Help! I've Lost Passion and Can't Get it Back!!

Welcome Back Vibrant Fam! Today I want to talk about those days we all lose our motivation and passion. You know, those days you prepare for the night before that will be super productive and then you wake up and make up every excuse not to do it. Or maybe it's even a week or two or more you encounter this feeling of lacking. This feeling can very well be attributed to depression -- definitely not undermining that possibility at all and I just want to clarify that before continuing on. I will say that if I have learned one thing throughout my life, it is that a lot of issues may seem surface level but can be connected to much deeper issues (I can hear your moaning, bear with me though...I do the same exasperated sigh too). I have been diving into a lot in therapy and what I have noticed as I get my career in check and what my ultimate goal is -- this has been an outlet to share a lot of what I am learning and growing in. One of those being how I feel like I am losing motivation and passion -- I recently talked to my therapist about this and the first thing that came up was "I don't know". "I don't know why I am not motivated" "I don't why I lack passion" and a plethora of other excuses to avoid any true reason. Then my therapist and I talked for a bit and I was there being told I did know and what do y'know I started talking about all the reasons I never follow through. I found I did not follow through on projects, personal endeavors because I was afraid of what people would think. What if they did not see the value in the final product that I saw, or what if people just flat out did not like it. I try so hard to preach it does not matter what others think but fighting and working hard to get into an industry that is literally is based on what people think and value your work makes that hard.

For instance I have loved photography for years, since middle school and I started with a point and shoot but then saw several other friends getting into it and saw how talented they were and I silently fell out of it because I was afraid I would not amount to anything or my work would be considered bad compared to their's. I catch myself in this cycle of powering through, getting something off the ground and then succumbing to my anxiety and letting that projector endeavor silently fail. I noticed I let this transfer into my social life... What I mean by that is I would find myself making excuses not to go out, I would deadass convince myself that the people that are my friends would be annoyed with my presence and want me gone or I was getting a pity invite. I reclused heavily constantly and stopped keeping in touch with people I loved more than anything until it almost was too painfully awkward for me to reach out after a period of time. I allowed this anxious ideology to rule my life in every facet possible -- to the point I would get extremely depressed and not allow myself to prosper in any way. I feel like I may be babbling but I say all of this because I earnestly feel you -- I understand where so many of you are and what you are feeling. These two examples are so minuscule to what I encounter daily and weekly and what is funny is we all know close friends that deal with this same thing but still some how convince us those same people will not support us or want us around. Anxiety has become this new limb we have all grown and have got so comfortable with it that it is almost a worse feeling to completely let it go and face those anxious fears head on. I leave you with this: the next time you have a great project idea or a new personal endeavor you plan on setting forth -- do not wait, do not let your mind convince you not to do it -- just do it. Pull in the help of your closest people and get the support to do it. Your mind is an amazing tool and can work for both bad and good and if we start exercising it to work for good and tell those anxious thoughts "No. Not now." when they creep up, we start training it for good.

Your friends love you more than your anxiety tells you they do, your project has potential and that creeping thought of failure is keeping you from growing and learning how to make that idea a reality. Go forth and prosper -- you deserve it. Spread Light,Spread Love and Stay Vibrant.