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Show Notes:

It would seem…that life continues to happen…regardless of the beautiful, wonderful, awesome-fest of a project building event we are currently wrangling.

I ran into a steaming pile of it at my real world job just the other day.

I experienced negative emotions of a sort and intensity that have been dormant for years.

I forgot to mention in the episode that I have a PTSD background as well. It normally means little to nothing.

But the thing at work had the war vet Marine in me waiting to strike. I just didn’t let that happen.

I coped.

I even reformatted my understanding of events to see the positive hidden within.

This understanding led to some breakthrough decisions, regarding these twilight months of my employee life.

Y’know. Silver linings and shit.

Don’t let anything derail your dream for a moment longer than necessary.

Transcription

Welcome to the Bipolar Excellence Podcast. Episode 34: Forced Evolution.

Something new today, if you’ve been following along! Hopefully someone’s been following along who, routinely. This will be part of the new series called Personal Development. I’ll put a link to that in the footer of the website, bipolarexcellence.com with the other series.

This can go so many ways. So I’m going to try to focus real hard on, on why. Where this title even came from. And it’s based on my current events. And also it’s layered on top of the overall plan.

So.

Here’s the deal. When you’re on a mission to spread your word, to the world, or share your project, build your company, develop your coaching career. Spread the news about your artwork or the thing that you build, or the service you offer, all the things you do as a bipolar person that make it better than everyone else that does that thing without bipolar.

Whatever, though, whatever that project may be,.

Regular life, somehow doesn’t seem to give a shit that you’re on a mission. And that you need to be left alone so you can complete it in peace while utilizing full focus.

Life seems to get in the way anyhow.

I’m coughing a little cause I was lifting weights in the cold air. And I’m not just, just not too long ago and I’m still getting my lungs back to me. Okay. Here’s what happened.

I work at a rehab facility and I love the work. I love the guys I help. It’s an all male facility. This is my job. And I deal with dual diagnosis people. They got an addiction and there’s usually a mental health issue, issue, aspect attached.

I kind of think that’s the default, if you’ve got an addiction. The addiction, I don’t think it ever just rides all by itself.

There was either a mental illness prior, or you developed one as you destroyed your mind, with the addiction post.

Anyway, I love the job. It pays dirt. And I took it because I was at a similar facility. That was like the stuff of the dark ages. It was like the Spanish Inquisition at that place.

The, the clients were well, they were treated like they were still in jail and that they had no worth other than numbers on a sheet. Their humanity was overlooked entirely and, and squashed, even though our, our, our program mandate said something different.

So now I’m in a different place that’s much more sunnier than that. I’ve been there a while now. Coming up on a year. And there’s a similar problem, nowhere near as bad, but similar.

Now, as I coach people who are high functioning, bipolar people, and build out that passion project, my passion project, it hasn’t taken off fully yet.

So I still have a job. If you’re listening to this podcast, you’re probably in the same boat. And at the job I have now, I want so bad to tell this story without falling into too much negativity. There’s someone that showed up and got paired with me and we completely clash on how to run the shift. And this is there was a blow up.

I was managing this person for a while. Thought I had everything under control. And really that person was quietly boiling and was waiting for his moment to address this issue. The details don’t really matter. We just couldn’t see eye to eye and we, we got right up to the edge.

This guy brought the old Kenny to the surface, in a way that I haven’t experienced in many years.

The old Kenny got notified that he might be needed a bunch of times at the last job. And some things happened there with people that made me extremely mad, all in favor of the clients.

I cannot get behind what a lot of these addiction places do and how they treat the people we’re supposed to be helping.

But this, this time, this guy awakened the beast. And I got to tell you, it made me metaphorically sick to my stomach. The levels of anger I reached were so huge and, and my desire on some level to use that anger for the worst reasons. I had to walk away. So did the other guy. To our credit, I don’t think either one of us would have acted on this.

We just would not have. We’re not children. But we wanted to. And in my case, there’s something in my, my makeup between bipolar, my bipolar past my, my own addiction past. And then in particular, my Marine Corps training, and I’m a war, vet.

There’s there’s a piece of me that needs to never come out ever again.

I can’t get rid of him. Whatever we did and, and we are it’s, it’s still in there. It just depends on you know, are we ever going to decide to tap into that thing and make use of it in any way to do harm?

And I refuse to. I don’t even want to. Even as mad as this guy may me, half my anger was because I got to this place. And I knew that this with this guy I wasn’t going to, there was no way to win argument wise. There was no way to win, which made me even madder.

And really, really? Now here’s big picture. Really? I didn’t belong. I don’t belong where I am. I’m not earning enough. I’m using a tiny percentage of a percentage of my skillsets to do this job, as much as I love it.

And that’s what I’m really mad at. And I knew that when I took this job. I knew it when I took the job that was before that job.

The cool thing about these jobs and here’s some more big picture for you. I’ve learned a lot about coaching that I didn’t know I was needing to learn, uh skills I was lacking, until I took those jobs.

This current job, particularly, I’ve experimented with certain coaching skills and perspectives. And I’ve learned to listen to people better and not assume certain things. And how to reach people more easily that are in a more delicate frame of mind.

Too bad I couldn’t have used it with this guy, but it’s a different kind of thing. We weren’t, not coaching him. I had in the past, but apparently not well enough because it, it blew up anyway.

And when, when the here’s the ultimate, here’s the ultimate big picture lesson: I’ve been mad about this. This just happened two days ago. I’ve been mad about it for days. I wanted a certain kind of resolution that I quickly realized was not to be had, and that it’s not even what I really want.

My initial desires, they’re not even my true desires. I just need to upgrade my employment status that in a way that uses more of what I’m about and pays me what I’m worth.

I came away from this still. I’m still, still mad, not happy, but, but, but working on not letting the anger lead into anything else.

I realized right away, by the second day I realized this guy handed me a gift. Because it kicked off a whirlwind of activity where now I’m upgrading my employment situation.

I still don’t want a job. I don’t want to work for anybody. It’s why I do this podcast and why I have people come to me. I am meant to just coach and help people.

And I’m only interested, really, in doing it with people with big dreams. I don’t, I can do the other coaching with people with, let’s just say day to day, regular person dreams. And I enjoy it because I simply love helping people.

And I particularly love helping people struggling with mental illness and addiction problems. But going forward with my big passion project, my business, that’s not, that’s not who I even want to work with.

If that’s where they’re at entirely. They’re still struggling to get any kind of stability off the back of those two problems. That’s that doesn’t interest me as a bill, as a business building prospect.

So I said all that, because then, my emotions switched more towards a subtle anxiety. Something I haven’t felt in a number of years. And it hung. Slight depression, slight anxiety.

Nothing’s anything. Nothin’s explodin’ in my face, in my life, in my heart and my mind. Nothing!

And I think that’s an important decision. What do you call it? Word came in my head and went right out. Distinction!

You can feel certain aspects of bipolar and it doesn’t mean you’re having a bipolar situation.

Depression’s normal in certain situations. Anxiety is normal in certain situations, particularly around work and jobs.

My anxiety stems from I have, I have to reinvent myself a little bit once again. And go job hunting or look for a way to climb the ladder in the place I’m at. And one exists. And it doesn’t interest me.

This created a little bit of depression and a little bit of anxiety in me, to the point that it, it really grabbed my attention. I’m like, geez, I, I got a, I got a problem, so to speak. This, this isn’t leaving me alone. Hasn’t been this hasn’t been here in years, there’s these problems for me.

I get them every now and then, but th this was lingering.

And part of it is because this hasn’t been resolved yet. I still have to go back to work tomorrow and sort this out with the boss because it became a whole thing.

And again, it’s, it’s ridiculous what it’s based in. And I don’t even care. I just want out of this place, but I have to do it in a way that’s sane and responsible.

I can’t blow my money up. And I’ve found a few different ways to do it.

So tonight, actually two nights ago. And, and then tonight, I lifted weights and an interesting thing happened there as well. Back when I was actively bipolar, I used to lift weights to exorcise my demons.

A lot of guys in the gym, particularly meatheads, like me, the guys with a, you know, a layer of concrete on the surface of their hands of calluses and, you know, the bleeding and the scars from different things that have happened in the gym.

And, you know, th the, the guys that just go in there to destroy. A lot of these guys have done. They’re lifting that weight to try to exorcise some demons.

I don’t think that’s necessarily bad. But it’s only a surface approach. You got to go deeper, with workin’ on the demons. And I won’t get into all of that right now.

I actually have a course on that in my website, the a, It Takes Guts To Live Well course, if you really need help with that.

And I haven’t lifted to exorcise my demons in quite, quite a long time, years. Well, I was exorcised in these last couple of days.

And it’s interesting because tonight it wasn’t working through the whole, through the whole workout, until the very last couple sets of what I was doing. When I’d finally exhausted myself. And I had to focus with all my might to not, you know, do the workout improperly and hurt myself.

I’m dealing with a slightly damaged shoulder. So the tiniest little wrong movement at the wrong time will, will open up a tear again in the muscle. And then set me back weeks. Something I just endured just a little bit ago. I’m rehabbing that shoulder it’s coming along nice, but I’ve got to really focus and be careful and listen to my body. W a hundred percent attention.

When I reached that hundred percent attention, coupled with the exhaustion of all the work that came prior? At least for about 30 minutes, all my tension left me, my mood brightened, the anxiety left, and I felt like King Kong. And it was nice.

It surprised me. It was a, it was, it was inside of two seconds when the switch took place. I honestly wasn’t even looking for that. I just wanted to feel better. I didn’t realize it would be that potent when it hit.

And then I felt like the old me. The me that can win at anything I try. The me that even if it doesn’t look like I’m winning, still got still going to try with all my might and have total faith in myself.

I can have that at all times, but I don’t always feel it. And I felt that again, just, just within those last couple of sets.

So, I guess I just wanted to share with you. I definitely did not want to rant about the bad things in my life. I wanted to make clear that there’s going to be bad things in your life, no matter what, even with my help.

Life’s life. But I wanted to point out the good that I discovered in these moments. And then these various, like I said, I, the gym with the exorcising. That’s ex-OR-cising. I haven’t had to do that in forever. And tonight I feel like I did it correctly.

I feel like I used it therapeutically and it’s definitely not how I work out. I don’t lead with that ever. It doesn’t even interest me. That’s not how you should work out. You should have the hundred percent focus and everything, but it, there shouldn’t be a demonology problem involved as well.

But I had one and a, and I kind of dipped back into my old. Some old perspectives in the gym, really, without trying to, and I felt a lot better. So there’s, there’s positive value in that. It can’t, you know, you don’t want it to be every single time you go into the gym, because you got other problems that the gym is not meant to solve.

But for a on the spot patch up, it worked brilliantly. I feel pretty good.

And I’ll let you guys know how the employment thing worked out. Ah, that was another lesson I wanted to make clear to everybody. You, you can work, you can pull jobs that bring you closer to assisting you in the building of the passion project.

The job I have now pays so little it’s laughable. And it I’ve, I’ve learned so much doing it.

And I’ve had such good times. But not, not just in an entertainment sense. Really fulfilling times. And I’ve helped some guys in some, in some real tough spots.

And besides another person I work with, we’re the only ones that do it. And we know this. And we both suffer for being how we are. And we don’t, we both do not belong where we are and yet we’re glad we’re there to help these guys and give them some relief they can’t get elsewhere.

And help them fix some things in a way that no one else around us is willing to do.

Can’t stay there because I can’t afford to. And a piece of me feels like I’m letting these guys down, just in my potential leaving.

I felt that way when I left the last place too. It was like, if I walk, there’s nobody here to, to advocate. There’s nobody here to fight the system on their behalf. Because the system’s fucked up.

It is hurting these guys a thousand percent more than it’s helping. And it disgusted me and I fought back because that’s what I do. Everywhere I been, all the time, my entire life. Even in the Marines, I fought the whole Marine Corps in my way, with a bunch of guys that were just like me.

But anyway, I hope some things in there help give you some perspective on your struggles and what to do about them, what to feel and think about them and how you can find the good in them.

And if you’re working with me, we’ll, we’ll come up with specific steps and systems to help you deal with these things even better.

And I want to leave you with. This is so exciting! I came up with a new outro!

Please, always remember. And I mean this from my heart, somebody out there needs you to pull off the thing you’re trying to pull off and you’re going to achieve it because of your bipolar characteristics. Not in spite of them.

There is a power to experiencing what you’ve experienced with bipolar. I want to help you find it and use it in the ways I hopefully made clear tonight for you guys. All right. Okay then. See ya on the next episode.