Actions and Practices in Self-Esteem

Having healthy self-esteem is a critical part of all of our lives. It is one of those attributes that can help us rise very high in business, within our social circles, and in terms of our happiness and self-confidence.

I was looking through a bunch of my old papers and came across some notes I made years ago while I was looking into a related thing that is so important to our lives—that being confidence. I want to share with you some of those notes that helped me better understand the importance of healthy versus low self-esteem, it’s role in my confidence level, and how I could build more of both in myself.

The sources of healthy self-esteem are mostly internal. In our brains we work on and build what we think of ourselves, and if we approach it correctly, we tend to have lots of confidence and work on bringing our self-esteem to higher levels.

No, you don’t need to achieve perfection overnight, but you can get so much from just small improvements designed to lift low self-esteem. We all need to be aware of the operations of our consciousness as your mind is the best tool for survival. You should be aware of everything and live in the present moment, seeing first, then knowing, then acting.

So, you may ask, what are these actions are we talking about? Well, here are some of them:

1. Have an active mind.

2. Be in the moment.

3. Reach toward relevant facts.

4. Know where I am relative to my goals.

5. Always be open to new knowledge.

6. See and correct mistakes.

7. Make commitments to learning and growth.

In addition, there are a few practices that can boost self-esteem. Here is a list of practices that I wrote down and regularly work on that seem to boost my self-esteem. These practices have helped lead to some great success in my business and personal life.

1. The practice of self-acceptance. (It’s sad that most of us are very hard on ourselves, even harder than we are on other people, and, of course, that self-judgment is quietly tucked in our minds and quietly reduces our self-esteem.)

2. The practice of self-responsibility.

3. The practice of self-acceptance.

4. The practice of living purposefully.

5. The practice of self-assertiveness.

6. The practice of personal integrity.

When self-esteem is low, we are usually motivated by fear. Fear is how we act. There is fear of being exposed, fear of failure, dreading the unknown, and change. Higher self-esteem looks for new frontiers, looks for opportunity, and looks for new and bigger challenges. Sadly, without a good level of self-esteem, we suffer with lots of anxiety and insecurity.

These guidelines were and are very helpful to me in building and maintaining my self-esteem. This is quite important to me now in my retirement years. I am also only a few years away from hitting that big 80 number. I’ve been keeping my tennis game up so I need to keep working on keeping my self-esteem up too! Hope these guidelines and suggestions are helpful to you!

The Rewards of Development

In last week’s post, I shared parts of a bio of mine written years ago. Part of what that bio recounted was how I got into real estate. I started with small properties at first, but later on I gravitated into a much more profitable part of real estate known as development. Looking back, some projects I did really surprise me. I find myself thinking, “Wow, little ole me did all that!”

My work in the development side of real estate has been some of the most profitable of my entire career in investing. I’ll never forget getting a call from a guy in Pennsylvania telling me about a 77-unit apartment building that was for sale at a great low price. Shortly after that I heard, for the first time, about people converting apartment units into condos. After a lot of red tape with the local authorities of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, I got the go-ahead to convert all 77 units into condos and, wow, what a quick 2.7-million-dollar profit I made. It was so easy because most of the renters bought their own unit.

I followed that up with a 44-unit condo development in Mississippi and walked with 1.3-million-dollars in profit from that. After those great successes, I developed a 13.3-acre commercial development right here in Salt Lake City and made 1.1-million-dollars in profit there.

I was on a real roll when my Kauai attorney called me and told me of a great plot of land on which I could develop a bunch of condos. I was skeptical at first, but after I drove by the golf course that was next door to it, I forged ahead and laid out plans to build 68 condo’s right near beautiful Princeville, Hawaii. Wow, was I super surprised when I sold all 68 condo lots before we even broke ground.

Timing is so very important with development. You sure don’t want to get into a big development when the real estate market is at the top and there are reasons to believe that the market is turning and heading down. You also don’t want to get into a market that is oversupplied in the type of real estate that you want to buy into. That’s when you need to be patient or need to look at another city or state where the market is already down but looks like it’s picking up.

I continue, to this day, looking for the right and best real estate, whether it’s dirt to be developed or apartments and commercial developments. In August 2003, I hired an office manager (Kimberly Wangsgard), because, wow, did I need help with all my properties. Ms. Wangsgard had, in her former job, played a critical role in development for S-DEVCORP, a company that had developments ranging from 1.5 million dollars to 30 million dollars.

She helped me so much that I eventually had her change her last name to HAROLDSEN. Yes, I married that very beautiful, brilliant, and kind woman and it’s been an absolutely wonderful and happy marriage. An excellent development indeed!

A Glimpse Into My Past

I was going through some old papers and came across a biography I wrote about my life. I thought, since a lot of people ask me about my background, I would share some of that with you here:

Mark O. Haroldsen was born in Portland, Oregon, way back in 1944. He attended high school for two plus years in the Middle East before moving back to the USA where he graduated in 1962 from Ames High School in Iowa. Mark attended Utah State University on a basketball and track scholarship. His time on the bench, however, helped him decide to drop the basketball dream and pursue a Bachelor’s Degree in Business which he received in 1969. He followed this with some post-graduate work at De Paul University in Chicago.

His career began as a stockbroker with Goodbody & Co. in 1969. Later he worked for Paine, Webber, Jackson & Curtis, then went on to work as a manager for Bosworth Sullivan in Salt Lake City, Utah from 1972 to 1974. After a short political career, he lost his bid for the Utah State Treasurer and started buying real estate. This change was inspired by a Denver client that was making millions in real estate.

After gaining tremendous success in real estate, Mark started a real estate seminar company which he ran from 1978 to 1986. The multi-million dollar company set the standard for real estate conventions, retreats, and information, presenting up to 50 seminars a week using a huge staff and brilliant speakers.

Not only is Mark an extremely successful real estate investor, he is also the author of many books including his first and most successful book, How To Wake Up the Financial Genius Inside You. The book sold over 2 million copies and landed him on several national talk shows.

After the enormous success of that book, he began publishing the Financial Freedom Report, a real estate magazine that ran for over 20 years. And yet, that was just the beginning. He then got into a much more profitable part of real estate, known as development. 

I’ll stop sharing my bio there as I would like to go more into how that development thing worked out in next week’s blog, including how I made millions of dollars in profit through real estate development.

The Greatest High

When I was very young, I never got high. But now, at almost 77, I must admit I get high quite often. In fact, right now is one of those times. I’m high, real high – the captain just announced that we are about 33,000 feet high.

Ho ho… you might have thought I was talking about drugs, drugs that stimulate the brain. Nope. I’ve never done drugs. I really do love being at 30,000 feet or more, as long as I’m on an airplane. Oh yes, I love to travel, and flying not only gets me 30,000 plus feet high, it also lifts my brain as I see and experience new things.

The brain responds tremendously to novelty such as new sights and sounds. It certainly gives me a high. Yes, I know that many people are afraid to fly, especially when they see things like a jet losing an engine over Denver. But wow… look at the odds of dying on a commercial flight. Research shows there is a 1 in 29 million chance that you will die that way.

I love to visit foreign countries, not just because of the flight there, which I love, but because of the uniqueness, the novelty of new countries and new people, and the amazing variety of cultures. Sadly, those great things like foreign travel and being very social were suddenly taken away from us, but it isn’t permanent. Fortunately, it seems like we might be pulling ourselves out of this COVID mess. (And, yes, I did get my COVID vaccine!)

As I write this, we are thousands of feet above the Pacific Ocean, flying from Kauai to Seattle then on to Salt Lake City. And, yes, our months in Hawaii were warm and wonderful although it did rain a ton! But we still got in some tennis time and beach time.

I am a huge believer in staying active. There is so much evidence showing that if you keep moving you will, on average, have better health and a longer life. Pair activity with novel things to do and novel places to visit and you can lead a longer and healthier life while having tons of fun!

We are now making lots of plans for future trips and are very carefully increasing our social life. I hope the best for you as well as we get our lives back to normal. How novel everything will seem then!

Hard Working Spies

My dear wife Kimberly read a very fascinating book which she then talked me into reading. The book’s title is The Spy and the Traitor written by Ben Macintyre. It’s a true story about spies and counter spies in Russia, England, Denmark, France, and the Netherlands. I was not too interested, at least not at first, but with her request and gentle prodding, I picked it up while on vacation in Kauai and began to read.

Wow, what a book it is! Now, I’m only 100 pages in out of 335, but it’s really got me hooked. It’s a very fascinating read about some very dangerous spy and counter spy activity that I’m pretty sure is still going on. But the thing that really impressed me was the lengths these spies would go to accomplish their objectives.

The main character is a guy by the name of Oleg Gordievsky who is working for the Russian KGB, but the more he sees the western world of Denmark and England with its free market, freedom of speech, and all those things that go with Western and free enterprise countries, the more he realizes that communism is not the best way to go for human beings. So, Oleg is drawn towards the free enterprise cultures but as a top Russian spy he has to hide his thoughts and beliefs so as not to be sent back to Moscow where he could be imprisoned or even put to death.

Reading this great book about the true story of Oleg and so many of his friends and enemies certainly made me stop and think of how good we have it living in a great free country that allows us to think our own thoughts, write about them, and publish them without fear of being arrested or put to death. Plus, we have this amazing freedom to make a terrific living, maybe even making millions of dollars without bribing anyone or dodging the law.

The spies on both sides in this book were pushed to lengths that were almost unbelievable. They worked, studied, and spent unbelievable amounts of time planning what they were told to do and accomplish. It made me think that if we, as free men and women in America, were pushed half as hard by others or by ourselves, it would almost be a certainty that our success would be astronomical. So many of us could be making millions, or even billions, as well as helping others to do the same thing or to chase other great and noble causes that don’t involve money.

Our problem is that so many times we have it way too easy and we just move along at a normal, or even slow pace, depending on where we live and what our friends and relatives around us are doing. For the most part, it seems like we follow our family, friends, and neighbors rather than push ourselves to great new heights. But it doesn’t have to be that way. It’s all up to you and me. Think about how hard you push yourself and whether you can push yourself further to gain even more in your life.

 

 

Show Them the Love

Wow, Valentine’s Day is here again! This is a day when we should realize just how important LOVE is – love for others and love for ourselves! I am so very fortunate and grateful for my wonderful wife and loving family and friends, especially in these COVID times. Even though I can’t give them all big hugs, that can’t stop me from loving them and having that great love come right back to me.

Love is such a super wonderful thing and, maybe, the most important thing in the entire world. As David Hawkins says in his great book, Letting Go, “Most people are preoccupied with survival in all its subtle forms, and so they reflect primarily fear, anger, and a desire for gain. They have not learned that the state of lovingness is the most powerful of all survival tools.” He goes on to say, “Love stimulates endorphins and life energy, bringing a healing balm to stress-prone lives.”

I have such a great and loving wife; I don’t think I could love her more than I do. The same goes for my kids and grandkids. In times like these I think about the opposite of love – hate – and how much damage hate does to our world compared to what love does for the world.

What a great day Valentine’s day can and should be is us showing and giving our love to our family and friends. We all need to think deeply about those around us, those that do so much for us, and show and give them all the love that we can. Even just saying those words “I love you so very much,” and “Thank you for loving me and giving me so much that lifts my life,” can mean so much.

We all must try so hard and so often to send those words and those feelings on to others, not just today, but every day. We owe so much to these people that it really should be automatic that we take time to let them know.

So, HAPPY VALENTINES DAY to you and please pass on the love and share it with everyone that you know and care about.

When the Brain Let’s Go

I continue to read and reread David Hawkins great book called Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender. I’m even more into it now, especially with all the evidence he gives on the huge power of the brain and how it can do so much to aid the body, including its power to cure diseases. It’s all done by giving the brain the right signals. And, of course, if you give it the wrong signals, it can cause lots of problems.

The brain, if used right, really does have the power to eliminate disease. It’s all about your thoughts and feelings. Dr. Hawkins tells of how his brain eliminated and stopped more than a dozen different physical problems that he had. He did it by using what he calls the “letting go” technique. “Once the mind knows the way to alleviate its inner pressure, like Pandora’s box, it begins to let all the garbage up, and up it came in profusion!”

Hawkins healed himself from more than a dozen physical and medical problems by using his brain. He did this with migraine headaches, gastritis, hyperacidity, and intermittent pylorospasm. He also cured what he calls “middle age syndrome”. He describes this as, “Coldness in hands and feet, loss of energy and libido, and depression.” He adds that, “The mounting pressure of suppressed emotion in all areas of life obviously contributed to the multiplicity of illnesses.”

To get the brain working on healing the body, one of the first things Hawkins says you should do is “stop giving a physical disorder a name; do not label it.” Instead, ask yourself, “What am I feeling?” For some reason this does make a difference and for the good.

I love David’s summary of this thing called “letting go”. He does so by describing the process he went through: “Now, like it or not, it had to be acknowledged that everyone is a thinking/feeling organism. It would not work to keep denying reality. Before long, it was okay to have feelings. With the letting go technique, the only way out was to acknowledge and relinquish the feelings. This became easier as the physical condition started to improve … Within days of using the technique, the physical condition at the lower end of the gastrointestinal tract promptly healed itself and, in fact, the surgery was cancelled.”

Then he wraps it up, saying, “How wonderful to be free and to experience the power of mind! It was obvious … that we are only subject to those things that we hold in mind. It is not necessary to be a slave or victim in the world.”

The Benefits List

In these tough times of COVID it’s easy to become very negative about so many things. In the book Letting Go, David R. Hawkins talks about choosing the positive thoughts to push out negative thoughts. He says, “There is an inner reality that we can term our ‘inner greatness’ or ‘higher self’. It has much more power than the inner negativity. In return for letting go of the payoffs that we were getting from the negative position, we are now surprised by the positive payoff. We are subject only to what we hold in mind…The body will respond to what we believe.”

Years ago, I came up with a simple trick that keeps my mind on a positive track. I know how easy it is to let goals slip away from me so I take time to write down, not only the goal, but all of the benefits that sticking with and achieving my objective will bring me. And then when I think of more benefits, I add those to my benefit list. I called this B-RAM, which is short for Benefits, Rewards and Motivation. I also call it my “Big Brain Booster”.

I would strongly suggest that you try it out. Take time to write down all the benefits that sticking with your goals will give you. We certainly have enough time in these COVID days to think these through and come up with lots of benefits we’ll get from reaching our goals.

Now, we may not be able to get out and about to pursue all our goals, at least right now. But given time, this pandemic will be over and we can be so very ready to go after our preset goals and find ourselves glued to them because we can see all of the benefits as we review our list.

Here’s how I came up with this B-RAM concept. Years ago, I had been reading a great book called Beyond the 120-Year Diet by Dr. Roy Walford, a leading expert on longevity. As I read the book and saw how difficult some of the calorie restrictions were on the diet he recommended, I began writing down the benefits that would help me stick with this tough calorie restricted diet. I needed extra motivation so my list made it much easier to stick with the diet. After that, any time I got discouraged, got weak, or got diverted on this diet, I looked at my list and it remotivated me and reminded me of why I set the goal in the first place.

It can be easy to forget why you set certain goals but when you go back to your list of benefits, it’s easy to remember why and it keeps you on track to achieve your goals. And believe me, it’s not easy to stay on a very restricted calorie diet as you probably can understand, especially if you’ve ever been down that road.

As I’m sure you know, if you have followed my posts or read my books, writing down your goals and objectives, putting a timeline on those goals, and revisiting what you wrote increases the chance of you reaching them. It doesn’t matter whether your goals are health or wealth. It works for those goals and many more.

So, now, in these COVID times, let’s all spend more time making benefit lists for our goals. And don’t forget to put your list of goals and benefits in a very convenient place so you can visit them often and easily!

Biden’s Hard Work

Last November I wrote my blog about meeting Joe Biden at a house of a friend of mine. I was so very impressed by how intelligent he was. He was also such a nice down to earth guy.

So, yes, I was very delighted that he won the election and is now our president. I’m confident that he will be great for our wonderful nation. And now, of course, I will be showing off the picture of the two of us that I put in my previous November 15th post. I’m sure he loves the picture and he’ll never forget me… ho ho ho.

But, yes, I will put the picture of Biden and I on my home office wall along with the many other famous people I’ve had by my side. And, yes, I still have the big sign above all those photographs that reads, “People Who Don’t Know Me”.

But all joking aside, this past week has brought to mind my deep appreciation for the country that I live in. I’ve traveled the world and visited more than 90 countries and even lived in the middle eastern country of Turkey for a time. I’ll never forget being awakened by gun fire and explosions near our apartment when I lived in Turkey. I ran to the balcony and looked out at hundreds of soldiers and their guns. We were right then living in the middle of a military revolution and a chaotic overthrow of the government. It was quite the experience.

What I have seen in Turkey and elsewhere has helped me realize how proud, pleased, free, and safe I have been living in this great country called America. I am quite confident that the next 4 years will make us an even better country and place to live.

I do have confidence that President Biden will be instrumental in bringing Americans closer together, regardless of our political differences, education, or wealth. I’ve been reading a bit about Joe’s background and it doesn’t surprise me that he has done so much in his life.

Biden is a very hard worker, so much so that in high school he was the star of the football team and led his team to a perfect undefeated season, making many, many touchdowns himself. If you want to be one of the best in almost any field, it takes lots and lots of hard work and time.

I know this from my own personal experiences, both in business and sports. When I was in high school, I set a goal to be a great basketball player and spent 4 to 5 hours a day practicing. My biggest specific goal was to help my small American high school in Ankara, Turkey win the big American basketball tournament in Rome, Italy. And, yes, we did win the tourney and I went on to get a basketball scholarship at Utah State University. That was the good news. The bad news was that I mostly sat on the bench there. Oh, well. I hit my goal of being on the team at least.

Joe Biden certainly knows and applies those ideas. He takes lots and lots of time and puts in a ton of hard work. He’s done it big time now as the President of the United State of America.

 

Missing the Small Things

So, this past week, I got a little bit of a taste of what it might be like to be in prison. Now, this is only a 10 day sentence and I got to share my “cell” with my wife Kimberly, so it wasn’t all that bad. It did, however, give me a very small taste of what it would feel like to be locked up.

Okay, I know that sounds dramatic. It really wasn’t all that terrible. But what was this all about? Well, there’s some new (for me) rules in place if you travel to Hawaii right now thanks to COVID. When you arrive from outside the islands, you have to spend 10 days in quarantine. Luckily, you can at least spend those 10 days in your house or condo.

The hard part is, for those 10 days you cannot leave your property. The penalty, if you do leave your place and get caught, is a $5,000 dollar fine plus one year in jail. Ouch! That seems severe but, then again, so is COVID-19.

We humans really don’t totally appreciate all that we have and how we live our lives but can’t do until it’s taken away. On the other hand, this time locked up has given my wife and I lots of time to think, read, and even doing a little bit of writing. Plus, we now have tons of time to talk to each other. Still, after 8 days of this, I am going a bit stir crazy.

You would think, with tons of time on my hands, that I could do lots of planning. I do keep thinking about that and yet, to be quite honest, I have not done much planning at all. We humans get so used to our schedules and habits that when they get disrupted, it can make your mind go in all kinds of different directions. It sure has done that for me.

It’s one more thing that you don’t realize you depend on until it’s not there. It’s crazy that now, with all this time on my hands, time I might have really wished for when I was super busy, I just really want my old schedule and routine back.

It is the small things or the everyday things that you start to really miss when you can’t have them anymore. I guess I’ll be ok but I do really look forward to next week. At least, I imagine, I will really appreciate my routine and the many other small things I took for granted every day. A new appreciation for the old and ordinary things may be one of the real silver linings of this time in lock down.

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