This post is part of the Get Excited About Life Series. This post follows on from Living Your Passion.

Sometimes you are just not feeling like being involved in your passions, there are two ways in which this strikes. One is a temporary distancing from a passion the other is a permanent move away from the area.

Dealing with temporary lack of passion

There are a few reasons that you might lose passion in a particular activity. Here are some:

• You have forgotten what the reason for you being involved in the activity was
• You never discovered what your core passion was that was inside the activity
• Entropy has been creeping in and you are starting to get lazy

Solving the first two problems involves going back to the techniques I outlined in my earlier posts on pinpointing your passion. Go back and work on these exercises again. Break down the activity that you seem to be loosing passion for and see the elements, then go back to the big picture and start over from the beginning and see what appears. Once you have gone through the exercise have a look at what your results were last time that you did the exercise.

Often you get in the habit of doing an activity and start to forget why. Finding your purpose within the activity is what gives you the energy. Your passion does not exist inherently within any particular activity. Rather the activity provides a means to which you can express your passion.

The third problem of entropy is usually brought on by the first two problems, you just don’t notice it until you are already lazy. What happens is one day you have an excuse not to do an activity relating to your passion. Then a bit later you start to forget about the link between the activity and your passion. Now that your activity has become a bit disconnected from your passion there is little positive energy towards it and entropy sets in further as you skip it more often.

To get out of entropy always requires extra effort. In my post living your passion I specified that you should be involved with your passion every single day. You need to (starting today) do your passionate activities every day without exception. This way you will overcome the entropy. Once you have got back to consistently doing the activity you have to check if you are still passionate about it. So you follow the methods I listed for dealing with the first two problems of temporary passion loss.

Dealing with a passion shift

Believe it or not, sometimes you do need to give up on a passion. One of the most important things to realise, especially if you are involved in personal change is that you do change. The more involved you are with personal change the faster you change and it can be disconcerting for awhile but that is a topic for another post. The fact of the matter is that sometimes things that you used to be head over heels about are no longer interesting to you.

First up, try the steps for fixing temporary passion loss. If after trying these you find that you are not excited then chances are your passion has shifted.

Now you have re-identify your passions. Start over working through the get excited about your life process to discover where your passions have shifted to. It will feel like you are throwing away all the work you have done and starting with nothing. That is correct, but there is nothing wrong with that. It is a absolutely necessary step to bring a new clearer understanding of yourself and your passions.

When you change you have to change to. Don’t get stuck thinking that because you have invested all this effort into something that you have to stick with it. The efforts you previously made where correct for that time in your life. Now it is time to move on to your next stage.

So don’t be afraid to make the change, go forth with fresh excitement and discover what the next stage of your life holds for you.