Eliminate FOMO with These Fun Party Tricks
This article is part two of a four-part series. To read from the beginning, start here.
Put. The. Phone. Down. Try it! It’s wild.
Texting and social media are a great source of community, belonging, and entertainment, inviting us to share in the grand wonder of being alive. (Who doesn’t love to witness a total stranger exult in the magic of a double rainbow?) And yet, in one of the supreme ironies of digital media, these technologies that facilitate a crucial connectedness can also perpetuate loneliness.
Find reasonable ways to unplug. One of my close friends leaves her phone in the car whenever she and her husband go out to dinner. Another colleague puts his phone out of sight from the time he gets home until after his young children are in bed, for two delightfully unfettered hours of family time. One of my colleagues on the SCAD faculty uses the aptly titled Freedom software to limit her access to social media to one hour daily, keeping important digital connections alive and well and in their rightful place, at the periphery of consciousness, to let her focus on teaching students.
Take it from Joshua Fields Millburn, cofounder of The Minimalists, who encourages us to rid our lives of excess and make room for essentials. Millburn says he was held captive by social media before realizing how unfulfilled he felt and deciding to break free, digitally and mentally. He’s not the only one. According to the American Psychological Association, Joshua is one of 65 percent of Americans who agree that periodically “unplugging” or taking a “digital detox” is important for mental health.
Once you’ve untethered from your benevolent digital ankle monitor for an hour or two and spent some much-needed time in the studio and with your loved ones, go see what’s happening IRL.
During one of my favorite episodes of Mad Men (“Six Months Leave”), Betty Draper is having a pretty terrible day, and the housekeeper, Carla, shares a little sage counsel. “You know what helps?” Carla says. “Splash cold water on your face and go outside. You’ll notice things are right where you left them.”
Heed Carla’s advice. Find ways to make the body move. Here at SCAD, the first art and design university to offer an intercollegiate athletics program, we’ve long understood the positive correlation among sports, the arts, and mental health, which is also why we developed SCADfit, a state-of-the-art wellness facility dedicated to helping students personalize their paths to health and sweat out the FOMO.
Studies find that exercise can be as effective as antidepressants in combatting anxiety and depression, which is good news for everyone. For artists, however, physical movement has an even deeper impact on creative inspiration. One recent study has shown that the simple act of walking can boost creativity by 60 percent. A brisk constitutional does much good for the soul! There’s a reason the great thinkers of civilization, from Aristotle to Kierkegaard, loved to walk. (Personally, I consider Pilates the perfect restorative art form — and so does St. Vincent, I’ve heard.)
Do what you can to eliminate FOMO, but don’t expect a life free of all angst. Mental health professionals will tell you: a certain amount of anxiety is perfectly normal, and even useful, functioning as a natural motivator to keep working for what’s just over the horizon. As Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy reminds us, the notion of the “tortured artist” is more myth than reality: His music, he says, is part of his path to health, the path away from depression and anxiety, a guiding light.
FOMO taps into our desire to belong, and good art, at its core, is a mode of communion. To connect to the world in a meaningful way, look to your own art. As author Elizabeth Gilbert reminds us, creative solitude is precious, giving one time to reflect and find meaning. Protect that time. It won’t always be easy, but there’s no way around it: Adults have to make decisions. Go to the karaoke bar with friends late into the night, or turn in early, to get up before sunrise and hit the gym and the studio? Work late, to earn that promotion, or take the family to dinner? That’s why they call it adulting. It’s no cakewalk. Wisdom, in any human life, is more precious than all else.
Later this week, we’ll look at how colleges and universities address FOMO and student anxiety in the learning environment.
