By Arden Martin. Originally posted on ardenmeditates.com
Truth time: Fear Of Missing Out does not have to be a thing. Before meditation, I was an introvert who joked about about my extreme homebody tendencies while secretly feeling like it wasn't funny at all. When social plans arose, I always preferred to stay home and recharge my batteries and often used my "draining teaching job" as an excuse. But while a part of me was thrilled to post up on the couch, I also felt guilty and self-critical for not wanting to be social. Why can't I be a normal, social human being? I'd ask myself. What if everyone out in the world is becoming BFFs without me? I truly believed that I sucked at having fun and no one liked me because of it. I didn't want to engage socially because I felt like a failure at it.
After I started meditating and my body began to shed layers of stress and self-loathing, I learned the following lessons:
1. My relationships will grow if I tend to them regularly and genuinely love them. Just like plants. No matter what, no fear needed.
2. My true nature is bliss (aka happiness, rainbows, and that floating-on-air feeling that we chase with psychoactive drugs), and within me lies an innate capability to be and have fun. I do not, in fact, suck at having fun. When I rid my body of stress by meditating twice a day, I can access that bliss more easily. I have more positive (dare I say fun?) experiences when I work and socialize with others. Best of all, I can keep up with my friends (and my hip-shaking husband) on the dance floor now, and it used to be a struggle just to uncross my arms!
3. I'll never feel FOMO if I trust my intuition. Meditating helps me hear my intuition, that place in my gut or heart that speaks before my brain has a chance to deliberate or justify. When I do this, I make choices with ease. I simply ask, "Does this feel charming to me or not?" and I listen to what immediately comes up. If my heart says yes, I go for it. If my heart says no, and my brain begins searching for reasons why I SHOULD do this thing (everyone else is doing it, my friends will have fun without me, I don't want to look rude), I opt out. In the words of Danielle Laporte, your feelings are the sign you've been looking for. Even if a situation demands that you consider more than just your feelings, consider them all the same. When you opt out of something that doesn't feel good (despite what your brain, your friends, or your mom say), FOMO stays away because you'll end up doing something that feels charming to you instead.
So what does this all mean? Meditate regularly and observe as FOMO and your inner critic are replaced by a powerful intuition that makes decisions easy.