I was having a conversation with a friend yesterday – does FaceBook chat count? and we briefly talked about how to recover your passion when you are feeling passion-less. Here is what I shared with her:

Whenever I get to that place where I feel that I have lost my passion for photography, I do a couple things. First, I SLOW DOWN. I have to step back mentally and take a deep breath, actually a few deep breaths! I try to find my happy place – like the cave with the penguin in the movie “Fight Club” – and remind myself that photography is fun, actually it’s a BLASTY-BLAST and that I truly enjoy making photographs!

The second thing I do that really helps is to SIMPLIFY.  In practical terms, that means, grab my full fram DSLR of choice (Nikon D3), slap on the ever-so-trusty 50mm, head out to a place in public with people and just SIT there.  I hang out.  I watch, maybe even stalk a little bit, but I am still and I observe for a while.  I am looking for the interactions between people and especially watch the youngest kids and the oldest (they both intrigue me).

So it boiled down to those two things, when I am lacking passion in my work, I slow down and simplify.

What do YOU do when you feel bogged down or lacking passion for your dream?  Let me know in the comments!

- on a side note, I’m trying to get my night-owl behind up early in the morning to spend time on this.  Last night I fell asleep to Modern Family on the DVR after midnight and got up at 6:30. I like being up to spending time with this part of my life first and it reminds me of the the concept of the 6 o’clock club in Frank Bettger’s book “How I raised myself from failure to success in selling” – read it or grab the audio if you can – it’s a gem, nay a classic and you wil learn  something from it!