#127 - Why FOMO Causes Burnout

Summary

Today on the podcast, I’m going to be work-life balance and why FOMO (fear of missing out) can directly lead to burnout.

For show notes, head to coachellyn.com/podcast and, of course, if you have any questions or want to connect, head on over to @coachellyn on Instagram.

ACTION STEPS:

• Recognize what you’re feeling like you’re missing out on

• FOMO leads us to take on things we shouldn’t

• FOMO causes analysis paralysis

RESOURCES IN THIS EPISODE:

• My Take Back Your Life PREMIUM Membership - here

Transcript for this episode:

(00:49):

Hello there, my friends, listeners, and welcome back to the take back your life podcast. I posted a poll earlier of what y'all wanted to hear today, and I kind of don't know why I did cause I'd already decided I want to talk about. FOMO. FOMO, and burnout. And the big reason I want to talk about this is frankly, it's been coming up a ton in my world. Firstly, I have been manning a work-life balance project at work. For those of you that don't know, I have a day job. I work as a professional tutor. I have about 15 private tutoring students right now. And on top of that, I manage a team of 15 tutors. Now what recently I've been doing is they've actually realized that work-life balance is kind of my jam and burnout is kind of my jam at work. So they gave me a project to help assist our tutors with their work-life balance, with their burnout, with setting boundaries, because frankly we all suck at it.

(01:42):

And the big thing that has come out of that conversation, a number of big things came out of that conversation. But one of the things I saw that was most interesting and I feel deeply was this idea of fear of missing out. It really came up when we asked tutors, why do you check your email so much? Why do you feel the compulsion to check your email so much? And the answers were things like I'm scared of missing out on opportunity. I'm scared of missing an opportunity to help. I'm scared of getting in trouble for not being available. You know, it's all of these fears of, if I'm not available, XYZ will happen. I'll miss an opportunity. I won't be able to,

(02:28):

I serve as best I can and so on and so forth. And you know, we are in a service industry and the work that I do. And so many of you on here are business owners and service providers in some capacity, whether you're a business owner or not. And I'm sure we all feel that like, that's our big motivation for why we are always available. And then there's some other stuff that can come up. That's kind of another side of FOMO. For example, I have had opportunities come up in my business that despite how much my gut and my intuition is telling me this, isn't the right thing for you. This isn't what you want. This isn't aligned with your goals. This isn't aligned with your values as much as I'm just like feeling it in my gut of that's not right for you. That's not the right client for you.

(03:22):

I still find myself considering saying yes, because if I say no, what am I missing out on? If I say no, what kind of income am I missing out on? What kind of exposure am I missing out on? You know, am I going to miss the opportunity to take my business? Full-time faster. Am I going to miss the opportunity to pay some things off? All of these things are making me consider opportunities and things that are coming up that I otherwise know are not right for me. Like, have you ever had that gut feeling where you're like, this is not right for me? Like I know that and yet you're considering it. Anyway. I have felt that a number of times over the last six months, nine months,

(04:12):

And it's all FOMO, it's all fear of missing out every single

(04:18):

One of those is fear. And that fear comes from a scarcity mindset. That fear comes from a place of, if I say no, that opportunity's not going to come again or I'm that income's not going to come in or whatever it is, it's the fear that that opportunity is scarce and we're not going to see it again. And how does that lead to burnout? That leads to burnout because in my experience, it leads to a, this is the obvious one just being too available, just piling on and taking on too much stuff because you're just flat out scared of saying no and flat out, scared of missing out on something. That's the first way it leads to burnout because you overwhelm yourself by taking up stuff that you don't have the time or a mental or emotional bandwidth for. But more so than that, I think probably the biggest ma maybe the least obvious way it leads to burnout is because it leads us to analysis paralysis, that scarcity mindset, that fear of missing out that FOMO. We can't turn that part of our brain off. That is like, but what if, but what if, but what if, but what if, but what if I say no, what's, what's the consequence of that blah, blah,

(05:44):

That part of our brain just keeps spiraling instead of us just being able to sit with and accept, you know, what, this isn't the right time for that, you know what, this isn't the right opportunity for me instead of just being able to accept that and move on. We analyze analysis paralysis is one of my favorite phrases. We give into analysis paralysis and we just can't let it go. And does that not sound exhausting in and of itself? I don't think I made the connection until recently that FOMO and burnout are very much interrelated in however manner FOMO shows up for you. And I think the best things we can do, cause I always try to wrap these up with something that's tangible. One of the best things that we can do in my experience is to a learn how to tap into our intuition and our gut more.

(06:43):

And how I've found helps me do that is meditation and journaling. I used to say prior to becoming an avid meditator, that I had no intuition. I used to joke that my mom is the intuition that I don't have. She used to know I was going to break up with someone long before I ever did. Thanks mom. Um, but I used to think I had no intuition and then I started meditating. And what meditating did for me is it shut my brain off long enough for me to start to hear that intuitive voice, you know, your intuition, who, who was it? Somebody said at one point, I think it was something like your intuition whispers and your conscious mind is yelling. So we never hear our intuition cause it's just like this little whisper in the background. But when we meditate, it turns up the volume on that.

(07:30):

So couple that with journaling and meditation, it's not only turning up the volume on your intuition, but when you journal and you're able to dig into those things more, you start to learn your values. You start to learn your priorities. You start to learn what that kind of north star is. That compass is that's driving you and motivating you. So that is a huge thing that we can do is to just turn up the volume on our intuition, by doing things like meditation and journaling. And then once we do that, it's kind of like confidence. It's, it's learning to trust your intuition and how we learn to trust. Our intuition is not something that comes easily learning to trust. Our intuition is you put little drops in the confidence bucket. You make little deposits into slowly but surely starting to trust your intuition, small

(08:22):

Things. And when you realize your intuition is guiding you correctly, in those small things, then you start to want to trust it more in those larger things. So starting small, starting easy learning to trust your intuition about, I don't know what coffee drink you want or what ice cream flavor you want. Those small drops in the confidence bucket are going to help you trust your intuition more until you start trusting it with larger things as well. So the takeaways from today is FOMO is huge for burnout, whether it is fear of missing out on an email, if you're missing out on a business opportunity or a career opportunity or fear of missing out on a social gate, engagement, FOMO causes burnout. And the ways we overcome that are tapping into our intuition with things like meditation and journaling, and then slowly but surely over time learning to trust our intuition, learning to trust that it is guiding us correctly.

(09:16):

And we do that by trusting in the small intuitive nudges, and then slowly but surely working up to the big ones I talked for less than 10 minutes, it was still a little bit long for it to be, but I've talked for less than 10 minutes and a wrap this sucker up. I hope you have an amazing rest of your day and I will talk to you soon.ily.