SOMO
The IPOs of DoorDash and AirBnb this week can leave many with a natural sense of SOMO — Sadness Of Missing Out.
It is, I think, quite possible to feel both happiness for the teams at AirBnb and DoorDash (and Y Combinator) and sadness for oneself.
The sadness comes from comparing. It comes from What If scenarios. What if I had gotten the VC funding I deserved? What if I had found a capable Co-Founder? What if I had moved to the Bay Area?
Those who have succeeded can only offer pity and the cold comfort of saying, “We were incredibly lucky. We had great support. It was a team effort.” But one would guess that inside, they are giddy with their success and believe equally that they were extremely fortunate and that their abilities led them to this outcome.
Because that’s what humans do. We all make what social psychologists call the Fundamental Attribution Error. We personalize every experience.
Doing well reflects on the person. Doing poorly similarly reflects on the person. Human beings are pathologically egotistical and can’t help but imagine people playing the most important roles in the play of life.
So if Brian Chesky, CEO of AirBnb, makes $15 billion, is he 1,500 times better than someone who only makes $1 million? That doesn’t comport with our natural understanding of ourselves and the world. Our inability to process this illogic leaves as byproducts confusion, anxiety, pressure, and the horrible feeling of lack.
This feeling of lack and SOMO is certainly not relegated to startup founders. How does the un-drafted college basketball star feel about the ascending NBA player he used to go toe-to-toe with? What anguish does the corporate executive feel when their similarly achieving peer gets the promotion over them? How does the high school senior feel when she sees her best friends get accepted into the Ivy League and she does not?
These examples show also that jealousy is a function of closeness. The farmer in North Korea does not compare himself to the Silicon Valley magnate. Pluto doesn’t compare itself to Mercury, but dammit! wonders Mars, why did Earth get all the good Sun?
Comparison is the devil, but it’s not really our fault. We’re wired/weird this way. Competition (and hence comparison) is the fuel for evolution.
The culminating potion is one of inadequacy, unfairness, the feeling of not getting one’s due, envy, self-contempt, blame. This potion is called Lack when you focus on absence, Jealousy when you focus on imbalance, and Sadness when you direct your blame inwards and beat yourself up for not achieving the same outcomes.
What to do when presented with this toxic concoction?
The antidote is perspective. The mind has a mind of its own. When presented with the successes of others, our mind may launch into its unproductive subroutines, including: schadenfreude; explaining success away; comparing apples to lemons.
But this demon in the brain will pass. We will go back once again to our routines of enjoying the warmth of a nice cup of joe, diving into an enjoyable film, spending time (hopefully not only virtually) with loved ones, creating our creations, and focusing more on being who we want to be, as opposed to not being who we don’t want to be.
Our economic engine has the diabolic power to magnify minute differences into wide gulfs in financial outcomes. Yes, of course, most of us would rather be on the winning side of that split hair, but so long as our framework for interpreting the world consists of assigning status based on income (or other unreliable markers of success and happiness), we will be doomed to a perpetual feeling of lack.
Net worth is not personal worth.
When rich people tell us that the most important things in life are free, do we believe them? Are they just telling us that to make us feel better? Would you consider the current richest person in the world — Jeff Bezos — to be the happiest? I think few people would agree with that.
So stop taking yourself so seriously. Enjoy what is around you. Get out of yourself by helping others. Be proud and grateful for what you have accomplished. Let go of the Fundamental Attribution Error, taking to heart the humility to recognize that great people can be ordinary and that ordinary people can be great.
The key to happiness and avoiding SOMO isn’t to achieve more success. It isn’t to dash through more doors or to air more beds. The key to happiness is to live your life in whatever way makes you truly happy.
