"Missing out" is the new freedom (the anti-desire protocol)

What if I told you that missing out is the key to freedom, and refusing to become part of the system is necessary for unlocking the life you truly desire?

When everyone else turns left, sometimes the best thing for you to do is to turn right, but that’s much easier said than done.

You see co-workers getting promotions. Your friends are living perfect lives. Your buddy just started dating an attractive woman who looks like a supermodel. It seems like everyone around you played the game of life perfectly well by following the rules.

They went to school. They landed their dream job. They bought a nice home.  They’re ticking off all the boxes of what a successful life looks like.

Then you look at your life, and you feel like you’re missing out on all the action. You feel like your life was supposed to be more exciting, more successful, more like everyone else you see out here thriving.

Every time you’re reminded of this, it knocks you out of balance and maybe it even creates a sense of despair or FOMO (otherwise known as the fear of missing out), because humans are herd animals. We are naturally inclined to try to fit in and so we feel a strong urge to adopt the same behaviors of the people around us.

But what if I told you that operating on the perimeter of the herd, rather than the center of it, is the very thing that’s going to unlock your ability to live life as you wish rather than being trapped by the constraints of the system.

"People do not realize how much they are influenced by the ideas and judgments of others. They want to fit in with the group, blend in with the crowd, avoid the risk of standing out. They fail to understand that the moment they conform, they lose their independence of thought and action.” – Robert Greene

I have a saying that “you cannot be outstanding without standing out. And you cannot stand out by fitting in.” In other words, deviating from everyone else, and living a life that’s distinctly different than the status quo is the formula for freedom.

The fact is that most people are not free despite what they think.  Most people are not financially free. Most people are not psychologically free. Most people don’t have geographic autonomy. And I would say that most people don’t have time freedom either, but what’s even worse, most people are TIME POOR, meaning they don’t have enough time in the day to do basic things like taking care of their bodies.

By not doing what everyone else around you is doing, you create an opportunity to separate yourself from the pack and build a custom-tailored lifestyle that’s exactly what you want for yourself.

You can create a life of freedom in almost every sense of the word.

If you don’t believe me then stick around because I’m going to explain to you exactly why intentionally missing out is the master key that’ll unlock the door to your freedom. Once you understand this concept and implement the steps I’m about to provide you, you’ll have a formula for finally breaking away from the things that are holding you back so that you can create a life for yourself that the average person out there can only dream about.

So, pay close attention to what I’m about to say. In fact, instead of passively reading, I encourage you to actively read and write down the three main takeaways that you get from this article because what you read here might be the one thing that changes how you move for the rest of your life.

There once was a point in history when fitting in, and being accepted by the group was a matter of survival. You needed to sacrifice your personal indulgences and conform to the social norms of the group because your actual survival depended on it.

If you didn’t help the tribe hunt and find food, then you likely didn’t eat. If you were outcasted by the tribe, then you either find another one fast or die.  So not only did you have a very strong incentive to fit in, but you also had a very clear reason why you should do so.

Fast forward to today and the survival instinct to fit in remains. It’s still part of our operating system. It’s deeply entrenched within us to overlook our own personal interests in the name of fitting in.

“Evolution has designed us to be exquisitely sensitive to social threats—because, for most of human history, being left out meant you didn’t live long enough to leave offspring.” – Robin Dunbar

“Our ancestors who were more sensitive to social exclusion were more likely to survive. FOMO is the legacy of that vigilance.” – David Buss

This is the basis behind FOMO. It’s part of our built-in survival mechanism to adopt the behaviors of the people around us.

This basic instinct is still with us today.  But the only difference between our prehistoric ancestors and the modern world is that our FOMO today is not aligned with actual survival.

Your brain is ancient hardware that struggling to operate in a new environment that it was never designed for, and the system upgrade is still pending. So, the fear that you have of missing out today is a sort of misfiring of your operating system. You now probably experience FOMO because you don’t drive a BMW, or one of your co-workers got a promotion and you didn’t, or you’re not on that safari that you see your friends posting about on Instagram…

We naturally try to avoid FOMO. That’s basic human behavior. We do this by making sure that we conform to the lifestyles that we see other people around us living.  We try to eliminate the feeling of missing out by acting as other people act and conforming to whichever societal construct we live within.

In the united states, the social construct that we find ourselves trying to fit into is one that glorifies materials, status, and instant gratifications over health, well-being, and genuine and lasting fulfillment… and our individual actions are influenced accordingly.

Let’s take a moment to look at the facts.

Three out of every four Americans get less than the recommended amount of physical activity leading to a sedentary population that’s currently experiencing an obesity and chronic disease epidemic that has no signs of slowing down.

The average American spends 7 hours a day looking at screens which means very little of their wakeful hours are spent being present in the real world and enjoying all that it has to offer.

People in some of the most prestigious jobs regularly suffer from chronic stress, burnout, and loss of purpose because they’re trapped by the golden handcuffs and they “can’t afford” to walk away from the financial dependency.

Your instinctive urge to fit in is likely leading you down a similar path.

"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. The individual who conforms to the norms and expectations of society, who accepts the established patterns of thought, behavior, and values, may appear to be ‘normal,’ but this outward adjustment is no true indication of well-being. – Jiddu Krishnamurti

Our primal survival mechanism that drives us to fit in has us now conforming to a lifestyle that makes us sicker, poorer, and more mentally unstable. 

Fitting in today means eating a standard American diet that drives an epidemic of preventable chronic diseases, it means participating in a culture of excess consumerism that has many Americans saddled in debt. It means using technologies like social media which ironically exacerbate the growing loneliness epidemic. 

The sicker we are, the more time we must spend in doctors’ offices and taking meds.  The more money we spend on non-necessities, the more one must work to pay for our spending habits. The more stressed out we are, the less opportunity we have to enjoy our short time here on earth.

In other words, fitting in and fully conforming to the current system is preventing so many people from truly being free.

To be well-adjusted to such a society is to become part of its sickness. True health, then, is not about fitting in or being accepted by society, but rather about living in a way that is authentic, free from the pressures of social conditioning, and aligned with a deeper sense of truth and inner peace.” – Jiddu Krishnamurti

In my opinion it is such a tragedy that so many people spend so much of their lives trying to fit into a system that makes them worse off by doing so, trying to have all the things that society says you should have, trying to live the way everyone else is living.

The rules you were told to follow from an early age, stay in line, don’t be different, stay in school, get a good job, buy a home… those are the same rules that arguably have led most people to be trapped by the system in one way or another.

But the good news is that there is an alternative option that some people choose to take, and this option is the master key that unlocks a life of freedom.

The challenge is that this alternative requires you to override your primal survival mechanism and choose to intentionally exclude yourself from certain elements of society that you are otherwise compelled to participate in.

In essence, you need to turn your FOMO into what I call SOMO. That is, you need to turn your FEAR of missing out into a “STRATEGY of missing out.”

In doing this, you leverage the very thing that so many people try to avoid at all costs, and you’re strategically leveraging it to your advantage.

There’s this concept of voluntary discomfort where you intentionally do uncomfortable things because you know that in the long run it’s going to enhance your life in some way.  That’s why people do cold plunges, they get into a tub of ice water and purposefully experience the discomfort because they know it comes with the benefits of anti-inflammation, anti-aging, and dopamine management among a host of others.

Likewise, intentionally leveraging the discomfort of missing out, of selectively choosing not to participate in certain aspects of society also comes with a host of benefits.

Selecting out of a culture of consumerism comes with financial benefits that make it easier to achieve financial freedom.  Selecting out of a culture that centers activities around excessive alcohol consumption makes it easier to form authentic and healthier connections with people.  Selecting out of a culture of mindlessly consuming brain-numbing content as entertainment makes it easier to channel your time and energy into more constructive activities.

"Conformity is the enemy of individuality, and individuality is the foundation of power. When you blend in, you lose the essence of who you are. The first step toward mastering your life is to break free from the constraints that others have imposed upon you." – Robert Greene

So, if you want better for yourself then you have to override your default programming and rewire your operating system to naturally seek out opportunities to strategically miss out. You must re-program your subconscious mind to stop desiring the societal status quo and to start having an aversion to those things.

To do this you must create an “anti-desire” protocol.

 Whenever I need to break a bad habit or I need to resist the temptation to engage in activities that I know I shouldn’t be doing, I use this protocol to great effect.

So how do you design an anti-desire protocol?

Firstly, you need to know your vision and your values.

I talk about the importance of having a clear vision and well-defined values all the time but to quickly recap…..  

Your pain is your purpose. You, me, everybody has one problem in life that trumps all other problems. It’s your biggest pain point, and your purpose in life is to alleviate that pain point by finding a solution to the big life problem.   

I won’t go into extensive detail here because I’ve talked about this in previous articles, but you need to turn your pain into your purpose through an exercise called anti-visioning. Spend a week or so journaling whatever thoughts and feelings you have as it relates to that big problem that you are facing and then synthesize those thoughts in writing into a future scenario that would represent the worst case for you.  

Then you take the opposite of your anti-vision to create your vision, and then you find the 3 to 5 words that capture the essence of your vision.  Those words are your values, and they will inform every decision you make.

The TLDR is that your anti-vision informs  your vision. Your vision informs your values. And your values inform your actions.

In my case, my values are health, autonomy, connectedness, simplicity, and peace.

So, I know that if I’m doing anything that doesn’t bring me health, autonomy, connectedness, simplicity, or peace then it’s misguided.

Using this framework, you should also be able to determine whether any actions or decisions that you make are misguided. Now that you have your values defined, you can easily determine whether something is aligned with your vision or not. 

Next you need to identify your most destructive FOMO trigger.

When I use the term “FOMO triggers” I’m referring to the things that you see other people doing, and you find yourself wanting to do the same, or something similar, whether you are able to do it or not.

If you’re not keenly aware of what actually triggers FOMO for you, then you definitely won’t be able to successfully implement a strategy of missing out.

"Awareness is the greatest agent for change." – Eckhart Tolle

There are plenty of things in life that we want to include ourselves in. There are plenty of things that trigger a sense of FOMO, whether we are aware of it or not.

But in this case you don’t want to put your energy into all of those triggers.  You need to strategically figure out which one is the most destructive for you as it relates to your vision and your values.  That’s the most important one that you’re going to focus all of your attention towards.

To do this you should spend some time reflecting back on past experiences that have triggered your FOMO and also spend time taking notes whenever you have a FOMO-inducing experience.  You should spend about a week doing that, then at the end of that week synthesize everything you wrote down into the single thing that causes the greatest amount of FOMO for you.

Create a one sentence statement explaining what the most self-destructing source of FOMO is for you, and why it is such.  And now that you know this information you can move on to the next step of the anti-desire protocol, which is to turn that main trigger from being something that you desire to something that you genuinely detest.

This entails reprogramming your subconscious mind (or your operating system) to be incompatible with the actions that trigger your fear of missing out.

You can do this by creating a direct link between the single greatest source of FOMO that you just identified and your anti-vision. There needs to be no daylight between the two so that every time you think about going to that event, buying that car, going on that vacation, hanging out at that bar, working overtime for that promotion… your anti-vision and the consequences of giving in to those actions are the first things that come to mind.

The visual of your anti-vision needs to be stronger, clearer, and more easily accessible by the mind than whatever instant gratification you expect to get from partaking in those particular activities. So, you must train your mind to build a sort of muscle memory, if you will, that reflexively avoids said activities.

There are several techniques that you can use to do this, but I think the easiest is through a combination of writing, repetition, and environmental design.

Let’s start with writing because it’s the most straight forward.

By writing down in vivid detail how engaging in the specific activities that you fear missing out on will actually manifest your anti-vision, you start to encode the anti-desire into your memory.

After you write it down you can use the power of repetition by scheduling a daily block of time for mindfulness where you reflect on your greatest source of FOMO along with your anti-vision, and by doing this you repeatedly remind yourself that these things that you fear missing out on are going to do nothing but bring you more pain, more suffering, and more misalignment in the future.

Then you can take things a step further with environmental design and reshape your narrative through what I call “self-brainwashing” which entails only allowing information inputs that reinforce the need to avoid the actions that you fear missing out on.  In a way you’re intentionally creating a self-reinforcing echo chamber to reshape your perception of said activities.

"What you read, what you watch, who you spend time with, and what you expose yourself to, will shape the reality you live in." – Anonymous

If your vision and values entail being an entrepreneur or, having more work-life balance, enjoying a simple life outside of the corporate grind, yet all of your peers getting promotions on LinkedIn is triggering you to put in even more hours at work or to seek out even higher status jobs to keep up, then that’s misaligning you with your vision, and you need to cut off that stream of incoming information.  So, you log out of your LinkedIn, turn off your notifications, and stop consuming any information about what other people are doing in their careers.

Then you seek out as much information as you can that builds the echo chamber you need to reinforce the anti-desire. This can be anything like podcasts, books, or even YouTube videos of people sharing their stories as to why they stepped away from highly coveted jobs, or why you should consider prioritizing other areas of life over your job.

Books like The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Farris and Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber are great examples of this.

All of these techniques combined will for sure begin to build an anti-desire for the things you used to fear missing out.

Next you need to create direct links between your SOMO and your vision.

This is literally the same process that you use for connecting your FOMO triggers to your anti-vision except now you want to connect the act of “strategically missing out” with your vision.

Actively deciding not to pursue that promotion, or not to participate in that event, or not to buy that home with a two car garage and a white picket fence… how does choosing not to do these things align you with your values and move you closer to your grand life vision?

You do the same process. You use writing, repetition, and environmental design to rewire your subconscious mind to naturally default towards opting out of things that you know don’t bring the long-term benefits you’re looking for.

You write how missing out on certain activities will translate into you manifesting your vision. You use repetition through a mindfulness/visualization process. And you use environmental design, via self-brainwashing, to train your mind to naturally gravitate towards missing out on that thing that you used to fear missing out on.

I can go much deeper into the anti-desire protocol but I’m trying to keep this article reasonably short, so if you want to hear a more in-depth breakdown of how to start rejecting things that you know are serving as distractions in your life, then let me know.

But in short, following this protocol is going to rewire your mind so that you can start to strategically miss out on things that don’t serve you well to make room for more fruitful life pursuits.

When you strategically miss out, you’re not turning yourself into a hermit or an outcast. You’ll still participate in society but what you’re doing now is, for a very specific area of your life that is extremely important to you, you’re turning what previously was a self-destructive desire to fit in into a constructive anti-desire to stand out. 

You’re finding a way to operate differently. And when you do things differently, when you deviate from the standard, you are going to see non-standard results.

And the result you’re looking for is to have way more freedom than the average person, in whatever area of your life is most important to you.

So, more freedom to do what you want when you want without being burdened by financial debts. More freedom to travel without having to get approval from your job to take a vacation.  More freedom to enjoy a healthy life without constant doctor’s visits and prescription meds. And the list goes on….

If you’re reading this, I’m assuming you are looking to make some big changes in your life. If so then I invite you to check out The Self-Reinvention Cheat Code, which is a field manual that I’ve created to help people like you get started with a life-transformation process in a strategic and organized way.   It’s a 50-page interactive guide that walks you through creating your own vision and values and then building a systematic approach for actually manifesting your vision instead of continuing to dream about it.

So, if you’re serious about changing your life and living on your own terms then let The Self-Reinvention Cheat Code be the first step in your process.