FOMO: What it is and how to stop it | Wall Street Financier: Notes from High Altitude©

Millennials are the greatest of their generation. They endowed Mark Zuckerberg, an average man, with the third largest wealth in the world: Zuckerberg, 34, is “now worth $81.6 billion, about $373 million more than Buffett, the 87-year-old chairman and chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway Inc”.(Fortune) They also threw a riddle at me this morning: Who is smarter, Donald Trump or a lamppost ? I would think that’s insulting.

Millennials also invented a thing called FOMO, and they want me to solve it. FOMO stands for Fear of Missing Out. FOMO is that itch you get when Facebook or Twitter beckons. You got that phone in your pocket, and, like a good beta orbiter, you wanna check out on your girlfriend’s FB feed. (You haven’t been to any of those Jedi Council meetings, or you would know phones aren’t allowed in. Jedi Council members are all wired, they record each others, but they surrender their phones prior to meetings as a matter of principle. Every one in those meetings thinks: “I’ll get that bastard one way or the other, and the best thing he’s got no clue what I’m packing.”)

FOMO is the consequence of poor habits. FOMO denotes a lack of focus.

1. People that fall for FOMO have poor self-esteem. It is not just ADHD people that have FOMO. You need to work on that self-esteem, pronto.

2. Since FOMO appears to catch people while on their “downtime”, plan your downtime better.

3. Social Media has made it too easy to get attention. Social media is an engineered method to get you a little shot of dopamine. If you still desperately want to check out what your friends are doing, why not reconsider and check out Zuckerberg’s page ? See if you want to give that a like, repost, or retweet. How interesting is it now ?

Your redpill quote of the day: “One man’s gain so often rests on another man’s pain.” (R. Southey, The Battle of Bleinheim)

4. People need to have their phones and computers off for a number of hours, every day. Being “connected” 24 hours a day is damaging. You need to tell your girlfriend: Yep, I go dark for two hours. My phone is off at 9 PM. You won’t be able to reach me from 9 PM to 11 PM. I do things. Then I go to sleep.” Get that phone out of the room during sleep hours !

5. Have regs for vacations, either “no work communications” or limited communications, for example, you will only check e-mails on Wednesday at a consecrated time. Unfortunately, the first thing people do while on vacation is taking pictures to post them on their wall. Why does everything you do have to be a circus show ? You’ve rode a horse, or you’ve sailed on a boat and the first thing you want “I need to take a picture of it”.

6. On social media, if you need to get the latest on something or someone, and cannot wait to do so, that means you’re on their time. They got you. Social media should only be a downtime activity (unless you’re a journalist like I am not and are looking for a story).

7. Do not follow people on social media that post every hour or every minute of the day. These people are not serious. They are addicts, and they’ve sold their time for the little shot of dopamine. People that vomit their lives on social media are not believable. Obviously, the more accounts people follow the dumber they get. I don’t even encourage you to follow me on social media. It’s enough you read this blog.

FOOD BREAK: MAX CANTOR’S SMOOTHIE

People have this craze nowadays to post their health recipes. This is the protein smoothie I made today. I challenge you to find one smoothie that walks the talk better than this one. Warning: this is not a sugar-free, or a coffee-free recipe. This is not a keto diet item, although the sugar in it is natural. Not a weight-losing recipe, either. The chocolate taste came out heavy. This thing really gets you full.

Ingredients:

-Chocolate protein scoop (use your favorite brand, mine had sugar in it from monk fruit)
-Cacao and maca powder, 4 spoons
-Frozen blueberries and peaches, 4 ounces
-Coffee, 6 ounces
-Water
– Eggshells from 3 eggs (Ha: bet you didn’t expect that one)
-Honey, one spoon
-Walnuts, a good portion
-Half a teaspoon of frankincense hardened resin. This thing was new to me, too, and I am not in the church business. I heard frankincense has some good health benefits, and I’m willing to try it.

If you can do better than me, if you can eat eggshells without having them crushed in a blender, if you have heard of a more of-the-charts smoothie, let me know in the comments section below.