Have you ever gone out shopping? If yes, then you should have heard people shouting the following: Don’t miss this opportunity! You can only buy this today, don’t miss out on this amazing experience! The offer is only for a limited time. When you buy stuff online, you can see the similar settings, there are great festival offers, customer onboarding offers, offers only for you with timestamp ticking on the top and many more. Have you ever bought something that you actually didn’t need, but bought it just because you didn’t want to miss the great deal. Isn’t this an amazing marketing strategy, it uses the people’s psychology to make them buy stuff. Is this good or bad for us? If it’s bad, how can we escape from this?

You see, it’s not always bad, some people intentionally make use of these offers and that’s not an issue. Sometimes even if you buy them out of pressure, it might end up being a good deal for you. Here, I am not talking about the end result, but the process of making that end result. To understand this let me tell you a few examples.

Once I went on a trip with my friends and they went outside while I was sleeping, in general if you think about it, it was not a big deal. I was so tired and I needed that sleep very much. But the fear of missing out on something amazing outside, made me disappointed. I was worried that I missed out on fun things, till they came back and told me how boring it was. You see, I am the guy who reads a book from front to back including cover pages, just to not miss out on anything.

Another time, I was thinking about finding a life partner. But instead of focusing on the process, I started asking myself, what if I get old and never find someone, did I miss out on something just because I didn’t start this earlier? Then I realised, I had spent my time so far on improving myself, I tried out a lot of different stuff which other people might have never done, there is nothing bad about that.

In both these situations the problem was how I thought about it. I realized I was approaching the search for a partner through the lens of FOMO, it was creating pressure and a sense of urgency. People say pressure is a privilege, but shouldn’t it be more fun than this?

So the fear of missing out is not only making us buy stuff, it will also make us do stuff that we might have never done on our own will.

People are getting into relationships or marriages, just not to miss out on stuff. Some people even do drugs, just not to miss out on that experience and get addicted to it. Do you think this is making us explore different things in life or making us do crazy things which we might regret later. In this situation, our mind will be ready to give a lot of reasons why it’s very urgent and important to do those things.

But we forget that all these are in our imagination only. I am not saying there is no such possibility, the offer might actually be genuine, but what’s the point of worrying about something that’s not in our control. But if you change your perspective a little, then your worries will be gone.

There is a difference between the feeling of trying out and the feeling of missing out. These are two different ways of looking at the same thing or two different perspectives of the same situation. The former one lets us navigate our life with clarity and the latter one lets us do the same with confusion and emotional overload.

You see, when you think of trying out something new, you count the things you have done already, which actually makes us happy in some way. When you think of missing out, you count the things that you have not yet done and only focus on them. This will only make us feel overwhelmed.

Why does counting the things that you are missing will never work out? Because in this life we have only limited time and energy. There will always be something that we will be missing out on. So if you focus on the things that you miss out on, there will always be something to worry about. Instead if you refocus your time and energy on things that you feel like trying out, it will give you the pleasure of exploration, finding your new and better selves. Each time when you try something new, keep them in your tried out list. Later, when you review them, you will actually feel happy and proud that you have done all those things.

You see, keeping our old photo albums, memorable items and sharing photos on social media are all some form of tried out list. We are hoping that, when we look back at them in the future, it will make us happy.

But remember, the line between the trying out list and the missing out list is very thin. To keep you from crossing the line, make sure the list does not make you worry, rather it should motivate you to do better things. It will only happen if you can keep a wise and feasible set of items in that list. You see, happiness is not a fate, it’s a skill. This scenario is one example of that.

So next time when you hear from someone or yourself that you are missing out on something, don’t fear it, take a deep breath, sit on a chair, think about whether you really want to try out those things. If you want to but circumstances are not working out, then as we always say, there is no point in worrying about the things that you can’t control. Focus on the things that you can act on. It will make the process a joyful one.