How To Bring Passion Back Into Your Life

No matter how much you love your work, your play activities, your friends, family and even pets, you need to take a break from them. There’s a behavior researched by psychologists called “habituation”. Essentially it means that with repeated exposure to any stimuli, you “learn”,whether consciously or unconsciously, to ignore it. In life, that can result as boredom, procrastination and even cessation of the behavior. To bring passion back into your life, to make your life more interesting, your work more productive, you need a break. Change is good!

Relationships need a break
Consider how habituation that works in your relationships. Too much time spent together even with someone you love can begin to get on your nerves. You may start getting sensitive, short tempered, and then annoyed with the very things that you at first found endearing about the other person. Too much time with one person may also start you taking them for granted, and unappreciated in your life. Time apart can revive this interest. A fitting quote explains that “absence makes the heart grow fonder”. Try a break from that person, and you will realize this is true!

Overwork and Job Burnout
At work if you are working on a big project, you may feel overwhelmed and a need to continue to work constantly until the assignment is completed. However research actually shows that continued work without time away from the project can be detrimental to your speed completing, as well as the quality of the job. People know this instinctively and have even named time off a “mental health day”. It truly is, because when you take the time away you come back refreshed and reinvigorated.

Exercise Time out
Maintaining the same physical activity all the time can become boring, and even harmful. Physically you can become inflexible and muscle bound (kept in place) by only exercising the same muscle groups continuously. Habitual use of muscles without time for relaxing and allowing the minute tears that can naturally occur to heal, can lead to muscle damage and or joint pain. Furthermore there are also mental effects of repetition: doing the same activity becomes boring, and not something you are looking forward to continuing, so that exercise becomes something you avoid instead of enjoy.

I’m not suggesting that you abandon the your relationships, jobs, hobbies and exercise. Consider taking time away to spend with other friends you’ve been ignoring; try a new hobby that you’ve always thought about pursuing. Take time to away from your “must finish” job to stretch and clear your head. Try a different exercise to give your other muscle groups a workout. You might even want to move your furniture, pictures and workspace around to make you notice those things that you don’t see anymore! Change can be good for allowing you pay attention to your life and surroundings and feeling re-inspired, renewed.

That’s the way it is with anything in life. We need to step back, walk away and get distance from the habitual things we do and experience. It is from this different perspective that you revive your interest and desire to return to the activity. Often that break in activity brings out new passion, creativity and focus when you return. So, make your life more interesting and bring passion back into your life: take a break, make a change!