FOMO Transcript

Rhea: FOMO—Fear of Missing Out—that’s what it stands for.

Liz: Yes. I didn’t know that. I hadn’t even heard the term FOMO.

Rhea: I mean, I’m the Queen of FOMO. I was, sorry . . . I was the Queen of FOMO, trying to plan twenty things in one night. Any invitation I was given, I’d say yes and then figure out later how to make it all work. 

Liz: Is that why you’re late for everything? 

Rhea: Late for everything? I think it’s more it takes me a lot longer to do my hair than I think it does. 

Liz: It’s funny because it’s not a new thing. I just think that it’s a cool acronym that we get to play with. 

Rhea: It’s fear that you’d gone along the wrong path, comparing yourself to someone else and thinking that they have got it better.

Liz: FOMO I think is an extension of that, but it seems to have plagued the younger generations more than previous generations, because I think there is always a sense that I’m doing what I am supposed to be doing. I’m a rules follower. I went to school or I didn’t. I got this job, I got this house, I got this family. I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing and then I die. 

Rhea: My generation I’d say it started and definitely the generation below me, we’ve chucked most rules out the window and so all of a sudden, from one choice of life path, we had infinite. As a woman, I don’t have to marry someone of the same gender, race, religion, financial status, country. There’s no barrier for me but obviously with less rules breeds maybe too much choice. 

Liz: I don’t think there’s such a thing as ‘too much’ choice. It’s just about being unclear about who we are and allowing those myriad choices to influence us, to get lost in all those choices. 

Rhea: In the absence of rules, we have tried to create rules and the rules we have tried to create are basically just watching other people and thinking they are happier than us 

Liz: Precisely

Rhea: So we should just do it like them instead. 

Liz: We need instruction manuals. We are used to that. We are used to commandments. We are used to being told this is how you live your life, and when we’re told that well, you don’t have to live that way, well how else can I live? That person seems to be having a great time. Maybe that’s what I could be doing. But I remember for me, FOMO was bred from my internalized shame, because I didn’t end up living the life that I thought I was supposed to or I was expected to. I internalized my family’s disappointment and it was very difficult. For a long time, I didn’t really feel fully satisfied in my life because I had that nagging feeling. This isn’t how I was supposed to live my life. 

Rhea: That wake-up moment happened much earlier for me in careers. Relationships were still very hit and miss, but career—I did what you was supposed to do in a very prescriptive way. The right schools, the right degrees. I went to law school. First day at a law firm, I had an anxiety attack to rival all anxiety attacks. I felt so trapped in the box of how I should be living my life and what I should be doing with my career, and I knew it wasn’t what I was meant to do. I just knew it.

Liz: To your core 

Rhea: To my core. It wasn’t where I was meant to be, but the little voices which weren’t just the little voices in my head but they were being echoed around me by my nearest and dearest—you just don’t want to get a job, you don’t know what it’s like to be responsible, you just don’t want to wake up early in the morning—all those things to minimize my experience, which was this is not right for me.

Liz: And you were abandoning yourself in the process of denying yourself. 

Rhea: Exactly, and that split gave me such big anxiety that lasted months, that in the end, I gave up drinking for twelve years. Stopped all caffeine. I didn’t have a choice but to leave. I lasted seven months. I did what I said I would do and then I went back and did my Masters and specialized in Gender Violence, and then when I did start working where I wanted to work, none of those issues were issues anymore. I was happy to wake up in the morning. I was happy to go to work every day because I was doing what I was meant to be doing. 

Liz: You were living your purpose. 

Rhea: Exactly. At the same time as I had chosen me in my career, I didn’t choose me in my relationships and I have been playing out both of those. My career is a true reflection of who I really am, whereas my relationships have not . . . 

Liz: I put off my FOMO for a few years because I think, well I know it was too much internal issues, like I couldn’t relax and it was impacting my relationship, not so much so because I just learned to compensate. Okay, this is where I am at now so I’m just going to make the most of it and do whatever I can do, but it never really got rid of the voices. I had to depend on my husband and it wasn’t so easy for me. I can’t believe I’m living in Spain and I can’t get a job. What am I going to do with the rest of my life? I just wasted and squandered my very expensive elite education. It wasn’t necessarily coming from my parents. It was coming from my brothers ‘well, you would know what that was like if you had your own income.’ It did take me time. Took quite a bit of time.

Rhea: Did you think that the FOMO part was not being able to accept that this was how your life was going to be?

 Liz: Yeah

Rhea: And thinking I should be like what everyone else is telling me, because I am doing something unconventional, I’m wrong.

Liz: Yeah, and I just couldn’t allow it without feeling like I was surrendering, sacrificing myself and choosing a different path for myself.

Rhea: But you having those experiences with structure, me having these experiences with structure and breaking out of them allowed the generation below us to not see the structure in the same way, and that is definitely echoed in our business. Well, nowadays the way what you work and how you work and where you work is all up to you.

Liz: Part of the reflection of who you are, because we are gravitating towards the things that we think express our values, or represent our philosophy.

Rhea: And there’s no judgement anymore. I want to go work in finance, well done you! I want to go do a start-up that helps clean water in Africa, well done you too! I kind of feel I wouldn’t have had my breakdown if I had known that was an option and it didn’t exist as an option when I did it, and I had to really fight through to do it. 

Liz: As you pointed out, when you are not living your purpose, is when the FOMO is the biggest.

Rhea: And I keep thinking to myself, what happens if I had ignored that? What happens if I had just stayed in that law firm?

Liz: Or if I had stayed in New York and got some job?

Rhea:  Wouldn’t that be the biggest missing out?

Liz: Oh absolutely, because I would have wondered what would have happened if I had gone if I had gone to Spain. Would I be happier? Probably. I would have been free from those constructs.

Rhea: Actually maybe allowing these constructs to define us is the biggest missing out 

Liz: Absolutely

Rhea: And that should be what the real FOMO is, to not be true to yourself because that’s where all the potential comes from.

Liz: Precisely, because if you are just living with so much FOMO, if you are just constantly scrolling through your Instagram or even your dating apps and you are seeing all the choices, and so you think well, that’s all for me but it’s not. When you are connected to your purpose, you end up knowing what you want and you . . .

Rhea: You end up connected to yourself

Liz: Yes, and your choices become a bit more manageable

Rhea: Being able to being in touch with yourself then as well as you stop comparing yourself to others, then you stop judging others too because you . . .

Liz: You don’t judge yourself. You are not comparing yourself to others

Rhea: Because you are like, Bolivia is not for me but it could very well be for you.

Liz: Oh yes.

Rhea: So that’s also different, because now you are allowing love in both ways. You’re loving yourself and you are loving them.

Liz: Precisely. You’re just saying good for you. 

Rhea: It’s just embracing that we are all different

Liz: And I don’t need to live like you and you do not need to live like me.

Rhea: And everyone just feels a bit more secure and a bit more allowed to be themselves. I mean, I’m curious. How did you accept that you were different then? That your life was going to be unconventional?

Liz: I wish somebody had just said that to me when I was younger and then I would have been okay with it. I was always used to being the outlier. I think as you and I discussed before, we are constantly being sent the message that we need to belong.

 Rhea: We can’t be different.

 Liz: No

 Rhea: Well also because it makes us a lot harder to sell to if we are all different

Liz: Precisely, and I think that’s a really important point, which is just how much capitalism underpins FOMO, because when you really consider how businesses use social media, use FOMO, which is all based on consumerism. 

Rhea: It’s simple maths, isn’t it? What makes us all happy is different. Our experience of happiness is different, therefore the same things won’t bring us the same amount of happiness. Yet we are being told that it will, because actually the beauty in each of us is our uniqueness.

Liz: Absolutely. It’s not in trying to have the same body as someone else. It’s not in trying to have the same car, house, look as anyone else.

Rhea: You can’t learn anything new if everyone is the same, and you can’t see things from a different perspective if everyone’s the same. I mean, from my experience was definitely denying my “differentness” and trying to make myself the same as everyone else made me unhappy, and to be honest, probably made me just as unhappy as everyone else, which is the irony of it all.

Liz: Exactly. Yes. 

Rhea: So in a way, if you want to be the same as everyone else, you can be but they are all unhappy too. 

Liz: Yes, which is why they are peddling whatever they are peddling.

Rhea: Everyone’s unhappy from what I’ve learnt from you, because they are locked in their own shame of wanting something different

Liz: Or not being able to accept their differences, or that they were enough to begin with because I think the biggest thing about FOMO is the message, “I am not enough.”

Rhea: I need to be different in order to be loved, accepted, celebrated, make money, all the other things

Liz: Admired, successful. Absolutely.

Rhea: And actually the irony .  . . my biggest successes career-wise have always come from my differences, and in breaking those rules. There is a better way of doing this, or we need to do this differently, and if you look at anything, the people around us who we admire are the ones who are doing things differently.

 Liz: You’re talking about being an originator.

 Rhea: That, and just being true to yourself. If this is how I wanted to do it, this is how I am going to fucking do it. And actually when our biggest fear is that we are going to be ostracized for being ourselves . . .

Liz: Oh yes, because we are always taught to be part of a collective

Rhea: But sometimes when you step out of that, actually the collective isn’t working. It’s dysfunctional.

Liz: It is

Rhea: And in this way, I am going to do something different. Like anything else, you are walking through the fear of being shamed and sometimes coming out in the end may not necessarily being celebrated but knowing that you’ve changed something and I think that is just as important, because as much as we are all different—I know you said this in the first  podcast  and I definitely see this now—we all have the same core issues to an extent and usually a lot of the same beliefs, if you really pin it down to our cores, and we’re all being pushed away from those by being told we have to conform to something that isn’t like us. We have to take ownership of who we are, our lives, our purpose and what we want to do, and then in doing that, in embracing our uniqueness, that is the choice we make to fulfill our destiny to be happy. It’s all well and good saying all of that, but what do we do? How do we do it?

Liz: Well, first you release the shame. That’s probably one of the greatest challenges that people face because it’s been a tool to keep us in control. Parents still use it with their kids. I mean, I think every generation is battling that, and I think we need to become much more aware of all the vocabulary and the attitudes we carry that have to do with shame. The criticisms—why is somebody doing it that way? Even if it doesn’t make sense, perhaps they are introducing some new concept that we just don’t yet understand. There’s been this drive to break people down to get them to conform. I remember sort of sitting at dinner, hearing people my age, my generation, the Gen Xers who would talk about how they paid their dues. There is still a lot of that. Young people need to pay their dues. They think they are owed success, and there was always a complaint that these younger generations are so entitled.

Rhea: What’s interesting is you’re right. We are criticising everyone for trying to do everything differently, and it becomes a perpetuating cycle of ‘we want to be different but we don’t feel we can be so we are going to criticize people who are, and we are going to judge them for doing it differently’. And if you break your own cycle, you will be like, I’m going to allow myself to be different. You don’t judge anyone else who is being different either, and that’s how we also release the shame as a society, because by embracing ourselves, we are allowing other people to have the space to embrace themselves too. 

Liz: Exactly.

Rhea: And yes obviously, like everything else it starts on a personal basis, so if your life is in a place that makes you happy, but the only thing that’s making you unhappy is when you compare yourself to other people, stop doing that little bit and then you are left with the life that makes you happy bit.

Liz: It’s true, and if happiness eludes you because it does elude some people, it’s about your satisfaction. We are constantly being sent a message that we should be comparing, that comparison stares us all in the face all the time. We are hyper-aware of what other people are doing around us

Rhea: And the only thing we have in common actually is that as we say in every episode it feels, we all want to love and be loved and how that manifests is always going to be unique in ourselves, but because we all want that, it feels like other people have it, we are trying to copy them to get it too. 

Liz: Very much

Rhea: When in fact, the love that they are showing on social media often in dinner parties, often to other people is an illusion anyway, so we are all feeding into that illusion of love and trying to recreate it in that same way when actually, there are no guarantees that that’s what people are actually experiencing. So we think that if I do what they are doing, I look like what they look like, I live the way they live, I will also get love and be loved.

Liz: Yes

Rhea: But the irony is we know that that’s all an illusion. People don’t sit there and tell other people, I am miserable actually. Everyone is going to pretend to be happy, and that they are “in love”. So we are following a recipe where we have no certainty of the cake coming out of the oven the way it was going to look like. For all we know, they put the ingredients into a cake, they’ve put it in the oven and then taken a picture of a store-bought one and said, this is what I just made. We are making the same cake as them and wondering why it doesn’t look like the one from Marks & Spencer, so comparing ourselves to other people, unless they are being totally honest and they have exactly the same wants, desires, feelings, and motivations as we do, we’re not going to get our desired results anyway.

Liz: No, and you know that most of the time, if somebody is posting a particular experience, they’re doing it because they are not really present to it.

Rhea: So the only way to have that happiness is to start listening to yourself. When you are not able to give yourself the validation you know if you are doing a good job, you look for other people to give it to you instead.

Liz: But if I don’t get enough likes or comments on this post, then it reinforces all the insecurities and doubts I have about my life, and that’s why there is often that ‘See? As I post this, you want this.’ And the more I know you want something . . . 

Rhea: The more pressure it is to me. I’m sure we have all had an experience in our lives where, from the outside, people looking in will have thought, ‘oh she should be really happy’ but we know that we weren’t. So living for what other people think of you is not a guaranteed way of happiness. I don’t judge the ones who follow the formula and it works for them. 

Liz: But does it really work for them?

Rhea: Might do. But for the ones that don’t, I think this episode is really about giving you the courage to just ask what will maybe make me happy and should I give it a try? And know that if it doesn’t make me happy, it’s okay. I’ll just try something else instead. 

Liz: I will take that a step further and say, can you ask yourself why am I so afraid of living my purpose? Why am I so afraid of committing myself to a path and being completely okay with that? For me, the moment people can really own their purpose and know what they are here for, the rest of it just becomes noise to them.

Rhea: The minute that people know who they really are, then they can appreciate who others really are

Liz: And they can detach from what others are doing, those experiences. 

Rhea: And then no more FOMO, because we are not all meant to have the same face or the same body, or the same likes or dislikes. I’m single. I should be doing XYZ or I’m in a relationship, I should be doing XYZ.

Liz: Or the other person is in a relationship, I want to be in a relationship so I’m going to do that.

Rhea: Yes, I’m really good at that one. This is their story of how they met, so if you recreate that story, I’ll also meet the right person, but then in partnership, each person is unique and each partnership is unique and each relationship is unique

Liz: So you are not going to . . .

Rhea: So you are not going to recreate anything.

Liz: No. You’re not going to end up with their person because you did something that that person did.

Rhea: Well, that’s what I always say. Do I want to end up with my soul mate or someone else’s? I guess the only way of ending up with my own is being me first 

Liz: Because it’s then built on artifice, and it goes back to like attracts like. If you are unable or unwilling to accept yourself as you are, then you will most likely to attract somebody who is equally insecure and unable to find or respect their path or are really clear, because they are not living according to their own values. They are living for other peoples’ opinions. When people can really confront what it is that is sourcing FOMO, the insecurities that feed the shame that’s also underpinned by our very capitalist society that creates the sort of vicious cycle, I think the more we see it, the more we realize that’s not who I am. And I do find with younger generations, they are much better about declaring who they are.

Rhea: They are much better at declaring who they are, because to conform you have to be different

Liz: Oh, touché!

Rhea: Which is why I am saying the formula might not work for you and that’s okay too.

Liz: Younger generations are so much more clued in to their purpose. That’s what I see, and they are much more fearless and so my hope is that for us as the older generations, the ones blazing this path for them, we can at least deal with our own shit. What sources our FOMO, and our shame so we are not ruining it for them. I find thought that we are still battling. I think FOMO is one of those things that is probably plaguing us as a society

Rhea: Comparing ourselves to others

Liz: Constantly. I really think that that is influencing so many of our choices and decisions right now.

Rhea: And so we project it. So for example how in order to be a good mother, you have to do all the things that all the people on Instagram are also doing.

Liz: Oh gosh yes!

Rhea: We are projecting that onto the kids. We’re comparing them to other kids

Liz: If we step out and realize how locked not only we are, but our inability to detach from these perceived needs and wants. That’s all they are because they are not really what are in line with our hearts’ desires because we all don’t need new bathrooms, but when we really start to deal with the holes in ourselves that are telling us, okay this is what we need because oh my gosh, I feel so insecure about my body or my relationship, or where I’m at or my job or my financial situation, then we are sending the message to younger generations you can do this differently. You will find greater joy in having this in your life if you carve out your own path, as opposed to following . . .

Rhea: Instead of thinking I need that new pair of jeans to make me happy, these jeans won’t fix it, because only I can

Liz: They never do

Rhea: Yeah. Only I can fix these things

Liz: Precisely

Rhea: Only I can fill the holes. Only I can make me feel like I’m not missing out because I fill my own gaps. 

Liz: And you complete yourself. 

Rhea: You just have to listen to what makes you happy

Liz: And that’s discernment

Rhea: Knowing the difference.

Liz: Yes.