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Ken Jensen

EPI-84: After Your Bipolar Disorder

EPI-84: After Your Bipolar Disorder

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:01:00 — 83.8MB)

September 3, 2023

Troy Steven is my first return guest!

I know I said I’d never interview anyone again. But Troy showed up unexpectedly requesting a talk, and I like him a lot, so I figured what the hell?

Troy has an incredible day job, which is not what he wanted to speak about at all.

He wanted to share news of his latest publication “After Your Bipolar Disorder” and some more about his publishing company, Battle Press.

Troy has a similar wellness plan as mine, the only difference being I found a way out of meds entirely.

But as we discussed in the interview, I learned that most people can’t do what I did, even with the plan I offer.

So it’s nice to have other options, like Troy’s.

Here’s his bio:

Troy Steven has been battling Bipolar Disorder since his first episode in 1993.

He has a Master’s in Engineering and has worked in the Aerospace industry for 25 years.

He currently works as a Test engineer for a Space company in Cape Canaveral FL.

He is the proud Dad of 4 children and Grandpa of 3 grandchildren. Troy’s passion is writing and publishing books.

His new book is “After Your Bipolar Disorder.”

And if you have a book you’d like to have published and don’t wish to fight the big publishing houses, then visit Battle Press to get Troy’s friendly assistance.

As he puts it, “I treat every book as if it was my own!”

Transcript

Just click the “READ MORE” text below for the transcript!

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Hey. This is Ken Jensen. I’d be bipolar disorder in an all natural fashion back in the mid 2000s. And believe it or not, that’s not even the coolest part of my story.

What I learned through that process and what came next and how that applied to bipolar and wide bipolar was ever even part of the process, was mind blowing to say the least.

Bipolar has hidden within its strengths. I’m gonna show you what I mean and how phone up in my life so you can do the same. Welcome to the bipolar Excellence podcast episode 84 after your bipolar disorder.

So an old friend from over a year ago showed up. He is my first repeat guest on the show. Some of you may recall how I said, rather strongly, I wasn’t gonna interview anybody on the show anymore, and I’m sticking to that.

This was sort of, not sort of. This was a completely unplanned thing. and Troy Steven, who is the author of After Your bipolar Disorder. That’s the second book he’s written. He just wanna come back on the show again, and I liked Troy.

And I was I was glad to help out and give him some exposure for his new book, his second book, as well as the publishing company that he runs. So you’ll find out all the details in the upcoming interview you’re about to see.

So, yeah, I really don’t like interviewing people. It’s not a natural flow to me. It not the same as just holding a conversation. If I was good at interviewing, it would be like a conversation.

But I get to focus on what it is, the goals I’m trying to achieve, what it is I’m trying to help my guests do in accordance with I wanna achieve as the owner of bipolar Excellence.

And I don’t really achieve a flow state as well as I’d like with that. but with with Troy, that’s his pen name. So I trip up his name. But, with Troy. He’s such a pleasant person, and I find him very interesting.

And I just just was glad to give him a hand by doing this. And We had a before and after talk, and the after talk led to something interesting. I’m not gonna share the details. because until the thing becomes something, it’s nothing.

But just in, the after conversation, the after show conversation, Troy mentioned something that was put put to him by somebody in his circle that he felt I might want to be part of as well.

And I do. I’ve been here before countless times with with many things for many reasons. So we’ll just see if if if what he suggested flies with the other parties involved, because it isn’t just up to to him and me, then we’ll see.

I’m I’m all the way on board, and I’m excited. If not, it’s kind of I protect my myself from my own over enthusiasm, which is a lesson I learned the hard way after bashing my own face into multiple brick and stone walls years ago.

You get really excited. I get really excited when I hear something cool that I’m about to be part of and either the thing itself never takes place. or it never gets finished or it never becomes what we thought it would become.

And then it dies. that happened to me numerous times before it reached the place that I’m at now. Now And I think this is critical for some of you to know. Now I don’t have a long range link to anybody’s plan that I’m part of.

Not if you were simply a client. You have me while you have me, and I’ll do my damn to get you to wherever it is you’re trying to go next, but I’m not beholden to the outcome.

That’s really what any good coach should that’s how they should look at it anyway. We’re here to help you figure out your answers with the stuff that’s already in your head and heart.

And then in my case, I imagine a lot of coaches. I’m also an advisor and a consultant. I’m gonna throw in my 2¢ where necessary because it’s it’s gonna be required.

But occasionally, and this is part of my larger goal with bipolar excellence, a project will arise that somebody really wants me to be part of that really appeals to me, and I’m I’m gonna get on board. I want that to be the case.

So there’s been a couple of those in the works now. This is the latest. So we’ll just see. I I want this to work. If it doesn’t, I’m not gonna be crushed because I keep a healthy buffer of detachment in place.

So so that if I’d show more things fail than succeed. So to protect myself, again, from my own hope and dreams and wishes and wants and desires.

I just keep it loose, and then we just see we just see how it’s gonna go. That’s good advice for anybody out there doing anything just so your soul doesn’t get crushed.

Should it not go your way. You don’t quit entirely. You you you pick yourself up. dust yourself off, take a look at what happened, and learn. Everything that happens is feedback. Even god awful terrible things is a form of feedback.

Pick a part why it happened, ponder, mull it over, look at things, introspectively, and retrospectively, and try to figure out why things went the way they did. and you will discover gold.

Eventually, a thing will go the way you want it to go. That aside I am officially back to lifting. I got in my 5th lift last night. My body has already responded responding quite well. My body fat starts going down almost immediately.

Not stunningly so, but you can see changes in in various parts of my body that that I know something’s happening. It’s really weird too because I don’t bother weighing myself other than out of curiosity.

Because the only thing that changes really is my composition. It’s been that way for, I’m gonna say 25 years now. Overall, I get heavier each decade. but I also it’s it’s muscle mass as as well as fat.

And the only thing that changes is how much muscle versus how much fat is present. I just wanna be huge and beast like. And so a certain amount of fat comes with that, and I’m I’m willing to accept it and I don’t care.

And it looks fine. I wear it well. if it gets to be too much fat, terrible things happen, and I gotta wear a shirt all the time. And I’m looking at myself sideways in the mirror. sideways being, what are we doing?

We have to get back in the gym. Look at what’s happening. anyway, again, I’m 55 now. I know my body. I know my training. I respond rapidly just to just a touch in the weights again with the intention of doing something with them.

So I’m really happy about that. It’s going well. My appetite doubled almost pretty much doubled by day 2. That’s another thing. Once my body knows it’s game on, I I pivot fast.

Hunger goes through the roof. My desire to drink more water goes through the roof. My my my willingness to cut sugar down. I don’t cut it out. but I cut it way down. that kicks in naturally and I don’t suffer much for it.

I’m glad that, I’m doing what it takes to make my body function the way I want and perform in a gym the way I want. I did do, I’m almost I’m I’m about 290. Now 2 years ago, I could still do 12 pull ups and I had to work my way up to it.

I hadn’t done pull ups in many years. And I did deads and rows and and and lap pull downs and things like this. A bunch of different things working with the hammer machines. strong lats, but not for pulled pull ups.

And I learned, embarrassingly idiously, some years back, handful years back. I couldn’t even do a pull up anymore. I’ve always been able to pull ups my whole life. Well, I learned, how you get them back as you do holds.

You get into the top position and just hold and resist gravity as long as you can and you do sets of that. you’ll find you hold you hold in the top position longer before you even start to dip and you can fight to dip longer.

And you just do that till whenever, and then you get back into doing regular pull ups. And that’s that’s how I did it last time. That’s how I’m doing it now.

I did a set of 3 where I did. I did, what I do with 10 seconds. Everything felt like I had no strength at all. Then on the second rep, my body was in the game. or second set. And I did, I think, I think I did 15 seconds.

And then on a third rep, I fell solid and I did 20 It’s not. That’s holding 2:90 up in the air for 20 seconds. Maybe it was 25. I don’t know. It wasn’t more than 25. And, I fought hard to to to resist gravity on the way down.

I was really happy with myself. Now I haven’t worked it out with any regularity in a solid year. That was too much. my lats and rear shoulders and and the the long head of my triceps were absolutely shredded like shredded, shredded.

I traumatized them. I didn’t damage them to where it won’t work anymore, but I definitely traumatized them. So I needed an extra day off than what I normally would before I could train again.

But even that had an after effect, it was just I don’t know. I’m feeling it. I’m I’m feeling the warrior wake up again, and it feels really good So I’m back in the gym.

If any of you need motivation along those lines, I hope something I said there helped. this is an intro before you get to the the interview with Troy.

I think about this sometimes because, I follow the routine that Mark Marron and what the fuck pod does where he shares a lot about his personal life before he even gets to the guest, and he’ll go on for quite some time frequently before he even gets to the guest.

I often find I like that more than the interview with the guest. I like hearing what Mark’s up to.

So that’s how I shape my show as well. nobody’s brought this to my attention whether they’re yay or nay on it, but I don’t care. It’s how I’m doing a show. It’s how I wanna do it. It’s being done. You’re either in or out.

If you’re out, the chances are, whatever. We we wouldn’t have clicked anyway. If you’re in, that that’s just one more way we can gauge that we’re meant to work together. So that was a stick to your guns when you do something.

You might have to pivot. I might have to pivot somewhere down the line depending on on what does or does not shape up at all of this, but, this is episode 84, and I’m I’m happy doing the show this way.

I’m gonna keep doing the show this way. So I’m video recording this. If you’re listening on just the audio podcast, And I’m messing around with the Vimeo editing tool, which I’ve I’ve attempted in the past and didn’t get anywhere with.

And, tonight, I just figured some simple things. I found a YouTube video that clarified some stuff, easy peasy. And, this was causing me a certain amount of depression because I don’t I don’t have to edit my videos using that editor.

I have been wanting to. There’s certain things I wanna do so that my branding and my website show inside YouTube in a way that YouTube won’t let happen through their tools.

I forget what. I think it’s once I hit a certain amount of listeners or viewership or something.

I don’t know. So you gotta bake them into the video itself. I never bothered because this is a ton of work putting all of this together, and I’m with what what everything else in my life, I’ve been doing what I could do.

So I’ve been really dreading trying to learn this fucking editing, this this this video editing software inside Vimeo.

I’ve made 5 or 6 or 7 attempts in the past. Finally got my head around it. I feel I feel elated. I’m I’m glad that I hung in there and looked at it again.

I’ll be able to do some more things to really polish up my videos right now. I’m just putting together this latest video with an intro maybe an outro. And then, that’s it. that’s I think that’s all I wanted to cover for the moment.

And I think the cool thing with Troy Stevens is He has an entire other world with his skill set, and he that’s not what he wanted to talk about. He wanted to talk about his book and his publishing company.

And I thought that was really cool because in a way, that sort of the the friction I run into withdrawing by by bipolar people who want help with bipolar And and and and they just shoot right past the fact that I’m building something much larger than fighting bipolar off the story of how I fought bipolar and won.

This is always something that’s tricky to me. I don’t know bipolar excellence will remain titled as such.

Right now, it will because as I’ve said before, it’s too much damn work to unknit it and start all over. I will just shoehorn this thing in and then make it go. The Oh, the to do list. The to do list is it’s it’s done.

There’s nothing left on my to do list. that matters in a way that that has to be done before I could start the LinkedIn marketing machine. I am averse to learning something new. It ages me as stressed stresses the shit out of me.

And even though I’ve been wanting to do this thing since I think mid or late spring, trying to get everything else ready and running into other technical issues has making this last too long before I just get on LinkedIn and just do the official marketing sheen that I’ve been trained to do.

And that’s just how it goes for me. That’s just how it goes. And I’m I’m there now. There’s like, I’m looking over here.

There’s 5 or 6 things on my to do list. They’re all long range stuff. No immediate problems. They don’t need to be done potentially if ever. There are things that’ll make things better and cooler, but they do not need to be done now.

To keep me from doing the LinkedIn marketing push. So I’m greatly relieved that I’m finally doing that. I guess the lesson there is, it takes what it takes. You’re you’re better at some things than others.

Don’t fight yourself or beat yourself up too much over the shit you think you should be doing faster and better than what you are. just keep doing something. It’ll happen when it’s supposed to happen in a way it’s supposed to happen.

Sometimes when you hesitate it’s not because you’re really it’s not because you’re lazy. It’s not because you’re, just putting things off needlessly. Sometimes there’s a peace unit knows this is not the way to go.

And you’re chasing after a goal post that was put in put in place by someone else’s well meaning advice who has the life that you want, but it just doesn’t agree with your makeup and one way shape or form.

It doesn’t mean you won’t still have to do it maybe, but maybe it does. Maybe you’re doing something that it look it looked better when that person did it than than what it’s turning out to be for you.

This is a tricky thing you only know with testing and experimenting and and building on the on the fly. And you’ll know you’ll know. If something’s really just giving you an ulcer every time you do it, it’s just not worth it.

It just isn’t even if it sounds like the way you’re supposed to go, And but at least you know. And if you try at something for a very long time, at least you did that.

You didn’t give up so fast that there was nothing to learn. because a lot of people struggle with bouncing from from tactic to tactic instead of implementing just one thing in a strategic form thinking long goal.

They go tactic to tactic. They get shiny object syndrome. Oh, that’ll do it. Oh, that’ll do it. and I’ve done all these things.

Every once in a while, something sneaks in and and I do that again. I catch it faster than before. but I’ll think something will save my ass quicker and easier. And usually for me, it’s technology of one sort or another.

If I can just get some technology to do something I’m doing manual, that’ll speed something up over here, which will speed up something over there and just save me time and hours, stress, labor.

And then I end up losing half a day on the thing that would have everything easier that same day that had I just done it the way I knew how to do it, which might have been rough and not as polished, I’d have got it done in, like, minutes or half an hour, and then I’ve been on my way and through it.

Even that is something that has to happen.

Learning. Learning, testing, experimenting, sampling, seeing where we’re at with something, trying new things. It has to be done in a sensible way, but every now and then some sensible sensibility has to be thrown out the window.

You get better at it as you go. Don’t beat yourself up over it too much. A little bit of beating yourself up is healthy, but not too much. Too much is too much.

You’ll you’ll get all pessimistic and and quit before you ever reach the finish line. Alright. That was 2 sports metal floors and besides the strong man competition. I’m not even a fucking sports fan. I think that’s a signal.

I’m gonna end this here, and this will be the intro. to the interview with Troy Stevens and And if I’m screwing up, if it’s Troy Steven, not Troy Stevens, I can’t remember. I don’t have my notes in front of me because I suck at that.

Okay, guys. Let’s see how this worked. Okay. This is Ken, and I am here interviewing Troy Steven Troy Steven. Troy Steven has been battling bipolar disorder since his first episode in 1993.

He has a masters in Engineering and has worked in the aerospace industry for 25 years. He is the proud dad of 4 children and grandpa of 3 grandchildren. Troy’s passion is writing and publishing books.

His new book is after your bipolar disorder. Welcome welcome back to the show, Troy, since you were here somewhere a little over a year ago, and I was awful excited to see you in my email asking to come on again.

This is this is pretty fun for me. Thanks for coming back again. Oh, thanks for having me, Ken. Good good talking to you again.

It is. we mentioned, Troy and I were talking before the show started. And, Troy used to have a mustache, and my beard is feeling ambiguous about, that the fact that it’s gone, but we’re gonna I’m gonna coax my beard through this.

I should explain, Troy, this beard plays into every damn thing I do online. So I have to listen to the conversation. It’s it’s impressive. It’s impressive. Thank you. Alright. So I guess I’ll provide a little, just a little background.

When Troy and I spoke a little over a year ago, Troy had written a book and he has a publishing company of his own. And he’s since written a second book. And even though Troy is an engineer and quite intelligent.

And that that’s an understatement of massive proportions. His pub his passion is publishing books, and I’m a writer at my core. and I’m I I love books. Books are like people to me. I feel comfortable when I’m in a library.

I feel like I’m with friends, so I’m really curious to hear more about your story, Troy, with how you how you came into the publishing industry, what what kicked that off, how you’ve grown it, and how bipolar ties into it.

Sure. so when COVID hit, I I quit working for an engineering company and was working at home And I wrote my first book breaking bipolar.

Took me about 9 months, and then I published it on Amazon and Hulu and Ingram Spark and other platforms. So I learned all the ropes about publishing books.

And I put an ad out on Craigslist to get a, I will help you edit and publish your books and a couple people hit me up and Since then, I published over 40 books. my company’s called Battle Press Publishing.

I’ve met a lot of interesting people, offers, you know, writing fiction or nonfiction. religious books, the whole gamut children books, and I learned a lot along the way. That’s one thing with respect to bipolar.

A lot of people who are bipolar are very highly intelligent. And so being able to get the disease under control and overcome it, so to speak, although you’re, you know, always in the back of your mind.

Don’t get another bipolar episode happening. But, so I like to tell everyone there’s lots of, you know, there’s hope.

If you’re bipolar, do not give up on hope. If you take the right measures and learn how to manage your illness, then you could you know, exceed in life. Winston Churchill was bipolar. they thought Abraham Lincoln was.

Ted Turner. Kathleen David Jones. There’s lots of people high functioning people who are bipolar that Excel in life. And so, you know, that kinda goes along with the entrepreneurship and getting your own business going and growing it.

I agree. I agree with I agree with all of that. That’s something I I believe when we talked last year, you were only into the thirties in the book that you the amount of books you published.

And now you’re over 40? Yes. Alright. So that’s that’s a bunch in between. Just with one inside of 1 year.

That’s a lot more books that you published. Yeah. And most of them were return return authors that wrote their second book or third book in the series. So people like working with me because I treat every book like it’s my own book.

And they’ll send me their manuscript, you know, Microsoft Word easily, and I’ll edit it. And anything I change, I’ll go put it in a red font. I’ll send them back the manuscript with my suggested edits.

We send it back and forth back and forth until the manuscripts ready to go. And then we do a cover design. Have a great guy that does cover designs. You know, it covers the book.

So — Yep. and then, then publish it, you know, either e you know, publish as a ebook, paperback, hardcover, or audiobook, or all four. on the different platforms. So, yeah, I’m loving it. I like how you mentioned how bipolar.

Either bipolar tends to land an intelligent people or intelligent people seem to be the ones that are more acceptable to being bipolar. but either either way, who knows which, maybe a little of both.

But I found the same thing. I found a lot of people that have buy polar. A lot of them have chaotic worlds because they’re Their minds are too busy and they can’t find enough to do with them or they can’t find something to focus on.

And They’re capable of doing so much, and I believe ordinary life frequently is not enough. that’s a big thing with me. I cannot settle for the status quo.

What seems to make the average person comfortable is me in a depressed state trying to do the same. I I When I was younger, I used to need more excitement and adventure slash misadventure, and and I sought chaos.

And if there wasn’t any, I made it, so I had something to react to. and that’s all since passed. Now it’s more nuanced. It’s more subtle. It’s more about mastering myself.

I found my newest my newest as far as, however long I’ve lived now 55 years, the the last and greatest adventure that I’ve been on for the last recent so many years is the adventure of understanding myself and mastering myself And I find that to be just as thrilling as when I was just out in the tangible world creating carnage and chaos.

And and my my day job, I deal with a lot to have bipolar disorder. And they’re all they’re all some of my most interesting people. Do you think bipolar played a part at all and you’ll be an engineer? Probably so.

I mean, I I always, when I was growing up, I’ve read 10 books a week from the library. My mind was always like that. I played chess. I was a chess champion. math was my, you know, I was the best guy in the class in math and so on.

So that kinda like I don’t know how bipolar fit into that, but that was, you know, the engineering part of me that I was leaning towards. So, how old were you before bipolar became a thing when you could title it as such?

Yeah. See, I was thirty three years old. — That’s same as me. Really? I was probably 202829. I just thought I was going insane. And then they’re like, no. You’re bipolar. And they show me the list.

I’m like, yes. I am in fact all of those things. Yeah. I’m not trying to discount that, you know, I guess Ken and I, we’re in pretty good places right now in our lives, but there is a a a long road before this happened.

I am a co leader of a bipolar support group that needs twice a month. And we have about 10 or twelve people that show up at each meeting.

You know, I’d say the majority of them are on medication. include myself. each of them has ups and downs, and it’s really It’s when I never really wanted to go to the support group meeting once I so I have my first episode in 93.

I could check myself involuntarily into a psychiatric hospital, had a psychotic break. was in there 2 or 3 weeks. Came away heavily medicated. then struggle to try to get my medications right so that the right formula is working.

I was married. 3 kids at the at the time. 3 young children. So I was in the hospital 2 more times, 2005, and 2015. both involuntarily. I threw all my medicines away and went manic.

I guess, leaning up to throw all my medicines away. I was having manic, manic symptoms. And, you know, it just got higher and higher. And so I think the problem was is that I didn’t have the right medications.

I wasn’t doing, like, doing things that everyone should do to have, like, a whole life wellness plan to follow. That’s I talk about in my book where you you master your medications. You you have a you find a good psychiatrist.

You go outside and get fresh air and exercise. You eat right. You minimize or don’t do it all. alcohol, marijuana, and drugs. And, you learn learn mind strengthening techniques like meditation, different things to help your mind.

You try, you know, learn these different techniques that when when things are, like, for example, you start a lot of times people will ruminate where they keep thinking about the same thing over and over and kicking themselves in the butt for something that happened.

Just try to, you know, change that train of thought. So I I what I do is I if I realize I’m doing that, I say the word noise and change my train of thought.

So, anyway, mind strengthening and you learn along the way from my first episode, if I start I could think about my second episode that, hey, the same thing was happening maybe 4.

So I need to do something about it. You know? You get smarter along the way. I guess what I’m trying to say is you have to have, like, a living whole life wellness plan.

A lot of people are suffering from bipolar disorder. 20% suicide rate. So 20% of people I’ve done research you go online and check it out on Google and so on, but, like, approximately 20% of people commit suicide who are bipolar.

It’s it’s the energy. It’s from what I heard, it’s it’s got the highest rate of all the serious mental illnesses.

And and from what I’ve read about schizophrenia and and I work with people who have schizophrenia, that’s something knowing that there’s something worse than that.

And and you and I have lived it. It’s it’s almost surreal. It’s when I think back to what I used to be, you and I you and I had different different well, or sorry. We had similar wellness plans.

The only difference I found some ways of not having to do meds anymore but I know that for many reasons, most people I’ve ever worked with can’t duplicate what I did even though there’s very clear cut steps plans, products, and other people to help.

And I realized there’s a lot of variables involved in in achieving achieving wellness the way I did. And So it would respect to that. You you would need meds just just to keep going so the owner doesn’t take charge again.

And then, some people I think they just feel better on meds and and that’s that. And I tell people I’ll tell you what, if your life works, you’re happy with it, then that’s whatever you’re doing.

Do that. And, it what’s who cares how you got there? If you’re happy and and you can and you can succeed at life, and the onus isn’t leading the way anymore, then then you’ve won.

I was asking you before about engineering and by or the only reason I brought that up? Sometimes this is a very specific thing. Sometimes I miss being manic. because I could consume information the way I think you can organically.

I had a B manic to consume what you sounds like you’ve been doing since you were a kid. I I I, you know, I had to I had to be bipolar in a sense to match your ability to process data.

When my mania went away, I I could not read as much think about as much. I lost that, and you probably are familiar with this. It’s like three-dimensional thinking.

I can make connections in all directions up down behind me in front of me. I could include time for the past, the future, all kinds of anything. I could tie together all kinds of bits of data and experiences to come to a solution.

I have an I have a a a memory of that, an echo of that that I can still I still use when I’m helping people or solving my own problems, but it is not as powerful as when I was manic.

The bipolar side, I could solve the crap out of pro problems if all they needed was some heavy duty thinking about them.

I I know exactly where you’re coming from now, and I agree that when I’m when I’m manic, I could definitely outshine when I’m not manic.

You know? Yeah. Cool. Have those connections and just feel in the flow. And sometimes that’ll happen to me even now, but not you know, not not all the time.

But — it’s not as intense. Right. When I was in that state, you know, doing good things, solving problems. people would even say, how how did you even put that together? and I’d tell him, I don’t know.

I see it all crystal clear. I see all of it. It it and somebody far flung bits of data, and it was It was really amazing, and I could see it all in my head clear as day. Almost like, I think it away. I’m always amazed by painters.

I don’t know how a painter looks at what you and I look at and turns it into an awesome painting. That’s that’s just mind blowing to me. I think with this type of thinking you and I are kicking around here.

I think it’s similar to that because we could we could see it easily, and no one around us can. And then we hand the people to solution and they’re they’re looking at us like we’re magicians.

I’m like, I don’t know. I just see it. It’s right there. But, yeah, I don’t have that like I used to. I have it. but nowhere near. I’m not the Superman with it as I used to be.

Something to strive for. So let me let me ask you this. Did you write a book and then in the process decide to become a publishing company? I I can’t remember anymore. Was that the part of the the the order of events?

Yeah. When I first started writing my book, my first book breaking bipolar, I was just I’m gonna write a book and try to make money off of it and, help other help people who are bipolar and loved ones of people who are about bipolar.

You know, I wanted to just help a lot of people do the best book I could and along the way. And then I figured out. first of all, I tried to go through a vanity publisher called Bookwhip.

And and, they were gonna publish my book for me. And that became a fiasco. just, I sent them a manuscript. They edited it and formatted into a paperback format and ebook, send it back.

I made a bunch of changes. And before they I sent my changes to them, and they knew that I would had to give them the go ahead. They went ahead and published the book on Amazon.

And so here’s this book on Amazon. It’s got errors and issues and needs that it’s big time. You know? usually, there’s a process back and forth back fork till the author says, yeah, it’s good to go.

So I had, like, Better Business Bureau take take my book off of Amazon. So that was my first experience. And, so then I ended up finishing up my book and learning how to publish it as a ebook paperback hardcover audio book.

And then once I got through all of that, it was still COVID time. and I put the ad on Craigslist to try to get authors. And then I got a few authors, and then I went on to fiverr and and put on a ad onto the fiverr.

And got a bunch more authors and off to the races. that’s cool. That’s interesting. I we I think we follow I think we follow a similar general path there.

In this case, with business building, I did the same. Wanna be bipolar. I got way up on a pedestal and started screaming every corner to your tech of Fine to tell them I I found the answer.

I have the way. That was a brutal lesson in reality. How that did not work well. But, I learned a lot about the process of telling the world about what I did.

And then, I got, like, a thirty thousand foot view a bipolar in every sense of of how it affected my life and why, and I started understanding myself in ways that had nothing to do with bipolar.

And and in particular, how I ended up beating it and what what my life became later. And, I became a person that’s settled that certain people are drawn to And I didn’t realize what exactly to call myself or what that thing was.

And now that now that we’re in bipolar excellence, it’s it’s it’s all got to do with that, but We both did the same thing.

We started with bipolar. We defeated it slash managed it out of existence, the ways that we did. We told everyone about it, and then it led to something even larger.

And I think anyone on a growth path experience is that same thing. You start out with one thing because you gotta start somewhere. If you got an idea or whatever and you want out of life, then start building something anything.

Get good with the fact that maybe maybe a nail it, but the chances are slim. Maybe it’s really good. those chances are greater, but probably still sort of slim.

But what you’ll learn from the process right or wrong, you’ll iterate your way towards what you’re supposed to be and It’s it’s brutal. It’s brutal advice to hear, but I think you I’m sure you experienced the same, Troy.

The You keep taking a run at the thing till the thing becomes more polished, and you understand and learn along the way, and you learn more about yourself along the way, And as you do, it shapes the clay better as you keep iterating.

Have you experienced that growing as a publishing company? Exactly. Yeah. You you know, you pretty much have to fail and learn from what why he failed.

And then get yourself back up and go after it harder and keep doing that until you’ve learned enough to get you know, to getting on your feet and stable. And then, you know, you wanna grow up bigger and lots bigger and scale it up.

You keep doing the same thing. and a lot of it, I think his team worked coming into contact with people that’ll help you be on your team. You know, I I I had a girl that was doing social media for me, for about a year.

Like I said, the guy that does my creates my covers for the books. Marketing. that’s how I came up came upon you. I had a girl that was trying to get me on the podcast.

And she contacted you. And here we are. So I think a lot of teamwork, you know, having a good team behind you is important. Just depending. But — Yeah. Yeah. There’s I’m a solopreneur. I do most everything myself until I hit a wall.

And then I’ll go for a while at something because it’s like, you know, it’s like a man stop and ask for directions. There is no such thing. Eventually, you gotta stop and ask for directions.

And, hopefully, you’re not into some dark canyon and it’s, 2 AM in a in a foreign land. But, If I don’t hire someone directly to help me, I I’m I’m building a nice network of friends and supporters on on LinkedIn.

And I’m finding that I’ve heard this advice for years, but you offer help to other people first Just be helpful.

Without asking for anything in return, you do that long enough till people get an idea of what your flavor is and what your intentions are.

If you grab their interest, they’re gonna pick you apart anyway. They’re gonna research behind the scenes. And what you’ll find is over time, you gotta pick out this of waters.

You gotta be patient. Some of these people who turn into friends are very, very powerful allies at the at the least, and they’ll see something to you where they wanna help back.

And I’ve had that happen to me more and more and more lately, and it’s becoming very satisfying.

I do all my own technical everything on my own because I’m capable, but, again, even in my case, I I know what to do, but I don’t know that I’d hire me to do it. If I had the money to to get the best, I’d be like, no. No.

You need this and then hire whoever I point you at next. So you do what you got to to get the thing off the ground and keep it alive and going and have world find you. But then, yeah, as much as you can, you don’t wanna do everything.

That’s that’s not why you You wanna do whatever the the kernel, the core of the dream is. You like you, you wanna publish books. You wanna help people get their books done. You don’t wanna do all this other stuff.

So I would imagine, you know, you already have a team in place, and you wanna you wanna get to where they they do the bulk of that other work so that you can You can help the future authors with their dreams and helping them see the future for what their book might do and what it can be.

Does that sound about right? Yeah. And, so when we when I was talked to you before, I don’t know if it probably at least a year ago.

Mhmm. You’ve you’ve got you I maybe didn’t understand, but now what you’re doing on the LinkedIn and you’re you’re helping small businesses or what what are you doing in terms of helping others?

I help existing small businesses try to scale things up or branch in new areas. Usually, if they want my help, it’s because they’re afraid to make a leap.

And then I focus even more so on people that just have an idea. Something they wanna take big and they’re afraid to launch their business. They’re afraid of the online world.

They’re afraid of learning how to integrate with the real world with brick and mortar buildings and online banking and They need somebody at their back that can guide them through the creation of a dream and take it to the completion, in this case, as a functioning small business.

What I share with people the most is with rare exceptions, one of the best ways to move through life is as a small business owner where you have more charge of of of everything in your life.

And it took me a while to understand I always wanted to be in charge of my life and I realized a lot of people, the matrix life in general society trains people to be drones.

So a lot of people get the feeling that they don’t wanna be drones anymore. They’d like to build something that’s their that’s their own that they they are proud of or excited about.

But then they don’t know how to go about doing it. Then they go online, then they get ripped off by all the gurus that know everything. If you just give $8000, they’ll help you do this, that, and the other thing.

And or to get overwhelmed and information overload. So, basically, I take somebody that’s brand new that has an idea, has a few dollars necessary to invest in it to get it the ground and build somebody to keep parts.

And I talked them through it, and I stay available quite a bit. so that they never feel like they’re alone as they get their baby up and walk him. Oh, that’s great. Sounds like fun too.

I did a lot of this years ago on pro when I say unprofessionally, I I was just doing it. I there was no mission involved. I just found myself somewhere where a lot of small business owners were coming to me for advice.

And at the time, I didn’t even have a small business. And for years, I wondered what that was. Why are they coming to me? They’re making money. Some of them quite a bit. Some of them were millionaires.

They wanted my opinion on things. And for the longest time, I couldn’t figure out what that was. When I’m with people in a room, I tend to give them confidence, and I can help them stay calm, and I can bring them clarity.

It doesn’t matter if they’re bigger than me. It doesn’t matter if they out earn me by Cajillions. People are people are people.

Whenever they’re getting ready to do something new, it’s a little bit scary, a little bit confusing. I know how to lead people through the woods. bring them back out into the into the air into some shiny new land.

And I like to do it a lot with metaphors, apparently. Yeah. Kind of a consultant. That’s great. Yeah. Where do you see Is there a next level for your publishing company?

Is do you hit, like, a certain amount of books and maybe you got another plan cooking in the background? Just curious. My trust over the last few months has been marketing books.

I’m not so a lot of the books I just published, the people pay me for doing the formatting and editing and cover and publishing, and I didn’t get a royalty from the books when they sell.

But about 12 of the books with local authors here in Satellite Beach, Florida, and other other states also.

I did a contract with them where I get 20 percent of the royalties for each book that sells. So now I have 12 books, including my my two books.

That our marketing recently started using Amazon Advertising and you know, about it’s the same thing about I’ve been trying to lose weight for a while, you know, a couple of years atkins whatever k toed diet.

We finally started using Nutrisystem and lost £25. And I was like, finally, I finally found something that works.

You know, to lose weight. Just, about a month ago, I lost £25. And so then I started I’ve been doing all kinds of marketing, social media, all the platforms, Twitter, YouTube, so on.

Trying to get podcasts for my authors and so on. And then I started trying Amazon advertising about a month ago and having great results.

So I’m like, finally, I found something that I’ll sell books. Oh, that’s awesome. That’s where I’m at now, but I’m like, I like to publish a lot more books. you know, Yeah. A lot of the authors I know are writing more books.

So I’m I’m open to accepting new books contracts and so on, but right now as I’m focusing on marketing. Well, that’s cool though that you added the contract part. You that was smart. And that’s a that’s a huge growth step in its own.

Right? Yeah. Definitely. Well, the one thing we didn’t really cover today, what is the name of your new book and and what is it about? Name of the book is after your bible bipolar disorder.

Bipolar heal thyself. and it’s about creating a personal battle plan for battling for overcoming bipolar disorder a little bit like we talked earlier where there’s different parts of the plan.

Mhmm. one of the first one of the first parts of the plan is the contingency plan. Have someone that’s close to you that that knows about your problems with the illness If you get into trouble, start having an episode, call this person.

They’re your contingency, so you don’t skyrocket into mania or into, you know, go down into depression and end up in the hospital.

So contingency plan, optimize your medications, learn how to rank your medications up and down until you’re in the therapeutic level where you’re optimal, you’re thinking, well, you’re happy, You’re doing good.

It takes a while. It takes a long time to find the right medications to that work for you. training your mind, talked about those mind strengthening techniques, train your body, do the exercise and so on.

Having having, I would say, having sex with your partner is good for your mind, good for your emotions, Yes. It is. That’s that’s a street from a Napoleon Hill. — That is.

Other parts of the plan, how to recover from a bipolar episode faster when you, you know, when you’re in recovery, learn about if you’re gonna be in psychiatric hospitals, it’s good to know what what it’s like in there and what the rules are and what the laws are.

I have a chapter in my book about that. I have a chapter about legal rights.

And so the the book is the first in the book is to have a bipolar battle plan, which is really like a whole white whole life wellness plan that covers all the aspects of bipolar, the medication and so on.

And it’s up to you as the person who is bipolar to fit to heal yourself, you know, bipolar heal myself.

Is a is something I like to say a lot, you know, learn all you can about the the disease, you know, You’re the you’re the hero and the story, and bipolar is the protagonist.

And it’s a war. It’s a war. You know? It’s definitely a war. Yeah. That’s what you’re saying.

The whole page of my site, it It’s it’s well, that’s part of that larger view that I realized after I fought bipolar the way I did. Everyone’s at war with themselves. Everyone. But for some of us unfortunate few, it becomes bipolar.

That’s a high level war. That’s a commitment. A lot of energy, a lot of pain, a lot of suffering, but it’s a it’s an ex it’s like an over exaggeration of what everybody’s going through.

And As far as I can figure, it’s why everyone’s on earth. What whatever you believe about whatever. Even if you believe nothing, I think you should at least believe that you’re here to improve.

Otherwise, what are you? You’re in Amiibo. You should be trying to do a little something better with your life. trying to leave them, you know, leave leave the world better than you found it.

Otherwise, you’re an Amiibo or an anarchist. And what you mentioned, Hill thyself, you’re talking and you were talking about self self, there’s self awareness and there’s self responsibility.

My doctor, what kicked off my search to to beat bipolar. Well, no. Let me let me rephrase that.

To survive. I was only looking to survive And if if possible, if possible, if I could get a 5 to 8% reduction in the severity of the symptoms, I would have been ecstatic And I didn’t dare hope for more because I was in such a bad state.

Nothing seemed possible that was anything like wellness, but my doctor gave me a death sentence a literal death sentence.

And he told me, you know, he said, you’re gonna die by cop because you’re that guy. It every time you go off, the Marine Corps comes out of you, cops show up. And he’s like, you’re getting you’re actually improving in this one area.

He said they’re gonna have to put you down to save themselves. And I said, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You’re you’re right. That that’s what this is looking into. Well, what it’s looking to become.

He told me you gotta find something outside of of psychiatry. I just don’t know what it is because I’m a psychiatrist, but he’s like, we have a, you know, we have a medical file and you’re a foot thick.

We’re not helping you. We’re making you worse. Now that’s my case. I realize everyone’s different, and I realize I’m even in the minority how everything went for me.

But he said what was telling as as, as far as heal thyself. I was already on the path even as I was melting down, and I didn’t know it until he said this.

He said the one thing I hate for you out of all my patients is that you’re aware. I’m like, what are you talking about? He said everybody that comes and he was the head of all psychiatry at the Veterans Administration.

And he had hundreds of patients himself. He said everybody comes to me. They want the pill They go home. They take the pill, and that’s it.

He said, you come to me. You want the pill just as bad as them. You take the pill. You go home. When you come back, you have a list of a list of questions about that pill, and you want to know what it’s doing with all the other pills.

And why did I pick it? And on and on and on, he goes, you’re the only patient I have that comes back with questions. And I said, that’s impossible. I’m the only one. I’m like, are you, like, making some strong point? He goes, no.

You’re the only one who asked me why my treatment plan is as it is with you. And he said, because of that, you go home and study all this stuff, he goes, you, like no other patient I have, fully understand how screwed you are.

And he said, I wish you didn’t know what you knew so you could die in peace because you ain’t got long to go. You’re forcing it. And we always yeah.

People always say it was terrible, but when I was with him, I said, don’t sugarcoat it. I wanna hear everything straight. I wanna know what I’m up against. Anna Murray. I need to know my enemy so I could figure out how to fight it.

And he respected that. So he told me that straight out. It still was it was it was hard to hear, especially later, but I needed to know it as like a tactician slash engineer my own life. Okay.

This is what we got. This is how real it’s about to be, and he’s saying something’s gotta be different. I gotta be different. And I was trying to heal myself without string outside the parameters of the traditional way everybody goes.

But now the all these years later, I got better, but one of the things, one of the primary things I’ve always taught people, I said, however this turns out for you, You gotta be aware of all the parts, like never before, and you gotta step outside the parameters or whatever the normal chain of information is to find out if something else might appeal to you or fit you better.

And then I said take responsibility for everything in your life. Everything’s your fault.

Because it is. But, really, what people hear that is they’ve screwed up and it’s your fault, and that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying you are 100% in charge of every aspect of your life, meaning you can’t fix everything.

But how you react is a 100% in your in your control. And by looking in how to act, how to react to different problems, how to become proactive, If you take ownership of that way of thinking, you’ll come up with out of the box solutions.

But you’ve gotta you’ve gotta understand nobody’s gonna come save you.

Not not fully. Take ownership of what you’re doing. Even if you have people trying to save you, become a better partner with them in the saving of you. Stop waiting for someone to save you, and then you do nothing on your own time.

And I think that’s what you’re saying with your plan. A lot of people just take the pills, and that’s all they do. You’ve come up with an entire book on And this, step, step, step, step.

That’s taking charge of your life being responsible. People need to know that about this. Definitely. Gotta take responsibility. You’re only here once Gotta make the best of it.

Yeah. Alright. That’s a pretty powerful point to end on. I think, Troy. do you have, oh, let’s do the thing. Where can people go to get your book or or, anywhere else you would like people to find you online.

Give them give them all the things, please. Yeah. So the new book after your bipolar disorder is available right now on Amazon in ebook or paperback, and it will be available on other stores in a in a month or 2.

My first book breaking bipolar is available on Amazon and a lot of other stores.

Your favorite source, Apple, and so on. So the two books, breaking bipolar, after your bipolar disorder, and then my Publishing company address is battle battlepress.

Media. So battlepress dot me idea, m e d i a is the website. And, you know, if you’re interested in the help when you publish your book or just wanna buy some books, go there. You could drop me a line in the contact form.

I’d love to hear from you. What are you going, everyone? I self published my one and only book, and that process aged me. The system has improved since then, but, it would be much easier if you went with someone like Troy.

Who’s, particularly if you’re trying to publish a story about something that’s so personal and maybe involves a lot of trauma, but Troy does any book under the sun.

If it’s a good book and he can help you work with it, he’s gonna help you publish it.

So I couldn’t recommend Troy more for this. It’s clear how much you care about the people that are writing their books and how you wanna help them guide that thing to completion and getting it published.

And, that’s It’s very scary. This is this is what I say about everything I do too. Very scary to do something on your own.

And if you’re gonna publish a book, Please go look up Troy on battlepress dot media and check out his book after your bipolar disorder and his other book breaking bipolar and make make sure he’s the man for you, but I can’t recommend him highly enough, especially the first time authors.

You don’t wanna go do battle with a big corporation. Go to someone that’s a person and a human and cares about you, and that is Troy.

Well, thank you for having me on this show, Ken. It’s been great. It is, Troy. We’ll have to catch up again in another year or sooner if if if if you explode in some fashion of awesomeness, I wanna hear about it.

I might be able to. Okay. Alright. Thanks for being on again, Troy. It was a pleasure. Thank you. Alright. Everyone take care.

EPI-83: If I Don’t Pick Something Up And Put It Down, Soon…

EPI-83: If I Don’t Pick Something Up And Put It Down, Soon…

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 22:47 — 31.4MB)

August 27, 2023

Without the gym, I start feeling very bad. In all ways. About all things.

So, on a personal level, I simply need to be regularly training.

But to also succeed as a businessperson, I HAVE TO be in the gym!

It’s very simple: healthy body equals healthy mind equals successful life.

Pick whatever form of exercise appeals to you most. Add in some various stretching routines, wherever sensible and apply.

The body and mind are not two separate things.

That’s some fuckery the psychiatric industry got implanted quite effectively in everyone’s minds decades ago.

It’s how they sell pills so well.

That yucky bit of evil aside, there is only the bodymind. One piece. One unit.

On a basic level, the brain is just another ball of meat inside the body with its own biological needs that have nothing whatsoever to do with your thinking and feeling.

And it also does its job better when it’s not tending to various ills and woes within the rest of the body, due to your lack of exercise and more.

But since we here in the Bipolar Excellence world are attempting to build and grow something larger than ourselves, we need to remain aware that the healthier we are, the better able to build we shall always be.

It’s not that you “should” take care of yourself.

It’s you “have to” take care of yourself.

Especially if you’re here with me, asking more of yourself than the common man does on any given day.

Give your chances of success a helping hand buy building with a bodymind that is running in top form.

You can sacrifice here and there, due to unforeseen demands on time energy and what have you.

But keep these sacrificial periods as brief and infrequent as possible.

This will hep you become the thing that others will one day be glad you built.

Transcript

Just click the “READ MORE” text below for the transcript!

Read More

Hey. This is Ken Jensen. I’d be bipolar disorder in an all natural fashion back in the mid 2000s. And believe it or not, that’s not even the coolest part of my story.

What I learned through that process and what came next and how that applied to bipolar and why bipolar was ever even part of the process was mind blowing to say the least. Bipolar has hidden wood in its strengths.

I’m gonna show you what I mean how they’ve shown up in my life so you can do the same. Welcome to the bipolar Excellent podcast episode 83. If I don’t pick something up and put it down soon, I’m back in the gym.

I just finished my 3rd night of lifting about an hour ago. You’ll probably see me sweating here if you’re watching the YouTube video version of this. it feels to be back in the gym.

It’s important to me. I’ve mentioned it in the past. I’ve had starts and stops since this show has started. Restarted. over the past year since my dad died, little just about a year ago, a little over a year ago.

And everything that that caused within my personal life, settling his estate, helping my mom with, every every major system in the house was failing.

The, the go fund me that I created and all the local help that that drummed up off of that and the charity that kicked in and, you know, I was in the middle of all of orchestrating that.

That was a lot of work. That was months. Some of it, still was taking place up until recently little dribs and drabs of things because contracting things take time.

And took away my focus for working out. At the same time at my day job, there was a lot going on that I was still adjusting to even though I’ve been doing this for a year.

The kind of work I do, I’ve been doing for 5 straight years, and it’s it’s part of how I am as a person anyway.

But the way they wanted it done at this place and how I needed it to be so that I could mentally survive what it is that happens to me at this job, it, and and to give the the corporation what they need.

It it there was just a lot I had to settle out in my head to to make things happen smoothly effortlessly and on autopilot.

I that all kept me from working out as well. So I recently got that all settled and found out I was in a better spot there than I even realized.

And it was time to get back in the gym. My body was getting loud about it in in the main in the main the main way was my knees. My knees were they felt like they were full of fluid and I hadn’t done anything anything to them.

My day job involves a lot of sitting, putting together this show and everything I do online to create content and market and help people involves a lot of sitting.

I’ve never sat this much in my life. Well, let me let me edit that. I haven’t sat this much since I was bipolar almost 20 years ago. And my knees felt like they were breaking.

I had days where I could barely walk, and I knew it was bullshit. I knew my knees were fine. I knew this was the result of inactivity. I have an extensive stretching routine that I’ve done 4 years before I even work out.

Some guys will say don’t stretch before you lift because you want that spring in your muscles because it helps you lift more. I’ve tested this and I agree with them. However, I’m not mobile enough without without stretching first.

I I there’s there’s positions particularly with dead lifting and a couple other things. Even benching, I can’t get in a position properly unless I’ve stretched first, and it got worse.

The older I got So my stretching routine got even more intense. And there’s warm ups I do now that I never used to do when I was younger, and it it feels really good.

And My body is thanking me for doing this. And primarily, my knees feel better. A lot better, and it happened almost immediately. and they improve every day.

The knees, because they wouldn’t bend, I couldn’t do front front thigh stretches where you squat down put your hands behind you, you know, balance on the floor and then and then let your body rock forward and stretch out the the front of your thighs.

I couldn’t get that into a lesser degree. Your hip your hip flexors, I couldn’t get that to happen because my knees would barely bend, period.

To go under load, which is what, you know, you’re you’re in the bottom of a squat position. You’re under the most load possible with your knees at their weakest because they’re fully bent.

I couldn’t do that stretch. So I came up with an idea. I got some lifting straps like you know, on a construction site that they got loops on either end.

And I looped one end of those straps around the main beam in my my basement. And I wrapped the other loop through that loop in such a way that I essentially invented a poor man’s version of the rings and gymnastics.

I run my forearms through the through the bottom loop and grab the straps above, and then I can hold all my way with my hands and in my in my upper body.

And then and then ease my way down into a full squat, which is sick. It’s delicious. I haven’t been able to do that and I don’t know how many months just to get reach the full squad position.

And then lift myself up a little by my arms and and let my body rock forward my lower body and get that stretch on the front of the thighs. I have missed that. Oh my god. and my knees are responding wonderfully.

They’re they’re they’re bending almost all the way again. They still hurt. This isn’t, you know, this ain’t magic, but they responded freakishly well almost immediately, and it gets better every day.

And then with the stretching routine, I’m telling you guys, if you don’t stretch, you’re fucked. You’ve particularly the rear of your body.

If your hands and your calves are too tight, and your back muscles are too tight. You you’ll have headaches. You’ll everything will hurt. Your heels will hurt. Your knee knees, your hips, everything will hurt.

And it’s because all the muscles in the back of your body, which hold you erect, are too tight. You gotta get some stretching in your life some somewhere. and whatever form you can, you’ll only win.

Do it carefully and go learn it online. Look up YouTube and go figure some things out. But I’m feeling really good. And and besides just taking care of myself and lifting, which I absolutely love.

I I love love love the gym. Love it. It’s the one place in life to where no matter what else might be going to shit around me, I’m at peace. The gym not only feels right. It’s church.

It’s meditative. It’s achievement. It’s warier time. It’s the only place I can be a savage. unbridled and get that level of energy out and in use in a way that’s acceptable in public. I lift at home so I can do her I want anyway.

There’s nobody to witness anything. The only the only thing I have to worry about is if if I live too late at night, I’m in my garage. I gotta button up the garage so I don’t link up my neighbors because I’ll get making some noise.

So anyway, I’m back at it. And part part of why I wanted to get back at it was because I knew, When your body runs better, your mind runs better.

That’s part of one of the systems that I the system I wrote about my book, the system I sell on my site, that that’s one of the things.

You want your brain to work better, take care of your body. They’re not separate pieces. That’s where psychiatry and Western medicine get things wrong. your brain and your body are one piece.

The brain in in in a sense is just another organ in the body needs to be treated properly. as the piece of meat that it is with the supporting structures and systems around it being treated like the machinery they are.

So that your brain such you can think right. Just keep your emotions under control and and all of that shit. If you don’t take care of your body, your brain ain’t gonna work right the end.

It’s not even to be argued. So anyway, Another part of why I did that was not just so my brain would work right, but because I want to succeed bigger and faster in my business practice than I am.

And I realized that number 1, everything that happened to me in the last year, it had to happen the way it happened. There was no getting around it, and I didn’t even really fight against it. I wasn’t happy but I knew what it was.

I knew I knew what it was. It it it had to be as it was. And I accepted that sacrifice. I literally said this many episodes back that I was sacrificing my health to a degree because I I didn’t have a choice.

I didn’t have the energy. I didn’t have the time. I didn’t have the will. I couldn’t even think clear to add training in the middle of anything else. The other stuff would have would have not gotten done.

And in some cases, tens of 1000 of dollars were on the line and other people’s lives are wrapped up in mind. It it required full focus. So As all of that’s going on, I’m still doing the work online.

I’m doing this podcast, the newsletter. I added the YouTube videos. I’m doing more on LinkedIn. And I just did a bunch of work on LinkedIn tonight today. I’m very happy. I got all my services put back in place.

They were there once before. I had some thoughts. I chased them down. they didn’t go where I want them to go, and I realized I need to put those things back in place so people realize there’s shit they can buy for me.

There’s ways I can help them. if they don’t consume all the material, which a lot of people don’t, they need to see blatantly immediately, like, oh, he sells this. So I didn’t have that in place.

I just spent a day putting those things in place, and I gotta tell you, I feel better about life. And and and I tuned them up so that they present well And, it’s so funny. I had a to do list over the weekend.

It was a mile long and I only got about a third of it done. Nothing in in nothing is anything complicated, but there’s there’s a matter of how much energy and focus I can put into any any one thing at one time.

And anything online always always takes longer than I think it will if it’s a new thing. This podcast and all the pieces that are connected to it I do it are a known entity. If I kick ass, I can get done in about 2 a half hours.

If if if I’m cruising 3 hours and if things are just not going my way or I’m tired, 4 hours. to get all of this done and out in time so that you guys have it in the newsletter Monday morning.

And and on on all the podcast stations, platforms, I I want it there every Monday. I want it before midnight on Sunday to be already loaded in.

That’s just the thing I picked to do. Now along, along with that, let’s see, the podcast. Now I had no intention of interviewing anyone ever again after that nasty experience I had not long ago that I take complete responsibility for.

I brought that to me. I signed off on it. I lived it. It was horrible. And the other person, the things they did upset me, it doesn’t even matter.

Nobody can get in your head and upset you. You upset you. It’s how you react to shit. That’s totally on you. I built a bad situation, and then I owned the the thing, the horribleness that came to me from that situation.

Fine. I don’t wanna interview any anyone anymore. Right? Well, this gentleman, I’m gonna leave all the facts out until we’re done.

Very, very nice guy, very accomplished person. He’s doing some cool stuff on the side. He’s got a bipolar background as well. just called me out of the blue. Well, he emailed me out of the blue and he wants to be on the show.

He wanted me to interview him. And I was like, yeah, fuck it. I’ll interview him because News is a nice guy, and he’s up to some cool shit too that are that’s separate from just talking about bipolar.

Same as me. You’re gonna really enjoy him. He should be next week’s show. I don’t see why not, but I still don’t wanna interview anyone, but I’m gonna wing that and just talk just two guys talking over coffee and just just just see.

I just wanna know about him. The longer I do anything, except for this podcast.

How do I put this? The podcast is by default against what I’m about to say. I don’t like talking about myself anywhere near as much as learning about other people and hearing what they got to say.

But the podcast starts that conversation. station. You guys get an idea what I’m about, and someday we talk about something. And so I don’t have a choice.

Here, I have to talk about myself. So I do my best to make it useful. as I learned in human design, I am I am not even technically here to help anyone so much as I am to share my life and people can learn from that.

I can share lessons from it. That’s literally how I’m designed to be. In the Colby Index a, I am not designed at all to build anything.

I am pure abstract thought, ideas, the plan. The the the I pull the pieces out of the mist and the fog and turned it into a cohesive tangible plan that somebody else has to then run because I’m done.

I don’t want nothing to do with it. You don’t want me running a thing I just built. I’m a consultant and an advisor and an advisor and a counselor in fashion.

I share all of this because that’s what I learned from Colby in human design as well as my personal experience over the years with a lot of other just real life situations.

You know, I’m gonna share for a moment. There was a situation again. I I needed money really bad and there was somebody that I was doing something with.

And they wanted to hire me to help them build something online, a website, and they wanted to tie it into something they were doing. I knew easily how to do it.

This person was a problem. This was a problem person to anybody that crossed paths with them. but he was willing to pay me. I was on a bind and and I think I needed a tank of fuel for my heater and, I agreed to work with this guy.

I had a partner at the time. He was like, whatever comes out of this, this is on you. And, now the thing is I met with this person and his team, and he had a he had a pretty good handle on what was what already needed to happen.

I just tightened it all up, scaled up the vision, and and clarified some details. I just I’d figured out who on the team was in charge of what clearly delineated who that should be and what they should be doing.

And, we even had we even had a contract And the contract stated that I am simply going to share my advice in these meetings.

There was gonna be 4 of these meetings, and that’s what you’re paying for, and then we’re out. as this guy signed in the contract, he basically, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. We we’ll we’ll we’ll look into that. He kinda shined on shine me on, if that makes sense, his understanding of what that contract just said. It’s he just refused to honor in his heart. What his eyeballs were telling him.

And I caught that and and didn’t didn’t care. I needed the money. So I went with it. I did not rip them off. I provided everything. I said I would, and it was extensive, and it was beautiful, and wonderful.

When the 4th meeting was done, I was like, that’s it. I’m out. We’re done. This guy thought that I would remain glued to his hip for who knows how fucking long to see this grand vision has come into into being.

So I learned never to take money just to get paid. I don’t care how desperate of a time I’m in or what I need.

It’s not worth it. I’ve spoken about this before. There’s times when you’re dying or something, you gotta do something. for money and and and and come what may. But I’m not in in a spot like that anymore.

And if you’re if you are Think hard and fast before you before you do it. Hard and long, I mean, before you do it because, god, the headaches you you incur from that kind of a decision. You’ll remember my words.

You’ll rule my words. And I did with this guy. He lost his shit. He was a pure fucking asshole of just orders of magnitude beyond, just a day to day asshole. He made things hard and complicated for a while for me and my partner.

And, we basically both threatened him with his life to get him to leave us alone. And He eventually did. And, this was like, my god, I don’t know, 14 years ago or something, but god, what a lesson I learned off of that.

And and again, I served him well. He just wanted something different from me and just believed it would happen if he just clicked his heels to get it three times and wished it to be so.

I caught that and didn’t honor it’s happening to then just take a moment and be like, dude, I’m I just wanna check-in with you because I don’t think you’re reading what I just put down here.

Don’t I don’t think you’re, you want something more than what I just said here. And I would I would like to get really clear about it before we move forward. So anyway, I will never do that again.

If anybody comes my way for help, there’s a process they have to go through to for me to vet them. You have to prove to me why I should even consider working with you. It’s a and I’m teaching you an empowerment thing here.

I don’t want people’s money just to get their money. I don’t want an asshole client or a or a headache or a problem. don’t wanna bite off more than I can chew even if they’re good people and, you know, I think maybe I can pull that off.

I want nothing to do with any of that. I want everybody good on the details. and everybody comfortable with the relationship.

But this is my business. In a sense, I’m hiring you you gotta prove to me why I should take you on and put you in my life. Flip side, I’m then I’m then gonna throw myself, hurl myself at your issue, and help you every which way I can.

But not until you’ve proven to me that I should let you into my world. Again, if you’re building something new, get what I just did there into your mind and soul and heart and body, embrace it, believe it, live it.

You will have a much better time of all it is the faster you can take ownership of your dream the way I just shared with you that I do mine.

You’ll have far less headaches and a whole lot more fun, and you’ll make a lot more money faster. Okay. There was What was the other thing?

I just wanted to throw a tidbit in there. A bonus little bit of nothing. Okay. This this mic arm, this boom arm that’s in front of my face. I can’t wait till I can get the there’s a little desk thing I wanna get.

Like, I see on Rogan and other shows where there’s no boom in my face like this. But until that time, I had to move this boom out of the way to see if I could just whatever to to organize my desk better.

And when I went to move it, the the screw. It’s a screw. It’s a c clamp. And the handle on the end of the threaded bolt came off the bolt while the bolt itself never moved.

I didn’t realize they weren’t one piece. So I figured out how to get the C clamp off, and then I had to once again go to the fine folks over at JBweld.

I should be getting I should be getting kickbacks for this. They should be sponsoring me. I was able to take the the the handle. JB weld it to the to the bolt, the threaded bolt.

And then put the whole thing back together, move it properly, reset it, and it worked just fine. And I shared that because You’re just not gonna believe that the the the tiny shit that’ll frustrate you and get in your ways.

You try to do these things that you’re gonna have to deal with so that your your your show, in this case, goes forward properly, just tonight. There was some little tiny, tiny click I could just barely hear in the headphones.

I’m like, the fuck is that? This thing never did click, and it was electronic in nature. and and subtle. I’m like, that there’s no way that that’s not gonna come through on the recording. And I have no idea what it is.

I, you know, I I barely understand the stuff that I use here. I started playing with some of the little slidey things, and I was able to see who was one of the little slidey things. Apparently, I would guess it’s a former electrician.

There’s a loose connection of some sort. I I guess. And, you know, sometimes it’s on. Sometimes it’s off. And I I don’t know. But but I was You just it’s always gonna be something. If in this case, I fixed that one rather quick.

I gotta tell you, I feel very successful and good about myself as a man in American and a former marine that I found out what the hell was doing that click. It’s been there before, and I just let it ride.

I I don’t know if it’s in the recordings if you can hear it on different equipment, but I was very glad to find it and get rid of it and and, I don’t want anything messing with the quality of this stuff to to the best of my ability.

Okay. I think tonight, I’m gonna end on the little clicky thing. look out for the cool, super cool guest that’s gonna be on next week’s show, you’re really gonna like him.

Really nice guy. Not having not not anywhere near the loud mouth I am or the free of nature that I tend to be as I ramble and get out of control. Very nice, more of a reserved guy, very pleasant.

And I really like talking to him. I think you guys are gonna like listening to him. Alright. There’d be more if I kept digging, but I’m tired. I’ve gotta now process all of this and get to bed. Alright, guys.

EPI-82: Gird Your Loins

EPI-82: Gird Your Loins

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 18:02 — 24.8MB)

August 20, 2023

Gird your loins.

Protect your psyche’s delicate parts.

Because there’s always hard shit.

And there’s always gonna be hard shit.

How you react, or better yet, how you develop proactively to deal with the never ending hard shit, is what separates the men from the boys.

Two life-altering sources of growth helped me see this clearly, many years ago. And the fact only becomes more true, the longer I march down this personal development road.

It’s not that your problems go away.

It’s just that you become a more highly evolved person, one who has the tools to better handle the problems that would have normally destroyed the old you.

And anyone on the path to growing something larger than themselves is not only going to still have problems, the problems themselves are going to often become more intense.

Call it God or The Universe testing us. Or maybe the deeper version of ourselves testing the shallow. Whatever.

The proverbial shit will still regularly hit the nearest fan.

Can you respond with dignity, grace and poise as the resultant mess ruins your beard for the day?

Or do you let your emotions direct your unnecessarily dramatic response, usually creating more harm than good, in the process?

The pros learned to accept long ago that sometimes, one’s beard will be defiled with one stressful mess or another.

But they simply clean it up while keeping their eye on the larger meaning of it all.

Then react in a rational, measured manner, one which ensures victory for both their beard and all who’ve come to depend upon it.

Transcript

Just click the “READ MORE” text below for the transcript!

Read More

Hey. This is Ken Jensen. I’d be bipolar disorder in an all natural fashion back in the mid 2000s. And believe it or not, that’s not even the coolest part of my story.

What I learned through that process and what came next and how that applied to bipolar and why bipolar was ever even part of the process was mind blowing to say the least.

Bipolar has hidden within its strengths. I’m gonna show you what I mean and how they’ve shown up in my life so you can do the same. Welcome to bipolar Excellence podcast episode 82. Gerd your loins.

There’s always, there’s more hard stuff to talk about than there is good. and I don’t wanna demoralize or demotivate anybody. But I think that’s the case. I think there’s more hard stuff than than not. I don’t think it’s 5050.

I don’t think there’s a fucking balance. I think there’s hard shit hard shit, and then how much your grace improves and your ability to adapt and your ability to pivot inside a tight moment improves as you deal with the hard shit.

There’s always hard shit. And, you know, now that I said this, I’m glad I did because it makes me think of something I learned from CenterPoint, the meditation service I used to use, which I hope to God.

I will get back to. I will get to it. It had a time limit on it, a time frame, you know, of 6 years. I only did 2 years worth, and I liked what it did to me, and I need to get back to it.

But anyway, One of the greatest things that CenterPoint’s tool Holasync did for you or any meditation for that matter It’s not it’s not that your problems go away or you’ll get so damn smart at dealing with them.

Some problems will go away, and you will get smarter.

You will. to to better deal with some things. But the bulk of it is you learn to better deal with the problems you have to such a degree that they no longer bother you like day 1 did. They’re still there.

But it’s almost like when you were a child being bullied and now you’re a man or a woman, you’re an adult. You if if you had to deal with that same exact bully from when you were a child, could kick his ass or harass.

The problem remained the same. You just evolved into something bigger and better that could handle that same exact problem. So there’s the motivational bit in that.

The reason I bring this up is tonight, tonight, just hours ago, I was doing house cold chores to include getting ready to clean my fish tank. And I’m so excited because, the fish needed it, and we’re very close.

My fish and I. and I get very guilty about how infrequently I cleaned their tank. So, anyway, and I lost a guy recently, and I’m pretty sure it’s my fault for letting the tanks for too long.

It looks good when I learned the tank can look good and not be good. So anyway, as I was getting through my day, with my my mind pretty much focused on this podcast.

I walked into a I’m just gonna say a family problem, and I’m not gonna supply any details because it’s nobody’s business. But I walked in in the middle of something.

I initially didn’t even know what it was I was seeing because there wasn’t a lot of, there wasn’t a lot of, signals that you’d normally expect for what was actually taking place, showed up soon enough.

And an old wound got reopened. And All the drama and troubles and garbage connected to that wound came rushing to the surface as somebody tried to actively reengage with the thing that called the caused the wound in the first place.

This is exterior. This is external. It’s it’s not It’s not in my immediate family. It’s it’s an outside threat. Things got rather ugly pretty quick. Nothing tragic happened.

Nothing that couldn’t be fixed, took place. And a couple hours later, everything was twistedly all the way back to normal. But the trauma and, you know, the the the psychic damage the hit the family took was done.

And it was all based in large part by one person’s actions who was morally in the right but didn’t understand the larger picture of what was actually happening and why and and and the history connected to it.

So in a sense, no wrong was actually even done. but something that was intended to be good was about to take place that was going to go very, very bad And it was it was traumatic in that sense.

It was a psychic hit. And Like I said, we got through it. No further trauma’s got added to the situation outside of what it already was. and and everything was at least in the immediate sense, put to bed.

Everything’s fine. but I still had yet the podcast. I had yet to even do the frigging fish tank. And I and my clock My clock on the wall is battery driven. The battery was dying.

I didn’t know it. I thought I had hours yet. I have a phone and everything, but in this case, I was simply paying attention to the the clock on the wall. I thought I had hours to go. Nope. That was hours ago that I had hours to go.

I I was already late into the night. Didn’t even realize it. So that was, that was sort of demoralizing because I’m like, well, there goes my sleep and and the podcast, everything involved in all the places that I put it and everything.

I gotta write about it and newsletter and and on and on and on the editing. This is like a 3 hour. This is a 3 hour thing per episode.

And and and as well, I had a plan, and that plan got blown up in my face to no wrongdoing on my part. and you’re gonna find that happens over and over and over the longer you build anything that matters.

You know, when you’re not doing something that really matters, something that’s larger than yourself, something that requires great sacrifice on your part or the need to remain accountable to others in a way you may never have before.

A lot of life, even shit like what happened to me tonight is is it’s easier to handle because is the big thing.

It’s the biggest thing there is. And you have more energy and attention and time to to put into it And it doesn’t hit as as wrong because it’s all there is. If the rest of your life is routine, then that was it.

That was the big deal. When you have a big deal of that sort and yet you have something like this show that I run and everything that’s attached to it and people that need me to show up on a regular basis for a multitude of reasons.

Now the other big deal is, it’s even bigger than it would have been. had it been just the only thing taking place. So the trick is how do you deal with such a thing like this?

And get on with your your your larger responsibilities and, not ruminate over what just happened to the point that it gets in the way of what you’re trying to create, whatever your project is.

Thankfully, my part for more for multiple reasons, this was all manageable.

And I got put into a state, and I don’t wanna carry on about this, but I got put into a state of mind where the old me got brought to the surface because I was being threatened.

I was never gonna act on what was threatening me and I wouldn’t ever.

And I didn’t even come close to. I’m just saying my energy, my mood, you adrenaline, my old training, whatever remaining PTSD I have because I’m pretty sure some of that still lingered.

My defenses come up quick and hard and I start getting solidly into an offense mode of a quite serious and dangerous nature.

I, but I know how to not let that run away from me. Some of you, if you’re following a You knew that there was somebody that did this to me some time ago, on a job site.

Guide had actually caused me to quit the last job I had. I needed to quit that freaking job anyway, but he was the impetus, but it almost happened with him leaving this earth.

And Interesting fun satisfying side note. That was a year ago. That asshole recently got fired from that job as he rightfully should be because he was heart, hurtful and toxic. He got fired. And, yes, I’m pleased with that.

I didn’t hold a grudge. I got through it. I was annoyed about it and whatever, but I was like, then what are you gonna do? You can’t save the whole world. Can’t fight city hall. But, you know, I I really did move on.

I I wasn’t happy about that guy being where still was hurting the people he was hurting, but there was not a damn thing I could do about it. And finally, the system realized whatever and and he went. Yes. Satisfying.

So this thing that happened maybe today was not that. But Doesn’t matter. A threat’s a threat, and my body reacts the same way. And then mentally, I’m aware of the larger picture of what all might happen if this thing should go further.

Not me being on the offense, just the problem itself. And and so that made me get even more defensive because I knew what was coming and I couldn’t started looking like I wasn’t gonna be able to stop it.

And that got me even on more heightened alert because I I knew how bad this could get and why and and what was gonna come. And I was like, I can’t I can’t do this again. And it wasn’t even of my doing.

And, and now I’m making the podcast. you can tell I’m a bit more subdued, but, yeah, I’m alright. I really am. It was it was It was painful in certain ways, but it’s something in in in one respect that had to happen.

And now that it has Should this thing rear its ugly head one more time? Everyone involved is now fully on the on on the same page in a way they were not earlier to So it ended well.

And it was like there was like a lesson hiding within the disaster. So now I’m doing this and and I’m I hope I hope you guys get that I don’t know.

On one hand, the less evolved me would have handled this poorly on a number of fronts and caused more to come out of it than than would have been necessary because I couldn’t control my rage.

And my defenses would have come up even stronger because I hadn’t healed enough yet. So I lash out. I hit first before I can be hit this sort of a thing that I don’t I don’t do that anymore.

And the reason I bring that up is if that’s an issue with you as we’re working together, I got steps to help you get to where I am now to where The raunchiest shit can be thrown in your face in a way that makes you want us do something that you can’t and You know what’s wrong and you won’t, and you’ll be okay with it as I am now.

And I really am. I’m I’m I’m glad that Based on my pathway of of being, I could feel the moments when a tipping point was being reached and I would have gone over the edge and done this and done that and done the other thing.

I didn’t do any of those things. I knew I was at those points and the energy was there And it was huge, but there was never a fear of it actually going somewhere that I couldn’t recover from.

Never. It’s interesting to be taken to the brink like that by your own emotions and have him get that intense, but also know academically from your perspective.

Look that up. Your witness perspective. I knew that this guy was gonna do anything overly stupid besides make some noise.

And rattle and rage a little bit, but, you know, and I didn’t. And I’m proud of that. So the episode title, Gerger Lloyds, that’s a phrase if you’re not familiar.

It’s it’s got to do with putting from from, like, from, like, I don’t know, Greek warrior Greek slash warrior Roman times where you would you would put a protective thing of metal around your waist.

To protect to protect the, the tender bits, twitched your thighs, you gird your loins, you go in a battle protected As you build the thing you’re building, you’re gonna sometimes, sometimes, actually, I think more and often than not, the bigger stretch gonna come from you.

And and what I mean by that is there will be exterior threats that get hurled at you, and the threat can be anything. Use that phrase very loosely. Just anything that can just sink your little boat.

Any number of things are gonna come at you that’s gonna cause you to wanna react offensively and You can’t. A matter of fact, you wanna have strategies in place that you don’t even react. Reaction is the opposite of being proactive.

Proactive is when you have a plan in place for when things like this go wrong, you can respond in a way that’s more healthier, more healthy. And produces a better outcome than if you just react pure emotion.

This is not easy to achieve, and it’s not gonna be a thing of perfection Like, where I got today, it was choppy. It was choppy. The only win that came was when it really, really mattered that I not do the things that I felt like doing.

I didn’t know. And and and then also knowing in my heart of hearts, And my, my my aware of mine, I never would. It’s not even the true fear. No matter what it feels like to me, It’s not real in network chiropractic.

That my chiropractor taught me. It’s it’s a thing of where you can feel the emotions, but you don’t run away with them. They don’t make anything happen. you feel them in full force, but you don’t use them to direct your next move.

And that’s a very healthy place to reach. Most people are nowhere near it. They get an emotion. Then then they react and they do something stupid fueled by whatever that negative emotion was or even sometimes a positive one.

You gotta have some more class. You gotta have more style than that. You gotta have more poise. truly great leaders get just as pissed off about shit.

Same as anybody else, but they don’t show it. and they have a better way of handling it. They’re thinking longer term. They’re talking. They’re thinking bigger picture. They feel the same things.

But they know it’s foolish and destructive to act on the things in the moment. I have not achieve some sort of lofty heights where I don’t feel these things and still get to where it looks like I’m gonna do some stupid.

I haven’t it happens way less. Like, I can count on one hand how many time something like this happens. And I don’t know. Every few years maybe at this point.

It’s just not a thing anymore, but but it’s still in me. I didn’t have all his I didn’t have as much graces I woulda liked tonight or poise our class. when I knew when a danger line was being reached and and I knew not to cross it.

And I also knew I would I would never cross it. And, that’s a satisfying feeling. And in the end, because I didn’t add anything at least in that that one major respect, Everything was fixable soon after.

The problem’s still there, but but in the immediate sense, Everybody directly involved is good. I had more to say, but, you know, that seems so heavy.

I think I’m gonna leave it at that. I want you guys to think about that. As you go through my material, if you’ve ever read my book, you’ll realize the enormity of what I’ve just shared tonight with you about me.

You’ll realize I know some things and how to use these things so that I am no longer the old me while I do this cool thing with the rest of you.

What might that mean for you if you’re trying to something and you’re looking at me as your leader. That’s it. I’m gonna leave with that. Be well.


EPI-81: Eccentricity: Nobody Puts Baby In A Corner

EPI-81: Eccentricity: Nobody Puts Baby In A Corner

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:17 — 33.4MB)

August 13, 2023

This is for you “way outside the box types” who may have yet to begin.

You are meant to let your freak flag fly!

Don’t hide what sets you apart from the rest of the world.

Because your very differences are what will bring you fulfillment.

And your particular flavor of eccentricity is what’s needed to save some certain part of the world, in a way no one else can.

Here’s a great article on the topic: “Why we need eccentricity” by Martin Howard.

This is why I love comedians so much.

They both flaunt and enhance their weaknesses, using those very “flaws” to build a world bigger than most will ever inhabit!

And so will you!

Because, like those comedians, your flaws are usually your greatest strengths, hidden and misunderstood.

And that certain part of the world?

You’re the ONLY one who can save them.

Now, by “save”, I mean, benefit in some way. Like what happened with Baby in Dirty Dancing:

Or it might be actually saving them from something dramatic.

Either way, the life you want and the people you want in it, are both drawn to you based on how well you can stand out from everyone else.

So just go for it!

The beginning is going to be rough.

But the growth it causes is necessary for the eventual win.

Transcript

Just click the “READ MORE” text below for the transcript!

Read More

Hey. This is Ken Jensen. I’d be bipolar disorder in an all natural fashion back in the mid 2000s. And believe it or not, that’s not even the coolest part of my story.

What I learned through that process and what came next and how that applied to bipolar and why bipolar was ever even part of the process was mind blowing to say the least. bipolar has hidden within its strengths.

I’m gonna show you what I mean and how they’ve shown up in my life so you can do bipolar Excellence podcast episode 81. Accentricity. Nobody puts Baby in a corner. That’s our reference to dirty dancing.

Go look it up if you’re you never saw it before. I loved that movie. I was doing a search for the first time. I was trying to come up with a topic for tonight and there’s plenty I could speak about.

I I don’t run out of topics ever. Something always comes to mind. If not instantly, then within to 2 to 3 seconds, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I can spin it into an entertaining or helpful podcast episode.

That’s what it dawned on me for, I don’t know, for some years, I guess. I had saved bookmarks of articles for topics to talk about in in a bunch of different categories.

On my computer. So I dug through there. And, unfortunately, for what I’m trying to do with this show, Dan near all of them were directly related to issues with mental illness.

Now I have a lot to say about that and could say, but that was my past. Focusing on it was my past. and I’m not interested in in hitting it that hard anymore.

I have talked about it and I will continue talking about various mental health issues, and it’s a it’s a hot button right now, thankfully. So so people are getting more help than than they used to.

And then probably even when I did what I did, almost 20 years ago when I when I walked away from, Western Medicine Medicine entirely, and found an all natural holistic way to to knock bipolar completely the fuck out of my world.

So But again, that that even ties into the eccentric nature of me. I did that by going not just against the grain because I I wasn’t initially.

I was wooded the grain. I was drinking the Kool Aid, but none of the Kool Aid was working. I wanted the Kool Aid to work. I wanted to go with the rest of the herd right to where pills take people and I wasn’t being granted that gift.

The last doctor I had, who I respected greatly, effectively gave me permission to go try something else. I’ve talked about that before.

So what happened next. I’ve talked about that a few times too. But the way the path got revealed to me. It it’s odd. It’s almost like a lot of the bus the bizarre shit that is bipolar help me solve bipolar.

I’ve always been on a fringe, but when I was younger, never realized that, though, just now, when I was younger, not in not in always, but it it got less so the older I got, but when I was younger, I was more I could be more easily categorized as an underdog for for many different reasons.

I had my areas of strength being a fucking marine being was one of them.

But even as a marine, I was only a good marine within the the the parameters of being marine without the marine corps needing me to marine, the rest of me didn’t function so well, if that makes sense.

But the older I got, I wasn’t I I was trying to break out of the underdog role and find my personal strength. And interestingly, as I got older, I eventually found my personal strength.

And then I learned something that was a notch higher in perspective than that started seeking calm I maintained my personal strength, but I wasn’t as focused on it anymore.

I just wanted to be at peace and didn’t give a fuck about anybody for any reason. that had nothing to do with helping me find that peace. That is still in play now.

It’s not to say I don’t care about people, my family, my friends, whatever, but I do lead quite a solitary life, even though I have a job where I work with people, and I have a lot of not only a lot of coworkers and and people I answer to at a company, but I work with people as a job.

I have clients. And I’m awesome with them, all of them.

And I have personal strength that comes into play and how I interact with everybody. But even with these people, I’m more interested in finding my calm. I have it in some ways, but I want more of it.

And the way that I’ve solved everything in my life up to this point, really ties into being eccentric. I attached a LinkedIn article to the post on my website on bipolarexcellence. com episode 81. You’ll you’ll see a link.

I found an article to a guy that talked about why that is a strength, eccentricity, And it basically has to do with eccentric people. as he put it, they seem like they already are mentally ill or heading for a break down of some sort.

They did a large study of some sort and found that most of these people that were wildly eccentric had a lower a lower rate of mental illness by far, and they actually went to the medical doctor far less than the general public.

They tended to live a hair longer than the general public, and they were happier. don’t know if I’ll pull all that off, but I I’m in that mix.

And, I stick to my guns. It’s something that people draw from. My client draw from me, whether on my day job or here as a coach on bipolar excellence or even coworkers and family and and friends, I don’t waiver.

I’m maneuver. I’m maneuver. I strategize. I play angles when I need to, but The me that’s me that people find appealing and intriguing and interesting and helpful, that never changes.

My attitude, the way I talk, what I what I say, what it is I’m talking about, the way I say it, my sense of humor that’s woven throughout all of it. None of that ever changes, and I seem to be in a category of 1.

Every once in a blue moon, I run across someone similar. I talked about that not long ago in one of the episodes. And that is a pure joy to me when I feet when I feet, when I meet a fellow freak.

And we know each other. It is so deeply satisfying when we’re like, You see it too, don’t you? That is one of the coolest things for me, and it rarely happens.

I get one of those every once in a blue moon. But Being eccentric, particularly when you’re younger or starting something new can feel like a weakness or you might second guess yourself or judge yourself too harshly.

If you don’t get the results you’re looking for right away, you might feel like you’re you’re not being serious enough professional enough. You’re playing too far outside the lines.

You’re going too rogue. You see me? I’m always wearing a Rogue shirt. That’s a fitness company, but I like that word on my chest. It ain’t mine. No. It’s theirs. So I’m always rogue. I I always have gone my own way. I get certain.

It’s not constant, but I get away with more than most and most situations, put it that way, but not in an underhanded way so much as it’s how I need my life to be so that I can get things done properly for whoever’s depending on me.

And it’s gonna it’s gonna grate on some nerves. It’s gonna rattle some people more the rattling than the grading. people don’t always know what to make of me. And until they’ve come to know me, it it it it puts them off.

It it makes them, wary. it’s never a bad thing, but if they’re looking to do something with me, they’re not always a 100% sure if I’m their guy just because I don’t fit easily into any sort of mold.

That’s a natural organic thing with me, and it’s also on purpose. Now I apply this to myself when when building a business online such as I am, I’ve said this before.

You’ll you’ll get a you’ll get advice from other successful people and absolutely contradicts the advice of someone else who also devoutly believe in. How can they both be right? because for them, it worked.

They’re not wrong. They’re not misleading you usually. There’s plenty of scam artists out there and bullshit artists, but Most people are when they when they’re a leader and they’re trying to teach you how to do something.

They’re they’re coming from the heart and they’re speaking from experience. They’ll even argue against the the other person that you believe in equally strongly.

And broke my broke my attention. My my I use my phone to make these videos and I just got a text reply. So, anyway, I wanna you to know every little thing that might crop up as you try to do something similar.

Like, alright? That’s one of them. No big deal, though. That’s life. You just keep going. There was a there was a CM sidetrack now. There was a famous author. I believe it was the guy that wrote war and peace, I think.

Pretty sure. I have yet to read one piece. It’s it’s one of my literary Everest. I’m gonna read it one day for the hell of it. just just to know that I did it. It’s a bucket list thing.

Warm peace is it’s it’s a concrete blocks worth of ink in between two covers. You gotta want it. Well, this guy, and I and I believe that’s who this was in the book that was was being referenced when I make this point.

He he had a family, like, teen kids running a ragged, running wild all around him while he tried to write that book, and he did it. You’re gonna face the same shit. So What the hell was I talking about before my concentration got broke?

God damn it. I don’t know. God now. I’d have to pause and go back. This is where editing on video would be would be helpful. I imagine but, I’m not gonna bother with that.

They’re they’re I don’t have to time or the energy. It’s all I can do to put all this together every week and and be on time and just, you know, make my life go. So I’m just saying I I’ve got to use my resources sparingly.

I almost had it. I almost had what I was talking about before. Damn it. Well, we were talking about being eccentric and, oh, I know what I was talking about. Something something about, oh, following advice.

Even today, I mean, this day, the day of the recording of this podcast, something was going on that was bothering me about the overall growth of this and the work I’m putting into it and the breaks I take and the naps I take And and I started getting hyper focused on the fact that most days when I come home from my day job, I am emotionally and psychically and psychologically spent even on good days because you have to give so much of yourself to do what I do and it well.

You’re empty. Then to come home and and work on this stuff is almost impossible because I’m numb.

So I get down on myself, then I’m not working at this harder than I am more often than I am. because there’s results I need to see out of this and I want them faster than they’re coming.

This is a common plight. I always have to pause and remind myself. I’ve done a lot already. on this show. I’ve done a lot online with the site and I’m always doing something and I’m always keeping steady.

As long as you do those things, You’re probably probably if you’re not grinding, you know, grinding it out, being a power player, 80 hour weeks kinda shit.

Like, like you see in movies and and and reading books, I can’t do that. I’ll die. I work generally in spurts.

I can lay out a lot of ass. extensive, extensively in the moment for a certain amount of time. And then I’m I’m empty for quite some time. I can’t do anything sometimes for a week. to or more. Nothing new. I don’t have an Emmy.

I gotta let my batteries build back up. It’s an introvert thing on on one hand. I know that. I’m more introverted than not, but it’s very easy to get down on yourself when the results aren’t where you want them to be.

Now about results, I said on the last episode, Something just recently happened with somebody that found me on LinkedIn, and we’ve been friends for a while.

And now she’s helping me test out new parts of my system as if she was a client.

She’s not. Uh-uh. We’re treating it as if I’m I am coaching her and she is a client. But we have a barter arrangement, and I’m not gonna get deep in all of that because it’s it’s I don’t wanna jinx it.

I don’t wanna if she’s listening, I don’t want her to feel rushed or pressured because I’ve stressed that to her endlessly. this is not you set the tone, and I am happy with it. And I I couldn’t mean that more from art.

She’s building something and I’m helping her design it as I would have paid client. that’s going to benefit me and those of you listening now, everyone in my world, she’s become a division of mine in a way.

It’s hers. It’s not mine. I’m not a partner with her. It’s hers, but I already see ways it can grow, and it’s gonna grow.

That’s going to increase my business. And it will set her up to be in some sort of business position as well. Should she need it or want it? my job is not to force any of that.

It’s just to motivate and guide the creation of this thing we’re doing that we’re both gonna benefit from and our people will benefit from. And I’d like to say more because it’s really exciting, but but it’s not the time for it.

The point is that’s a success. It is not cash in my hand. But it’s the potential for it, and it’s a potential for it in a way that I’ve been more intelligent about than than in the past.

I’ve partnered with people a lot some years back. And I tend to be the one that gives way too much and gets too little or nothing in in return beyond experience.

And, the way that this is structured, it looks the same, but I’m not the one doing all the work now, and the other person is eager to, and I’m just going to guide.

And as I said, this is the the nature of the thing is gonna benefit me and you guys. And I I’ve already figured out ways that it can pay me, but it’s not my place to force that or anything.

I will suggest it when the time comes, And if it doesn’t fit, it doesn’t fit, and it doesn’t even fucking matter. It it doesn’t. Everything happens as it should. There’s no need to force anything. And I like that.

That calm I talked about before, I have that within this this project. And this this girl was drawn to me because at least in part, I believe, because of my eccentricity meaning I’ve just gone a different way than everybody else.

And I have a different perspective on what happened to me and why than anybody she’d met prior dealing with the same problem and it intrigued her.

And that’s what connected us a long time ago. all this time later, it’s bearing a different kind of higher level fruit. I can’t stress enough to you guys listening how important and how cool that is.

And also layered on top of that, the fact that I did it in a way where I protected myself from my own enthusiasm. This other person is do I protect myself from?

I’m talking about my my ability in the past to jump into anything, say yes to everything because whether it’s got to do with being bipolar or or or a a a generator as I’m referred to in the human design and and a bunch of other different things that I I’ve pinpointed about myself.

I have the ability to burn myself alive from a starting point of massive enthusiasm. And it’s not smart. It’s not intelligent. It’s harmful. and and, it leads to bad things.

At best, it leads to nothing. But I learned a long time ago, I had to protect me from me. all those things I just mentioned, what I was getting at was I have an ability to see the whole damn future of the thing.

I can see all the parts. I know the general skeletal outline of whatever’s involved for all the departments and also the project in its entirety.

When you’re able to do that, it’s very hard to be patient and wait for the win. So you start doing shit on your own. The thing you’re gonna learn when you do that usually You can’t be the only one on the team that’s got all the passion.

In that case, you would be the founder. But even then, the parameters would have to be made would have to be made clear to the team members.

And usually in my past, I looked at all of us as equal players, and that’s how we all understood ourselves and be. And with the exception of 2 guys.

There’s another guy I remembered because I’ve talked about this before. The exception of 2 guys, everyone I’ve ever worked with has been quality people willing to work hard and do whatever to build a dream, but do whatever.

Started becoming something different as the project progressed. And I got overwhelmed and burned out and destroyed because I let it happen, and I’m not on this.

So I feel really good about that. And this girl for the first time, I heard her in a video. We’ve always texted And I gotta tell you something else. If if you’re doing something anything like this, you need to talk to people in video.

You need to see their face. it changes everything. You guys notice anyway. You you know it just from life experience, but when you’re building something important, video has to come into play if you’re not locally based.

If you can’t physically see each other, this shit’s gotta get on video It just changed everything for me, and I was already good with her, and she was good with me.

I’m very excited And and I’m glad that I’m glad I’ve hung in there long enough with everything I’ve done and we’ll continue to hang in there as I increase revenue and build this thing larger and and involve more people, the likes of which like her, I did not see this coming.

Not really. And I’m excited about that. That’s the adventurous side of it. That’s the life fulfillment side of it. Will this work? I don’t know. It should. It should. But who knows?

Any we’re not there yet, but it’s still exciting to find like minded people It’s it’s exciting and satisfying to find people that take someone with an eccentric point of view on so many topics like myself and take us take us seriously.

They can see even if we’re being if even if we’re being goofs, they can see the substance They can hear and feel the passion.

They can perceive the strength involved. They know the backstory of what it took for me to get to now, which was beyond extensive and awfulness and hard work and guts.

And I don’t have to change who I am as a person, my personality, to have in life what I want. Not only that. When put together properly, It’s that eccentric personality of mine that’s going to give me the life I want.

I want you to think about that. Alright? Don’t change who you are. Just figure out how to take it pro. And if you’re an eyeball like me, in some cases, extremely so. I don’t tell you guys everything.

Rest assured, you don’t need to change shit. You state just who you are, boo, and you build upon it and you reach out with it to the universe to the world, to the world, to find the other people like you who wanna run beside you.

And you’re gonna really enjoy the process and do well for yourself. Alright, everybody. Be well.


EPI-80: Thank God For Perfection!

EPI-80: Thank God For Perfection!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:38 — 43.5MB)

August 6, 2023

Achieving perfection has become a pressing topic of thought for me lately.

Not that I’m pursuing it.

But I sometimes get hard on myself for not trying harder, should I get into an ongoing “relaxed” state.

It can feel like looming failure if I focus on how much of it I’m doing at the time.

Three Things About This Mindset:

  • my body of work and fully completed systems say otherwise
  • feedback from clients and supporters say otherwise
  • and sometimes, I just need a fucking break.

If you develop the routine of simply creating content, and push at it long enough, you’ll soon have a body of work.

This is the one time, albeit a long one, where it would serve you best to buckle down and ceaselessly create without judgment.

Just create!

In a short time, you’ll be amazed at how much you’ve done.

And the sense of failure or attempt at achieving perfection starts to slide away.

And when either flares up again (and they will), you’ll have this mountain of evidence that proves they’re to be ignored.

Where this takes you, how long it takes, and how well it feeds you…who knows?

But without its presence, your initial body of work, you’ll not only NOT achieve perfection, you’ll attain misery.

By steadily, faithfully creating something, anything, your sense of worth climbs.

Your mind gets laid out before you where your eyes can see it, and a higher level of planning commences.

Clarity sprouts from those two things above.

Peace, satisfaction and fulfillment ensue.

And lastly, done long enough, when you get down on yourself for lack of effort, lack of results, etc., you’ll know these feelings to be the bullshit that they are, and you’ll enjoy your break.

Transcript

Just click the “READ MORE” text below for the transcript!

Read More

Hey. This is Ken Jensen. I beat bipolar disorder in an all natural fashion back in the mid 2000s. And believe it or not, that’s not even the coolest part of my story.

What I learned through that process and what came next and how that applied to bipolar and why bipolar was ever even part of the process was mind blowing to say the least.

Bipolar has hidden within its strengths. I’m gonna show you what I mean and how they’ve shown up in my life so you can do the same.

Welcome to the bipolar Excellence podcast episode 80. Thank god for perfection. That’s where we’re gonna start. I had a number of topics that that came to mind. I never pick 1 ahead of time.

Sometimes I do. And, it seems like that never pans out right when I start talking. It’s it’s not there like I thought it was. Let’s see where this goes. So I hit a button the last week. I hit a button that it provides phantom power.

I just learned as I looked at the back of my mixing board which I believe is what powers the microphone I I I don’t know, but there was a red light on the on the on the display that I’ve I don’t remember seeing It just seemed too loud and too obvious and I I don’t think it’s always been there.

So I got that off. no telling if this episode’s gonna come out right or not as far as the the audio.

On the, on the video. Oh, and let me let me add My videos are not just on YouTube where you can just punch in bipolar excellence on YouTube and you’ll find me.

The videos themselves are also on the website on each episode’s page as is a player for the audio version If that suits your needs, they’ve always been on that on on each episodes page.

So you you got a audio. If you wanna play it and you don’t have to go find me on Apple Podcasts or wherever you go, Spotify, what have you. Just go to bipolarexcellence.

Com. Look for the episode number you want. Wanted to see. And then under podcast, and there you go. You got your audio. And if you want it, you got your video. You also have a transcript. Whatever I said, is in a transcript down below.

This seems to pan out to about, I don’t know, about 4000 words I don’t type all that up. I type up something different that’s sort of a a summation usually with a slightly different point of view.

After the fact. I write those up on the fly after I’ve created the the episode. So the transcript is literally what got said in the whole thing. I take my audio file and I dump that into a thing called deepgram.

They have an account that offers 8000000 hours of free time before they ever charge you to use their service to transcribe an audio file, which they do in about a minute.

And, I dump it onto the page. That’s so Google has something to search for without cluttering up the page.

I got an expandable box that you click on. If you wanna read the transcript, personally, I’ve never wanted to read a transcript of anything, even though prefer reading rather than watching or listening anything for learning purposes.

Entertainment’s different, but I do know that some people need like, if they can’t hear, you can read the transcript.

And the transcripts aren’t perfect. They’re pretty good, but they’re not perfect. But, all of that’s on each episode’s page.

And speaking of perfection, the longer I go, I’ll start one of the things I wanna do is if I mention a a resource in the show, I wanna put a link in an area that’s easy to find and standardize on each episode.

I haven’t done that yet. I did that in my last podcast, but I haven’t done it on this one. The last shows I’ll get around to it at some point.

Right now, I don’t do it all that much that it matters. I know I normally drop a link in just in the the material I wrote about that episode on that episode’s page, or there’ll be a link.

But I thought it’d be nice if there was a section that just clearly showed all the resources clean and easy and people don’t have to scan the page to find them.

I’m not there yet. Busy enough with everything else I do. if you’re looking at the video, I wrote a very well known company that provides Mike covers in here to be a thing that shows my logo.

Now one of the reasons I’m doing that is just because it looks cool. The other reason is if you’re on YouTube, there’s a lot of podcasters are, anybody for that matter with a microphone in front of him.

It’s a way to advertise your show. I haven’t yet looked into YouTube’s studio they call it to see how it is.

I can show my logo My logo shows on my website because Vimeo allows me to use it in their videos. Another tip for you. I you put all my videos. I have I have my own copies of them. They’re in Vimeo.

They’re stored on my computer as well, but I have control over those. that then gets put on YouTube. If YouTube loses its mind and hates me and it makes me go away, I didn’t lose anything other than whatever I had on YouTube.

You know, my presence there and whatnot. It doesn’t hurt anything as far other than inconvenience. I still have the originals. please do the same.

If you’re gonna create video content or any content that matters, you need to store all your original material on your own computer or in the cloud or in some other platform that you pay to have access to, the free platforms, they can take your stuff down anytime they want.

I don’t foresee that being a problem, but that’s how problems work. Who the fuck 4 season? They just happen. So I’ll have a mic cover at some point.

The company’s not answering me. I wrote them over a week ago, and I haven’t heard back because I got an odd shaped mic. And and I didn’t see an easy way from whatever options to put a cover on. I’ll sort that out.

As far as perfection, I was on LinkedIn. I had an idea about what it is that people find valuable about me in a way that that more clearly nails it than what I’ve had in my headers, both well, anywhere I have a header.

They they all say the same thing. a ban the banner at the top that shows the picture of me and and says what I do.

I’ve known for a while that people just draw they draw off my energy, off of my enthusiasm, off my good will, my good mood, my will to win people pull that stuff from me when in my presence or while they have my attention.

Frequently, when I leave the area or the situation, the ability to do anything along the lines of what we were just discussing evaporates with my absence.

Now with people that hire me, that won’t be the case because they are going out of their way to make use of what I’m about and what I can do for them.

But I never I never made that clear and it dawned on me that I should make that clear. One of the things with marketing is you’re told so many things from so many different marketers, all of whom are successful.

Their information conflicts with each other’s. everything’s right if it works for you. They’re not lying. Most of them, they’re not lying. It’s just that’s what worked for them.

You pay attention to whoever appeals to you most. And then you follow sometimes only pieces of what they suggest, myself included, that works best for you. Sometimes you’re not gonna follow everything that one person says on any topic.

I I don’t even you shouldn’t. There can be some people, and I I have I have 2 or 3 of them. It can be some people where you’re pretty much buying into every damn thing they’re selling, but you don’t have to.

And with marketing training, I was trying to say something along the lines of what my mind my my thinking was to keep in line with marketing practices.

And then it just dawned on me. Just the other day, I’m like, people draw strength from my presence. So on all my banners now, what what did I put Alright. afraid afraid of afraid of, launching your dream put a beast in your corner.

Never create alone again. I did not say that in any smooth delivery kind of fashion, but because I couldn’t remember exactly what at the screen in front of me what what it was.

I I now say, but that was it. And I’m trying to convey the the fact that when people are hanging out with me is when they’re the most enthusiastic.

They feel the most capable. They feel the greatest amount of hope. they have a sense that the thing they’re trying to do is gonna actually take place.

They know that somebody’s got their back. who never gives up on his own gig. Even though I’ve been through many iterations and I started all of this, Really?

The whole entrepreneurial thing when I really committed to it started before I lost my shit with bipolar disorder and fell off the wagon with alcohol a second time.

I started before all that. I endured those other things. Found a way out of them. and started telling that story. Over time, I realized that’s not taking me exactly where I wanna go, but it has its value yada yada yada.

We end up where we are now. I’ve known for quite some time that a bipolar flavored mind is capable of a lot of things the non bipolar mind is not.

The incredible things it can do will take place with regularity, dependability, as long as bipolar is not in the way of it happening.

Well, that’s what I solved. That is not what I offer people. I do make clear how I beat bipolar. It’s in a course It takes guts to live well.

I’m excited. You you can have at it and and good luck to you, but I’m trying to make the point that My story shows what I overcame, what I’ve persevered through, how I did it, how I got to now, and why that’s of use to you.

And regardless of what you’re doing separate from the very general building a dream, which is something I’m I’ve been part of for decades no matter what I’m doing, There’s just the fact that people get awful damn enthused in my presence.

And I believe in part. It’s because that’s how I feel about myself. Even when I don’t have an inkling of the results I I want across the board. I have the most important results are done.

I’m still saying I’m still sober. I still have my health. I’m still employed and I still get better at everything I do. Even though at one point, my brain was mush. angry mush. This is what I offer to people.

You don’t just have a guy that has the skill sets that I have. You have a guy that no matter what the fuck is thrown at him, he keeps going. That was one of the comments I used to get routinely when people read my book.

They’re like, Jesus, a lot of shit happened to you, and you just you just wouldn’t stop. you you kept trying to get out of it all. You kept moving forward and moving through.

And, I did It wasn’t that that was some kind of plan of mine. It’s just how I’m wired. I just keep going. I can’t I can’t cave. I take that back a hair because actually, I I haven’t had to tell this part of the story so long.

I’m a former marine. and a war vet, gulf war vet, the 1st gulf war, there’s something about being a marine that that Well, it’s not even it’s this exact thing. We don’t fucking quit.

Doesn’t matter how bad it gets. we don’t fucking quit. That has been applied to how I beat bipolar and everything I’ve done since. I lead with it that my my my my my past and my training as a marine has a direct part in everything I do.

I’m not all militant and gung ho, It’s it’s not like that. It’s just the the the toughness, the ability to persevere, the ability to think my way improvise, adapt, and overcome.

I embrace the marine corps motto that way, improvise, adapt, and overcome. I do those things as a marine because I can’t go against my marine training. We don’t we’re not allowed to quit or give up.

You might take a breather. I just did that last night. Everything’s been going fine. but, I got kinda busy with a lot of stuff and I got just, just kinda smoked. I wasn’t upset or irritated or anything.

I just I just felt a sense of Enough’s enough for 5 goddamn minutes. Alright? Just enough’s enough. I I was a sense. I didn’t even plan it consciously. And I fell into a rabbit hole on YouTube of watching Pink Floyd reaction videos.

This is something I do about once every 6 months. I didn’t know it after last night. I think this is a thing I do. It’s my form of sitting down and pulling out a bong.

I just watch other people who’ve never heard of Pink Floyd. Discover Pink Floyd. I could carry on about how awesome Pink Floyd is and why but that’s not the point of this. The point was I needed a break and I let I just let it happen.

I had a lot of work to do, but there’s always a lot of work to do on these projects. Always. Fucking always. Even when you get rid of your list, once you get humming along, you’ll fill the list right back up.

I’ve done it time and time again. Now what I try to do is I strive to keep the list on just one page. When it starts spreading into two pages and sometimes 3, I get a little sweaty, a little greasy. I gotta get it back down to 1.

And I just did that. I did that yesterday and early in the day. And then, I did almost. I think I did 4 hours of of YouTube videos. I don’t do that on on YouTube at all for any other reason than what I just said.

It just doesn’t happen to me. I don’t like throwing away my time like that, and nothing interests me to that degree that it can even just take root in my day, except my 6 month Pink Floyd, think.

So I I became aware of that. I I didn’t realize until one point when you fall into YouTube rabbit hole, you know, hours go by and I look o’clock. It’s been like 3 hours. I was like, holy shit.

It was 3 hours. It could have been done doing something useful, but then I was like, no. No. This is good. This had to happen. And then I went in for, like, another hour more. And I just became aware of, like, you know what?

No. This is good. My brain needed to cool off. I needed to think about anything other than business and my website and all of this stuff. I I needed to let my brain cool off and and my spirit relax.

And and at the same time. and I’m aware of this. I’ve been doing this for decades. I know that the plan is being improved upon by my subconscious as my conscious fritters away my free time like that. my valuable time.

I don’t worry about it. I learn this about myself. You give yourself a break every now and then, and you you’ll get the hang of it over time. You’ll get to hang up knowing, are are you taking a break, or are you just fucking off?

And I still fuck off too. You don’t get away from it. I am not one of these grinders like Gary Vieg Harry Vayner check or any of these alpha males. I think, actually, I haven’t dug deep into this. I saw some shit on on YouTube.

But I’ve only glanced at it. I think I’m a Sigma male, I think. Just a fun fact. But I’m not one of these guys that could just like, I’m on fucking coke. Just go go go go go go go in for the kill. Close. Always be closing.

I hate that. I don’t wanna live like that. Ultimately, all I wanna do is talk to cool people. That’s the whole point of this whole damn show. I just wanna talk to cool people. who are doing cool shit and be included in some way.

I have turned this into a business so that I can survive rise up through the ranks of of cool peopleness until I can play at the level that I truly want. That’s why all of this exists.

As far as perfection, it’s never gonna be perfect. I don’t know who does it perfectly. the more the the longer you live and find out other creator stories, you’re gonna find out some are better at some things than others.

Some sore to do the awesome things they’re talking about or the impossible things they’re talking about with their work ethic and shit, but even them, Everybody fucks up.

Everybody has a string of failures in their past. There’s very few people that knock it out of the park on their first go.

Give yourself the grace to accept that as reality and still proceed in a proactive fashion that does not upset your mental wellness status. You drive yourself crazy with this shit if you go out of too hard.

There’s times when you have to go hard. There are. And there’s times when you have to go hard for, you know, a certain amount of time, but it it, you know, at least with me, it it comes and goes in waves.

I cannot I can’t sustain it. I’ll have a day where I work super hard and I feel great and I line up 3 or 4 or 5 things to do the next day that’ll just kinda polish off the foundation of what I built that day, but it was that day.

The very next day, and possibly, frequently, the whole next week, I don’t have it in me.

I don’t have it in me to just do the final stages of whatever it is I started on a Monday until sometimes the following Monday or maybe 2 or 3 weeks later.

It just doesn’t happen. I get these bursts of inspiration and motivation on a super high level occasionally.

And whenever I try to keep going with them, If it’s not mindless routine, every now and then, I’ll have a stack of mindless routine things to do that I can grind through.

But not creation, not developing whole brand new things, editing things. No. Those moments come and go as they as they want. There’s nothing I can do to change it. It’s never gonna be perfect.

Thing’s never gonna be perfect, but I’ll tell you this much. It gets better the longer I’ve been doing it. I cannot believe how my website looks, how it functions, what it does, the amount of work I’m doing on, this is podcast Sunday.

My family calls it. I got at least 2 solid hours of leave me alone as I hammer out this podcast and all the associated pieces.

I’ve gotten it down to 2 hours. It used to be closer to at least 3 and sometimes 4. And now I’ve added YouTube. I went into that. I learned a lot of lessons the hard way with what I had initially established in there.

It doesn’t matter because There’s 8,000,000 people on the fucking internet. There’s something like 3 or 6000 3 or 6000 hours of footage being added every minute to YouTube.

Nobody knows I exist. They’re not gonna know you exist. Just start making shit. Get good with the fact that you’re gonna fuck something up. You’re gonna leave something out. You’re gonna whatever.

It doesn’t matter until you until you’re known. You’re you’re not known, and you’re so far away from being known. It’s not a concern. as you create your mountain of content and then strategically make friends with the right people.

Like, what I’m doing on LinkedIn, you can do air or whatever suits you, depending on you and whatever industry you’re in, you you make leaps every now and then in activity and gains.

And then you learn from it all and you improve, but for the most part, nobody sees any of your mistakes in your experiments. If they do one of two things, they hate you and they leave and fuck them because fuck them.

And two, they see what you’re doing and they can read between the lines and they understand what’s happening behind the scenes and they stick with you.

You win either way. The first guy probably was an asshole I would’ve given you heartburn.

The second guy believes in your cause to whatever degree and could one day become a partner or a client or just a really good friend. I’m on LinkedIn right now, and I’m I’m friends to I’m LinkedIn friends.

With a handful of people and the list is growing. And then I’m starting to really care about some of these people. And I know they feel the same about me. It just a few, but you start building relationships there and having fun.

And I’ve been doing that. And It’s nice. It’s nice to connect with people that are in the same fight I’m in at all different levels. They’ve all got stories about multiple attempts and failures and successes.

Same as me, and we support each other. And we don’t even in these kinds of conversations, we don’t even talk about it. We talk like you talk to any friends you have. You fuck around. Fuckeria bounds and you just have fun.

And, it’s it’s it’s delightful to me and it’s it’s a relief and I’m I’m glad I picked LinkedIn the way I did. I’m glad I’m using it the way I am and I’m getting super excited because my to do list got shave, write down almost nothing.

And I’m starting to create the outline for the content creation machine that is going to be used via Justin Welsh’s LinkedIn content courses. There’s 2. That’s it. but they’re extensive. I get the logic behind it.

I like what I like how it’s gonna cause me to think, how it’s gonna cause me to share my points, and how I can automate it all at scale. people are gonna find out about me in a big way very fast relatively soon.

That’s the thing I’ve been fighting to get to tour 4 months. The last few months, my my at my day job, I’ve had to learn skill sets and a way of moving through my day that has been strenuous.

And I I I work with people who are disadvantaged in a number of ways, and it’s draining even on a good day because you gotta give and give and give.

And, even when you enjoy it, it it just it takes a lot out of you and, I have almost no energy at the end of every day. But even there, I’ve realized my, you know, my my body.

My body’s letting me know. It’s time to get back into the gym and everything. I started stretching again for real yesterday. That was sex. Oh my god. My knees stopped working over the last so many weeks.

Painful, painful knees. felt like they were full of fluid. I’ve had that before. I beat myself up a 1000 different ways over the years, but I knew there was nothing wrong with my knees.

I knew it was because of the inactivity and and physical inactivity in my day, how I’m forced to sit in these tiny little company cars then sit at a desk and sit at people’s homes, sit at malls, sit, sit, sit, sit, then I come home and sit at the computer.

This is most goddamn sitting, I’ve done in my life for any reason outside of being mentally ill and unable to function in society, then then Just that, like, I’ve never sat so much coupled with the lack of energy at the end of each day and and which keeps me from going into the gym.

I’m starting to pay a price that cannot be ignored. My gym my gym had got turned into a storage facility.

Thank god. I cleared it out enough And that was by necessity. That wasn’t like the thing where people buy, you know, treadmill and then start hanging clothes off of it to dry after 3 months. That’s not what happened.

I’ve been forced to do different things in my my real world that are out of my hands and a lot a lot of reactive stuff. Things happen and I gotta react home and and they weren’t part of the plan. And that’s that because that’s life.

Sworting it all through, getting it all done. I got the gym opened up. My son, who’s the size of a fucking truck. He’s been in there with, 1 or 2 of his friends training, and I had always wanted him to train with me.

And when I was actively training. He wasn’t into it. Now he’s into it and I fell out of it. However, I’ve been training for about 40 years mostly full time.

I have to have it. It’s just life went somewhere. I never saw it coming. And then once I realized what all was involved, I had an idea how long it was gonna take to get through it.

And I’m almost through it. I’m I’m going through a a an ocean of changing life situation stacked one on top of the other the likes of which I haven’t faced since I was actively fighting bipolar 20 years ago, but it’s all working.

And I got the gym cleaned out the other day and straightened up and and opened up. And I got things There’s just a lot of things in my physical world that are literally moving around that are providing me more and more space.

But I’m managing and facilitating it all. I got my woodshed getting cleaned out. I’m gonna turn that into a mini garage. I don’t burn wood anymore. It was in the way. I found people that needed it really bad.

I’ve been in that spot before. That’s like getting handed money. because it is really. And they just came and take all the took all the wood. I didn’t wanna fuck with it. I didn’t wanna touch a single stick.

Like, there it is. It’s yours. You just gotta get it out of there. And, now I’ll have more space for even more things that will clear clear up areas of my life to make things easier for me in that respect.

So it’s never gonna be perfect. Alright. It’s never gonna be perfect. but it gets better as long as you keep working at it.

So you gotta start for 1, and that’s why my website’s designed to people designed to reach people who are just starting. I can work with people at any level at any, you know, that you can be in business for decades.

You’ll still find me very valuable. doesn’t matter. That’s not what, you know, that’s not my value. What my value lies in is my my presence, my thoughts, my wisdom, my insights, my mood, my energy, I don’t care where you’re at it.

I don’t care if you’re earning a 175,000 times more money than me. I still know things you don’t I have points of view that’ll help you add 1 more 0 to everything.

And if you’re just starting, well, that’s like the sweet spot with all that I do. I’m gonna be a huge benefit to you. But you gotta start. And then you just keep plotting along. You’re gonna screw a lot of things up.

You’re gonna eat your own face off wishing you could do better, and this is how you learn. You just keep going and stacking skills and accumulating knowledge and experience, and the damn thing starts taking shape.

Along the way, other people more for the most part who you don’t didn’t even know we’re watching you, we’re waiting to see you reach some level of success or accomplishment before they jump in and say or help or take part, and they will.

It’s happening to me now. I don’t wanna use a first name, Tammy. Something’s happening.

It’s brand new. And it’s going to help me. It’s gonna help some of you who come my way whom I cannot help in a way that I’m not qualified for. And this other project has turned into what it is I would do with a paying client.

This started out as an agreement between a couple people to give each other a hand. And it rapidly is becoming something much larger and official looking. I already know how most of it’s gonna go.

I know whatever Tammy requires I can provide. And and I’m very excited about what she’s gonna do and my part in it, which I get and I said is what I built all of this for. and I never saw coming. That was where that point started.

I never saw this coming, but I knew that things I didn’t see coming were coming. Tammy just brought me one. And it wasn’t even immediately clear. Conversation took place across many days, and the next thing you know, something happened.

Neither one of us was striving for anything really. And, just happened, and I dig that. And I want more of it. Tammy, thank you. This thing will work, or it’ll take more than one try, or it goes away completely.

But out of the efforts, we put into it. We’re gonna learn cool stuff, and we’re gonna do good no matter what. There’s no way we can’t personally. I think it’s gonna work because I ain’t that complicated.

And there’s precedence for it being a real thing. It’s not it’s not a stretch in any in any sense. It’s it’s doable. one day. I’ll have Tammy. I’ll have Tammy talking to me if she agrees to. She doesn’t.

That’s fine too. what do you call it, chat? What what do you call him? I don’t know. Quiet, quiet partner. that’s it, guys. I really wish I had a a closing line other than Be Well, but, apparently, I’m never gonna try. So Be Well.


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