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

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

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

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

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

Welcome to Episode 38: Mental Illness, Addictions, Chaos: Not Finding My Purpose Is Killing Me.

I forgot to mention this in the last two episodes, I now realize: This is another episode in the Life Of An Outsider series, you’ll find in the footer of the website, bipolarexcellence.com.

This is 38. I’m done at 44. Can’t wait. These things are important. I’ll refer back to them as I do other episodes and finishing this series has just about killed me.

It’s in the way of a lot of things. And I’m growing to hate it. But I know that I got to do it right. I’m going to do it from the heart and with passion. And they’re going to be helpful because this was all important stuff to me when I was climbing out of the hole and building my dream in its initial stages.

So yes, hating this series, that was a better plan in place. And then a lot of things changed in my life that limited my time to do it the way I wanted to. And I put a lot of things in place that couldn’t be undone. So it was a. It held up a lot of what is, is waiting to happen next that’s even bigger than this series itself.

And there’s nothing to do, but keep hammering away until I hit number 44 and finish this beast. But again, it’ll be fun. I’ll be, I’ll be referring back to these things over the coming years because this stuff’s all critical.

And this episode is, in particular. So this whole series… I made a list once of all the problems I came up against trying, trying to just straighten my life out and build it, build up a life that I wanted.

This is one of the darker episodes, and I don’t want to get too damn dark with it. And I can’t, if you’re in this, in this, I’m not even the guy that can help you get out of it, beyond selling ya a course on how I did it, which I did. I have a wellness course that’s a extensive, large, detailed, very organized, very helpful.

I got it over bipolarexcellence.com. But it’s, it’s like, it’s on you. You can use it and I’ll answer the occasional question, but my job with bipolar excellence is to not help people beat bipolar. You heard me say as much in the intro to the show. It’s not that I don’t want to it’s that I’m not qualified.

And, and I don’t want to. I want to help. I desperately would love to help you beat this thing, but experience has shown me these. This is the area of doctors and therapists. And I’m not that. I’m just some dude. I can share how I beat it and hope you do something good with it. And there are outside third-party organizations who will directly help you with fighting the illness, just like I did.

And I leave you in their hands. Once you find out who they are in that course. All right. So let me put that there, since that’s what a key, that’s a key part of the, the topic of this episode. You’re still in it. You’re still in the the God awful game, more than building out the big vision.

The way to tie these two things together… is what I realized was bipolar was a symptom of me not living my life right. It was not an illness. Cause I caught an illness like I caught a cold. It was, it didn’t just show up one day. A lot of things made it show up. I trauma set it off in me. I was able to pinpoint and how that happened. That’s was set it off.

But even, prior to then and all through it, it became clear to me… well it became clear to me in retrospect, everything about me, had to change. Damn near everything.

I was trying to live a life that was not talking to my spirit. It wasn’t talking to my heart. It wasn’t even talking to the better, the better aspects of my ability to think. I was limiting myself. I was playing it small. I was playing it safe. I was going with what I knew. I learned a lot.

I was very good at a lot of stuff with repair. A high, high degree of intelligence stuff. Stuff I can’t even remember how to do anymore. Can’t even believe what I used to know how to do. But it wasn’t for me. Life led me that way. How I got brought up trained me into that. How the Marine Corps, trained me, trained me into that.

Everything I did for the next 10 years enhanced, enhanced this wrong way of living that was not my thing. And I was sinking from it. Depression was the first thing I dealt with and it was fairly constant until bipolar hit. And that was when everything went a supernova.

Now, I discovered that bipolar was nothing really, any more complicated than get your head out of your ass. If you’re still in it, I realize that sounds insanely, you know, like, like I like ridiculing such an awfulness. I am ,in a way, to de-stigmatize it. To depower it.

You’re, you’re giving it more credit than is due. You’re not aware of how much power you have because the illness is making it hard to feel it or think it, or be aware of it.

Go through everything on bipolarexcellence.com, go through this whole Life Of A Outsider series. Keep listening to my podcast. It’ll make sense to you, why I just said what I said. It’s not because I’m a ridiculing where you’re at. God, no. I remember how bad it was. I just refuse to soak in it. I ain’t going to soak in it anymore, even to make my points.

I’m trying to be a little light with it to prove to you. I. I once lived in the darkness, the inky black darkness of the slime that was under the bottom. And I don’t know how I was never suicidal, but I’m not really sure how that didn’t come to be, because it would only make sense. Cause life living life was stupid.

Living life was pain. Period. Who would wake up to that if there was a way out? I just kept fighting.

But that’s the whole point of this episode. I don’t, I don’t think I really even have a whole lot to say about this sort of wildly, I think. But again, this is not my, that’s not my area. People better suited to assisting people out of the, out of the darkness, the pros in the mental health field, that’s who you want to talk to about this.

But I just want to make clear, I was where you are. And I got out. I don’t know if you can, but I know that it’s possible. I know there’s more help out there than you realize. You than you probably realize. And it’s growing. There’s a movement that’s been afoot for decades and it’s finding steam now.

The good thing about the pandemic here in 2022 is that it’s shorted out so many people, it put the focus on mental health, which means dollars got put on dealing with mental health. Because the whole country is experiencing pain directly from people suffering from mental illness in connection with the pandemic. They have to do something just to save America. To a certain degree.

That’s good news if you’re with me. You’re going to have help that I never had. You’re going to have direction and guidance and coaching that I never had. There’s going to be funding available for different things. Even if you do exactly what I did, probably some of it will be paid for by the time you get around to doing it because of how life has shaped up recently. You’re, believe it or not, you’re in a better spot than I was when I began this fight.

But again, I realize that, like never before, once I started coming out of bipolar, it was a fight of me against me. I knew that, initially. I knew I was just fucking up and just, I was paying a price for it. I just couldn’t see how. You don’t know how you’re doing these things, how you’re living wrong until you examine it closely. And I was trying to do so with a brain that didn’t even work.

I pulled it off little by little, chip by chip. I took an ice pick to that glacier and never stopped chopping. Eventually I got where I had to get. But as I, as I got there, it became very clear to me how miserable I was on all my many dozens of jobs, most of which I was really good at because I was capable.

None of which did I want. None of which were none of which were bringing me what I wanted in life, at all, beyond a paycheck and some pretty cool stories. But nothing was going to lead me where I wished fervently to be.

I thought for years that my purpose was helping people beat bipolar disorder.

That didn’t work. That’s when I learned the difference between therapy and coaching. I’m a coach. You can coach people. There’s a type of coaching where you can work with people that are hurting, but I, I do that minimally and, and I focus more on addicts, even though mental illness is always tied in with addictions.

It’s a lighter, it’s a lighter touch. The kind of coach I am, it’s very clear, made very clear in our training. We’re not, we’re still not therapists. We’re not clinical anythings. We’re just there for support and, and proof that it can be done. I love that.

But what I really love is, once you’re out of all of that, what do you want to do with it?

What have you learned? What do you want to tell people? What did you learn about yourself that you want help with seeing how to turn it into a whole way of living that you, you might even be unaware of that, that the potential doesn’t that it exists, but you don’t know what it’s called. You don’t know where to find it.

I’ve gone down all these paths myself, and it increases. I still go down these paths. I’m getting blown away by what gets brought to my attention. The more I keep chipping away at this different glacier.

I just want you to consider if you’re more bipolar than not, it, it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Things drive it. That’s why meds either can’t help you at all or work a little bit or work sporadically. Because the problem, in part is, you’re not livin’ one part of your life, or potentially all of your life, in alignment with what your heart really wants.

And your brain is waging war against itself in an attempt to wake you up.

I’ve this, isn’t just my opinion. I’ve studied this from teachers of all sorts. They say some version of this. They weren’t talking about bipolar in particular, but you’ll find evidence of this stuff in personal development and self-help work. Spiritual trainings. Meditative trainings, all of this stuff. Energy work.

You’ll, you’ll find evidence of it everywhere the more you read and dig. If you’re not a reader and a Digger then just take my word for it. Alright? The closer we can get you to figuring out what you’re really here on earth to do, at minimal, the less intense bipolar will be in your life.

I’ll tell you what, I’ll give you one crystal clear example that’s very small scale. For some reason, I always felt better in the doctor’s office, even though the doctors never helped me. And it wasn’t all doctors. I went through a bunch of them. The very last doctor I had, which was when I was my most sick, he had the lengthiest, most detailed in-depth conversations with me about the illness and life and the science of it all.

And when I was with him in these in-depth conversations, I had zero symptoms. Other than that, I was violently bipolar in every way you care to count. But in those conversations, as well as anytime I was in a good conversation with anybody, zero symptoms.

It was because I was focused on something larger. I took the focus off myself and I was… I like talking to people. I like hearing their stories. I like, I like learning about life through other people’s perspectives and experiences. All ‘o that was happening whenever I was inside of a good conversation, which led me to here.

Find out for yourself. Find out where you’re missing, what your heart’s trying to tell you and see if you can tease out what’s the illness and what’s the captain not leading the ship down the right sea lane.

I got a course on bipolarexcellence.com called You Be You. I designed it more for the people who are solid and looking to climb a mountain, rather than come up out of a hole, but it can do double duty.

It’s not going to help you overcome bipolar all by itself. It won’t. I got my wellness course that might might help you do that. It totally helped me, but I, I offer no guarantees there. I can’t. In the You Do You, it gets more into the the etherial, the abstract, the really misty stuff about why we are what we are and what to do about it.

And it’s a completely different perspective on, on wellness and growth. If you did that in conjunction with my wellness course, maybe, or whatever thing you’re doing to get better, that could help you as well. Again, no guarantees. I just, I offer it. I, I hope it, you know, if you use it, I hope it’s something that might help you.

You got any questions about any of this? Go over to bipolarexcellence.com. Sign up for my newsletter. You’ll get a free guide that touches on a number of these things. And I offer some direct sources of help immediately within the free guide. I worked hard on that guide and it looks pretty cool. Go ahead and sign up for the newsletter. We can talk more.

If you’re on my newsletter, you stand a greater chance of hearing back from me, if you drop me a line, only due to the time constraints and energy. I’ve gotta monitor who I talk to and why, so that they can pull off any of this, particularly for those of you who’ve invested with me.

But you make that little step and I will reciprocate. Join my newsletter, bipolarexcellence.com and you’ll get something immediately that will potentially be of great use to you, right on the spot.

All right, guys, let’s go to the next episode.