Earlier this week, my book Who Am I and What Am I Doing With My Life came out. Why should you read it? No more false identity FOMO.
Is any FOMO (fear of missing out) real? I believe so. After all, FOMO is just repurposing the economic principle of opportunity cost into your personal life. It’s good to consider that yes, you will miss out on a good night’s sleep when you stay up to watch the next Netflix suggestion.
Identity FOMO is a little different. It has to do with a more nagging, existential, joy-stealing fear that you are fundamentally not the right person. There is a different course of life you could have taken—job, spouse, home—that would have resulted in a better reality. That is past-facing identity FOMO. Future-facing identity FOMO has all the same fears, just transposed to the next decision. It’s the idea that a far better reality awaits you if you just made the right switch.
Identity FOMO is a little different. It has to do with a more nagging, existential, joy-stealing fear that you are fundamentally not the right person. There is a different course of life you could have taken—job, spouse, home—that would have resulted in a better reality. That is past-facing identity FOMO. Future-facing identity FOMO has all the same fears, just transposed to the next decision. It’s the idea that a far better reality awaits you if you just made the right switch.
Just as economic or social FOMO is not always bad, this book is not going to tell you that identity FOMO is all bad. That would be a lie. If you spent the bulk of your free time in the past ten years watching YouTube, I feel fairly confident in saying you have missed out on a better life. But that’s also in the past, and that’s where solving false identity FOMO comes in.
False identity FOMO comes from a degree of fixation and obsessiveness around wondering if you should be someone else, fretting that you will spend your life inches away from blissful self-actualization because you haven’t made that one decision. That’s simply not how it works.
One of our happiness cliches is: “It’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey.” This is partial malarkey. It doesn’t matter how chill you are, the journey’s going to start looking pretty grim if your destination is hurtling farther into outer space. As a Christian, however, you have an awesome identity destination—Jesus Christ. God set that for you; it’s not going to change (Romans 8:29; Colossians 3:10). And God has staked his faithfulness to getting you there (I Thessalonians 5:24).
It’s when you know that destination—being made like Jesus, when you see how good that destination really is, and you’re confident you will get there—that’s when you start enjoying the journey. As you commit to God, God promises that whatever your journey looks like, there are no useless steps, no walking in circles. That’s why there’s a lot of false identity FOMO you can dismiss.
Your ultimate identity journey—the one that leads to true self-actualization happens on the inside. Your past and future decisions regarding circumstances (job, relationships, opportunities) don’t matter nearly as much as how you relate to God in those circumstances or as you reflect back on them. If you understand this as your identity journey, you’re never far off course. It’s as simple as remembering to pray, invite God in, and trust him with where you are and what’s in front of you.
Why did I write this book?
You can order the book here. It would mean a lot to me if you can leave an Amazon or Goodreads review!
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