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  • Picture this.

  • You log into social media and you see this picture of some friends at a party

  • Scroll down, and here's a video of a friend cliff diving in Cancun.

  • A number of friends are talking about garden cop, and you haven't seen it yet.

  • And now you start feeling something called FOMO, or fear of missing out.

  • FOMO is the anxiety we experience when we feel there's something exciting happening elsewhere and we're not a part of it.

  • It's been around for a long time, but these days it's triggered mostly by posts on social media.

  • Social media gives us instant access to the activity of our friends.

  • That's what it's there for, and this could be a good thing, but it also makes it all too easy for us to compare our lives to theirs.

  • This could lead us to second guessing our decisions and feeling insecure in general.

  • It can even get to the point when there's a looming sense of FOMO, even when we're not online.

  • So how do we kick this FOMO?

  • An answer that might quickly spring to mind is to simply quit social media.

  • But that's not practical for a lot of people.

  • Instead of quitting, you can try limiting your time on it or even just taking a few days off.

  • This could give you a chance to focus on what's important in your life and enjoy the things that you are doing without comparing them to others.

  • The lives of our friends do sometimes look pretty exciting online, but let's put some quotation marks around the word "lives."

  • Their social media activity isn't their actual life per se.

  • It's more of a highlight reel of exciting things they've posted to contribute to their online identity.

  • It's easy to see these highlights and think, "My life just isn't as exciting as there's."

  • But what we're usually not seeing is what's going on behind the scenes, the negative things or the boring routine of their day-to- day lives.

  • They may post something awesome, but in the grand scheme of things, it's just a short snippet of their day.

  • The odds are when they're not out doing these awesome things, they probably experienced just as much FOMO as you do.

Picture this.

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