This article is first published in Vajb magazine in Serbian.

If you don't get why is someone going back for the nth time to the partner who cheated on them, how people gather the courage to leave everything and move to the other country or why someone needs to be in the center of attention, even though they look like a fool - psychology is where you'll find your answer.

American psychologist Abraham Maslow made a pyramid of human needs, hierarchically arranged in five levels. We, as humans, are not the beings who mastered the art of being completely satisfied - the moment we satisfy one level's needs, we become preoccupied with the higher one.

Image source: en.wikipedia.com

1. Lowest level of the pyramid are the physiological needs: food, water, sex, warmth, and rest. You can't forget them or turn them off, it is what it is.

2. If you had a snack and peed, we're moving on the next level - safety needs. In order to function properly, we need to have solid ground to stand on. That means that it would be nice to not have bombs falling outside our window, to have food in our plates, to not fight for life or death and to not have any incurable illness (or illness in general).

3. Belongingness and love needs are what we need to satisfy next. We are not lone wolves and we function in the pack only. Our "pack" are the people we have close relationships with - family, friends, husband/wife, boyfriend/girlfriend and everything in between.

If you're not alone in this world, let's move to the next level!

4. Now, this is the level a lot of people didn't manage to reach - the obstacle is the need to be accepted. Esteem needs, so self-respect and prestige, as well as respecting others and being successful is the last deficiency needs. 

5. We arrived at the top of the pyramid. If you're still with me and everything's checked - congrats! Finally, we have the self-actualization need: achieving your full potential. that includes motivation, creativity, problem solving, spontaneity, tolerance etc.  

Very few things in this world are written in stone.
This hierarchy is not one of them.
It depends on the person or society. For some people, success is more important than love and others would rather be hungry that go against their principles.

Some criticize Maslow for not making a universal theory, but the one specific to American society and their value system; in countries such as China or Korea, the well-being of the collective is valued more than personal success, while in underdeveloped countries the need for a (secure) job is stronger than the need of self-realization.

 In the 70s, the hierarchy was changed and updated and 3 growth needs were added to our pyramid.

Image source: interiorsandsources.com

 1. Cognitive needs are above the esteem needs: exploration, desire for knowledge, understanding, need for meaning and curiosity.

2. Above that we have aesthetic needs: appreciation and search for beauty and balance. (Where are my artists?)

3. In the end, at the very top of the pyramid (self-actualization is dethroned), there are transcendence needs that transcend beyond the individual: aesthetic experiences, religious faith, mystical experiences and certain experiences with nature, service to others, sexual experiences, the pursuit of science etc.

What level are you on? 

More from Psychology series: Why are we lonely? • Big, bad FOMO and how to overcome it

Raise your hand if you've ever felt bad because you thought everyone's life is better and more fun than yours. (Hint: it's not)

Let's talk about "illness" that is more widespread among Millenials and Gen Z than Black Plague used to be among Europeans in the 14th century.

Fear Of Missing Out (or FOMO from now on) is a fear that, as the name says, you're missing out on something because everything fun is happening somewhere where you're not. It's not about what would you gain from being there, but what you would miss out on if you weren't.

You know, that feeling that your peers are doing something much cooler than you and that they're richer and happier than you.

The term is created in 2004. by Patrick J. McGinnis in his article for the magazine of the Harvard University, but the unsettling feeling behind it is probably as old as the society itself.

Even though it has always existed, I think I don't need to put special emphasis on the fact that look-how-much-fun-I'm-having-and-how-exciting-my-life-is photos and videos that you can't escape from, no matter what social media you have, don't exactly help.
There are several pieces of research on this topic and the results are more-less the same - around 70% of our generation admitted that they had experienced FOMO. And we are, not surprisingly, the generation that has spent the majority of our life in front of screens - first the TV screen, then the computer screen and finally the screen of our smartphone.

What would above mentioned medieval Europeans consider unthinkable, we consider normal - if we want, we can find out how people all around the world are doing right now and how they live. We also don't have to peek over the fence (at least not physically) to find out what people around us are up to. It's enough to move our thumb and scroll a little.

I would love to say that medieval Europeans would find that incredible as much as we would find their lack of hygiene incredible, but I had my fair share of having to go to a public toilet to find out the hard way that the lack of hygiene is still alive and well. But, back to the point.

FOMO in marketing

FOMO is not only "I saw on Facebook that my friend from high school is now married, travelling the world and having fun while I failed my exam for the second time and I'm home all the time so I feel everyone is having a better time than me".
It's also a powerful marketing tool and it's very successful in making us feel that we need to spend our hard-earned money on their product or service.

Sales that are today only.
A limited edition that you can buy now and never again.
An incredible offer that you must purchase now or you'll never get it.

And what if you miss the opportunity that cannot be missed?
Well - nothing.
Unless you refuse Don Corleone's offer, you won't wake up with a dead horse's head in your bed. Those sales and incredible offers will probably last for some time, and it's likely that something similar to that limited edition product already exists somewhere else, not limited and cheaper.

Remember this article the next time they try to persuade you that what they offer is absolutely necessary!!, bolded and colored in bright colors and with too many exclamation marks.
It's completely fine to spend your money on something you want and you like, but think twice if you really want it and you really like it? Or they just used good, old FOMO to market their product, create a sense of urgency and rush you into the purchase?

What's the difference between FOMO and wanting to live a fulfilled life?

 A question that came to my mind when I was researching this topic was: where a desire to live your life to the fullest ends, and where FOMO starts?

Since I didn't manage to find an adequate answer by someone smarter than me, we'll have to settle with my own answer.

There are two key differences: 

1. Motivation - when we want to live a fulfilled life, our main motivation is what we will gain from that experience, whereas FOMO's main concern is what we would lose if we miss it.

2. How we see the life we currently live - in the case of FOMO, we're not satisfied with our life, while in other case we see our life as a "work in progress" we love and for that reason we want to make it better and richer.

How to overcome FOMO?

Now when we learned what it is, it's time to learn how to overcome it.
Dr. Gupta from aada.org advises the following:

First step: be aware of the problem.
Hi, I'm Dunja and I suffer from FOMO.

Step number two: turn off the noise around you.
Let's be honest to ourselves and admit to ourselves that it's not healthy to check what others are doing all the time. Nor it's necessary to read what incredibly important and smart thing politicians or celebrities blessed us with in the past couple of days. We also don't have to let influencers and bloggers influence our every choice.
Minimize the noise and listen to your thoughts more. Don't spend too much time on the internet - yes, you too, even if your job is connected to the Internet or the social media. Detox yourself from them from time to time.

Third step: practice being present in the moment.
Here comes the cliche: pay attention to small things, be grateful and work on yourself physically and mentally. But those things are important, cliche or not.
If you really want to practice living in the present, meditation is great too.

Bonus: ask yourself these questions when you realize the charming feeling we're talking about is kicking in:
Is this something I really want?
Is this feeling telling me I have to change something in my life?
Is this thing I want even possible and doable in this phase of my life?
Is this even real life? (when you see something on social media that sparked FOMO)

After all, the biggest thing you could miss out on is having a calm mind and being in peace with yourself.

More from the Psychology series: Why are we lonely? • Maslow's hierarchy of needs

First published in Vajb magazine, in Serbian language.

Why do we feel lonely?
To feel that way, you don't have to live on a desert island with a coconut on a stick named Bob as your only friend. You can be constantly around people - physically - but still feel like you don't belong anywhere.

Now, you may say that it's wonderful to be alone - and I completely agree. As an introvert, I love spending time alone; I even need to be alone in order to stay sane.

What's the difference between solitude and loneliness?

Solitude is a healing silence and peace of mind. As Osho said, the capacity to be alone is the capacity to love. It may look paradoxical to you, but it's not. It is an existential truth: only those people who are capable of being alone are capable of love, of sharing, of going into the deepest core of another person--without possessing the other, without becoming dependent on the other, without reducing the other to a thing, and without becoming addicted to the other. They allow the other absolute freedom, because they know that if the other leaves, they will be as happy as they are now. Their happiness cannot be taken by the other, because it is not given by the other.

On the other hand, loneliness is feeling empty and restless; it's that horrible feeling that you're completely alone in this world.

It's not about how many people are watching your InstaStory from a party, or how many people you were with at a said party - but how many people you feel truly connected with.
So - quality over quantity.

But why do people feel that way? Why we don't form deeper connections with others?
The answer, just like the human's mind, isn't simple and one-dimensional. It depends on a number of factors.

One of them is - surprise! - ourselves; more specifically, the structure of our personality.
It's often (wrongly) assumed that it depends on whether you're an introvert or an extrovert. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with your level of introversion, as being an introvert means "charging your batteries" in solitude, while extroverts gain energy when they're around people.
Being an introvert is not equal to being antisocial - I know plenty of very social introverts (as a matter of fact, I am one, too).

What you probably didn't know (I didn't, too, before I heard it when I attended a panel about psychology) is that loneliness can be genetic.
According to some sources, loneliness is partly inheritable (although that part is not very big); people with that genetic predisposition tend to feel lonely more often, even in situations in which the majority of people would feel content and satisfied. They are also more prone to depression.

 Another factor is our relationship with our parents, especially during our childhood. That is, after all, our first contact with other human beings. If our parents didn't give us enough attention / we didn't have a good relationship with them / we had any family problems, chances are that we'd start to perceive the world as an unsafe and a scary place. A logical consequence is that we try to protect ourselves from getting hurt, and as a result, we build a wall around us and try to stop everyone from getting close to us. And voila! We're lonely and we don't know how to connect to others, because at the very beginning of our lives we didn't have the intimacy and closeness we so desperately needed. So we didn't learn how to form deep connections nor how to maintain them.

We take our patterns of behavior and what we think it's normal from our immediate family; if you grew up in an environment where you could express your feelings freely and communicate openly and without judgement, it's very likely that you'll continue to build healthy relationships throughout your life (sadly, the opposite is true as well).

The third factor is the time we live in and its products. I'm not the one who'll complain about the decadence of today's world and our generation (in my humble opinion, people were always the same, we just showed our flaws and dark sides differently, depending on a socio-historical situation). Despite that, I must admit we live way faster and that the fact that Internet is so widely available, and therefore information about the rest of the world, imposed some high standards. That is especially true in the world of social media, where everything's great and everyone's happy. Impossibly high standards often have negative effect on us, sensitive little flowers that just want to be love and accepted, and on our mental health.

If you don't know how to use social media properly - and to be completely honest, most of us don't - it's easy to become Alice in the Land of Likes. The main problem is that we mix the validation we get with likes/comments/shares & co. with the number of people who really love and appreciate us. And not only our likes: we often spontaneously assume that people who get a lot of likes and are popular on social media, are also popular and loved in real life. 

Maybe they are, maybe they aren't - we'll never know unless we get to know them personally. And probably not even then.

In the race to document every special moment instead of living them (do I sound like a life coach? I'm sorry haha), constantly seeing numbers that lift or ruin our mood and comparing ourselves to others, we often forget about real connection. Inevitable aftermath: we feel empty.

After all - why do we love so much books and songs that describe exactly how we feel? Why do we feel better (even if it's sometimes hard to admit) when we find out that someone else struggles with the same thing as us? Why it's more comforting to know that, at the end of the day, you have at least one friendly shoulder to cry on than to own any luxurious item material opulence can give you? Why is solitary confinement considered the most cruel punishment, given to the most cruel criminals?

Because a human being is not made to be alone, and no matter how much someone says they not need anyone - they want to feel heard, understood, accepted and loved. Simple.

P.S. Photos in this text are the paintings that belong to Picasso's Blue Period. It started in 1901, after the suicide of his close friend, Catalan poet Carles Casagemas. That wasn't the only time he had to deal with the death of a loved one in his (at the time) 19 years of life. His younger sister also died, as well as one other friend.
Pain and loneliness became blue, green and grey brush strokes; he stopped being around people like he used to and he just painted, painted and painted canvases that no one wanted to buy. They were too depressing to be on someone's wall, especially because he painted people on the margins of society - estranged, poor and desperate.

I hope no one who's reading this ever felt this way. I just don't know any photo or painting that would fit in more. 

More from the Psychology series: Big, bad FOMO and how to overcome it • Maslow's hierarchy of needs