The Joy of Missing Out

Hi, welcome back to your Daily Mindfulness. In today's session, we're going to talk about the opposite of FOMO. So if you haven't heard the word FOMO, the definition of this, or it's an acronym, it stands for fear of missing out. The fear of missing out. And even if you haven't heard that expression, I'm sure you've experienced the experience of FOMO.

Especially these days where we're connected to our smartphones, technology. So many things going on around the world. We see pictures of people doing things. We see people at parties that we might not be at too. We see all the things our friends are doing.

And it, it can create this real fear of am I missing out on something, which sometimes can inspire us to do a little bit more or make sure we're involved in something that we might otherwise not have been aware of. But a lot of times, at least I know for me, it just, it creates this obsessive, neurotic feeling of am I doing enough? Am I experiencing enough? There's so much out there and I don't feel like I can do it all. And that I've found to be a very unpleasant experience. So I want to contrast that with another word that I came across recently that I think is the opposite of FOMO. And this is called JOMO.

Another four, four word acronym. It's the joy of missing out, rather than the fear of missing out. The joy of missing out. And the definition of this is when you embrace what's in front of you, trusting that this is where you're supposed to be right now, and feeling content with disconnecting as a form of self-care. Hmm.

So notice how that one lands for you. For me, I, I, I think mindfulness practice and the intention to be present in our life is one of the key things that can lead to, to JOMO. We recognize that, yeah, there are so many things that I could be doing and in any given moment, right. I could be here. I could be there.

I could be traveling. I could be at this job. If I'm at a restaurant, I can have this item or that item. But when we really tune into what's here right now and train ourselves to appreciate the subtleties of what's here and even find the joy and the pleasure of what's here. Then we're not activating that FOMO mentality.

We're not caught in the fear of what could be and instead we're training ourselves to develop a contentment with what is here right now. And I really liked the last, last line of that definition of feeling content with disconnecting as a form of self care. Because a lot of times when we do finally have the opportunity to not do something, where we could just sit on the couch, lie down, maybe even watch some, some TV or do some meditation. The thing that can come up is we look at our phone and we see everything else going on and it immediately gets in the way or can get in the way of us feeling okay with letting go. And so my encouragement to you is, is when you feel those moments of FOMO, when that fear does start to arise, what would it look like to reorient yourself to the joy of missing out? What is the joy of what's in front of you right now, what you're experiencing? Notice the fear response, the thoughts, just watch them.

They're just clouds passing through the sky. And drop into what's here right now that you could appreciate. And what, what is nice about not being caught up in all of these other things, but really giving yourself permission to be where you are? That's an ongoing training. I get that it's difficult when there is a world saying so many different things that you should be doing. And so in many ways, this is a massive act of defiance against the system, but it's something that can be trained and we're doing it here with this, with mindfulness and meditation.

So thanks for your practice and let's continue to explore it by settling in for our meditation today.