Where is Your Focus?

by Ann Kelley, Director of Communications and Website at Just Moved Ministry, akelley@justmoved.org

You’ve been uprooted from your home and plopped down in a new town. Friendships, invitations to dinner, laughter over an inside joke – all seem to happen for everyone else, but not for you.

Enter Facebook – or the social media du jour.

You’re just a click away from entering your old friends’ lives and the familiar sights of the home you left behind. There’s a picture of your best friends together or a photo of your mom and sister at your favorite cafe. Then you see a photo of the gang getting together for the monthly softball game. Every image is filled with smiles, laughter, fun.

What you don’t see is the argument that happened on the way to the softball game or the awkward silence that preceded the selfie. Most often, Facebook and Instagram are fairytale facades of life in the ideal.

Even more important, as you focus on what you’re missing, discontent settles in and you may miss opportunities available right in front of you!

Research has been done to prove this.

Darlene McLaughlin, M.D., assistant professor at the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine and a psychiatry and behavioral health specialist with Texas A&M Physicians states,

The problem with FOMO [fear of missing out] is the individuals it impacts are looking outward instead of inward. When you’re so tuned into the ‘other,’ or the ‘better’ (in your mind), you lose your authentic sense of self. This constant fear of missing out means you are not participating as a real person in your own world.

Is social media stirring up discontent in you? Is your focus on what and who you left behind?

Make the choice today to be present.

Focus on your life right here, right now. Are you getting social media notifications on your phone? Turn them off! Use these outlets for important connections but handle them wisely. Guard against the allure that life is so much better somewhere else.