Even though Psychology Today wrote about the “Joy of Missing Out” back in July, I learned of the hashtag for it– #JOMO — this morning on Twitter thanks to Techno Claus @Pogue. (Hang on, this will unfold into something worthy of #grappling. ) 😎
First, tho, you have to know about #FOMO for any of this to make sense.
#FOMO = Fear of Missing Out Missing what, you might ask… anything, EVERYTHING!
I first saw a lot of #FOMO references on Twitter last year when Bitcoin (#BTC, #Cryptocurrency) was going wild. I mean WILD… as in one bitcoin was trading for nearly $20,000. Now that was a bubble! Geek that I am, I had bought a few — very few– BTC back in 2015, so I had NO #FOMO. I was literally giddy. Not so much when BTC dropped back to around $3500 a month or so ago. (I could go on and on, but this is drifting far from the JOMO concept… sigh.)
Now I see both #FOMO and #JOMO are much older than I thought. Here’s a blog post from 2015.
Let’s cut to the chase. The last thing we need heading into a new year is more fear. Most of America has been “hair-on-fire” anxious since 11.9.2016 Every day a new political crisis and more investigations will begin soon… how can we miss those? Oh, no… mo FOMO! So, now more than ever #JOMO — the Joy of Missing Out. What?
Yes, as Buddhists would say, to change a habit we need an antidote. Clinical psychologist Ben Michaelis, author of the Life blog (linked above), says;
The opposite of FOMO is capital G, Gratitude.
Gratitude? not Joy? Well, the concept is basically the same and both are a choice. Yes, they are — grapple with that. (I keep using this term because it’s the title of my forthcoming eBook #grappling.)
Finally, David Pogue (@Pogue aka Techno Claus and soon to be Smarter Living writer @NYTimes) was on @CBS this morning explaining how we can use the #JOMO concept by taking a techno break:
I’ll be sharing more posts and ideas on how to establish healthy habits and ways we can find more joy and less angst in the new year. We can do this!
