As college students, we’re all probably familiar with the term FOMO or fear of missing out. That feeling you get when you have to stay in to study for a big exam while all your friends are living it up at the bar on Thursday night. However, another anxiety is pulling the rug out from underneath the feet of many of us millennials and it’s called FOBO, better known as fear of better options. FOBO is characterized by the inability to choose among infinite possibilities because a persistent voice in your head tells you there may be “better options” out there. Side effects include procrastination, anxiety and regret.
More often than not, I find myself taking extensive periods of time to make even the smallest of decisions. I have an overwhelming feeling that with all the choices available to me, the chances of choosing the best ones are slim. The result? Not choosing at all or making a choice that I immediately regret. Call it a perfectionist’s pitfall. The tendency to strive for the best of the best and inability to settle for anything less is a slippery slope and leads us to ultimately avoid decision-making or become seriously stressed out over the process. Making less-than-perfect decisions is inevitable and all part of the learning process, my fellow victims of FOBO just can’t accept it.
We are inundated with so many diverse options today, so how do we pick the right one? Most people would consider us lucky, that we were born into a time where possibilities are endless and paths are infinite, but in reality, it’s daunting.
If you’re anything like me you know what it’s like trying to pick the perfect outfit for the night. You have clothes busting from your drawers and doubled up on hangers, yet nothing seems good enough.
FOBO often strikes when we’re deciding on what you want to eat. The back and forth with your boyfriend over where to eat is all too familiar. You get overwhelmed at the vast menu and when you order you immediately think,
“I should have gotten X instead” or worse – you default to getting chicken tenders and fries.
As silly as it sounds I, like many others, can spend days trying to pick the right Instagram filter for a picture. There are so many options that we can’t decide which one will make the picture look best.
But I think the scariest case of FOBO occurs when we’re faced with making decisions after college. We dread the question, “What do you want to do after you graduate?” because we don’t even want to think about it. The fear of choosing the wrong job or career path is paralyzing to the point where we wait until the last possible moment to make a move.
Sometimes I wish we could just go back to being kids when all decisions were made by “eenie meenie miny moe.” Unfortunately, the older we get the more important our decisions become. My advice to dealing with the cumbersome effects of FOBO is to step back, relax and take a deep breath. Remain optimistic and confident in your ability to make good decisions so whatever you do choose will never disappoint. Remember that nothing is permanent and not making a choice at all in attempt to evade the issue is in fact a choice made.