If your service (or product) niche lies at the intersection of your talent, community need, and passion, what do you do when your passion runs out?

So many of my podcast guests share stories of hitting rock bottom. They don’t realize they’ve lost their passion for their career mission until they crash a car, accidentally drive somewhere that isn’t work at the start of their day, or aren’t surprised to receive a burnout diagnosis from a psychologist.

What do they, and so many of us have in common? We are so busy going through the motions and hustling that we forget to check in with the passion that got us started. We forget the first year glow. We forget the excitement of the beginner’s mindset that brought us to do what we do. Then, as entrepreneurs, when the passion runs dry, we bow our heads and close our business.

That doesn’t have to be the outcome. Here are five ways to keep your passion on endless re-fresh, instead of succumbing to failure, or waiting for that big incident “wake up call.”

1. Listen. Listen to the community around you. Actively seek their feedback regularly. This doesn’t mean looking for reassurance. This doesn’t mean getting bogged down in social media likes, shares, comments, and impressions.

Instead, make time each week to study your live community or other business-relevant social media accounts and groups. Look at the kind of messaging they send out, and what kind of responses come back. What is the audience asking for? If their asks are relevant to your service or product, what kind of novel messaging might position you as the expert solution? This is a never-ending process that can keep your creative spark engaging and fresh as you find new ways to cut through the marketing noise.

2. Assess your own energy spend. Relationships only last when there is an equal amount of energy, effort, and receipt on all ends. When you feel very passionate about a cause, service, product, or mission, it is easy to dive in 110% . . . at the expense of everything else in life.

Take a moment to map out your top 5 professional and personal relationships. On a scale of 1-10 rate each one for how much energy you put in. On a scale of 1-10 rate each one for how much you openly receive. If there is a major energy mismatch for a particular relationship, ask what you can do to shift the level of reciprocity – preferably before the energy drain transforms into an energy-sucking vortex.

3. Mind your time economy. While you can delegate or avoid activities and tasks, you cannot buy lost time. It is easy to get lost in a passion project for days on end, then suddenly find that you have let other tasks and relationships inadvertently slide.

Instead, before you set out to engage in passionately driven activities and tasks, ask yourself what your intention is. Is it an outcome? Is it simply to allow yourself a break for your mind to wander? Then, set a time limit. Then, set a timer and stick to the limit!

4. Balance input and output. If you are a creative, or you are driven to share a new product or service with the world, it is easy to give, give, give . . . until you can give no more. Passion runs dry, and you quit.

Instead, map out your week to receive too! Receiving can be anything that refills your energy cup. It might be going for a 15-minute walk each day. It might be reading 5 pages in a book. It might be sitting mindlessly at a coffee shop. It might be doing yoga, spending time with friends . . . doing ANYTHING that does not directly relate to the passion that drives your entrepreneurial work or business relationships directly. When you allow yourself permission to refill your own cup on a daily basis, you will have more to give.

5. Align values with time. Write down your 5 guiding values. They could be words that align with activities like “fitness,” or “religion.” They could be attitudes like “optimism.” They could be relationships like “time with husband or fur babies.” Any 5 words that you must have in order to thrive will work. Now, write down how many minutes or hours per week you dedicate to your top 5. Do you feel like the actual minutes or hours are enough to re-inspire your passion and energy so you feel harmonious with your environment?

If not, how can you shift your time to align to your core, intrinsically driven priorities—the ones that light your passion?

If your passion is starting to wane or has dipped into the spiral of no return, give the above tips a try. See which activities resonate to help you uncover your passion again. Most importantly, go beyond the exercises and outlines; act upon your discoveries to create the passion recharging change! If, in that journey, the nature of your product or service changes, that is OK. Entrepreneurship is an endless road to fine-tune.