This last week, during a discovery call, I had a wonderful woman tell me that she had lost her magic. That the sparkle in her life had dissolved and she wasn’t feeling excited. She felt that she had lost her passion for everything, for life, for work.
Not only that, but she also mentioned that she was carrying around a lot of knots in her stomach, tightness in her shoulders and tenseness in her jaw. So, whilst she felt she didn’t have all the words to articulate what she was experiencing, she could feel in her body that things weren’t smooth and relaxed. Instead, they were tense, pulling in different directions and asking for attention.
This isn’t the only woman I have heard speak those exact words. I know that if I were to look back to my paperwork from when I started working with my own coach, the incredible Joanna Naughton, some years ago, these were the exact same words I used. That I felt that there was a knot tied in my stomach, my shoulders felt like rocks and there was a lump in my throat. My body was telling me things weren’t aligned and I needed to do something to change it.
So, I wanted to write a blog about how these feelings manifest within and how to begin navigating them. Feeling as though you’ve lost your passion for everything and noticing your body trying to get your attention through physical sensations are often deeply connected.
Our body’s often trying to get our attention long before our minds have the words for it. And our mind can often find these catch-all “lost my passion for everything” phrases without really being able to articulate the substance beneath it.
A note on ignoring your lost passion and stomach knots
I want to say this now, before I write anymore.
Trust your internal nudges.
Trust your experiences that feel too big to put into words.
You are a woman; you are inherently intuitive.
Yet so many women have learnt to override their intuition to keep other people comfortable. If you are like the many women I have worked with, it’s likely you may have a whole inner narrative that wants to convince you that you are problematic, dramatic, airy-fairy, too much, broken, and so on, and so forth.
I really want you to know that your feelings need to be treated as information worth getting curious about. To treat them all as invitations to listen to something deeper.
If ignored, those whispers will eventually shout.
What a feeling of lost passion might be telling you?
‘I’ve lost my passion for life’ is one of those phrases that is easy to say because you know it to be true. Things aren’t exciting anymore – the work project you used to feel buzzed about feels flat, the yoga class you once enjoyed feels like another chore, your friendships feel like there is more take than give. Everything feels ‘off’ and you know it.
But after labelling everything that feels ‘off’, it’s not so easy to explain beyond that. Afterall, it’s not very often we sit to reflect on what gives us a feeling of passion – it’s just kind of there, or it isn’t.
If this is ringing true to you, I offer a few ideas about what might sit beneath and invite you simply to notice if they resonate on some level with you.
Have things been stressful?
For the hyper-independent amongst us, this could be a hard one to realise. You know when you go to the doctors with searing headaches and they ask if you’re stressed, to which you answer a short, sharp, ‘no, I’m not stressed, everything is good’.
And really, you believe it, because when you’re someone who excels at holding it all together, all the time, vulnerability can feel disgusting, to the point where it’s not even possible to engage with it.
But what if stress has been there all along? Accumulating quietly over time.
Every time you were the one that went the extra mile despite not really having time. Or being the one to take on the additional project at work, regardless of already having a full plate. Maybe you feel like the one that holds together friendships, because you’ve taken the role of organiser, on top of everything else.
Stress can be difficult to acknowledge, especially when you are super high functioning.
Stress over time becomes chronic, with your fight or flight response being constantly heightened. Of course, in turn, your system can’t find much capacity for purpose, it is focusing on survival.
Could it be repressed emotions?
Perhaps you’ve become so good at keeping the peace that you’ve forgotten what anger feels like.
Maybe you’ve swallowed disappointment for years.
Maybe grief has never really been given room to move.
When emotions aren’t expressed, they don’t simply disappear.
Sometimes feeling a loss of purpose or your body signalling things being ‘off’ for you, is a sign of your true emotions needing to be explored and expressed.
They have a lot to tell us, we need to listen.
Have you become disconnected from yourself?
Somewhere along the way, perhaps you became so focused on what everyone else needed that you stopped noticing what you needed.
Maybe you’ve become incredibly capable at managing life but have quietly lost contact with the parts of yourself that feel playful, creative, spontaneous or alive.
Sometimes “I’ve lost my passion” doesn’t mean you’ve lost it at all.
It simply means you need to uncover it again.
Maybe it is buried beneath the job.
The family
The relationship
The caring
The expectations.
Are you exhausted from carrying too much responsibility?
It can be so easy to associate productivity and self-worth. Afterall, it’s what is taught to so many by the school system and western working environments.
The more you do, the better you are. Before you know it, rest starts to feel uncomfortable. Sitting still feels unproductive. Saying no feels selfish. Your worth becomes measured by how much you can carry, rather than who you are.
When these things are experienced, it makes sense that your capacity might be limited for other things, such as joy and curiosity. Your nervous system is always going to prioritise your survival.
And without space for curiosity and joy then it can be hard to even think about what might make the ember in your belly turn into a flame and light you up.
The beautiful thing is that embers don’t disappear simply because they’ve stopped glowing. Often, they just need the conditions that allow them to breathe again.
How to begin finding your passion for life again
Accepting where you are at, without resistance, is a wonderful place to be to begin this work. Hopefully, if you’ve read this far, you’ll be coming from a place of curiosity, rather than ‘needing to urgently fix’. I hate to burst any bubbles, but a client of mine the other day really did tell me her foot was twitching because of how slow she realised she needed to start moving. To uncover our passion, there might be a fair amount of things to pick up, look at, sort out, rename, re-file, negotiate with.
Remove the pressure from yourself from having it ‘all figured out’ (whatever that even means!). Let’s be real – we are human – multifaceted, complex, beautiful. There is a lot to you, and it’s important to move slowly enough to start to really get to know and appreciate all of yourself.
Making intentional space for yourself is so important. Since your body is speaking to you, it’s important to create enough space to hear what she is saying. What she is telling you is valuable.
Lead with curiosity and compassion – if you feel like you’ve lost your passion, you are having a very real human experience, and I can promise you are not alone in it. Being able to observe your situation with non-judgement and curiosity, rather than something to be tidied up and fixed through shame, will make it a much more sustainable and life altering journey.
Be honest with yourself and others. I know, vulnerability can feel hard. But on the other side of it, is more joy, passion, creativity. There is just more life to be had, more passion, more spark, more light. With vulnerability, you can go deeper within yourself. When you go deeper within yourself, you can connect with the world around you on a deeper level. That might feel scary, but the possibilities are SO exciting.
In Conclusion…
It is so very possible for the knot in your stomach to become loose, to be replaced by something else; your passion.
I know this from personal experience and from sitting across from many women who have had similar feelings and experiences.
Their spark and their passion were never really lost.
It had simply been buried beneath years of carrying too much, pleasing too many people and ignoring the quiet wisdom of their own body.
It’s not about piling on pressure and searching harder.
It may feel counter-intuitive, but it is about doing the exact opposite. Moving slowly, with curiosity and an open-heart towards learning yourself again.
Because the lump in your throat, the knot in your stomach or the feeling that you’ve lost your mojo, deserves your attention.
It’s not always comfortable work, but when we can realise our bodies are trying to guide us back to our truth, not working against us, it can be the most beautiful journey we can take.
If this blog resonated with you, perhaps this is your invitation to stop trying to push through and start listening instead.
If you’re carrying the knot in your stomach, the lump in your throat or the feeling that you’ve somehow lost yourself along the way, you don’t have to untangle it all on your own.
My 121 coaching offers a compassionate space to slow down, make sense of what you’re experiencing and reconnect with the parts of yourself that have been quietly waiting for your attention.
If that feels like the next right step for you, I’d love to hear from you.
