A man walking through a city park happens upon a little boy crying uncontrollably.  “What’s wrong?” asks the man.

“No,” the boy whimpers. ‘I’m playing hide-and-seek with my friends.”

The man nods with compassionate understanding.  “And you aren’t able to find them?” he asks.

“No,” wails the boy.  “I was hiding, and my friend didn’t try to find me.”

We never really stop being children, and we all experience some degree of fear of missing out, aka FOMO. Our collective FOMO has increased exponentially. Social media propagates the misperception that everyone else in the world is living a life of unrelenting excitement, happiness, and pleasure while we muddle through our humdrum lives.

In business, the delusion manifests as Bright Shiny Object syndrome. If we don’t pursue each new platform, program, and coaching technique, we might miss the ship that will rocket us toward success.

Even worse, however, is the Fear Of Being Ignored. More terrifying than the prospect of not being in the right place at the right time is the specter of being consciously excluded or thoughtlessly overlooked.

Hence, this week’s addition to the Ethical Lexicon:

Athazagoraphobia (a.thaz.a.gor.a.pho.bi.a) noun

Fear of forgetting, being forgotten, or being ignored.

Perhaps the most elemental of all human needs is the desire to be valued.  We want to feel that we are important, that our lives matter, and that we are making a difference. That can be a healthy desire when it motivates us to contribute positively to the world.

But here’s the dark side. Too often, we look to the wrong people for affirmation. When we do, we make ourselves subject to their value system, regardless of whether or not their system is based on sound and worthy values.

Here, too, social media makes a bad situation worse. NYU Professor Jonathan Haidt cites evidence that depression among teenage girls began to spike the same year Facebook added the Like button to user posts, intensifying the caustic effects of conformity and the yearning for popularity. And although female adolescents may be most acutely affected, few of us are immune to either peer pressure or the dopamine rush of momentary recognition that compels us to curry favor with online algorithms.

BECOME AWARE OF SNAP JUDGEMENTS AND SUPERFICIAL DECISIONS

In her delightful TED talk, bestselling author Susan Cain proposes that the industrial revolution transformed the way society approaches relationships. Back when most people lived out their lives in small, rural communities, they had plenty of time to get to know their neighbors by assessing character and evaluating ability.

With the influx into large urban centers, however, the sheer number of people we encounter daily requires us to make faster judgments. Perforce, charisma has become the currency of evaluation, even though there is zero correlation between extroversion and either competence or quality.

The fallout is distressing. Not only does snap judgment incline us toward superficiality in our decision-making, it also encourages the superficiality of ideas, since the most attention-getting notions may be the least likely to pay off in the end. Theranos is the most dramatic recent example. And we’re still waiting for Google Glasses and Hoverboards to make their promised splash. But the fear of being left behind continues to distract us from staying focused on authentic purpose.

RECOGNIZE THE ROOTS OF A CRISIS OF CONFIDENCE

Why are we so afraid? Perhaps the proliferation of social media gurus has caused us to lose confidence in ourselves. Rather than seeking validation from self-proclaimed influencers and thought leaders, we should cultivate our own talents, our own skills, and our own circle of trusted advisers. If we’re worthy of being valued, then people of value will welcome us into their tribe. And that is worth more than an infinity of fly-by-night followers or smiling emojis.

Even if we succeed in attracting the attention of minions, we may have sold our soul to get it, or missed our chance to provide something genuinely vital to the world. Far more rewarding is working diligently to achieve Kevin Kelly’s ideal of 1,000 true fans by providing continuous, exceptional content or service.

MAKE THE MINDSET SHIFT TO RESIST

When we react to circumstances, we make ourselves slaves to those around us. By choosing our responses instead, we take responsibility for our own fate. We also take responsibility for the culture that we encourage to take shape around us. When we chart a course of ethical values guided by a reliable moral compass, the people worth impressing will take notice.

One simple mindset shift is to articulate daily our commitment to resisting the delusions of popular culture:

• My mission is to succeed by providing value.
• My purpose is to create, contribute, and serve.
• My quest is to earn loyalty.
• My benchmark is to improve over yesterday.
• My community is measured by quality, not quantity.

To escape the diagnosis of athazagoraphobia, we need to stop trying to impress people who are impressed for the wrong reasons and start channeling our efforts toward improving and enhancing the lives of others.  As Benjamin Franklin said: “If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth writing.”