Robert Gale Ongley

Tag: self-improvement

  • SELF-IMPROVEMENT

    As I project my focus forward into 2024, I’m reminded of a song I wrote on December 31st, 2021. Following are the first two verses and the chorus.

    It’s a time when we take a look back. Time when we look forward too. Time when we tend to take stock of ourselves, decide what it is we should do. The ledger shows some loss and some gain as we keep score on this old game. It may not be easy forgiving ourselves, hiding our light in the rain. But there’s no time to give up tryin’ To be the best we can be. No time we should give up flyin’ As we learn how to be free.

    Learning how to be free entails making changes. We hope to and should always be striving to improve ourselves, for our sake and the sake of others. It’s hard work, though, and we’re not always up to sticking to the task.

    Hurdles

    Our path is fraught with obstructions to our progress. Distractions, counter-intentions, new and ongoing problems all serve to make the way difficult. We can lose momentum even when active on a valid plan. When I was an adolescent, which I have to admit was a condition that extended into my young adulthood, I had attention on several areas that needed improvement. I needed to raise my math and science grades to fulfill my dreams of going to college. I wanted to overcome fear of the pitched baseball to regain my ability to hit well. I wanted to overcome my angst about talking to girls in whom I had dating interest. I wanted to be a better Christian. The truth is that I didn’t do anything about any of those issues. My ignorance about how to improve myself in important matters had me virtually paralyzed.

    Fear alone can cripple our dreams. This quote by Simon Marshall shines a light on the importance of dealing with our fears. “Breaking through the fear barrier is a big deal. The dopamine hit that comes with completing a previously insurmountable goal or getting through a shit-scary challenge is indescribable. Aside from the neurological benefits, you walk a little taller immediately. Confidence grows, and you redraw the boundary of what you think you can do in the future.”

    For the majority of us in the United States, there is a lot of opportunity for self-improvement with little in the way of insurmountable barriers. Even though my family didn’t have money to help with my education, there were paths to occupational and even financial success. Those lower on the social strata or in third world countries have truly difficult obstructions to overcome. Still, some find a way to transcend their circumstances to elevate their lives.

    Success Stories

    Alimata Korogo

    Sometimes there is assistance for people in poverty-stricken countries. Foreign aid from the USA has helped many. An example of one is a woman in Burkina Faso. She is a farmer in that country and a mother of six. The farmers there are vulnerable to repeated crises of various kinds and they find it hard to consistently make or keep a profit from year to year. With American assistance, Alimata Korogo was able to take courses and training on farming, home gardening, health, nutrition and literacy. She was then put in charge of 14 women with whom she shared the knowledge and skills she gained. The results were notable. “We were able to enrich our soil and get higher yields. I was even able to store tens of bags of cowpeas (a black-eyed pea variant) and sell them later at the market when prices were better,” she said in 2019.

    I have a friend who is one of the most inspirational persons I’ve ever known. When she was still a young woman, she loved hiking and other outdoor activities. Unfortunately, she contracted a flesh-eating bacteria that almost killed her. It ravaged her legs and they had to be amputated completely. She fought back to reclaim her life at a level of quality many never achieve. Not only is she active, but she is a full-time school teacher. She is a soprano in the church choir of which I am a member. She swims in her family pool and drives her own van. She is so adept at using the van and her scooter that she takes a vacation every year in it with her dog. She camps and enjoys nature, much as she did before she was afflicted.

    A Lifestyle

    Working on ourselves shouldn’t be something we do only in crisis or in times of need. We should strive every day to become better–better at our work, better at relationships, better in all aspects, especially at being the best version of ourselves. Making it a lifestyle will enrich our lives endlessly as long as we make a sincere effort.

  • NEUTRALIZATION OF THE EGO

    Why would I want to do that, you might ask. What harm is my ego doing? I’m not a narcissist or anything. I’m just a regular person and I need a little ego at least to keep some sense of pride. To understand why you might want to neutralize it, a clarification of its meaning might be in order.

    What is the Ego?

    There are quite a few unofficial definitions of ego. My home dictionary has five official ones while yourdictionary.com offers the best 19 ones. I don’t want to be redundant or split hairs to get this term understood well enough for the point of this post.

    Here are several to mention which can suffice. The most common might be the “I” or self. It would be the being who declares, “I think; therefore I am.” The definition from the field of psychoanalysis is the part of the mind that is consciously aware of the material world and which mediates between the id and the superego. Philosophy defines it as the enduring and conscious element that knows experience.

    There’s a spiritual slant on ego, however, that is presented to us by Eastern religions. I found this excerpt in a wonderful blog post from a website called Mind Valley. “Spiritually, ego is the veil of individual personality that bars you from having a universal existence.” The article goes on to say it’s ego that causes us to “get the perception of separation from other beings, the universe, and God.  Also, this separation by ego is the root cause of all sufferings in the world.” This is the aspect of ego which makes it necessary to be neutralized.

    Why It Has to Be Neutralized

    The separation obsessed ego is the being’s own worst enemy. So caught up in being a virtual island, it perceives others as a threat, their goals as contrary to their own, and their actions as working against them. Obviously, it’s not how most of us are consciously thinking as we walk around every day. These thoughts and attitudes are very basic and buried. But let’s face it, we think of ourselves as separate, destined to die alone even if surrounded by loved ones to the end. That final journey into the unknown must be walked in solitude. Or does it?

    One of the best teachers on the subject of the ego may be Eckhart Tolle. His insights about ego strike at the heart of its existence and self-importance. I share with you now a few I’ve selected.

    “The ego itself is that dysfunctional way in which the mind works.”

    “There is no ego apart from thoughts, the identification with thoughts is ego.”

    “The identification with thinking becomes ego. Which means simply that you believe in every thought that arises and you derive your sense of who you are from what your mind is telling you who you are.”

    “The ego has all kinds of ideas of what it wants to be because it wants to have a better image of itself.”

    Consciousness has nothing to do with ego. It’s being, not thinking about being or whatever it thinks about. Those thoughts are made to prop up our individuated sense of self, which is a complete illusion based on such things as confusion and fear.

    What to Do About It

    To paraphrase Paul Simon, there must be 50 ways to leave your ego. I don’t wish to evangelize here because there are probably numerous valid paths to freedom from the ego. I will instead offer insights that come from an assortment of people wiser than me. Tolle is one and this quote rings true for me. “The ego cannot dissolve itself but in the light of awareness it dissolves.” Increasing awareness can be accomplished through some time-tested methods. Meditation would be one of those. Deep prayer in which the focus is on simply being is another.

    Returning to being childlike, your natural self before all kinds of artificial aspects of personality were added, can free you of egoic mechanisms.

    Communication is an excellent elixir for mental and spiritual ailments. This could be in the form of a therapy routine with a professional, but just being part of a group that gathers and discusses ego might yield results. Communication with yourself through journaling about your ego could bring insights and increased awareness of your own behaviors. The important factor in all this is honesty. Facing the ego and your many foibles requires being real. The ego is cunning and you can delude yourself into thinking you’re dismantling the ego when you’re actually reconstructing it.

    Make it Simple

    If a self-improvement technique is getting complicated or convoluted, there’s probably ego involved. Keeping the ego neutralization simple is important. So, I reiterate some of the pointers I’ve mentioned here. Be rather than think. Be as a child. Practice honesty. There’s one other thing I read in my research of this subject that should be touched upon. Transcend the ego. Don’t try to crush it. We can’t undo it with a sweep of the hand. Patiently work on it. Humbly acknowledge it. With effective techniques, gradually rise above it to find the real you. Free of ego.

    One parting quote from Tolle: “Don’t take the ego too seriously. When you detect egoic behavior in yourself, smile. At times you may even laugh.”

    Ego With Humor