“JOMO not FOMO”

Speciality Bites with

Paul Hargreaves

Chief executive of Cotswold Fayre

• Becoming a B Corp
• Top trend predictions for Christmas 2021
• Self-sacrifice: The importance of building a leadership legacy centred on others
• Undercover Boss
• Can/should bosses really be close friends with their staff?

Like many people I am concerned at some of the impact of social media on our lives.

Whilst there are huge positives in terms of marketing and connecting long-lost friends, this constant bombardment with other people’s successes really isn’t good for us.  There are some who post the downs as well as the ups on their personal social media feeds, but many of us in business only post the positives and the highs.  I have been at it myself this week, posting about Cotswold Fayre picking up the Thames Valley Business of the Year Award 2020.  Now there is nothing wrong with posting good news stories but we need to guard our own reactions to other’s good news stories and successes.

The danger is to wish we were doing what someone else is doing or winning what someone else is winning or having the life someone else is living.  If we are not careful we can sometimes feel dreadfully insecure.  Steve Furtick puts it brilliantly, “The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel”.  You see we don’t see the lows of other people, the trials and the tribulations.  We think everything is a bed of roses for them.  Well let me tell you, it isn’t.  Take our very pleasing award this week, this has come after a year, 2019, where we went through some dark times as a business, which I won’t go into here, but much pain has come with the success.  And that is generally true for many other success stories.  No pain often means no gain.

The key to ridding ourselves of these insecurities is to be secure in what we are doing in our own lives.  To know our purpose.  This is something I have made good progress on in my own life over the past year.  I am much clearer on what I am meant to be doing in my life than I was previously, and actually have written a purpose statement.  This may evolve over time, but it has help me ensure that I am generally doing activities that fit within that.  So when I see others achieving success in all sorts of different ways, whilst I am still tempted to “wish I was there”, I pause, step back and think actually I am doing here what I am meant to be doing.  When we are in that place, we can actually be pleased that we are ‘missing out’ on what others are doing, and be pleased with what we are doing.  Moving from FOMO (fear of missing out) to JOMO (joy of missing out).

Enjoy your purposeful week.