“Yeats once wrote that man is forced to choose between perfecting his life or his work. Yeats was wrong. It is only a matter of which comes first — your life or your work. If you are a stylist, the choice is as easy as it is obvious. Your life comes first. Then you inject it into your work. You bring what you are to what you do. Your job should bear the imprint of your personality, not vice versa.” Quentin Crisp and Donald Carroll

“Try to forget yourself in the service of others. For when we think too much of ourselves and our own interests we easily become despondent. But when we work for others, our efforts return to bless us.”    Sidney Powell

Service to others takes the form of hundreds of activities. Even if you think you’re not servicing others, you probably are. Is it OK if what we do also serves us and/or our family? Of course. All giving does have the payoff of making us feel good about ourselves.

If you have a desire to open yourself up to change that may involve more giving, I suggest that you learn to do mind maps instead of lists. Mind maps are fun and tend to open up our creativity.

Some basic suggestions for easy mind maps:

1. Use the largest paper you have or buy some from a crafts supplier.
2. Use colored pencils or markers
3. Begin in the center with the word or words you want to use as the topic for your mind map
4. Start to add branches from the center. These will be the subtopics of your topic.
5. You may choose to add other branches to your branches.
6. Use as few words as possible and don’t over think your topic because a mind map is the best as you allow your creativity to flow.
7. You may choose to number your branches or you may make some of the branches thicker for emphasis.
8. The subtopic branches will be thinner. You may choose to draw plain lines to connect some branches.
9. Remember above all else to play and have fun.

Bargaineering is a personal finance blog, but has this month been writing about rethinking your career. Jim Wang is the founder and editor of the blog. His bargaineering philosophy is that life is about enjoying the thinks you love doing and spending time with the people you love spending time with.

He suggests using mind maps to see visually what you are carrying around in your brain. In recreating your career path be sure to do many mind maps first. Then from the collection of mind maps that you create, choose the main ideas to put on a composite mind map. He suggests writing down the things you enjoy and all that is important to you.