FOMO is an anxious feeling you get when you feel other people might be having a good time without you. As an expat we have FOMO for everything that we know we are missing back home, like my family Thanksgiving get-together.
I think another form of FOMO expats develop is based more on JEALOUSLY than actual fear. You feel that everyone seems to have it all together except you.
My second overseas post was Frankfurt, which I arrived at alone as my husband was still in Berlin. I was back at work after a one year break as a trailing spouse. I felt like all the other expats at work were adjusting so much quicker and better. Everyone was making friends, except me. How did they all end up at the same place after work or on the weekends, and why didn’t I know about it or get invited? What was I doing wrong?
What you’re thinking is that they did it better. They adjusted faster so therefore, it’s better, so therefore, they win in some way and their life is somehow better because of it.
Can you see how what you make it mean when someone else does something, is what’s making you feel so terrible? The reason we feel JEALOUS is because we’re having a thought. You can choose what you want to think when someone else succeeds. What I was making it mean is that it somehow depletes me when they are successful. When you compare yourself to them, you’re using that comparison as a way to beat yourself down. I was looking for evidence to feel bad. Alternatively, you can choose to look at someone else’s success and see what’s possible and find that belief within yourself of what might be possible for you. I think it’s incredible to think of that possibility. When you look at other people and they get somewhere so much faster than where you got, then you can think “Wow, I could’ve gotten here faster, maybe. Had I done it that way? I wonder what I could do to get even faster.” Every time you look at someone’s success, just notice what thoughts go through your mind. Are you coming from a place of insecurity and scarcity and are you seeing that there’s limited success in the world and that when they get some, you get less? Or do you think that success begets success and the more successful people there are, the more successful we all are? There’s that energy that can really bring us all together. We’re all headed to our own specific destiny and those of us who are showing up and working hard and supporting each other will all go there together, right?
You’re going to have thoughts that are going to create JEALOUSY for you. There’s no problem with that, but it is a choice, right? It’s a choice that you may not be making consciously. It’s a choice you’re making that’s making you feel like crap. The thoughts are going to come, they’re going to appear and your choice is whether you’re going to entertain them and look for evidence and try and justify them. When the thought comes “Oh, they have it better than me because they adjusted faster or they’ve already made such good friends and I haven’t.” Are you going to buy into that belief or are you going to say “Good for them” for what they got? “I’m going to get mine and I’m getting mine in the exact amount of time that I was meant to get it, and can I step up and be more of who I am and can I be inspired by their example of what is possible?”
If you do that work, it will take effort because you are in the mode right now of going straight to JEALOUSY. If you make the effort to notice when that appears, notice when you’re buying into that thought, and notice what you’re doing when you’re buying into JEALOUSY, then you can make a decision that you want to focus on a different way of thinking. That you want to focus on your own unique journey and competing against the best in you, and evolving into the person you’re supposed to be.
Everything you do and every place you are is exactly right and on time. No one else is better than you because they’ve adjusted faster than you or they’re more successful than you. You can use them as inspiration to become more of who you are, anytime you think you feel JEALOUS.
The interesting part I only found out later, was that those same people I thought had it all together, felt the same way about me. They thought that since my husband was German, that I already had friends in Frankfurt. They were JEALOUS of the fact that I could speak some German from my year in Berlin. They weren’t inviting me because they already assumed I had plans. Everybody is always convinced that other people are doing it right and better than they are.
When you feel JEALOUS, make sure you recognize it. Make sure you get a hold of it before you react to it before it affects you in any kind of negative action, reaction or inaction way.
Find the thought causing it and notice that underlying insecurity in yourself where that thought is coming from, and make a decision of whether you want to keep thinking that thought. Then you can decide what you want to believe instead.
I focus on the world being abundant. I think we can all get ours. I think the only reason we don’t get what we want is because we believe we can’t have it. Nothing will convince me that I can’t have everything I was meant to have and I believe that I was meant to have wonderful amazing things in my life.
Then I use other people’s success as evidence of what is possible in the world. I use them as my inspiration. I don’t use them as a way to feel bad about myself. The next time you feel JEALOUS, I want you to ask yourself “What do I have? Am I doing everything I can to create the results I want? Do I believe in myself and my goals? Can I use other people to inspire me and multiply my abundance mentality?”
If you would like to continue this work with me, then schedule a free trial coaching session.
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