From FOMO to JOMO: Finding Joy After a Cancer Diagnosis

Hey there lifter uppers. I'm Deb Krier, the co-host of Cancer and Comedy, where our mission is to heal cancer impacted people through hope and humor, something we like to call turning the grim into a grin. Well, today on Cancer and Comedy, we're going to be talking about FOMO, the fear of missing out when coping with cancer, and how to shift from FOMO to JOMO, which is the joy of missing out. Now here's the host of Cancer and Comedy, Dr. Brad Miller.

Hey, Deb, always a joy and a plover a privilege. Is that a good word or to be with you here on cancer and comedy along with our lifter uppers, it's always a joy for us to build a community of people who are not giving up on life, who want to live life to the fullest, no matter what the situation is, when you're diagnosed with cancer or some other things that kind of eat you alive at you know, mental health issues or stress in your life, divorce, depression, any number of things that can eat us up.

But we really kind of focus on the framework of cancer, and we're like to build a community of people who are really getting the best out of life, no matter what the circumstances are, and kind of shift little bit. We're going to be talking about today how to shift for your mindset a little bit. But we're here to help people get connected and be part of our community, and we hope that people will join our community at cancer comedy.com/follow Hey, Deb, I got a couple. It's summertime as we record this, and people are traveling. How about a couple of travel or travel related dad jokes? You ready for this?

Oh, can't wait. Can't wait.

Alright, what do you call a group of cows on our on a road trip?

I don't know.

A moo-bile party.

Cute, cute.

What just, uh, here's another one. Why did the tomato turn red during the trip?

I don't know.

Because it saw the salad dressing at the picnic.

Cute. I like it. I like it. Well, following our conversation, we will have yet another one of Dr Brad's bad jokes of the day, so be sure to stick around. But then we have our very important faith It or Break It segment. Well, as we mentioned, we would love for you to be part of our cancer and comedy community, where together we crush cancer with a message of how to cope with hope and humor. Please follow Cancer and Comedy at cancerandcomedy.com/follow.

Well, Deb, today, I thought we would talk about something that people experience in life in different ways. It's called, it's pretty common kind of a acronym, or whatever it is, F O, M, O, fair of missing out FOMO, which is where you FOMO, which is where people basically, is the feeling people have a nagging sensation that we're missing out on something exciting, or some social gatherings or opportunities or things that we just don't want to miss out on. And I think a lot of people, when they are diagnosed with cancer or some other bad thing happened, had this happen. I'll just speak for myself, I know that I did big time when I was diagnosed a couple years ago with prostate cancer, and I was given a kind of a serious, you know, serious prognosis that I didn't do something serious about it, I might not be around in a couple years.

And my I really went to my granddaughters who were very young at the time, like five and two, and I thought, Okay, I'm going to miss, you know, their birthdays and growing up, and I'm going to miss out on that stuff, let alone the things with my wife and other people, I'm going to miss out on that. And it made me kind of made me sad, a little depressed. It made Okay, what am I going to get done that I can get done in the next year or two? And a part of that's what led to us doing this right now, the cancer comedy podcast to be honest with you. But there, there's that.

But recently, I've had a couple of other experiences that made me think about this FOMO thing and how you might shift that. One of them is, I just overheard it when I was being treated. Had an infusion treatment going on. There was a person in a booth near me who was saying, something infected. Well, I don't think I'm going to be able to go on vacation this summer because of my treatments and things like that. And just kind of sad about it, that kind of thing.

And then that. Also had a conversation with my own mom here recently, who's in her late 80s and we were talking about several things, including, I said, Mom, is there anything in life? She's a decent health but slowing down quite a bit, and, you know, recently sold her car, so she's not as mobile she used to be, things like that. And I said, mom's there anything you really want to do that you haven't done in life? You know, we were just traveling or doing some activity or something like that. She said, No, there's really not a very, very content with my situation right now. My health is decent, but I I've seen enough, you know, seen enough youth, youth ball games. I've traveled the country with my dad years ago, and I. She's pretty content, I'm trying to say, in her circumstances.

And so this is kind of a shift from my franticness of wanting to get some stuff done in a year or two after my diagnosis to kind of an acceptance of things. And some people call that. I have just recently learned this term Jomo, the joy of missing out, which is kind of a sense of acceptance and that kind of thing. So I'm going to ask that's kind of my framework for our conversation here today. Let me ask you, did you have any, uh, FOMO in your life? Or what do you think about this FOMO issue regards to cancer?

Oh, I think everybody cancer or not has FOMO because we see things on social media, I think is probably one of the best things. Excuse me. Take a little sip of my water, where somebody posts some grand, glorious thing they've done, right, right, you know. And we think, Oh, that looks like fun. I want to do that, you know. Or we, we, you know, even if it's just something as simple and, you know, we laugh as women, fear of missing out on the big sale. Oh, and yeah.

So, you know, I think we all have fear of missing out. And, of course, the problem with social media is we tend, in many cases, to make things seem better than they are. You know, we talk about the glorious sunsets, and, you know, you know, and the fabulous trips, all those things. And you know, we don't always say, you know, I got food poisoning while I was, whatever it is. And so, you know, we all, I think, look at that and go, Oh my gosh. Fear Of Missing Out, you know.

And, and we've talked about not putting things off, you know, if you've got say a big trip that you want to do, you know, do it sooner rather than later, no matter what, right. Because who knows what the future holds and, you know, and I tell people I don't really have a bucket list any longer, because if it's something that I want to do, we try and figure out a way to do it right and so, you know, we kind of all have those things. I think cancer does make it, you know, a little bit more urgent, as you were saying, where we think, let's do it today, because we might not have tomorrow.

Well, also think, in my particular case, I'm also thinking about a friend of mine. He actually was my boss at one time in in my world as a pastor, district supervisor, district superintendent, and he was my superintendent, and shortly after he retired, I mean, very shortly, within a few months, he was diagnosed with cancer, real, I think, with liver cancer. But anyhow, he knew his time was short, and he did die within about two years after his diagnosis.

But the thing I remember about Bill was he really was aggressive about doing the things he wanted to do with the people he wanted to do them with. I remember he had a group of friends, two friends. So he did, they're two or three friends, so they did a lot of stuff together for they said they'd been, they were in school years ago, but they, I remember them, he had taken on road trips to see they went to a whole bunch of Major League Baseball parks, and they just did a road trip, and it was just go, and he would pay the whole way. You know, it not that the other guys were gay, but he just wanted to do it for them, right? And he did lots of things, and he did traveled a lot, but I remember he did things with his wife and with his friends and for other people, Charities has supported. He really leaned into a big time, and he made no secret about it. He said, I'm my time is short. I'm going to live it up best I can. I always appreciated that, that type of thing, and that's and then when his health did go and demise, everybody had good memories of him, not only because of the you know, he invested his money on them, but because he spent time with them that, right? That's a good, good thing too. So, but you said, but fear of missing out sometimes does put really undue pressure on ourselves, does it not? How do you think, Oh, it does. It brings an emotional toll, don't you think?

You know, and, and especially when it's something that maybe we don't even really care about, but it looked fun, so why don't we do it, you know? And, and all of those things, and, and I think it does. It really puts a lot of stress on us when maybe we don't need that stress. Because, you know, we know stress can cause physical issues, you know, and so are we getting so caught up in worrying about not doing that we're not living for today? And I think that might be the biggest thing is, you know, what's going on today? What do we need to be doing today.

I think a part of what goes on in some of the studies show this type of cycle that happens people when they have FOMO fear of missing out. It does can lead to anxiety and depression and loneliness, and people then disconnecting from what they do have. It's kind of a cycle. Well, if I can't do it, then I'm not going to do anything. I'm just kind of throw my hands right and give up. And it is fatiguing as well to kind of think about this as well. And I think there are some studies that show that. So, so what do you what do we? What do we do about it? So how can we kind of shift things a little bit? And what do you think?

Well, I love this concept that you brought up of Jomo, the joy of missing out. I've never heard of this before, and when I was looking at the information you provided, I thought, this is perfect. I love this. And we're not going, Yeah, I'm not able to do something. I mean, you know that's not, not the joy of missing out. It's, How do we still have joy when we're missing out on things, you know, be content with where we are, you know, and maybe reprioritize some of the things that we're thinking, hey, you know, is this important? Well, no, maybe it's not so important to me doing that, and let's find the joy in what we are able to do?

Yeah, I think it's and this is a mind shift, shift type of thing, and I was new concept to me as well. Jomo joy of missing out. And he really kind of picked up from my I mentioned my own conversation with my mother, being just very joyful and happy where she's at right now. She enjoys having time with her friends, and when her family comes to visit her, she's very happy about that, but it's about being kind of content and choosing to be content whatever your circumstances are. You know you your circumstances are going to happen regardless. None of us plan on a cancer diagnosis that becomes a circumstantial fact of life. You know that that happens to us, that circumstances happen you then you got to deal with it.

And you can deal with it by being depressed and upset or fear of missing out, or you can choose something, something different. I thought about that a little bit here recently, my wife, Debbie, and I, we went through our kind of revisit. She retired recently, we kind of revisited our wills and our insurance plans and all this kind of stuff and all that's kind of depressing in a way, if you think about your wills and insurance, you know, who's going to get what? And, you know, all the financial considerations, all that kind of stuff. But it was just also like, Okay, I'm glad we got these things together, and it's better to have it than to not.

So now you're not worried about it?

Yeah, and just have it cared for and that, that type of thing, it's embracing the contentment of the moment. So I think there's something to be said for this about the joy of finding some contentment and slowing down. So what do you think are some ways that some people can do this? What are maybe some ways or strategies people might use to shift from FOMO to JOMO.

Well, I think the first thing is stop comparing yourself to others. Trying to keep as we used to say, you know, trying to keep up with the Joneses, right? You know, I remember it was, it was so funny. When my dad was alive, he very much liked his vehicles. His cars were very important to him, and anytime Tom and I bought a new car, he had to run out and get another new car. It was he just couldn't, you know, and he just couldn't stand that we had something, you know, newer than him.

And my mother would just shake her head, because she knew, you know that was and you know they could afford to do it, and so it wasn't an issue. But, yeah, don't compare yourselves to others, you know, and, and, and I know that's hard, so it might mean that you need to stop doing things where you're going to do that so, you know, okay, stop looking at Facebook or limit you know the what you're doing or who you're seeing. I mean, you know, we've all got the perfect people in our lives, right? Well, okay, first of all, their lives are not perfect, right?

But if all they're doing is posting things where you're thinking, Oh, I wish I could do that, maybe, you know, limit your access to them, you know, and, and, but, but then, you know, it is called The Joy of missing out for reasons so deliberately, look for things that are going to cause and create joy for you. Chatting with you, right? That's so much fun. I love doing that. And so find those things that you can do that do bring you joy.

Yeah, and I think another aspect of this has to do with being intentional about finding those things that bring you joy, and prioritizing what really matters, what really matters to you. And you know, depending on the on what your particular health situation is, your health needs to be a priority if you're dealing with cancer, and that's one thing. But what are things that really matter in your life? Is it really that trip to Niagara Falls, or is it spending time with your family in a more enjoyable situation, rather than wearing yourself out and whatever the situation would be to travel, you know, and see certain things and go get in the boat?

And what have you that that kind of do. So it's family, this prioritizing, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. Prioritizing relationships over stuff is one way of looking at it, your health, your family, the things that bring you joy in life. You know, whether it's ticker TV show or doing crossword puzzles or reading, my mother reads of least a book a week, for instance, being validated by those type of things that can bring you joy, rather than external validation and that. So this is kind of a shift that we can choose to make. And I think, you know, people who deal with cancer, things like you have to make some shifts of right away, you know, kind of dealing with this, but we can help in this whole process here. But people, this the one of the things that's always the shift from living to keep up to living for oneself, you know, for what brings us joy?

Right? You know and it is you know we need to think you know, not that we're missing out, but as you said, that we are choosing joy, you know, because we are going to miss out, you know. And there's thing you know, like, if you're in active treatment, there are things that you just can't do, you know, you might not feel up to it, you know, all of those various things, as you said, you might not be able to travel like you used to, things like that. And so, yeah, instead of thinking, Oh, poor me still, though, I wish I could do that right, but maybe find a different way. You know, you mentioned a trip to Niagara Falls, okay, you know, rather than, than, you know, planning all of that, what about maybe watching a documentary on it, or, you know, so that you're still kind of seeing what's going on without all of that other additional stress.

Yeah, part of that is just practicing self-compassion, you know, self-love in the sense of, you know, what I really need for me right now, rather than, you know, sometimes it can be a comparison to ourselves, to our pre cancer self, or because, you know, a lot of people, I compare myself to myself to my younger self. For instance, I was talking, I was talking to a guy about my age, and we played in the same softball team last summer for our church, and we were saying, Are you going to play again this fall? We said, I don't know. Man, I pulled a hamstring, and I pulled this and that last year.

We're, we're debating, because either, you know, we're both in our 60s and you know, we're, we're trying to keep up with these guys in our 20s and 30s, and sometimes things don't work the same way. You know, we're comparing ourselves to our younger selves. And but this is a mind thing as well as a physical health thing and I think it has to do with living in the moment, you know, really cherishing the moments that we're in, instead of dwelling on the past. You know, we can't get in the DeLorean and go back to, back to the future. We're just not going to work that way.

And that there's some things that we could do, but I do think there are some things that we can do to help us and to live in the moment. You know, there is, you know, meditation and breathing exercises and other things, mindfulness, mindfulness, I think you said something a little bit earlier. I think is important for people to do, and that is, take control of your media, rather than letting it control you. You know, so not only social media, but TV, anything else, if we get caught up, turn the news off. Yeah.

And, let's just be honest, the facade of social media and even TV shows, and what have you, is they put some, you know, some, some pretty people on there who are, that kind of stuff, who, who, oh, by the end of the TV show, they have overcome, they've solved the murder, or they've done whatever to things are basically made whole, and sometimes things aren't made whole, and there's all those things too. So limit that kind of stuff. And I think I ultimately, though, I think it's about try not to be a whiner and think about what you've missed out on, but choose the joy in the moment, right?

And that that's what that that's about. So I love that. So let's just talk. I want to mention a couple of other things here that I think are important, that that people can not only do this on their own, but I think there's ways that people can connect it with other people, even in our own cancer and comedy community to help us to enjoy the moment. And there, you know, advocate, advocacy group and support groups and things, things like that. Do you have any thoughts on that about how people can enjoy the moment with others?

Well, you know, I used to do a lot of networking in person. You know, several times a week I would go and, you know, and, and, and then COVID hit, yeah, and, you know, obviously we weren't going. So, you know, when we were able to do that again, I actually sat down and thought, Okay, why was I going? Was it the social aspect, or was I learning something? And. More importantly was I getting business out of this, because these were business networking things.

And I finally realized I was going because it was social, you know, I enjoyed seeing the people. It was fun. You know, Southern Catering is always great fun, right? And so, you know, all of those things. And I thought, okay, I can do, I can still be connecting with people online, and so I do almost all of my networking online, you know, and so, you know, I think that's something to think about, is, you know, it for anybody you know, whether you've, you've been dealing with a cancer diagnosis or not, what are your priorities? Are you going just to be social? And if that's okay, then that's okay.

But if you are supposed to be going for business, then you need to rethink. Now, maybe it's okay when you're there, you need to not be being social. You need to be talking business, right? But, but Yeah, can you find an online community? And let's be honest, if you have not found an online community, you're not looking hard enough, because there are so many online groups, you know, whether it's something like you're doing on Zoom or, you know, you know, things like that, or maybe it's just like Facebook groups and things like that, there's so many ways where you can still be connecting with people that, you know, I tell people I don't want to put shoes on so, you know, I'm I, you know, that's, that's one of my things.

Well, you've developed a pretty good online community to try not to die, to live, and some of the other the coaching programs you're working on and that that's good. I just think it's being you got to take charge of your life, whatever situation is. But you can't necessarily do the physical things you maybe have done before, but you still have relationships. You know, it's the we're not talking by fear, by the joy of missing out. Doesn't mean isolationism or loneliness. It means shifting how you how you do things, and staying connected in new ways and through support groups who both, you know, both in house and then also online.

And I think it's important to just talk and share your story, not necessarily your cancer story, but your life story. You know what's going on. What do you enjoy? Tell us about your hobbies, your whatever you know, getting connected with people, not only about these health issues, but you know, if you if you enjoy, like you love dogs. I know that. And so you whole community of people around that, right?

And none of them are here.

There you go. But you have, I know you travel and go to events, but you also have connections with those folks and all kinds of other ways and share, share stories. I think we're talking about surrounding yourself with that which is positive and lifts you up and brings you up rather than dissolving into some depressed state of a poor me. You know, this is kind of the whiner attitude that we try to that's part of what we try to do here, is to try to battle the whiner attitude is dissolving into a spiral of depression and isolationism. And what we try to do here in cancer and comedy and help as well. Like to see you lift people up. This is one way that we can do it. Help people shift from FOMO Fear of Missing Out to JOMO, the Joy of Missing Out.

Right, you know, and be looking at your friends also, you know. Have they kind of retreated too much, you know, and so you'll reach out to them and just say, Hey, what's going on? You know? Because once we kind of get in our little cocoons, it's kind of easy to stay in our little cocoons, watch for your friends and loved ones, and, you know, maybe make sure that they're okay.

Also, I think that's such an important point to make. You know it's okay to be the first one to reach out. You don't the way people come to you. You can reach out and to start the process going. And almost always, people appreciate that. So I love that, right? And let's help this. Help encourage people that need it, if they need an outlet or place to make a connection. Hey, one place you could turn is cancerandcomedy.com right?

Most definitely, most definitely, Well, folks, I told you, it is time now for another one of Dr. Brad's bad jokes of the day.