FOMO vs Intuition: Why intuition is needed for an impactful, heart-centered business

When I first started writing my blog, I remember thinking…

“6k subscribers on Substack? Writing poetic soul insights? Maybe I should be doing that instead of what I’m already doing”

My mind scurried around like a mouse foraging for its food. Detouring me away from my original plan of building a library of writings on this creativemysticfairy.com blog.

And thank God the idea was actually just a fly passing by! It was FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out)!

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One thing I see often among feminine business owners, especially among those who are starting out, is the phenomenon of chasing for ‘shiny objects.’ 

I learned this from being a shiny-object-chaser myself in the past. Like when a business coach claimed that her clients are skyrocketing from 0 to hundreds of thousands of dollars a month, I would sign up to work with the coach, only to find out that her strategies did not feel good in my heart...

And whenever I heard someone else signing on clients through social media platforms I was not on, I would then jump on to follow the same trend, only to find out that the platforms did not nourish my energy for me to sustain…. 

I was “following the flow” except that the flow was leading to what other people were doing. It was because my mind always felt like I was missing something– like a special “secret strategy” and that only then, I could be successful…

This frantically-chasing phenomenon, called FOMO, is especially common in this day and age, when everyone online seems to be shouting off how their strategy is “THE WAY.” 

It’s easy for women to voraciously chase from one strategy to the next, and end up being drowned by the flood of information from multiple sources, only to find themselves even more confused than before… 

This is contrary to intuition, the inner knowing that brings relief to the feminine heart. If FOMO is like a frantic child yelling at your face, intuition is like the gentle motherly embrace that guides us to where we want.

With intuition, your mind is clear, calm, and composed on your way of doing business, without the need to compare and conform to anyone else’s. 

Throughout my journey of building my own heart-centered business, I’ve learned that being able to trust the latter, i.e. our own intuition is the utmost importance of a feminine business owner.

This is true especially for soulful feminine beings like me whose desires in business go beyond just monetary outcomes but also infuse deeper elements, like authenticity, softness, and sustainability as you grow your business.

Yet it becomes hard to listen to our intuition when we are mostly listening to the world vs our own (the Spirit of God within). Whenever we scroll on social media, we are left with the feeling that perhaps we are missing something that other people have but we don’t.

And the thing is, most marketing and sales tactics use FOMO to make people buy. That’s because using FOMO triggers the primal human response that makes most of traditional sales tactics effective (although it may not mean that it is ethical).

And as a heart-led business owner, you will experience this tension between the voice of FOMO vs. the voice of your intuition often.

On one hand, you will feel FOMO pressuring you to do what people say will lead to success (such as using FOMO marketing tactics); on the other hand, you will feel your intuition telling you that something is off with those strategies and that you want to do things differently… in a way that feels good to you

And so I wanted to write this post to help you discern between the two when it comes to building your business. From reading that, it will become evident to you that it is the latter that we want to listen to if you are desiring to build a business that is enlivening, fulfilling, sustainable to your soul. 

FOMO makes you feel like you never have enough. Intuition makes you feel like you are enough + have enough

When you have FOMO, it feels like there is a dry gaping hole inside you churning constantly with thurst. It feels like you just have to get somewhere/buy something/do something, in order to get what you want. 

It feels like you are panting with rapid, short breaths. In business, you may think to yourself things like “if only I learn from this thing… from this person… do exactly this way… only then I will get to where I want.” There is a neediness, a form of control, and a lack of self-trust.

When the truth is, most of the times, when we are in a desperate search for what we want, it does not lead to exactly what we want. As in my previous case mentioned above, I was in desperate search of the winning rapid-growth hack/strategy, only to find out that it did not feel good in my heart to implement…

It’s like searching for an oasis in a desert… only to find later that what you were chasing for was nothing other than a mirage. 

That’s because with FOMO, the decisions you make come from a lack of trust that you already know what you need to know. Thus, FOMO makes you become disconnected to the intrinsic part within you who already has the answers to your life/your business. The part of you is connected to the higher wisdom just as everyone else. The part of you who is one with the wholeness of God/Source.

It is when we act from this innate knowingness of our hearts, that leads to the things our hearts most want.

FOMO makes you believe that success is scarce. Intuition lets you choose your way of success, among many others.

The root of FOMO is the consciousness of ‘scarcity’-- that only a few selected things in the world are possible to yield the kind of success you want in your business.

And for sure, when you do view the world through the lens of scarcity, you will inevitably find data (external proof) that success is scarce.

For example, statistics show that only 30% of bloggers earn over $100 over their lifetime (meaning, success is scarce). And let’s say you are a newish blogger like me, and if you are looking through the lens of scarcity, you will let FOMO consume you, leading you to worriedly copy other bloggers’ strategies because you don’t believe that there are abundance of ways that can lead to success.

The truth is that, there are hundreds, if not thousands of ways to create success around what you want.

Such as for a blogger, you can create success through gazillion ways– ranging from affiliate marketing to advertisements to coaching. And even for the same route, let’s say coaching, there are different routes to creating income– ranging from how you drive traffic to how you speak to your people to sell your products. There is no ONE right way. 

The only question is, which of the ways feel most alive, authentic, and in integrity to You. Only when you follow and trust your intuition, you are able to discern that.

(In my case, my intuition was telling me how the popular coach-marketing approach of pitching in almost every post on social media felt aggressive, forceful, and salesy to my soul. And so I followed to my own intuitive strategy that is different and more nurturing to my audience which includes writing on the blog. And that led to sales that felt way more ethical, easeful, and aligned— with potential clients asking to work 1:1 with me in less than 3 months of starting my blog!)

FOMO comes from building a business for surface-level reasons with a tunnel vision. Intuition comes from doing things for deeper reasons with a long-term vision.

Usually we experience FOMO when we are motivated by things that are surface-level: meaning things that are not derived from the deepest yearnings of our soul. 

To most women in business (including myself in the past) that includes being motivated only by financial/numeric outcomes in business instead of being connected to invisible yet deeper values that are vital to the feminine heart. 

And it’s not that being driven by success and external metrics is wrong. It is the fact that, when the motivation for these external metrics are only from our minds (i.e. “How can I make the most profit now?”) we are usually coming from a place of fear (such as the fear of not “making it,” the fear of being behind, the fear of what might happen in the future). And so, the connection to our hearts become shrouded.

Thus rather than building a business that serves everyone for the greater good in the long-run, we inadvertently choose strategies that are driven by fleeting validations and short-term gains.  

It’s like a fast-food or fast-fashion industry that only considers the profit it generates in the short-term without looking at the long-term sustainability, health, and impact it has on humanity. Similarly, when it comes to a service-based business, we become blind-sighted only by how much our business makes next month, rather than the trajectory it builds over years and years from now. (I know this because I used to be someone who only think of how I can “quantum leap” next month).

To this, Alex Hormozi, the author of 100 million dollar offer and 100 million dollar leads, gave a fine example when he said along the lines of how building a business is likened to building a tower of lego bricks. When we are building a lego tower that is the tallest the fastest way, we neglect building the foundational base. 

Just like that, in a business, if we are only trying to make profits in the shortest time frame, we neglect building foundational strategies (such as having long-form, searchable content, creating a library of value-packed materials etc.) while only using strategies that sell using hype, FOMO, and pressure.

Thus, a business that is built from FOMO leads to the business using FOMO/fear-based marketing/ selling tactics– which would then lead to the lego tower “crumbling” just like how customer satisfaction, sustainability, and impact of a business crumbles in the long-run….

~

Your intuition knows the exact step-by-step plan of building your business. From how to write in a way that connects to your people to crafting a marketing plan that is authentic and true to you, your intuition is able to guide you in all business aspects.

However, in a world that glamorizes overnight success and filters out the truths of the actual work behind growing a business, it is easy to feel like you are not growing fast enough and thus doubt/ become impatient of your own unique, intuitive strategy of growing your business.

When the truth is, your intuition is what helps to build a business that is uniquely tailored to your unique soul– your expression, your values, your truths, your message– to then create your own strategy. When we are following the voice of FOMO instead, we sacrifice our truest expression and instead become forced to create a business that looks like someone else’s. 

Which is the reason why in the 1:1 work I do with my clients, we disentangle your mind from the noise of the world, so that your can tune into your own inner infinite wisdom and guidance within. For it is this inner realm of yours is where the truths of the Divine lies, and is also where the unique blueprint of your heart-led business is.