FOMO

If you’re not hip on some recent slang, the acronym FOMO stands for fear of missing out. I think for a lot of people considering work-life balance in today’s extremely hectic world, where we are expected to be perfect parents, workers, spouses, children, students, and overall ideal products of society, we can have a lot of FOMO.

-Can you have it all? The short answer, in my opinion, is no.

-Prioritize- What’s most important to you right now and what’s a strategic means of achieving that goal? I have a friend who prioritized finding a partner, and guess what? She did it, but she had to prioritize that above everything else in her current life.

-Be human, not a robot- You’ll make mistakes and many of them. How do you account for that? You try to enter situations knowing and planning ahead of time that you won’t get to do all that’s fun. And its okay to be sad about that. Feel that sadness or frustration wash over you and when you're ready, let it go, like riding a wave.

-Don’t be flaky- A lot of people who have FOMO come off to others as very flaky because they have difficulty prioritizing what they want to do. Do the best you can to figure out a plan and stick to it unless you really need to change it. If you’re not sure how things are going to work out from the get go, express interest but inform others that you cannot confirm plans until later.