Brutal truth- envy, jealousy and comparativeness is contagious.
FOMO is alive and well. It flourishes in times of stress and anxiety. Its
flashy and attractive- alluring and unfortunately, free. So, it is easy to
hoard.
Worse than that, it is macabre and morbid- like the heavy chains,
Marley is burdened with, in A Christmas Carol. Ghastly and pessimistic, it
latches on, lengthening frequently, weighing us down, distracting us from our
contentment.
It infects us with… I do not have. They are happier. They are more
loved. I am less than. It leaves us blinded by desire and shielded away from
what we actually have. When we are locked in its orbit, we succumb to its
energy and power. We are often completely helpless.
After you have experienced it for a bit, you feel disheartened,
even when you have reason to be joyful. Your experience was not as good as
theirs, see their pictures? They are more popular; can you count their
followers? An endless cycle, a never-ending succession of links- of comparison
and yearning.
This is a strange time, people are more visible on social media,
those who never had an online presence are jumping into the Internet frenzy. It
is a sight to behold. But, as new ideas, new successes, new experiences are
being posted- you doubt. Am I doing enough?
You can hear the metal scraping on the ground, as hindsight takes
hold. A reminder, a hoarse croak of regret. A thick layer of anxiety, that
yesterday- was blown away by the gentlest of breezes, now determined, has laid
rest in a thickness, unavoidable.
The dust settles and you are left with a clarity, albeit it a
tardy one. In the moment, the green monster rears its ugly head, no wits are
about you. The sinking feeling of comparison is boiling. Why do we do this to
ourselves? Everyone does at some point. FOMO is an inevitability.
A lot of podcasts, posts and blogs have been using the word grace,
recently. Give yourself grace. This is the antidote to envy. The remedy to the
anxiety caused by comparison. The key to unlock the padlock, that holds the
negativity chain around us.
I have said this before. But, especially in this time of school
years ending, educators feeling cheated out of ¼ or more, of a school year, we
are all feeling vulnerable. We feel deeply angry at our loss. We all feel a bit
of grief- and our grief and frustration cannot be comparative.
Our experiences are personal. Our ideals and hopes are unique. Our
actions and interactions are meaningful, to us alone. We arrange ourselves in a
way to make sense of our orbit, our cycles, our relationships. We teach,
mentor, and inspire others with authenticity- and each of us contributes a
magical, wondrous aspect to the world.
We have to be aware of this wicked emotion called jealousy, envy,
FOMO. We have to curtail its effects. We cannot prevent it- but we can reason
with it. Counteract it with positive mantras, personal daily reminders, and
gifts to ourselves – verbal reinforcement, that we are awesome.
These daily check ins with ourselves – are essential for our
emotional well-being. We need to ask ourselves four questions every day- to set
a foundation of optimism and self-confidence.
- Am I collecting useful evidence today, or relying on mass data?
- Where are my blind spots today and how do I find them?
- Have you sent yourself an invitation to be happy today?
-Am I remaining authentic, true to myself, or am I comparing
myself to someone else?
If we can focus on these- we can hopefully avoid the deep pitfalls
of FOMO. Maybe skirt around it sometimes. It’s a precarious state of mind and
if we don’t acknowledge it, own it, feel its curse- we will never be able to
drop the heavy chain and cease the rattle of doubt.
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