Next time that you are emptying your mind of thoughts, conduct an informal inventory. Did you find any thoughts questioning your courage? Did any of them inform you about your willingness to self-sacrifice? Did you learn about your ethical standing as you reviewed and then dismissed the thought-flotsam?
Chances are that the answer is “No”.
It is a “No” because these issues of courage, vision, perseverance, self-sacrifice, and moral excellence, the hallmarks of professionalism, are not just passing ideas in the river of the thought chaos—they measure deeper depths. They are the anchors that determine and set your personality and character. You will not find them in the daily detritus of your mind.
A poet might say that these tectonic forces are found in your heart. I would not deny this profundity, but simply say that the way to access them is through a mind that is emptied of thought debris. This empty space that you have generated creates a clear tunnel to who you are.
And this undeniable need for you to understand who you are flows both ways. The forces and components of your character need access to you in order to influence your thoughts, your words, and your actions. This access is best sans rubble.
So access to your core is not just for you to see who you are. It is also to permit your character and personality—your spirit—to wash over you, ensuring and strengthening their connection to you and what you show the world.
This is what you get to do during your character sabbatical.
Core principles are those of self-value, courage, compassion and empathy, self-sacrifice, morality, and work ethic. Your combination of strengths and weaknesses among these core principles comprises your character.
Each of these issues requires focus and attention during your many character sabbaticals. For example, although you may believe that you are courageous, you may find that you are troubled because you did not stand up for a colleague who was unfairly criticized by other team members. Was there something special about this circumstance, or were you backsliding away from who you are?
An empty mind permits you to examine yourself in these fundamental areas. During these examinations, you may find that you have your answer before you finish asking yourself the question.
Why you have fallen short or exceeded your self-expectation is worthy fodder for the character sabbatical. How you will conduct yourself differently in a future scenario is informed by a reconnection of you to your core principles. You have the perfect opportunity for this affirmation of reconnection during your character sabbatical.
And there is no better way to start than with checking your own standing.
Self-Evaluation
Self-assessments for some of us can be destructive. They can tear us down, even bring us to tears.
So no self-assessment should begin without first opening yourself up to a self-evaluation, ensuring that your self-respect is intact. Your character sabbatical provides the space for you to carry out some self-respect healing.
Many of us throw our hands up in frustration when they listen to or read about self-respect. “Why should I spend any time ensuring that my self-respect is intact? I’m fine,” they assert.
The answer is simple. You need to pay attention and strengthen it because your self-value is continually under assault.
For example, you work in an environment that can be consumed with negativity. Or the job that you have coveted hasn’t come through for you. A grant goes to a rival research team. Your plans for promotion go awry. Manuscripts may never get published. A colleague appears to go out of their way to criticize you.
You are not a robot. You are porous, and these circumstances and criticisms can generate self-destructive emotions in you; for example, that you are not worthy.
They have to be counteracted at once. The simplest and easiest antidote is the preexisting belief that you have value separate and apart from your circumstances. This is a natural product and benefit from character sabbaticals and the resulting character growth. This is self-valuation and the beginning of self-respect.
You must always check that your self-respect and self-value are intact because they are always under attack.
Self-Respect
Self-respect is not the respect of your accomplishments; it is the respect of the person who produced those accomplishments. It is your recognition that you possess an innate high value separate and apart from your weaknesses, performance, or your assessment by others.
This is a powerful concept. Acknowledging your high value in the face of and despite your productivity and your weaknesses allows you to address your weaknesses from a position of strength that is directly derived from your sense of worth.
A clear demonstration of your self-respect is your willingness to shift your concentration from your daily productivity/task list to your own character and self-development. This “attention to self” is a first affirmative step toward converting these weaknesses into your strengths.
Always be ready to reaffirm your value.
Why Are You Writing, Anyway?
It is useful to begin with two acknowledgments. The first is that you’re uncommonly intelligent. Nothing about the frenzy of activities that characterizes your early writing has or will ever change that. Even though you may not always feel smart, and sometimes you may think that you don’t act like you’re smart, these ephemeral situations are uncommon. One of your enduring characteristics is your keen mind. The second is that you have initiative and courage. Initiative to set aside time to think, to write, and to work to publish.
Yet despite their cerebral talents, most novelists don’t wind up in the upper financial crust of our society, and many of your nonwriting peers, who are not as intelligent as you, will make more money.
Why then would an astute person like you choose a field that won’t make you rich?
Lives of Others
Let’s begin by recognizing that your unique combination of motivation, communication and writing skills, your drive to get others to read your writing, and talent of perception holds the great potential of profoundly affecting the lives of others.
Unlike an investment banker, you cannot, with a few well-considered keystrokes, earn $475,000 in a single morning. However, your writing can beneficially impact a population of thousands, tens of thousands, or millions of people; the pecuniary manager cannot come close to having this effect.
A single novel can impact the lives of millions. Sinclair Lewis, the author of Arrowsmith, who wrote that novel with no knowledge of me, who died a year before I was born, changed the direction of my life. George Orwell’s 1984 helped us all to see that the future required our vigilance. A student of mine, having read the first chapter of my Finding Your Way in Science book, pulled me aside to tell me, “You changed my life.”
Great novels move our hearts in ways that financial dividends can never do. Therefore, through an intricate and unique combination of intelligence, determination, altruism, perception, and strength that only you possess, you have started a career that can positively affect the emotional lives and well-being of people and families. A student of mine, having read a chapter of my Finding Your Way in Science book, pulled me aside to tell me, “You changed my life.”
Collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps have destroyed. Novels enliven and uplift.
People don’t wait for the arrival of yet one more millionaire. However, they anticipate and will rely on your judgment, compassion, and productivity, to move them, to get inside them, to change them, to improve their own lives and through them, to affect others.