Mending of a Broken Heart: The Nature of Meaning and
the Purpose that Gives Life Hope
James
Michael Castleton, an award-winning physician, received his training and
education in medicine and behavioral science at Stanford, Harvard, Yale, and
Oxford University. He is a fellow of the American College of Cardiology and
National Heart Institute and a master physician and laureate of the American
Board of Cardiology. He currently resides and practices in Fort Lauderdale,
Florida. For more info, see: www.jamesmichaelcastleton.com
1. WHAT REALLY INSPIRED
YOU TO
WRITE YOUR
BOOK , TO
FORCE YOU
FROM TA K I N G AN IDEA
OR EXPERIENCE
AND CONVEYING
IT INTO
A
BOOK ?
After nearly 30 years
of medical practice, it has become
clear that meaning
is the driving force for
our existence—it is our reason for living and
the rationale for why we do what we do. Its absence is also the principle cause
of most disease
and despair.
Yet, even as meaning
is not a new topic, I realized
that it does not have
the impact on clinical practice it should because of the imprecision with
which it has traditionally been defined. Meaning
has been too often discussed without actually
clarifying what it means and has been used interchangeably with other terms, such as purpose, hope
and happiness, with
which it is not synonymous.
As I saw patients
go round-and-round seeking
but never finding
meaning—and suffering the emotional and physical consequences—it became clear that unless the meaning of meaning
were clearly understood, most attempts
to encourage people
to make healthy
lifestyle changes would
fail. When life
served me up my own crisis of meaning, I had personal
and professional reasons for beginning the investigation that lead to this book.
2.
WHAT IS IT ABOUT
AND WHOM
DO YOU
BELIEVE IS
YOUR
TA R G ET E D READER?
This book
is about the nature
of meaning and
the purpose that
gives life hope.
I endeavor to explain, not simply how to live a meaningful life,
but what it is that
you are feeling when you find life meaningful—and why
this emotion is built into our natures,
so that you can create
not simply imitate
a meaningful life.
Because meaning is not an end in itself, but is a byproduct
of a way of life,
this begs other questions—such
as what it is a byproduct
of, and I discuss how meaning relates to purpose
and hope, as well as how it differs from happiness—also an essential emotion.
A common misconception in Christian circles is the notion
that happiness must
be denied in order to find life meaningful. This is a terrible myth and I discuss what it is that does need to be denied, as well as what needs to be cultivated, so that life
can be experienced as both happy
and meaningful. I also discuss
how each contributes to the contented
life.
Victor Frankl, the great Viennese psychiatrist and founder of Logotherapy, was once asked how he reconciled his practice
with his faith.
He replied that the purpose of psychiatry was to heal the soul, while that of religion was
to save it. I came to the
conclusion that the
soul cannot be healed until
it is first reformed and that the question
of meaning will eventually, and necessarily, beg questions that invoke a consideration of faith.
For me, faith provided the
best answers to these
questions.
I have been a behavioral
anthropologist, cognitive psychologist and physician. Mending of a Broken Heart looks at the question of meaning from multiple perspectives including medicine, anthropology, humanism, Greek philosophy, eastern philosophy and faith. It shows where each can contribute, where some fall short, and where faith makes unique
contributions.
Mending of a Broken Heart is meant for the person
of faith or the spiritually minded. It is a personal
journey told from a personal
perspective. It is heartfelt, poetic
and searching and will
appeal to the person
who seeks to live
life with all
that they are: heart,
soul, mind and
strength.
3.
WHAT DO YOU
HOPE WILL
BE THE
EVERLASTING THOUGHTS FOR
READERS WHO FINISH
YOUR BOOK ? WHAT SHOULD
REMAIN WITH THEM LONG AFTER
PUTTING IT DOWN ?
Every life journey is ultimately
one of faith and personal
responsibility. We all place our trust in something
or someone and we create the meaning of our lives
with every decision
that we make. It therefore
behooves us to choose wisely
for it is the quality
of our decisions that will
determine the quality of our lives.
My aim is to give readers
a road map to the sorts of decisions they will face
and the types
of choices they
must make in order to give their
lives the truest
purpose and create for
them the greatest meaning
and happiness. I aim to summarize such insights succinctly, such as in the the following examples:
The measure
of a life worth living is whether at the end one can
say not that
it was lived
well but that
it was well lived. A life lived
well will be happy, but it is the life well lived
that is meaningful. Happiness speaks to our health, meaning to our hope. The former provides for the necessities of life; the latter provides
a reason for living. The former is found in self; the latter is found
in God.
Happiness comes from properly loving oneself.
Meaning comes from loving others
as oneself. The meaningful life
is one that has been
rich in significance because it has been both consequential and worthy. Loving another selflessly gives my life consequence and a sense of being valued. When I am loved selflessly, I experience its worth.
The key to happiness is realizing
it is not the same
thing as meaning.
The key to meaning is realizing
it is to be found
neither in the pursuit nor in the denial of happiness. We are spirit
and we are flesh,
and each part of our
being needs to be nurtured if life is to be healthy
and whole. Meaning
provides for the health
of the spirit, while happiness provides for that of the body. They are not synonymous and the health
of both is essential to the contented life.
4.
WHAT ADVICE OR
WORDS OF
WISDOM DO
YOU HAVE FOR
FELLOW WRITERS ?
Write because you love
to write, realizing that
very few people
are able to make a living
at it. Be sober- minded. Determine
whether your objectives require publishing or could be met by another means such as journaling. If you decide
to publish be realistic,
become informed, cultivate a taste for rejection,
develop a thick skin
and foster a humble
heart. Rejection is the rule
and success is the exception. Don’t
use self- publishing as a means of circumventing rejection
by a traditional publisher, unless you have exceptional credentials and a well-defined market that you are uniquely positioned to serve. Otherwise, you will be disappointed.
Remember that publishing is a business
and you need to treat it as such. Rejection is not personal
and don’t make it or take it so. Becoming
an author is a marathon, not a sprint,
and you need to do what
needs to be done
not knowing, in the moment,
whether it will
lead to success. Begin
with the end in view, but recognize
that the journey
consists in an eternal
now composed of simply taking
the next step. That is why you need
to love the process—all of it—which includes
the promotion and networking that is 80% of the effort. Truly, as demanding as it it to write your book,
there is a reason those
in the know say that
it is the easy part—it
is because they are correct.
5. WHAT TRENDS
IN THE
BOOK WORLD
DO
YOU SEE
AND WHERE
DO YOU
THINK THE BOOK
PUBLISHING INDUSTRY
IS HEADING ?
Digital technology is progressively eroding the advantages of traditional publishers.
Most readers
now make their reading decisions via their social
media connections and through the recommendations of their digital subscriptions, not at a bricks-and-mortar bookstore.
The most powerful platforms
such as Facebook,
Amazon, and Goodreads are democratizing their advertising tools such that individual authors can gain the same market insights
and achieve the same quality, reach and success as traditional publishers. No longer are traditional publishers gatekeepers to readers and authors are able
to build careers
using the same
crowdsourcing techniques that
have revolutionized entrepreneurship—in fact, publishing is moving away from a commodity-oriented market to one where entrepreneurial
and networking skills predominate. A new paradigm is emerging.
Nevertheless, traditional and self-publishing remain in many respects
a two-tier system running
on parallel tracks. Traditional publishers have connections, experience and expertise that most first time authors
do not. The query process, though
terribly difficult and demanding, helps assure that only works with some promise of success make it to market.
It is also a way of finding
an agent who is excited by and will take a personal interest in your book.
At the same
time, the definition of success is personal and the rise
of self-publishing is enabling the emergence of “mid-list” authors
who can make a satisfactory living
doing what they love while
maintaining
control of their own
destiny. In a world of 7.5 billion
people, it takes only
an infinitesimal fraction
of followers to make a living.
It is all about targeting and reach,
and here the rise
of digital publishing and advertising and self-service analytics has gone a long way to creating
a new game with new rules and new opportunities.
6.
WHAT GREAT CHALLENGES
DID YOU
HAVE
IN WRITING
YOUR BOOK ?
Writing the book was the easy part—if
5,000 some-odd hours
of single-minded focus
can, by any stretch
of the imagination, be considered “easy”. Understanding and executing
the level and scope of personal effort required in promoting
my book has been mind-boggling, but immensely satisfying. I have had to develop a fund of knowledge in regards to establishing a social media presence,
development of advertising creative, market segmentation, market analysis, benchmarks for ROI, and just plain stamina
(a “marathon mindset”) that was unexpected. These realities,
however, are an intrinsic part of every author’s journey—whether that is with a traditional publisher or as a self-published author. Digital and social media
may have created new opportunities, but they have also created new rules and demands. They may have leveled the playing field but they have also raised its altitude a few thousand
feet.
7.
IF PEOPLE CAN
ONLY
BUY ONE
BOOK
THIS
MONTH , WHY SHOULD
IT BE
YOURS ?
This book
addresses the most important questions a person
will ever ask and guides
them to the answers that will have
the single greatest impact
on the quality of their
lives.
Purpose, meaning, hope and happiness are not optional
parts of existence and they have no expiration date. Even though they are the measure
of our lives,
they are experiences we are born into with
little more than an instinctual understanding of their nature are and no practical
understanding of how to achieve
them.
Popular wisdom regarding meaning
is not so wise, and what insight
most gain is often at the
cost of a lifetime of accumulated mistakes. At the same time, too many consider
these issues seriously
only at the middle or end
of their lives
when things do not turn
out as they
expected or desired.
I do not want
to see others live
lives of regret because
they have postponed these questions until
they can no longer
be avoided and less can be done
to change the outcome.
Rather, I want
to see others live full and meaningful lives because they have grappled with these questions with the necessary
understanding that brings them the contentment they desire—an understanding I endeavor to give them, as a fellow traveler,
and as a physician and behavioral
specialist.
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Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog
are his alone and not that of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter
@theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more
important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by
BookMarketingBuzzBlog 2017©. Born and raised in Brooklyn, now resides in
Westchester. Named one of the best book marketing blogs by Book Baby http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs
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