HealthyGamerGG - Stop Letting FOMO Control Your Life

Episode Date: December 3, 2023

Today we're going to talk about how to become immune to FOMO. In this episode, we breakdown the problem with FOMO and how to find the real antidote. Check out HG coaching: https://bit.ly/47dF7rF Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by CarMax. Want to buy a car the easy way? Start at CarMax. Want to browse with confidence? Get pre-qualified with no impact on your credit score and shop within your budget. From luxury to family rides, CarMax has options for almost every price range, including over 25,000 cars under $25,000.

Want to get started? Head to CarMax.com for details and get pre-qualified today. Want to drive? CarMax. Yay to Bruce the streaming king With quantum fiber in the net He's gonna binge He wants more

He's got to have more More bedtime to drive More podcasts in the shower Quantum fiber Wi-Fi has the power More more more fast internet speeds Got the geeks to go big Bring him the game Right now

And his royal wig More sports don't stop His quantum fire is on top Lady Switch today at quantumfiber dot com Limited availability, service, and speed and select locations only. Today, we're going to talk about how to become immune to FOMO. The basic problem with FOMO is that you are chasing the lives of other people.

Instead of figuring out what you want to do in life, what we're doing is seeing other people do cool things, and then you're chasing after them hoping to get a fraction of their joy. And today, we're going to teach you how to switch it around. We're going to teach you how to be the inspiring person that sort of evokes FOMO in other people because you're out there living. your life. Hey y'all, I want to take a moment to talk about HG groups. Our group coaching experience here at Healthy Gamer is designed to help people with the problems of the digital age. Problems like social isolation, a lack of purpose, or simply feeling overwhelmed. Groups are a place that will help you learn the skills that are necessary for success that aren't really taught

anywhere else. Skills like how to be an effective listener and communicate effectively. Skills like how to be vulnerable so that you can allow yourself to authentically connect with another human being. Skills like cultivating self-awareness so you understand where your motivation comes from, but also where self-sabotaging behavior comes from. And so if y'all are interested in learning more about groups and interested in learning a little bit about how you can develop competence and confidence to move forward in life, check out the link in the description below. And this is something that was really hard for me to tackle as a psychiatrist. I sort of noticed that people would come to me more and more with FOMO, and that the traditional methods of psychotherapy

didn't seem to be working. We talk about, okay, like, what's your underlying insecurity and tell me about your parents and all this kind of stuff? And that despite doing all that stuff, it just didn't seem to work. And that's when I sort of realized that psychotherapy is built on our cerebral courtesies. It's built on the higher order functions of our brain. It's kind of like we talk about feelings and emotions and desires and values and even the subconscious which manifests in dreams. But it's all part of our like human or cortical mind, the most evolved parts of our mind. And the problem is that phomo, and especially technology, activates the deeper parts of our mind. So if you sort of look at something like doom scrolling, right, your cerebral cortices, your human parts of the brain

are kind of saying like, hey, like we should stop doing this. Like put down the phone, go do something productive. You're going to regret this tomorrow. And your brain is kind of screaming at you. Don't do this. Don't do this. Don't do this. But the problem is that technology accesses these weird, deeper, reptilian parts of our brain? Doomscroll. Dopamine. Fun. I don't feel good. Cats.

Ha, ha, ha. Right? So this is how technology works. And it turns out that FOMO actually accesses two really, really primitive circuits in the brain that are also present with a lot of animals. The first is the reason why two-year-olds are brats. And what do I mean by this? If you all have ever seen a two-year-old, who's playing with other two-year-olds?

It's like I was at a birthday party recent. where there were two-year-olds who were eating cupcakes, okay? So, like, one two-year-old has a cupcake and starts eating a cupcake. Cupcake's delicious. Another two-year-old comes along and says, I want that cupcake. And you're like, no, no, these are all like, there's like 30 cupcakes. They're all the same. Here's your cupcake.

And the two-year-old's like, no, I want that one. I want that one. I want the one that other people have. And when people get developmentally stunted, we see really sorted stuff, and I've seen this in my private practice, and it's really nasty. It's like two sisters and one sister wants everything that the other sister has. Right? So if one person wins a trophy in Taekwondo, the other one starts Taekwondo. And in the worst cases, this even involves things like trying to seduce your sister's husband because you want what they have.

So this is a really primitive circuit in the brain. And you may have sort of seen this when people try to outshine you. Or if you do one thing, someone's like, hey, you can't be doing that without me doing it. I'm going to do it better than you. I'm going to make you feel bad about yourself. I'm going to do it because you're doing it. I want exactly what you want. I don't want to live my life.

I want to live your life, but better. So it's a really primitive circuit in the brain, and it's very like evolutionary in nature as well. Because I don't know if y'all have seen these videos of like, you know, people walking down the street and then a crowd, like a prank video where a crowd starts running the other way like the world is ending. And the person who's walking down the street is like, I don't know what's going on, but I'm going to turn around and I'm going to run with the crowd. So kind of monkey see monkey do. It's a really primitive part of our behavior. The other primitive part that FOMO sort of accesses is this desire not to be ostracized. So the world has changed a lot, but our brain did not evolve for the world that we live in today.

So as an example, you know, in the past we lived in like communities of maybe 200 or 300 humans. These were like tribal communities or even smaller packs. We're talking about like for millions of years, this is what humans used to do. And so if you sort of think about the price of being left out or the price of ostracization, it was really, really severe, right? If you kind of fall out with your tribe, it's not like you can. can just meet new people on the internet today. You can't just block one person and then find a new person tomorrow. You can now, but you didn't used to be able to. It's not just something you made. It's the privilege that you get to work with your hands. It's building something that

serves a purpose. Proof that you have the grit to keep going. At Timberland, we understand you take your craft seriously, and we do too, which is why our products are built to the highest quality. We put in the work so you can perfect yours with purpose in every detail and crafted with intention. Timberland, built on craft. Visit timblen.com to shop. So what happens is our brains sort of realize that, okay, being ostracized from the pack, like a wolf that gets ostracized from the pack is basically going to die. So our brains are hyper, hyper sensitive to being ostracized and left out.

We sort of view this as, oh my God, now I'm screwed. And so here's the problem with technology today, is it activates these two primitive circuits. Logically, cortically, in a sort of human brain sense, right, our upper level functions, we may realize that I don't actually need to do what everyone else is doing. And if you stop and think about it, they're like 8 billion people on the planet. The definition of your life is that you're going to miss out on 99.999% of experiences because 8 billion people are out there. They're all eating great meals. They're all having all kinds of different problems and getting married and getting divorced and having kids and getting pets and going scuba diving and going surfing.

The majority of your life is missing out on what other people are doing. The problem with things like technology and especially social media is it activates these two parts of the brain. And that's kind of hard to psychotherapize. So now the question becomes, how do we fix this, right? If these primitive parts of our brain are being active, what is the antidote to those primitive parts of the brain? And this is where we're going to talk about, basically.

basically being satisfied. So if you look at like people who don't have FOMO, why do they not have FOMO? There's two groups of people, right? People who are able to just live their own life and when other people are doing things, they're like, wow, that's really cool. That's really good for you. Like, I hope you had a great time. And these guys are actually genuine, right? They're like genuinely, like they don't feel like they're missing out on anything. And why is that? It's because their cup is full. If we sort of think about, okay, if I'm starving and I see someone else eat like a really, really juicy burger. It's like, man, I really want to eat that burger. But if I'm, if my stomach is full, I actually don't covet the food of other people. So the key antidote to FOMO is to actually

be content yourself. And that may sound really hard, but we're going to talk a little bit, a really simple way that I actually found worked for a lot of my patients to actually kind of be content specifically with FOMO. So what I want you all to do is the next time you have FOMO, what you're going to do is you're going to want to do what other people do. I want that one. But instead of just jumping to do that one, because if you do, you're going to end up, you may feel good today, but tomorrow will roll around and you're not really content with your life, so you're going to get FOMO again. So instead of just jumping in and doing what other people are doing, I want you to stop and think a little bit about, okay, what is it about this activity that I am missing in my life? Because it's not the activity itself. There's going to be some kind of internal value that you recognize is not being satisfied.

So it may be something like exploration, like people are going on a trip somewhere. And that sounds really cool. I wish I could go on a trip. So what I want you to really do is think about the underlying value that you want to sort of have in your life. And as you sort of figure out what that underlying value is, it could be exploration, it could be a sense of growth, it could be a sense of connectedness or, you know, doing things with other people. So figure out what's that like deeper value that you care about, that deeper psychological need? So once you figure out what that is, the next thing to do is to start to think about, okay, systematically, how can I start to build this into my life?

Because I know it sounds kind of weird. If people are going on a trip, like, you can go on a trip too. You don't have to go on a trip with other people. You can take the weekend and maybe go travel somewhere for like a weekend, maybe get a nice Airbnb or get a hotel for a couple days, or maybe pitch a tent and go camping. And then what I want y'all to really do is think about, okay, how can I satisfy this value? in the simplest way possible. So we're not talking about duplicating a trip that other people are taking.

What's one thing that I can do to feel a little bit more connected? What's one thing that I can do to explore? Hell, go to a museum in your city that you've never been to. Because we always go to museums when we travel somewhere else, but we actually don't take advantage of the touristy kind of things in our own city. And something cool will happen when you start to do that. Because when you set a goal for yourself, when you think a little bit about your values,

and you start to move towards them, that's what leads to contentment. And I know it sounds kind of weird. Contentment isn't fulfilling your fantasies. Contentment is progress towards your values. And that's what's really cool is once you start doing this, you're going to start doing cool stuff, and you'll start to feel better about yourself. I know it sounds kind of weird.

You may think, but if I want this desire, don't I have to fulfill the desire to be content? Actually, no. Because if we sort of think about the nature of desire, fulfilling a desire doesn't make it go away long term. It actually increases it over time. So instead, what we want to do is progress towards our values. So take a look at what someone's doing, figure out what you care about in terms of what they're doing, and try to build it into your own life in a very small way. And what I'd recommend is over the course of three to seven days,

try to take one step forward towards what that value is. And then once you start to do that a little bit, by all means, post on social media, right? And this is where we sort of get to the really fun part, which is that you get to induce FOMO and other people. And so let's say two of your friends are going to France for a week. And you're like, that's super cool, but I'm going to go camping for three days. And then you post about it, right? And you're going to be like, yeah, I'm going to go camping or you come back and you kind of say, hey, I went camping for three days by myself. It was really awesome. I got to hang out. I got to, you know, go on a hike. I got to make a fire. I got to see some wildlife. It was really cool. And like camping and stuff like that is actually really fun.

then you're going to come back and you're going to be healthier because you inhaled all these plant aerosols, you got fresh air, you were disconnected from the internet, which has its own advantages, and then you're going to post about it. And then you're going to start inducing FOMO in other people. So the real antidote to FOMO, the real way to become immune to FOMO is to feel like there's nothing missing on the inside, the fear of missing out. And when we are unfulfilled internally, that makes our minds very, very vulnerable to FOMO because we've got the two really critical circuits, these primitive circuits in the brain, of wanting what other people want and fear of ostracization. And FOMO tackles both of those. And the real challenge is that

our cortical structures of the brain, our logic and all this other kind of stuff, doesn't really work at kind of fixing those problems. So I encourage y'all to really lean towards your value, start to take a couple of small steps, and you don't have to go all the way. And as you do that, you'll start to build contentment and you will start to induce FOMO in others. So good luck. And keep us posted on what y'all ended up doing and whether it worked or not.