The Miracle of My USA

I was going to tell you more about what I’ve learned about increasing longevity and enjoying excellent health through all the years of your life. But something else has been on my mind this past week.

I have been reminded many times through my writing and reading, that everything I do should be connected to that good ole USA. Okay, do you remember what USA is for me? It’s pretty simple and, no, it doesn’t stand for the country I live in. It’s an acronym I use to remind myself to live a life of Unconditional Self-Acceptance.

I know a lot of us struggle with accepting and loving ourselves unconditionally. We can be so very self-critical. But even if you’ve worked hard to have good, positive inner self talk and can truly say to yourself that you love and accept who you are, negativity can still sneak in. It’s not a given that once you’ve learned to accept yourself unconditionally that you’ll always accept and love yourself unconditionally.

You just have to give that USA some thought from time to time, and if you do, you will discover that living with that USA on the top of your mind will really lift your life. It can do this for pretty much any part of your life, from your career to your relationships. 

It’s so easy to forget about the meaning of my version of USA but it really can make a huge difference in your life. If you make Unconditional Self-Acceptance a super big goal for yourself, and think about it on a regular basis, you will see that by being more and more accepting of yourself and your life you’ll find more success, happiness, and contentment. And that’s because it’s that negativity and self-doubt that can really bring us down.

Whenever I focus on my USA, it helps lift my life in so many ways. It improves the way I do business as well as giving me the confidence and dedication I need to write my books. It has even lifted the quality of my tennis game. I’ve also seen how it can improve my relationships with my dear and wonderful hard-working wife, my super kids, and all my wonderful grand kids. Because when I can accept and love myself, it’s easier to love and accept everybody and everything about the people around me. And I mean everybody. Yes, everyone from new friends to long time buddies and, of course, family members!  

I’m sure you’re familiar with the feeling of being around people who don’t seem to like themselves very much. It can bring everybody down. So, if you stay focused on the good ole USA, you’ll be in a position to lift the lives of everyone around you instead of bringing them down.

It really does work. I say it even borders on the miraculous.

It’s Goal Time

Wow, it’s now a new year and the big question we all should ask ourselves is, “What am I going to do in 2023? It’s that good ole thing we call designing, planning and setting ourselves up for some significant progress and rewards. That is, if you do it right and, as I’ve preached to my reader and followers before, be sure, very sure, that you write down those goals and objectives and put a time deadline on them.

Here are a few parts of our life that we could, and probably should, aim to improve its.

TYPES OF GOALS TO SET

• Fitness
• Family and friends
• Social life
• Financial objectives
• Career objectives

And here are a few more that you may want to set as goals for this great year of 2023.

SPECIFIC SUGGESTED GOALS

• Enjoy life more.
• Create a list for a better diet.
• Drink less.
• Play more.
• Stop smoking.
• Read and research more.
• Stay current in writing your diary. This could even turn into a book.
• Write down long-term and short-term goals.
• Be specific in your goal setting.
• Write goals that are measurable.

Now, after creating this list of yours, maybe it would be a good idea to share your hopes, wants, and goals with your family and friends. But, of course, pick those people that will give you positive and helpful feedback, then maybe you can motivate them to do the same. Work back and forth with them, sharing what your goals are as you work them out. See if some goals that they are considering or have set can help you set more or better goals.

The great thing about going after your goals is that it gives your life more purpose and pushes you to do more and more. You will look back on the goals you’ve reached and get tremendous satisfaction, especially seeing how it will have lifted your life. It will motivate you to keep doing it and maybe, in the process, it will motivate your family and friends to do the same thing.

Go ahead and get started now!

For Love of Work

Last week, I said I would tell more of the story about Bunker Bean who I spoke about in the last couple of posts. However, I am going to do that next week as I have something else I want to share with you first.

Recently, I was thumbing through a great book that I read years ago entitled When All You’ve Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough by Harold Kushner. As I always do when I read a book, I wrote down many of the most interesting, helpful, and motivating quotes and comments that the author made. These notes are a great way to go back and easily refresh my memory since they highlight those points that hit me the hardest and helped lift my thoughts, actions, and life to a higher level.

Here are some of the points in this book that really helped me, especially the comments about work and how important it is for all of us:

l. Work can be the scaffolding that holds up our adult lives. (I need to keep remembering this as being retired makes it more difficult to find and do the best kinds of work for me.)

2. The key to one’s happiness is to find pleasure in our work and to use our abilities–no wasting them!

3. Our souls are hungry for meaning.

4. We work for meaning. We work so our days will not be empty of meaning!

5. Do not expect that life will always be fair.

6. For ultimate satisfaction, lower the level of what you want to what you already have.

7. The affliction which drains so much of the sense of meaning from our lives these days is that disease of boredom.

Kushner makes several other notable points in this book that are not easily summarized and put into a list. For example, he writes, “Asked, “’What do you do?’ we invariably respond in terms of our work, not our hobbies or organizational commitments,” implying that work is often our identity.

About himself, he notes that, “I work because I have a family to support and bills to pay. But I work also because it puts me in touch with people and helps me think of myself as a competent, contributing person.”

Kushner also writes that “there is something satisfying about being challenged to do something hard and then doing it. I think it must have been what Ecclesiastes had in mind when he said to us, in effect, ‘If you are not going to win a Nobel Prize for your work, if it is not going to make you rich and famous, it can still give meaning to your life if you take it seriously and do it with all your might.’”

I think the author makes many wonderful comments and offers some very helpful advice. It’s a great little book and I highly encourage you to get it and read it but, most importantly, LIVE by the advice that you think will make a big difference in your life, a difference for the better.

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.