FOMO and GAMO

Welcome to Shrink for the Shy Guy. This is the show for you. If you are sick and tired of being held back by fear, self doubt, social anxiety, shyness, anything that's stopping you from you being you. I'm going to share the most powerful tools and resources that I've been discovering over the last 15 years on my journey to eradicate social anxiety and instill confidence first in myself second, and then in every single person that I meet on my journey. You're going to learn these tools and how to apply them in your life now so that you can become the most free, powerful, bold, authentic version of you. Welcome to today's episode of the show. I'm excited to be with you today because we're going to be talking about a topic that is pretty much universal. Everyone has experienced it, even if they don't know the name of it. You have experienced it, even if you don't know the name of it. So we're going to be talking about what it is and how we can deal with it. And the it here, of course, is fomo, Fear of missing out, which is a very unique, specific form of discomfort and anxiety. And another reason I'm excited is because I'm not here alone talking to myself in a chamber of solitude. I am with a good friend and colleague of mine, Coach Jonathan Hernandez.

That's right. I too, suffer from fomo. Fomo.

He's admitting it. We're admitting it. We're coming out.

That's it. Part one is acknowledging the fear.

Dude, you have anxiety.

Missing out.

That's weird. Well, so here's the thing. We all have it. So for those of you who don't know what FOMO is, Jonathan, you want to share what people might not know what it is?

Yeah. It's a fear of missing out. F O M O fomo. Anytime that maybe people are planning for something and you have something else that you have to do, an obligation. The fear of missing out. Maybe there's a job and you're stuck in a current job and there's like an opportunity for something new. Oh, should I take that? Should I be content with where I'm at? The fear of missing out there, picking partners, you know, like, this person offers this in my life. I'm also curious about this. What if I pursue this other relationship? Is there a fear of missing out with what I currently have?

So it's like you in all those scenarios, you have a choice, you have options, but if you pick one of those, then you're gonna miss out on the others.

Yeah. Like, what if the other one is what if, like, let's say, for a party. I remember when I was a kid, I. I would keep my weekends open and I wouldn't confirm, like, oh, I can't hang out with you. Well, maybe. Maybe we'll hang out. I don't know. Because there was a fear of what if there's a better party? Or what if there's a better outing that I really want to go to? And. Yeah. So I would kind of like, not make concrete plans in the sense of, like, because I was afraid of missing out, but therefore I didn't do anything that weekend.

Oh, that would happen.

Yeah. And then I'd be like, oh, man, I should have gone to.

I did miss out.

I did miss. I missed out on both.

Well, a man often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it. Well, that's interesting because it reminds me of when I was driving with my brother when he had a license and I didn't. So he would drive me around when he was like 16, 17, whatever. And I was younger and we listening to the radio and we'd have all of the greats saved in those buttons, like 1 through 6, where you store the radio channels, the presets.

That's right. Yes.

93.5 alternative was one of them in the Bay Area and so forth. Kdon, that was like the shitty party station that played just bad.

I don't even know.

It wasn't even dance music. It was just bad. Anyway, that was 102.5. Why do I remember this?

Anyway, did you have a friend in the diamond business? Tom Shane? Yeah.

Hi, I'm Tom Shane. They told me to hire a voice actor and I said, no, Tom Shane can do it.

And it was located in the random spots of your place. Mine was like, off the corner of Washington and Tacoma between Thunderbird and Bain. Or like. And you're like, what? Where.

I always thought Tom Shane was, like, local to my area, but he's like.

He's apparently Internet.

Yeah.

We all have friends in the diamond business. What's going on here?

My diamonds are even less bloodier than my competitors. Fewer dead bodies on my.

No. Anyway, open Monday through Friday till 8. We're probably gonna get sued from Tom Shane right now.

Yes, it's for entertainment purposes only. We retract all.

We love you, Tom.

Negative statements. I have purchased mini diamonds. In fact, this is an endorsement. This is an advertisement for Tom Shane. I encourage people listening to go purchase from Tom Shane. Very good. Okay, missing out. We're listening to the radio. And my brother would find a song that he liked on the radio and be like, yeah. And then he would really quickly scan the other five buttons, like, click, click, click, click, click, click. And I'd be like, why are you doing that? You like the song? And he's like, but what if there's something better?

Yeah, you have choice.

Fear of missing out. So it also reminds me of. I forget his name. He's a psychologist. He wrote a book called the paradox of Choice. And in it, he highlights between people who do what's called maximizing versus satisficing. So a maximizer is going to want to assess all of their options, get really clear on which one's going to be the best, as in bring the most pleasure and the least pain. Preferably no pain, all pleasure. And they spend. I mean, if the anxiety is strong enough, they could spend an unhealthy amount of time doing it versus, like, a little bit of maximizing might be helpful and say, I don't know, a home purchase or a car purchase or something big. And the satisficer kind of takes in the data they got. Yeah, it's good. I'll go with that. And that's probably a better option when it comes to, like, choosing a restaurant, what you're gonna eat, that sort of thing. But he found is that the more choices people had, the more it could activate this sort of neurotic maximizing energy. And what I found is that it seems like people tend to do lean towards one or the other more often more of the time. Like, it's like a way that their anxiety gets expressed is through maximizing.

Is it just with a specific thing? Like, I feel like with food, because I'm going to eat regularly, there's a satisfying. Or satisficer. Is that what it is?

Yeah, satisficer.

Yeah. Where it's like, oh, this is fine, because tomorrow I can pick something else. But with, like, there's no FOMO there. There's no FOMO for me. I don't know, maybe something.

But have you ever, like, had envy of, like, you're at a restaurant and you pick something, and then someone else at the table chose something. Yeah, I should have gotten the ravioli. I'm here with this shit.

Yeah, yeah. There is a moment of that. Your meals are always delicious. And I'm like, I should have got that. Instead you.

My bowl of goop.

Your bowl of goop. I'm like, yes, I wanted that. Instead, I got this unhealthy egg McMuffin no, I don't eat that. But as of last week, yeah, listen to the previous podcasts. But then it was also a feeling of like, oh, I should have got that. But I don't hold onto it as much as maybe, oh, I'm gonna make a huge purchase on this computer. And that sticks with me for like, a couple weeks.

That makes sense. I mean, I think the bigger the choice in terms of investment money, investment time investment, or just opportunity costs, like, you pick one computer, you're not gonna go pick another computer for X years. And so I think the higher the stakes, the more we feel fear of choosing wrong. And when we were talking about this before, I realized that. So there's the fear around the choice, but that is preceding and leading up to the choice. Because as soon as the choice is made, there's a whole nother phenomenon known as gamo. Known as gamo to nobody. Because I think I just made it up.

But you're blowing my mind, Dr. Z.

There's FOMO, but then there's Gamo. Gammo is grief about missing out. And I noticed this one because of the first year that I. So I went to Burning man, like, eight or nine years in a row. And then we had. I don't think we. I think we even didn't go. And Candice was very pregnant with Zaim. She was, like, close to a couple months away, and we still decided not to go. And that's the first year that I didn't go. And every year since the first year I went to, then I win. But. So I wasn't even anticipating it. Cause, like, oh, yeah, it just doesn't seem right. Let's just not do it. And then it's like several days before even the first day of Burning man, and I'm like, a wreck. I'm, like, sad and angry and miserable. And I didn't put together why. And then I discovered I was like, oh, I'm grieving about missing out.

Oh, man.

So the Gamma was like the. So I wonder if fomo, the real fear of FOMO is the gammo, is the Gamma. We're afraid of, like, the feelings we're gonna have afterwards.

Yeah.

Because if you think about it, all these things, like, did I choose that partner?

That partner?

Like, it's. It's not so much, I guess you could choose something that is, like, was really awful. That, like, really just hurt you. Like, I chose the. I should have chose the Mac, and I chose the IBM now or the PC. And now I'm like, my life's ruined. But really not. It's actually gonna be probably kind of similar.

Right.

It's more the repeated emotional upset of, like, oh, man, this computer's freezing. I bet the other one wouldn't have frozen.

There's also a difference between materialistic things and, like, the actual experience. So, like, with the Burning man, that's an experience that you're grieving about?

I'm missing out. Yeah. Right now.

And for me, it was, like, the party. Like, I'm missing out, like, on this experience and being shy or a lack of confident. Like, I imagine there's a lot of people that think about experiences that they want to have in their life, and then they're, like, grieving about missing out on these opportunities.

Mm. Mm.

But we can get stuck in, like, well, is this the right fit? Is this the right choice for me?

Yeah.

So we're just, like, not making any choices.

Yeah. And I think that's. That's the. That is gonna be one of the biggest costs of fomo. I mean, it can increase dissatisfaction in and of itself, but then the other consequence is gonna be probably not making as many choices. That's what I've seen. Or stalling on making choices. And then the opportunity passes. Like the Weeknd example.

Yeah.

And the more I. I think it hit Barry Schwartz. I think that's his name. No, that's someone else. And maybe it's very short for the paradox of choice, but he in there talks about, you know, how there's pros and cons to both and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And as I read it, I was like, no, no, no, no, no. Like, maximizing just sucks. Like, maximizing is anxiety. So even if you're assessing options before making a big choice, that doesn't have to be fraught with anxiety and, like, needing to know everything. It just means, like, I think I should do a little more research on this. And so the more I thought about the topic, I thought, in general, the more we can reduce maximizing, the better we're gonna feel. And so, like, instead of seeing it as, like, a very important thing to do, what if it's just, like, an anxiety pattern? And so when it comes to the fomo, instead of like, oh, yeah, that's something that you do want to spend a ton of time really analyzing that. What if we saw that as well? Actually, the goal is to start to minimize the amount of time that I do. Here's the thing, though. That's gonna increase fomo, isn't it?

Yeah. Yeah.

It's the thing on Your face.

I'm like, wait a minute. I don't know if it's sound. It seems like there would be.

I'm just spitballing.

Yeah.

I'm just looking for ways out.

There would be a couple of ways.

Out of the cage.

Yeah. Maybe it's just something that we've accepted in a paradox of like, yeah, we're gonna have this. How do we. How. How can I maximize this? But not in the sense of like, I gotta get it, but just like with our. Maximize our intuition and our feeling that other possibilities are gonna happen in your life.

Yeah.

Cuz like, I mean, Burning man, there's always gonna be another one. And you have kids now, so that would be really exciting to have them.

That's the plan, you know?

Yeah. So it's like, if you want to see Dr. Aziz's kids, go to Bernie.

No, but like, as well as me in a loincloth banging a drum.

Cuz you could wear whatever. Yeah. Right.

We're nothing.

Oh, man, I want to go. I want to get dreads. Even though I have a shaved head, I just wear like a dread wig.

I'm like.

But there's like a. This idea. Maybe, maybe. Maybe it also would just jump into a fomo. Again, you can't escape this. Because I was thinking, like, what if the fact that we're focusing on this one experience, but we're not thinking about other, greater experiences of having outside of that one.

Mm.

So it's like, I don't know. I remember listening to a podcast that you. You. An episode where you were talking about, like, I want to have this experience myself, like, going by myself without Candace. And then when you were there, you were like, I miss Candace, though. And it's almost like that seems like a FOMO scenario. But then after you're like, but it's gonna be great having this experience with her.

Yeah. Yeah. That's really interesting what you're saying, because there is an inherent loss in making a choice. Often you lose the other options when you decide. And that paralysis and hesitation is when we don't want to face that loss. But then when we do, I think there's this myopic, like, kind of zooming in and saying. You're saying like, this is it. As opposed to, oh, this is one of many.

Mm.

And it is. It's. It's full of, like, flaws because it also highlights.

It has.

It's based upon this fantasy that somehow you could pick something and have everything else.

Yeah.

Like, it resists the reality of. Well, yeah, if you choose partner A, you're not gonna be with partner B.

Right.

Unless you become a master of polyamory and somehow get them all on board. And that's gonna last for how long? Till it all turns to shit. But so you choose A, you're not gonna have B. And there's, like, this refusal to admit that. And so I think that. And then. But if you do and say, yeah, when I choose A, I'm gonna lose B, and that's okay.

Mm.

I think that's. If we're okay with that loss, would we be FOMO free?

There's this moment where you. You said, like, letting go of choice B and choosing A and your posture kind of, like, reinstated. Like, almost like the confident man just came out. Like, this maturity of, yeah, I'm gonna let that go, and I'm okay with that. Like, this is what it is.

Like a power in that. Yeah, well, it's the same thing. Like, if we're really scared of, oh, I'm so scared of getting rejected. I'm so scared of this person not wanting to date me or whatever. And then when you face the reality that they could not wanna talk to me or they could not wanna go on a second or third date with me, and you really face that reality, like, yes, that can happen. And you're not like, oh, shit. Oh, shit, that better not happen. I couldn't handle that happened. Let me. Let me control and manipulate reality so that doesn't happen. But you're just like, yes, that could happen. All of a sudden, like, all your confidence rushes back in and you can be you and let whatever happens happen.

Yeah. There's a power in choice, in making the choice.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So make the choice.

Make the choice.

Do it.

Just do it.

That brings us to, naturally, the action step. Time for action. Action, action.

Time for action.

No, no, no. We updated the.

I don't care. I just don't want to do it that way.

All right, here we go. So your action step for today is to do it. Okay, so here. Here's a couple that I would suggest, and maybe you have one, but one would be to just flex the muscle of satisficing, make quicker decisions on stuff, especially stuff that's low stakes, and. And notice the discomfort you feel afterwards. So maybe you do feel, I felt gamo from eating something and wishing I could have eaten something else. It's like, oh, I made this thing, and it's not very good, but whatever.

I'll just eat it.

And it's really low level. It's Mild, but. So just experiment with more quick decisions around that and then notice. Because if you can build a tolerance for that discomfort. Yeah, that's right. I choose A. And now I don't have B. And then you can perhaps build that strength to make the bigger choices in life.

I like that. Yeah, it's pretty cool. So if I wanted Taco Bell, but I didn't get it. You don't want that. I don't want that. I'm thinking about the viewers who are just like, nah, I don't care about the health lifestyle yet.

We'll get you.

I want to bathe and Taco Bell.

Yeah. Then, you know, if you're deciding between the crunchy supreme.

You know what's funny? I don't even know what the options are anymore.

I remember I used to like their nachos, which was just chips and, like, a liquid orangeish goo. Yeah, it's like an orange oil.

Hydrogenated oil.

I don't know. It's just cheese. You know what's crazy? This is a side note for viewers. And yes, we're going long here, but it's worth it. I was at a store recently and I took a photo of it because it had. I think it was caramels, and they had them next to the apples because it's apple cider.

Oh, yeah.

And so, like, you know, caramel, festive. And it's festive. It's like, oh, yeah, maybe you're gonna buy this apple. And you'll also buy a fistful of caramels when you do it. But on the caramel wrapper, I have a picture right here, it says, made with real milk. That's all it says. On the front it says. I can't even read the name of the brand, but it says, milk made, caramels, candy. Got a picture of some caramels and some maple leaves, apparently. And then it says made with real milk in big letters on the right. I'm like, why is that a selling point? Yeah, it's like, that's.

What else could it be, though? Like, made with fake milk.

They wouldn't put that on the label, and they would just have, like, an image of milk to insinuate that there's milk in it. And then in the ingredients would be, like, natural milk flavor, which is, you know, derived from porpoise's anus.

Oh, man. That's natural. That's right. Anyway, do you have any grief? Not getting that?

I should have got those caramels. I could be eating them right now. They're made with real milk. All right, well, thanks for being with us today. Until we speak again. And thank you, Jonathan, for talking. It's always a pleasure. Until we speak again. May I have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome. Thanks for listening to Shrink for the shy guy with Dr. Azeez. If you know anyone who can benefit from what you've just heard, please let them know and send them a link to shrinkforthshyguy.com for free blogs, ebooks and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to social confidencecenter.com.