, you accept yet another task or project.

In practice, you are spreading yourself too thin. Not only are you stressed out by too many activities in your life, but it increases the likelihood of procrastination. This is because you cannot keep up with your schedule and you start finding excuses for not doing something you promised. It’s an ineffective habitual cycle. FOMO creates fear inside of us. Specifically, it’s fear of exclusion. It’s a base-level fear because it leads us to think if we miss out on this, we’re going to be excluded from future events with those individuals. It’s very convincing because we are social creatures and the thought that we would be pushed away from our own social circle because we missed one event is terrifying” (qtd. in https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2527715/#:~:text=Humans%20are%20inherently%20social.,organisms%20lacking%20a%20nervous%20system).

How does FOMO encourage people to lose out on money? In the Psyche Central article, “Deconstructing the Fear of Rejection: What Are We Really Afraid Of?”, The fear of rejection is one of our deepest human fears. Biologically wired with a longing to belong, we fear being seen in a critical way. So, when you have a fear of missing out, you see that “…[a] next shiny object is probably going to make you ‘rich and famous overnight,’ you don’t want to miss out. If you do, others are going to be rich and famous, not you. Unfortunately, in many situations like these, nothing groundbreaking happens at all (no fame, no money, just hard work). It is yet another product launch, which is going to waste your money if FOMO gets a hold of you” (qtd. in https://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/what-is-fomo-and-how-to-beat-it.html#1-procrastinating-being-unfocused-and-stressed).

Embracing the FOMO may indicate self-hatred: “Missing out on something can lead to the impression that we’re uninteresting, boring, or just plain. Because we instinctively care what others think about us, we still attend events, even if we don’t want to be there. In essence, we use those instincts as genuine information to bully ourselves into agreeing to anything. It makes us feel anxious and depressed, which may even distract us from being in the moment – the event you had said yes to” (https://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/what-is-fomo-and-how-to-beat-it.html#1-procrastinating-being-unfocused-and-stressed).

Feeling overwhelmed and information overloaded are also symptoms of FOMO. When we do not say ‘no’ to some things because we are afraid we might miss something and that fear increases our busyness. When we say ‘yes’ to everything, we have overcommitted; we lack boundaries, and we are asking for extreme stress. Who needs that? None of us! When we hold to FOMO, our brains are switched on most of the time: TV, Internet, texting, social media. In a paper presented at the Conference on Perspectives in Business Informatics, “Information Overload…," presenters Mellnat, Kreuzkam, and Stamer shared, “Information is essential in our society and for organizations. But the flood of information affects enterprises as well as individuals also in a negative way” (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265906917_Information_Overload_A_Systematic_Literature_Review). Kiander continued, "Pair that up with people posting updates about their lives or what they’re doing, it can be easy to blend one person’s life with another’s” (https://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/what-is-fomo-and-how-to-beat-it.html#1-procrastinating-being-unfocused-and-stressed).

An approach to dispose of the philosophy of FOMO is to shift into JOMO, the ‘Joy Of Missing Out.’ Eric Barker wrote the article, “This is the Best Way to Overcome the Fear of Missing Out," published in Time Magazine. In his article, Mr. Barker suggests that more is less and less is more. He suggests that FOMO is rooted in unhappiness. In her article, “JOMO: The Joy Of Missing Out…JOMO is the emotionally intelligent antidote to FOMO," Dr. Kristen Fuller suggests the results of trading FOMO for JOMO include the following: “[You will] be intentional with your time. [You will] give yourself permission to live in the present. [You may] embrace tech-free time [which will then provide the space for you to focus on your goals and priority]. [You may] experience real life (not social media life). [You will] slow down. Take time to think before you speak, embrace the quiet, use time driving in traffic or waiting in lines to sit with your thoughts or listen to a book. Slowing down can increase our creativity, which we can harvest into other productive avenues and projects in our life” (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/happiness-is-state-mind/201807/jomo-the-joy-missing-out).

LOL (Laugh Out Loud) is the grandma of these phrases; likely everyone reading this essay is LOLing at me for defining a common acronym. I blissfully encourage everyone to LOL often because when we LOL, we are enjoying the time the JOMO offers us. Who knows? Perhaps we can carry that joy into our next life because we may not YOLO.