Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 17:55 — 24.7MB)

Podcast Player Image by Dimitris Vetsikas from Pixabay

Show Notes:

When you can see and even viscerally feel the positive impact you have on people, yet earn too little from doing it? Well…this is the height of frustration!

But if you’re clearly aware of the positives, you’re at least on the right path to attaining greatness.

I feel this is a thing bipolar people can land in easier than most. After all we’ve endured, many of us are quite empathetic. We need to give.

And the illness tends to lend itself to a higher level of intellect.

So we both know what we’re made of and know it can be put to best use by us, better than anyone else.

But how? Where? And for whom?

And how do we not suffer needlessly due to unrealistic, altruistic perspectives?

Transcript:

Welcome to the Bipolar Excellence Podcast. I’m your host, Ken Jensen. I’m someone who overcame bipolar disorder, in an organic fashion, back in 2004. That process taught me a couple of things about bipolar.

I was living life so incorrectly, in relation to what the better part of me wanted and needed me to do, that it took bipolar disorder to shock me into seeing I should go another way.

The fact that it was bipolar that was the change agent meant I’m more creative than most. I have a certain, slightly higher amount of intelligence than the average bear.

And I have a way of seeing life and expressing myself that most around me do not, in such a way that I can have great impact on those who need me most.

You might be the same. I want to help you understand this about yourself. And I want to help unlock your greatness and then unleash it on the world in the best and coolest way possible!

Hello, bipolar prone folk! Welcome to Episode 44. People Love What I Do, But I Can’t Ever Profit From It.

This is the ever so exciting moment where I finally finish the series Life Of an Outsider, which you will find a link to in the website, bipolarexcellence.com. You’ll find it in the footer.

Oh, this is fun. I did like a, this’ll be the ninth episode I did in one sitting. You don’t, you don’t, nor probably should you, do this this way, but I’ve had it with this series! I need it done and out of the way. I have very cool people waiting to be interviewed who’ve for the podcast, who’ve done incredible stuff in alignment with their bipolar characteristics. I can’t wait to bring them to you.

Let’s see. Well, now, now I’m fully winded. People will love what I do, but can never profit from it. The funny thing I’ve realized is.. These titles? Part of why I came up with them was because they were all individual ways I listed my own problems becoming more with bipolar, with a bipolar background.

And I figured out, or I figured people… I wanted to have episodes, even though so many of these topics in this series are very similar, sometimes damn near the same, people are going to ask the same question with different words. So I tried to address that. It made it very confusing at times for me, to make my points and keep them tight, tightly focused.

But I think I did a pretty good job. And moving forward, I have other series planned and they’re not going to be this. They’re not going to be as closely, the topics, as closely related as these are. And I’m just going to handle them a little different.

There was, there was a whole technical thing I set up in a certain way that I couldn’t undo without breakin’ a bunch of things. And it has pissed me off that I couldn’t finish this series because then life, life got in the way. It’s it’s been a wild ride. It’s going to do the same to you. When you’re getting ready to launch your big project, it’s it’s life.

Shit’s going to get in the way. You’re going to get tripped. You’re going to do something wrong in a way you can’t fix. As I always say, keep moving anyway. Just keep moving. Don’t stop. Don’t stop until something becomes nightmarishly incorrect. Then you might want to look at it and be like, geez, I don’t know.

But take everything to its full extent, before you make a decision on whether to quit it entirely. And even then hang on to everything you create. And I mean, for a handful of years. Hard won experience talking to you right now. This list? I wrote it in 2011. I never did anything with it.

It was going to be a bunch of blog posts on the last website, I think it was? Yeah. Two websites ago? Anyway, which I easily could have done. But it became these podcast episodes 11 years later.

So hang on if you’re a content creator, keep track of everything somewhere. Maybe 4, 5, 6, 7 years, just to be sure. You have no idea of knowing when something you created way back when will find a home years down the road.

Because, particularly, I believe ,with bipolar people, we’re always trying to sort ourselves out. I don’t know. I think we’re always trying to do that. We get better at it with age and experience. But I think it always happens to a degree.

And if nothing else, even when you create something and it doesn’t go the way you want, or you can’t use it the way you want, it was your, it was yours. It meant something. And the person you become later will be able to find a way to make use of it.

Because it’s a piece of your past that proves a point. Even if you don’t talk about it in, in the, the context or tone that it was originally designed for, it still proves a point that you can now address in a completely different context and tone of voice.

I just did that with this list. So this last episode, people love what I do, but I can’t ever profit from it. I believe, looking at the little picture you might’ve heard me mentioned a handful of episodes back, I picked pictures off of various free image databases. Like Unsplash. What does it, what’s that one? Pixabay. There’s been a few, but that’s the two I was using latest.

I try to get a picture that metaphorically matches the, the, either the topic directly or the tone of it to just try to give the story on the web page some context. So I, so, and I remember this picture here, these guys running an ice cream stand or something. I think it’s like in Italy or something, something like that.

I remember trying to figure out, why is this different than a couple other episodes I said? I believe what it is is it’s about, like in my case, you, you get onto a project. It makes sense. That’s one of the trickiest things. A thing makes sense. There’s a certain amount of standardization standardization to it.

There’s a business plan that is, that is understood and widely accepted to be sane and proper. And you’re capable of pursuing it and you do so. And it goes nowhere for any number of reasons.

I believe that was my, my perspective on, on what I wanted to say about this topic. You might be in the wrong thing still. You might be on to something that you’re just capable of doing, but that doesn’t, that doesn’t mean you should do it.

Particularly, if you can’t ever profit from it, you’re ah, I’m still struggling a little as you hear. I’m trying to make sure that I hit on really what it was, why, why I made this topic distinct from the rest. But

I do know there comes a point. If you’re not profiting, you need to profit or you can’t eat. They’ll come a point when you’ve got to look hard at something and let your baby die, clip it out and start over. I’ve done that dozens of times. I’ve had, I think, four major website revisions with completely different names and, and everything.

I worked on my very first website. I hired a company that had a program you followed that they told you right up front, it’s going to take months. It was big on search engine optimization. There was a whole plan. And they’re like, their symbol was the turtle. Don’t be the hare, be the turtle. And they’re like, if you do what we say, it’ll, it’ll pay off.

It’ll do it. What it, what we say it’ll do. And I kept the faith and I worked on that site, something like four months. Many hours every day. I was on disability at the time and didn’t have a job. So I had all day to work on this and I put in all day, every day for four months straight.

When I turned the website on the way they told me to, it exploded. I was finding myself on page one for various keywords in Google all over the place.

That’s all grand and good. In the middle of that, somebody found the website and a film crew came up from New York City. I’m a couple hours north of New York City. They filmed me, in relation to my bipolar story. That never went anywhere, but it was awful fun. I learned from it.

But there comes a point when you, you you’ve got to know that a thing needs to, it has to have profit. Or it’s either a hobby, might be perfectly fine, but just back down your expectations and just treat it as a hobby. Don’t expect anything bigger than that to come from it.

Or if you really needed it to feed you, you got to go a different way. And that is, my God. Is that a hard conclusion to arrive at. And it’s hard to kill your little darling. But it has to be done. I’ve done it many times. And I remember writing to a coach I had at the time, how do I know when it’s time to stop on a thing?

How do I know when it’s, when it’s time to give up? Particularly in reference to bipolar? Because in my case I was more manic than not for many years. Even after I beat the bulk of the disease mania lingered. You can hear it in my voice on and off throughout this podcast. It’s a thing. It’s just not constant.

It just has moments now. But in the early years it was quite, quite present. And I had the energy to keep going, even if I shouldn’t. And I also had an aspect of bipolar where I call four dimensional thinking.

I could see forwards and backwards in time, for planning purposes. And I could see like, on all three planes of reality up, down, back and forth side to side, connected with the time aspect.

And I had an ability to link resources and ideas and experiences all together to create a thing that existed in real life. I don’t have that anymore. I have a remnant of that in me, but not like back then. It was, it was wild back then. I, I, I couldn’t believe the things I used to build. The constructs that could become like a literal business.

And none of that led anywhere, as awesome as it was, other than, as a learning experience. Made few dollars here and there, but not nothing to brag about. But you do have to profit.

One of the things that has annoyed me about, even sometimes now, like when you talk about profit people have a, they got these condescending notions of money.

You shouldn’t be doing something, you know, for money and like w… you fucking go to work for money! Me doing this? This is me going to work! As it will be for you on your podcast, your website, whatever it is you’re creating.

Hell yeah, you should profit. You should get paid for your time and effort. And you need to, so that you can reach more people and do more good in this life.

Look at a nonprofit. Nonprofits are some of the most profitable companies on the planet. They need to bring in money, wildly so, so they can help more and more people.

I know in my case, just to give an example, the more people that hire me for higher level coaching, I reach a point, because I’ve done this before, I reach a point where some of the smaller things I used to sell, I just give them away.

Because I can afford to. Now I’m helping even more people get their foot in the door and better their lives. And in a way that doesn’t take food off my dinner plate. Money is just a tool. It’s just a tool. It enables you to do things. That’s all.

Anything other than that, that you feel about money is your belief system working on money. It’s what you believe about money. It’s a. That’s that’s always annoyed me. It bothers me whenever I want to talk about it on the show. Because you definitely don’t want to talk about it all the time, but since this one’s about profit, it’s, it’s a, you don’t carry on about it, but I get paranoid when I, whenever I talk about it, even now!

I’m like, is this too much? But no, man. It’s you go to work, your pissed if they pay you, like, if they, if you’re short an hour or something, or the paycheck’s late, you’re losing your mind. Anything you do on your own is no different. Just, you’re the boss. So get good with profit. If you’re not already.

That’s a load of shit that’s, in a large sense, that when people, you care about money too much, that’s people who have no money. I’d say that in general. I don’t intend to be one of those people. I’m not one of those people.

That’s a, that’s an ignorant way of looking at life, point blank. More money you have, the more people’s lives you can affect and change for the better. You get that money when you realize the thing you’re doing sucks. Or it’s incorrect. It doesn’t match somehow to what it is you’re trying to achieve. And you’re just, you’re either not the one to do it, because sometimes the idea is solid. It’s just not for you. Or the idea is not solid or the area it’s in isn’t right.

You’re not marketing right. Whatever. But if you’ve been trying for long enough and it ain’t going, it’s time to let it go. You can park it. You can keep it alive off to the side and just not add to it anymore. That’s a thing. I’ve done that with other stuff. There’s stuff in Bipolar Excellence, I’ve done that with.

But the pruning is hard.

I didn’t get a lot of direct help from the people that coached me in the past. They’ll just say, you’ll know when you know. And they’re right. I hate to share that with you, but you’ll know when you know .

It’s going to take too long with some. You’re going to embarrass yourself because, sometimes, cause you’ll have shared with everybody about this great thing you’re doing. And then it does not a great thing.

And if you’re a, you know, a dreamer and bipolar prone, like I am, there’ll be so many of those things, you lose a lot of credibility. So off the back of that statement, the longer you go with this, the more you keep it to yourself. Unless you’re talking to your people or your potential people. It’s how you’ll save yourself a lot of effort.

Talk about it indirectly. You don’t remain, you know, you don’t stay negative about it. You don’t say negative things about it or, or denigrate it. You just, there comes a point when you do have to protect your own sense of well-being, by not oversharing on a thing. That’s not really real yet. It’s not. It’s not real until it’s real.

Real means you’re you got dollars going into your bank account, then it’s real. And even then, make sure that they’re coming in consistently and enough that you’re earning a respectable, a respectable income.

People I got, before you share. People like us, the creative types? We get ourselves into a lot of trouble in, in the realm of being socially comfortable with our peers.

We’re just not normal .And it can, it, it causes us grief until it doesn’t. There’s a chain of events, it’s only like four steps long, when somebody comes up with a new idea. It’s heresy and then the second step S people then attack it. They attack you, directly. Then there’s like a begrudging respect, as the thing that you’re doing well proves to be useful.

And then there’s a point reached where everybody just thinks this thing’s always been around. And when they read the history of your struggles, they can’t believe anybody ever would have said no to this.

That’s where you and I, more than likely, find ourselves. Gauge you’re sharing accordingly to protect yourself socially, which will directly affect your mental wellbeing.

And as far as clipping, clipping things out, when they got to go? You will know when you got to know. I wish I could be clear than that, but it’ll make itself clear when the time is right.

Now childrens! I leave you with this: please go over to bipolarexcellence.com. Sign up for my free newsletter. Get the guide that comes with it that can answer some of your largest problems immediately and get the ball rolling on some of the bigger issues.

Because there’s no time to waste. World’s burning all around us, quite literally in a lot of areas. They’re waiting for you to show up and help, in some brand new fashion that nobody else can see.

And I want to launch that thing with you. Good God. We’re going to do interviews next. All right, guys. See, in the next episode.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 18:00 — 24.8MB)

Podcast Player Image by Press 👍👍 Love you 💖 from Pixabay

Show Notes:

There’s loneliness.

Then there’s being alone.

Top? No bueno. Bottom? Goldilocks levels of “just right”!

You want to be on the outside as much as possible. It’s where all the cool kids hang out.

Funny thing is, once you’ve become known for whatever it is we might work on together, you’ll actually be inside a very special club:

Those who did not bend to the status quo!

My friends and I can’t wait to meet that version of you!

Transcript

Welcome to the Bipolar Excellence Podcast. I’m your host, Ken Jensen. I’m someone who overcame bipolar disorder in an organic fashion back in 2004. That process taught me a couple of things about bipolar.

I was living life so incorrectly, in relation to what the better part of me wanted and needed me to do, that it took bipolar disorder to shock me into seeing I should go another way.

The fact that it was bipolar that was the change agent meant I’m more creative than most. I have a certain, slightly higher amount of intelligence than the average bear.

And I have a way of seeing life and expressing myself that most around me do not, in such a way that I can have great impact on those who need me most. You might be the same.

I want to help you understand this about yourself and I want to help unlock your greatness and then unleash it on the world in the best and coolest way possible.

Hello, bipolar prone folk! Exciting times! Episode 43. I’m Always Outside Looking In: Is This Wrong? This is the second to last in a series of episodes entitled Life Of An Outsider.

You’ll find a link to that series in the footer of the website BipolarExcellence.com.

I am upset that I ever came up with this plan, but there’s only one left and it’s important. God help me. I came up with this plan sometime ago. I have other series planned, but they will be built differently than this.

And I had more time on my hands. A lot in my personal life changed that robbed me of that time. Technical difficulties abounded. It came out of nowhere. Just you name it. Hurdles got thrown up in my way. But, here’s one of the cool things. When it comes to a podcast, most people don’t even get to do this, this amount of episodes.

It’s something like 10 episodes and they crap out. I made it to what. I made it to 35 and I didn’t crap out. I just got stopped. I fully intended to keep going. And that’s why I’m here now. But most people get to 10 and quit. I ain’t quitting. I just kinda hit a snag. So the other thing is, a lot of people tend to do one episode a week or, or one every bi-weekly or one a month.

I’m way ahead of that. I got, I got in a minute here I’ll have 44 and I believe I started this, in reality, in November of last year. So we got December, January, February, March, April, May. So that’s six months, 44 episodes. That’s a that’s seven a month. So I’m ahead. And then some. I’m seven ahead… of or not seven. I’m seven a month.

So it’s like, Three. If I did ’em one per week, that’s three a month, more than, than the average person podcasts. So I’m trying to teach you. Even if it doesn’t look like an immediate win, it can eventually be a win. Some of you, if you’ve been following along, you’ve seen the big pause. He didn’t, you couldn’t make sense of it.

If you look on the podcast platform, these things are even dated back in December and January of last year. It’s 2022 May. I had a reason for that. Cause I was going to stack a bunch of series and get them all preloaded. So I had this huge, hugely populated podcast with episodes and, and look more impressive when you came there.

I still think that’s a good idea. I don’t think a lot of people bother with that. They just go ahead and start doing an episode in organic fashion. They make a plan for that week. They do that episode and move on.

That would probably be less stressful for most of you. If you’re bipolar prone, you might not be able to help yourself, but to do it the way I did it with this stacks of episodes preplan. Then I did things with the technology that made me have to stick to this initial plan.

To try to undo them, to get to the next part of what happens in this podcast would have screwed everything up. So anyway, oh my God, I’m tired. I’ve done. Not tired winded. I’m actually quite pumped. I started on Episode 36 tonight. I think that was about two or three hours ago. I’m on episode 43. I’m excited.

I’m always on the outside looking in. Is this wrong?

No. I’ll tell you what. You should be greatly relieved you’re on the outside lookin’ in. When you’re trying to fit in, that’s coming from a position of weakness. Now, depending on what your, what your situation is, particularly as an adult, I don’t know. I don’t know how this would even work as an adult so much.

It works more when you’re you’re a kid or a teen, or even in your twenties, you’re, you’re more insecure. You, you can be, and you don’t want to stand out. Cause that’s just too uncomfortable to bear. You need to just be accepted in the group.

I did that well, I did that, I don’t know, well into my twenties. And then when I started not worrying about it, I not worried about it in an unhealthy way. I of just went crazy and just lived crazy and didn’t give a shit what anybody thought.

Now I have that like like an echo of that in what I do now, but now it’s healthier. It’s I’m quite happy, not belonging to anything that doesn’t greatly matter to me. And that list is mighty short. I’m comfortable in my own skin.

I was not, when I was younger. Probably bipolar had a piece to do with something like that. I don’t know. Cause bipolar didn’t actually nail me until my late twenties. But when you’re on the outside, looking in, I think it would behoove you to question why you want in so bad. Is that a thing you even really want to be a part of?

If it is, why? And be honest, be open with yourself. Why are you looking for acceptance in such a way? Maybe it is that important. If I sat here long enough, I could make a list of areas that might be a sensible concern. I just don’t have them in my life. I’m way cool. With being the lone Wolf.

But I’m not really. I am, I don’t hang with a crew. I don’t try to fit into anything. I try to be the best version of myself with the people that I help the most. And the people that I help the most, at least on the, on the paycheck side of things, are people with addictions and mental illnesses. And I find them fascinating.

I find every single one of them has something really positive to be discovered and explored, even if they’ve done some terrible things, which they have, as have I back in the day. Don’t judge. I’m not naive. I get lied to a lot, but I don’t care because it has nothing to do with me. It’s how they’re just surviving.

And I know a lot of people that I deal with that I deal with, if I knew what they really did in certain areas, or sometimes I do, I wouldn’t want them living near me. I wouldn’t really associate with them. But because professionally that’s not what I’m there to do. It doesn’t phase me in the slightest and I just find it that makes them even more interesting.

I, I. I’m fascinated by flawed people. I’m fascinated by suffering people. I don’t wish it on them. It’s not like that. It’s not, and they’re not my entertainment. I’m just really fascinated in what makes a mind go sideways.

What makes a mind get warped? Like that. And then I find the good in that, that I can, and I help the people that it’s my responsibility to help. And I do it wholeheartedly.

On the, on the private coaching side, if you’re working with me, you’ll probably got a pile of all of that in you at some point, but you’ve moved well beyond it. Same as me. And now you’re on some kind of mission. You’re trying to take all of those experiences, good and bad, and turn them into something good and something powerful.

You got something to say, you got a group of people you want to help, and you got a one person you want to help. And you knew that you know the version of you is not the guy to get it done. I want to help you do that.

And the only way you and I I can work together, is if you’ve always been on the outside, looking in, or, or you got there eventually, because you realize you just can’t mesh with the status quo.

And I don’t believe anybody. Life’s going to hand you certain situations where it’s it’s… you’d do well to be part of the status quo. I mean, you would. But for living, for getting out of life what you really want? And for doing in life what you’re here to do, you need to divorce yourself from the status quo as quickly as possible. Or change the definition of what you call status quo.

There’s there’s another sweet spot I like to live in. Status quo is just whatever one else is doing. Well, what if everyone else encompassed a group of people not doing what the herd does? People like us that have fought bipolar and come out with unbelievable awakenings and ideas and passions and skills and visions. And we want to share them with the world.

There’s a lot of us like that. There’s a lot of famous people that you know, right now, you’ve read their books. You’ve listened to their music. You’ve seen their paintings. It’s artists, it’s musicians, it’s it’s actors and actresses, it’s poets. It’s it’s even architects, people, people that do stuff with their hands. There’s there’s people out there that have to be by themselves to do what they do, because it’s the only way they can pull it off.

But if you’re lucky enough to sit and talk them, your life would be changed. A quick example. I, I did that with Brad Douriff, Brad Douriff. He was, he’s an actor and he’s the voice of Chucky the doll. Now he’s been in a million movies, hundreds, hundreds. He was a, when I met him, he was 72. Was handful of years ago.

I got pulled into a music video. And I was like, yeah, I’ll jump. I’d like to be in that. I knew the, I knew the the movie director. And I had a chance at one point to talk to Brad Douriff. I was in the audience, but there wasn’t a lot of people. You know, the pretend audience for the video shoot. He was on the edge of the stage, just gathering himself and cooling off.

And we shot the shit for like 20 minutes. I don’t remember a damn thing we talked about. Cause it was all just…. Life. It was like life stuff. It wasn’t me fawning over the fact that he was Brad Douriff and he seemed to take a liking to me. And we were just two guys just talking about things and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I was on almost no sleep. I was on a 40 some odd hours with no sleep, as it was my wife and my daughter to get to this thing on time. And, and we were beyond exhausted. We were practically hallucinating and that 20 minutes with, with Brad, I was on fire.

I was energized in a calm sense, and I was so honored that I got this chance to be with him. And I built it. I built it.

Because way back when I first started sharing my message of being an outsider and I beat bipolar disorder in an outsider fashion, I started telling the world about that. I got a videographer who was a student at the time, pursuing a career in videography, to shoot a bunch of YouTube videos for me.

They’re gone now, but we shot many, many dozens of ’em. He went on to become a professor at two different colleges and start his own video production company. And it was through him that I got the invite that landed me practically in Brad Douriff’s lap. I got pictures with Brad later, but the, the I got his life story from his girlfriend.

She told me his story for an hour. I would never share what she told me and but it was fascinating and I couldn’t believe… I said nothing. She talked for an hour straight.

I met a guy there who was much older than me, probably in his seventies, who used to work in the garment district in New York city, back when you went in armed to buy dresses.

I was like what? He goes. Yeah. People never seem to understand that about the garment industry back in the day. It was all mob run and gang ruled. And he’s like, you could go in to buy a bunch of clothes. You might not come out. I was like, what?

So all of that came to me because I looked from the outside in, on how to fix bipolar and then worked hard as I could, in any way possible, with zero budget, to share that message. These fascinating people, years later, ended up in my lap.

My point to all of this is if you’re on the outside, always, looking in? Kudos! I do understand that it’s comfortable.

I do understand particularly like with bipolar. It gets very lonely. I could suggest finding my course over at bipolarexcellence.com to show you how I dealt with bipolar. And as you regain your wellness, you won’t feel so lonely. And you’ll learn things about bipolar… stuff I talk about all the time in this podcast… and how to attain them ,to where you may embrace your outsiderness, same as I have.

You might prefer to never go back to trying to be in the thing. you’re outside of. I hope not. The thing is the world is in turmoil right now. It’s 2022. Everything’s a, it’s… the water’s a little choppy out there. People like us are the only ones… because we’re not normal in the best of ways.

We’re not normal. We’re going to look at these problems in a way that everyone else will ignore or overlook or not believe. And we’re going to solve a lot of them.

I want to be at the root of that. I. I just for my own satisfaction, just like when I met Brad and his girlfriend and the guy that did the thing, and I built the kid that the kid that was the videographer, I got him his start.

I got him. I paid him for his free videos by getting him an internship in a professional production company, where I was friends with those people. That is another four years of stories to tell you even what happened because of why I was friends with those people at that facility. And what took place in a facility.

All of this is because. I am constantly on the outside in how I see everything. And I want to be involved. I drew these situations to me. I built them and/or drew them to me. I maxed them out, mostly with no awareness of where they go.

I almost never got paid for any of this ever. And yet my life has been filled with these fascinating moments and events and people and the kind of people and the level of play I’m accessing is getting larger, more important, more impactful.

I want to be a, a bigger player on the world scale because I enjoy it. Not because of the, the more tangible things that come with that, you know, fame and fortune. All right. I don’t care. I’ve had a little bit of ’em, a little bit of fame way back when.

I’m a published author, things really cool things came out of that for a minute and fortune, not, not so much so far, but I’m working on that, but not like I don’t have a list of things I want. I have a handful of things I want. Big house. I want a Jeep. I want my own gym in a barn.

I want a lot of land in the woods. I don’t want to be around any people. I want water nearby. Boom. You just heard my whole list. Don’t care if where I live, nobody knows who I am. Don’t care. I don’t care about any of that.

I don’t buy things so that I can tell to you anybody else look, like I can afford this. I, I hate that actually, but I do want some stuff. I want a better life and I’m building it. But I’m building it by living the life the way I want. And that’s by remaining an outsider and drawing other outsiders to me.

It’s critically important to me that my social circle and work circle is made up of people like you. You’re winning, as far as I’m concerned. You just might be at a phase of this outsiderness that it’s awful damn uncomfortable and lonely.

Hopefully something I say on this podcast or offer on my website will help you mold that into something more positive. And then we can find out what’s actually at the heart of what drives you and just explode it all over the world.

I hope so because it’s going to be yet another awesome story, with another far out person that I either get to tell or just, you know, I just get to live that life. I want to live these lives of you guys with you. And that’s why this whole thing exists. And that’s why I say remain on the outside, looking in.

All right guys. See you on the last episode of this series. (So excited!)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 19:36 — 27.0MB)

Podcast Player Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Show Notes:

Here’s that complexity again…

To quote De Niro saying one of my favorite lines from “This Boy’s Life“,

I know a thing or two about a thing or two!”

Do you suffer from this as well?

You know so much. And you keep searching for more.

But what to do with it all?

I find bipolar prone are more prepared for the unknown than most. We adapt quicker. We are more useful to a broader spectrum of people than most.

But not until we figure out what the hell to do with it all!

Well, what I said above makes clear that you have a base of operations that allows you to make forays into almost any other world, and find some measure of success.

Your job becomes one of understanding what the underlying focus has been, regardless of content.

There’s a lot of highly educated, out of work people.

And just being smart is not enough to guarantee any kind of success.

Understanding yourself well, then filtering all you’ve consumed and experienced through that filter of self awareness, will bring you everything you’ve ever wanted.

Transcript

Welcome to the Bipolar Excellence Podcast. I’m your host, Ken Jensen. I’m someone who overcame bipolar disorder in an organic fashion back in 2004.

That process taught me a couple of things about bipolar. I was living life so incorrectly, in relation to what the better part of me wanted and needed me to do, that it took bipolar disorder to shock me into seeing I should go another way.

The fact that it was bipolar that was the change agent, meant I’m more creative than most. I have a certain, slightly higher amount of intelligence than the average bear.

And I have a way of seeing life and expressing myself that most around me do not, in such a way that I can have great impact on those who need me most.

You might be the same. I want to help you understand this about yourself, and I want to help unlock your greatness and then unleash it on the world in the best and coolest way possible.

Welcome bi-polar prone folk! This is Episode 42: I’m A Seeker Who’s Learned Much In Diverse Areas. This is the third to last episode of this never ending series called the Life Of An Outsider. You will find the link to that series in the footer of the website, bipolarexcellence.com.

So excited! I only have, what? After this two more episodes to create and then the interviews start. If you’re someone that’s on that list, wondering when the hell I’m going to call, it’s going to be soon. Thank you for your patience.

So many things got in the way of me from finishing this series. This was supposed to be much easier than this. It would have been had my life stayed as it was when I began this project. It did not !Welcome to life, right?

All right. I’m a seeker diverse areas. Okay. I touched on some of this in the last episode about not trusting one’s own judgment.

For a lot of bipolar people we’re driven, we’re driven to seek and know and understand and find meaning, more so than non bipolar types. There’s a higher percentage of bipolar people than the non bipolar population that is of high intelligence.

We can’t settle as easily as most around us. We have to know more, do more, be more, understand more. We’re on a journey that most around us won’t understand, or even have the energy or the capabilities or the capacity to pursue.

It’s one of the shiny aspects of being bipolar prone. There is such strength within bipolar that is muddied and sometimes obliterated by all the other negative aspects of it, you don’t realize that there is a positive. I’m living proof that there’s a positive.

There’s even versions of bipolar that are just…they’re like bipolar light. You have it, but you’re just, you’re like you’re mildly amusing.

You’re eclectic, you’re the odd one out in the group, but not any massive negative sense or any way that causes troubles just if someone’s going to say or do some weird shit it’s gonna to be you.

If someone’s going to make an you know, notice something, make a statement, or share a perspective that everyone else missed, it’s going to be you.

In that respect, if you’re that? You’re way farther ahead than the rest of us, that the illness completely took right out of the game of life. And we barely survived it. So if it troubles you a little and that’s all you’re up against, you’re already doing better than, than a lot of the rest of us bipolar prone types. If that gives you any peace.

But all of us tend to have an overactive mind. Now I say overactive. That’s too broad of a, of a too broad of a concept. It’s a wrong way to say it. Your mind is too active for how your life is currently formatted.

That’s better.

That’s one of the biggest problems with bipolar. A lot of it, when it isn’t just, you know, mind bending illness type things, a lot of it is just misplaced energy and strengths.

And the lashing out that happens within one’s soul and heart and mind, at not being able to effectively deploy those strengths and to make use of all this energy and to give that incredibly complex brain, something to do.

A lot of us, we need variety and complexity and the novel to relax! Like other, other people fight to discover that and then keep up and they do it maybe in one area. And it’s a lot of work for them. We’re the reverse. To, to not have that, to have a regular life, we got to fight to stay sane in it.

When you give us a great, big, complicated, unbelievably odd, or unique situation, that someone’s got to manage, that’s our normal.

Now I have calmed down quite a bit, quite a bit from when the illness was raging in me or even after I came out of it with the parts that I just mentioned were still really right at the surface. I I’m not that driven anymore.

But at the same time, I’ve, I’ve learned a lot and I’ve settled a lot of questions. I’ve scratched a lot of itches that, you know, I’m done. I’m done in those areas. I’m still unsettled. I’m still have other itches that need scratching, and I’m always striving to understand myself better in the world.

Better, my place in it, how to make the best use of it so that I can be the happiest at the same time that I can possibly be. I have all that. But it’s… and regardless of how I might sound on this podcast, I’m actually mostly calm.

If I’m talking to someone, I can get pretty wound up. I get pretty wound up on this podcast sometimes. Trip over my words and such. Stutter even. Cause I can’t get the thoughts out fast enough.

But that’s just in that moment. For the bulk of the day, I am dead quiet, unless I’m talking to myself and entertaining myself. And everybody does that! If you’re bipolar, don’t think that you’ve got an issue with bipolar.

Everybody does that. We all talk to our dog, thinking it understands us and loves us and agrees with everything we say. You don’t gotta be mentally ill for that to be true, alright? Give yourself a little relief on that note.

We, we tend to just, we can’t deal with the status quo. Even if we don’t know it, we’re just always poking around and shoving our noses in things. Sometimes where it doesn’t belong. We can irritate people more easily with our our energy levels and our never-ending questions or our ideas on how a thing could be better.

I know in my case, I am currently on, I think it’s my 56th job, five, six, where there was a W2 involved. Okay. Not always a W2. But where there was a distinct thing to do that was separate from all the other things to do. I’m on 56.

I don’t stay anywhere for long. I won’t stay at this for long. The cool part about what I’m about to do next, I’ll be a type of coach a recovery coach. They already know I want out, they know I want a private, you know, I’m building a private practice and they like that about me.

They want someone with that that type of thinking and energy and ability to plan on their team. They know they’re going to lose me. And that was a selling point. They gobbled it right up.

So I only reached this point because I dug and dug and dug and dug and dug. And I was also somebody who like, even in the Marines… I was only in the Marines five years, right. 86 to 91. But when you’re that… I went in at 18. So when you’re that age and at that rank, I barely hung on to corporal, which was E4. I got the points for Sergeant and my, my job was full. They didn’t need any more sergeants in my job.

So I would have been a Sergeant if they needed a Sergeant. So my point is when you’re my age at that rank, there’s, there’s, there’s sort of a standard storyline about where you’ve been and what you’ve. And even how often you move.

I moved 19 times, in five years. I went to Japan twice. I went to Korea once. I’ve lived in tents twice for a oh, almost a year and a half total. I caught a war. I’ve been on a ship. I’ve flown on military planes a lot. I’ve lived on both coasts of America. Been to Mexico, been to Canada. Ah,

The job I had wasn’t normal. The people that were in it weren’t normal because we did, we needed to borrow people from other shops. So we were used as a dumping ground for the problem children. So my whole shop was like a biker gang in the Marine Corps.

Nothing about even my time in the Marines was normal. I had ribbons that had stars on them, which, which means you get a ribbon, when you do something once. If you do it again, they stick a star on it.

Some of my ribbons had two stars. I’d done things three times. That does not happen typically, at that rank or age. I, I had all kinds of things in the Marines that made me look like a little mini George Patton that used blow other guys away.

Like, where the fuck? What are you? What are you? What are you Rambo? Nah, they just keep giving me ribbons for shit. And I’ve been around doing a lot of stuff. Nothing even about my time in the Marine Corps, which is pretty standardized. \Operation was standard.

I had one job for five years when I got out of the Marine Corps and that was the longest job I ever held after the Marines ever. Everything else can be measured in, I think, two years, one year, and then all months, weeks and days.

I like to read. I got a pretty large library and I like to stand in front of it and spread my hand and go, all of that is in my head. If you read, you know what I mean. They’re like my children I’ll talk to anybody about anything anywhere. I’ve learned over time to temper it. Cause depending on what I’m doing during the day and how I look in general, sometimes I could terrify people.

I’m big, I’m 300 pounds, big beard shaved head. That means something to certain people. And I’m usually not what they expect me to be. I’m usually mistaken for a bodyguard, bouncer, jail guard, truck, or construction worker or a biker they know. I get that constantly. Or a cop.

I’ve been most of those things.

I’ve been most of those things. You’re probably the same. What do you do with it all? There in lies the rub. I addressed that in the last few episodes of this podcast. How do you take this practical male, maelstrom of experiences and wisdom and insight and knowledge and data and make any use of it.

Well, one, you can come hire me as your coach. Go over to bipolarexcellence.com. Start with my newsletter and we go from there. Anyway, that aside…

You need to always remember you got you. You gotta try to remember after a time there’s enough gap. There’s, you’ve done gathered enough data. You gotta start working on focus. You’re going to probably tap into what I was talking about earlier with another episode with a, you’ll say yes to too much.

Your, you, you PR maybe at this point you already have.

So now the problem becomes, how do we start sayin’ no?. ‘Cause no brings you power. No brings you. No, actually it carves out more room. There’s less things you’re trying to do. But the ones that remain? You do better.

As you do better, your personal belief grows. You know, you, you. You might struggle with imposter syndrome as you’re trying to do anything, especially if you’re stepping outside your comfort zone, but that’s a good thing.

Usually if you got imposter syndrome, that means you’re on the right path. Maybe the thing you’re doing, isn’t exactly it, but you’re awful damn close.

When, when you are wondering if you’re the person to say something, you’re probably doing your thing already, and then it’s just a matter of improving it, fine tuning it, focusing it, pruning some more things.

You’re probably somebody that has a lot more interesting conversations to share with anybody than, than those around you.

I learned the hard way that even though I had the most stories, a very interesting problem started happening. It took me while to notice it. I was depressing people who had no stories.

That was one thing that happened with the stories. People were bummed out that they hadn’t done all I done, seen all I’d seen, et cetera. And by sharing it, I was showing off a lot of times. When I was younger, I was definitely showing off or I just couldn’t stop myself.

And then as I got older, I learned to limit. I I’ve got thousands of unbelievable stories. And I’ve learned to limit them to spare the other person. Because more often than not, I run into people that haven’t done anything to that extent with their lives and it bums them out.

Shit. Even as for the military, when I meet guys that never even went overseas, as much as me. Guys that stayed stateside. That bums them out. So I, I, as soon as I learned that I don’t carry on too much about my overseas time, which is where a lot of the awesome insanity took place.

On the flip side of that, it becomes very hard for me when I talk to people and they have nothing to say because they didn’t do anything. I don’t even know where to go with that. It depends on why I’m talking to them that this matters. Sometimes it doesn’t matter at all, but it’s caused me to shrink my social circle extensively.

I can’t, I have a hard time being around people that had never really strove to do anything. That never looked into something they shouldn’t have and came out of it with an adventure. When you meet someone that’s solidly that, or they simply don’t know how to communicate. It’s very uncomfortable for me. And I don’t want to make myself uncomfortable to them.

I don’t, I don’t want to bother them. And it it’s hard. You got to start really being careful how you pick and choose your partners and your friends. Cool thing is when you find someone that fits whatever your, your list of requirements is in that area, you’ve, you’ve got a friend, the likes of which most people will never experience.

It’s almost like a marriage. There’s fun and a depth of closeness to come from having friends like that, that know that they themselves have had a massively varied life. It’s just like anything. You’re the only two that you know that have done it. And so you share a bond others don’t and it’s, it’s very satisfying.

And then a third thing along the lines of these conversations with this varied background, particularly in the job I have now and in the job job world. And then as a, as a coach for you guys, I listen more. When we’re working on you we’re working on you. I only pull something out for context.

Podcast is different.

It’s just me sitting here. You’re going to hear interviews soon and it’s going to be them. It’s going to be on these people, talking about their stuff. I can’t wait. And I so love learning about other people. But it’s going to be helpful to you. I’ve learned to listen more. Talk less, listen more.

What was it? Ben Franklin said that God gave you one mouth, but two ears. I don’t know if Ben said it. I think that’s where I that’s connected, but whatever. Listen more, talk less. That’s what I’ll be doing with you as a coach, if it comes to that. And I do it with my people now because it has to be, it always has to be about the other person.

I’m I’m old enough now that I’m bored a lot of times with sharing about all the wild shit I’ve done and the stories and the debauchery and the criminal activity and the adventure and the violence and the laughs and just the insanity of different things I’ve found myself in. I still love those stories, but I parse them out.

I share them very sparsely. And I just, I, I’m more in tune with the fact that I want to know I’m doing right by the other people, like never before. That’s always increased in me. But it’s super strong now. I need to know I’m doing my job well. So you guys listening and whoever else crosses psths with me gets out of meeting me whatever it was they needed.

And I don’t need it to put me up on a platform or anything. It’s. I just want to know I’m living right. Cause I spent too many years living wrong. And if that’s you, don’t only beat yourself up over, down a little bit because all of it taught you some, all of it got to where you are now. All of it got you to me.

Maybe we do something pretty cool together. I hope. Maybe you do something just from hearing me and I never meet you and whatever. I get deep satisfaction out of knowing. Cause I’ve done that with people. And that I’ve, I’ve learned from people I’ve never talked to and it changed my life and I’ve done cool stuff I can directly attribute to them.

I will tell like, people like you, that, who these people are, that, that, that happened with for me so that maybe they can help you as well. I love that. I love referring people to the people that changed my life. Even if I’ve never talked to those people. This is how it works.

That’s all, that’s how the whole world gets better. I hope you want to do that with whatever format of your gift is to give the world. And I hope I get to help you. All right then. Two episodes to go! This is so exciting! I’ll see you on the next episode.