Four Ways to Fight FOMO by Learning to Be Present
Do you ever catch yourself standing in the middle of the room flipping through someone’s travel photos on Instagram? I do, and often find what feels like seconds passing by becomes minutes and I then I’m losing time in a digital bubble — forgetting about why I was on my phone even to begin with.
Fun fact: technology companies and app designers create their products to draw us in like that, making the UX as addicting as slot machines in Vegas. Despite those ethical questions, we do have a choice about how we spend our time online or in the real world — and that includes how we manage our ever-passing thoughts.
The acronym FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) isn’t anything new. During feudalism, you would rather be a baron with a big house than a farmer having to wake up at 4:00 am to feed the hogs, right? That kind of envy is normal in human nature, but back then there were far less lifestyle choices and so many less opportunities to make comparisons.
Today with the advent of social media, there are an infinite amount of people and lifestyles we can compare ourselves to. Some of how that is portrayed is impacting our mental health with research finding heavy social media users are three times more likely to develop depression. Part of that uptick is how social media enables those comparisons since we can look at the highlights of other people’s lives in real time.
We can follow our yoga teacher’s voyage across Southeast Asia while sitting in our work cubicle on Instagram, or when we need to stay at home to save money, we can still watch our friends eating at one of the best restaurants in town. Before social media when we had a bad day or felt the twinge of envy, we would go home and just forget about it. Now we go home and admire other people’s lives on a screen wanting to sometimes leap out of our own skins in exchange for their good luck. It’s a gripping feeling that lingers.
Most people understand yoga through asanas, or the physical practice of a yoga class. But students of yoga philosophy are also familiar with the first two limbs of the eight limbs of yoga — a type of moral template established by a dude named Patanjali to help us go beyond the confines of our ego. The first two limbs are called the yamas and niyamas. Yamas are the universal codes of ethical behavior and niyamas are the personal observances. They are essentially moral guidelines for how we can live and build more harmonious relationships with the world, our friends, our families, and our selves.
Of the five yamas, aparigraha and is the last one and is the virtue of non-possessiveness, non-grasping, or non-greediness.
This important yama teaches us to take only what we need, keep only what serves us in the moment, and to let go when the time is right.
But it’s super hard to practice and observe in the modern Western world where we’re consistently swarmed by temptation, facing addictions, and the images of other people living “better” lives in their photos and videos.
Like the air, food, and water that nourish us, social media plays a role in making us feel part of a community as our homes, work, relationships, and routines create our values, beliefs, and images of who we are. Yet it also creates expectations which can make us disgruntled and feel captive, opting for the comfort of our attachments as opposed to our freedom. How do we move through life loving deeply and engaging fully without getting attached? Aparigraha encourages us to intimately play with the moment.
Some tips I read in Deborah Adele’s “The Yamas & Niyamas: Exploring Yoga’s Ethical Practice” to bring Aparigraha on and off the mat:
1. Pay attention to our breath. Let our inhalations and exhalations teach us about the fullness of breathing in life without the need to hold on to it.
2. Look at the physical things we own and surround ourselves with. Do they making us feel happy and light or do they hold onto us and make us feel heavy? Begin to differentiate between enjoyment and attachment.
3. Notice when we impose expectations on other people and things — the times where we unconsciously demand fulfillment and comfort from them.
4. Krishna Das has observed that the Western world had a muscle we forget is there: the letting go muscle. Instead of clinging to experiences, thoughts, emotions, habits, and beliefs, we should practice how to let some things go — letting go of the little moments can prepare us when the bigger ones come.
