Robert Gale Ongley

Month: October 2017

  • WRITE FROM THE HEART

    To truly connect with your readers, your writing has to be honest and from the depths of your being. Sweep aside that surface emotional drivel. Dig beneath the glib intellectualism meant to make you sound clever. Root out the core of your subject that picks up your pulse, makes you feel gritty or makes you want to cry from the suffering or the rapture. Pull it up and touch its palpable substance. Examine it from as many angles as you need to feel it. Then get it on paper and work it until your feeling jumps off the page.

    I wish to share some tips on this topic that were written for addicted2success.com by Tim Denning. These excerpts strike a chord with the essence of my message. You can find the full article on that website under the title, “How To Write From The Heart: You’ve Got The Words To Change A Nation.” Here are the highlights, in my opinion.

    “Write when you’re full of emotion

    “The easiest way to write from the heart is when you’re having a day or period of time when you are full of emotion. For me, this can either be a really sad state, or a point in time when I am experiencing the phenomena known as “flow.”

    “In deep emotional states, words flow out of you and are naturally tainted with emotion from your heart. Writing can be a great way to release negative emotions or multiply positive emotions. In these writing states, you should aim to eliminate perfection and not worry about spelling or what you’re writing.

    “The key for me has been to just let the words flow out of me and then go back and edit them later – that’s how you capture raw emotion. The rawer the emotion is in your writing; the more heartfelt the words on the page will be to your reader. Practice this enough and you will have a large audience.

     

    “Concentrate on passion filled topics

    “To write from the heart requires you to write about something you’re passionate about. Your heart, your passion, and your emotions are very closely linked to each other. For me, I find writing about entrepreneurship and personal development is the best way for me to write from the heart.

    “The reason these two fields help me write from the heart is because they are deeply personal in their own individual ways. Entrepreneurship translates for me to family, success, money won and money lost, pain, pleasure, etc.

    “Crank up the vulnerability

    “If you want to not only write from the heart but change your nation at the same time then, your writing needs to be 100% vulnerable. Why? The reason is because so much of the world is based on hype and things that are not real. When you are vulnerable, you naturally write from the heart.

     

    “Being vulnerable in writing and in life is not very common. People listen when you’re vulnerable, and you speak what you believe to be the truth. Vulnerability can create immense power, and it’s that power that you can use to change your nation.

    “I have demonstrated this one quite a few times on our site when I have spoken about my health issues, my mortality, the anxiety I used to suffer, and my imperfections as illustrated by others. Each time I am vulnerable I am writing from the heart with the goal of helping others. I would love you to try this approach in your own life and watch the success come flooding in like a tidal wave.

     

    “Include inspiration as much as possible

    “When you endeavor to include inspiration in some form in your writing, you automatically write from the heart. The way you go even further is you include action points after the inspirational points in your writing.

    “The reason for this is that the impact people will get from your inspirational points will not be reached to the maximum if you don’t write in some action points. Inspiration is meaningless without action that follows. Inspiration almost always leads to positive change, and I think that’s what everyone should aim for.

    ‘In the end, what will cause your writing to change a nation will be how much you can inspire and motivate everyone that reads your message’ – Tim Denning”

    A good drill to get you started could be to write an essay just for yourself about a time of great difficulty or heavy emotion. Get into full detail about it and give yourself over fully to putting the incident into words. This can give you a true idea of how it feels to write from the heart. Strive to make every word count. Be as a lovesick poet, wearing your heart on your quill.

     

  • DERAIL YOUR FEARS BEFORE THEY DERAIL YOU

     

    I believe everyone has felt it–the trepidation of some crisis in the moment or on the horizon that must be confronted. Walking into certain battle is one moment of truth that none of us should ever have to face, being in the position of having to kill other human beings or be killed. In less extreme examples, there are terminal diseases to be faced, confessions to be made, speeches to be given and questions to be popped. Life presents all kinds of challenges to our courage and every instance could be a negative turning point in our lives if we let it get the better of us.

    Simple and plain, the subject of this piece is how we should not let our fears cripple our creative endeavors. There are those who never finish writing a book because no edit is ever good enough to justify putting the manuscript out there for the world or even a publisher to read. There are lovely singing voices never heard in public for fear of humiliation. And there’s a painter somewhere now who wants to show the world his or her world on canvas but is hampered by lack of confidence in one’s own talent. To be hamstrung by our fears is to allow the magnificent mind that should be serving us to navigate this world take over to such an extreme that it practically makes us dysfunctional. Whether it is a general condition or specific to some small part of our lives, it’s unacceptable.

    While the focus here is how insecurity in all its forms can render us ineffective in the arts, this goes much deeper and is broader in scope. Periodically plagued by varying degrees of anxiety due to a wide range of stimuli over the course of a lifetime, I have also been fortunate enough to gain knowledge of techniques on how to generate peace and joy for myself. Concentration, contemplation and meditation are wonderful tools for accomplishing this. I have found, however, in the last year that there’s a fine line between bliss and high anxiety. There’s an actual overlapping rush of emotion where the two meet in the heart or mind. When there’s an ongoing battle for the higher ground, I can feel near panic one moment and heartfelt joy the next. They even seem to coexist at times. How can that be?

    I have to say it’s at these moments that we have to stand up to the fear and the cause of it to put ourselves in control. Even if that means letting the fear wash over us, perceiving it for what it is and moving on to what must be done. And what must be done can also include doing nothing. However one handles it, pushing through to the other side is the aim. John Wayne had a Duke-esque line that applies here.

     

    We must get in touch with the courage within us or the fears can incapacitate us. The creative spirit can be overwhelmed and suppressed to a faint voice hardly heard from again. We cannot let this happen. In the inspirational book Everyday Greatness, the chapter titled Courage expands on the John Wayne line. “Those familiar with John Wayne can imagine the steel in his eyes, the swagger in his stance, and the drawl in his voice as he made the statement above. While saddling up in the face of fear required John Wayne to step up, courage most often requires us to step out–out from our comfort zones, out from our doubts, and out into uncharted waters.

    “Courage is not the absence of fear, but the awareness that something else is more important. Courage can be displayed in heroic, visible ways, or in quiet, private battles we fight when attempting to conquer inner fears.”

    As Anais Nin wrote, “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”

    Another quote that illustrates my overall message comes from If It Ain’t Broke, Break It by Robert J. Kriegel and Louis Patler, “By embracing risk, you will accomplish more than you ever thought you could. In the process, you will transform your life into an exciting adventure that will constantly challenge, reward and rejuvenate you.”

    So, I encourage you to throw the curtain aside when it seems too scary to see what’s behind it. Even if it’s just as difficult as you had feared, you will learn how strong you really are and find your lion’s heart along that yellow brick road.