As a creative professional you are less able to separate your work and your life than most people. You cannot ignore your values when looking at a career path. Your values, your needs as a person, should direct that path. Should point you toward the right career for you. You can’t be a success if you don’t know what success means to you. And you can’t be a success unless you incorporate your value system into every phase of your life.

Unused talent is not just a waste. It is a poison. The symptoms are boredom, low energy, stress depression, envy. If you recognize these symptoms in yourself, it is time to do a little soul searching. You are not doing what you should be doing, okay, got that. But what should you be doing? The following exercises might help you figure that out:

1.  Make a talent map. Start by looking back to when you were young. Plot your talents on a visual time line or map at the ages of five, ten, fifteen and twenty. Use pictures, drawings or key words to represent each phase or age and your talents at that time.
2. Make a value tree. Draw a tree trunk and then extend branches off in all directions. In the trunk, write your biggest belief about yourself and what your life should be. In other words, your key overriding value. On the branches, write the rest of your values. Hanging from each branch, draw a fruit and put in it how the values manifest themselves. For example, in your tree trunk would be something like ‘freedom’ as your core value. Then the branches might be labeled ‘ability’ and ‘respect’ or ‘friends’ and ‘family’.  The fruit haning down from the ‘respect’ branch might be ‘fame’ and ‘money’ or ‘honesty’ and ‘integrity’.