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

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

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

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

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

Hello, bipolar prone folk. This is episode 39, Not Living My Dream / True Purpose. This is a part of the Life Of An Outsider series. You’ll find a link to the series in the footer of the website, bipolarexcellence.com.

Head over to bipolarexcellence.com. Sign up for my newsletter. You’ll get a tasty free guide that offers some serious help for some serious problems or serious growth right away.

Go sign up for that thing. And then let’s talk to each other some more. I want to know about you. That’s the first step to pulling that off.

Not living my dream or to appropriate. Okay. So this is very similar to the episode that just came before it, but it’s not as the other one was about the fact that not, not doing so is killing you.

So this is more general. And I had this sorted out when I made this list as to why it makes sense. I am thinking fast while I talk so that I make sure I’m just not doing, you know, saying duplicate information.

If I recall, the reason I added this to the list. Okay. Just, it’s more of a general thing. I didn’t know what to do with myself.

Like forget even bipolar for a moment. I just didn’t know what to do with myself. I can remember that going back into my, my youth. I don’t really count my youth as far as living a purpose or anything. Cause I, I didn’t know anything about myself, really. Period. I knew I hated going to work. I hated having a job. I hated how hard I used to work for very little money.

And a lot of that is still true to this day. And only now at the ripe old age of 53 is it’s it’s, it’s taken a turn. It’s looking like I’m about to do better than ever before, in a way that actually suits me as a person. So it’s, it’s really hard if your, your you’re trying to F the…

One of the wins. One of the wins we all look for is finding a job we love that pays us what we need. I have found that that’s an elusive beast. I think for most of us, it’s never going to exist. You’re going to have to build it.

That’s what I did with Bipolar Excellence. Now it’s not there yet. It’s not where I need it to be yet, but it’s growing. If you’re still back to where you’re no, you’re just doing jobs, I think one of the best things you can do right away is, is do the inner work on finding out what it is you’re best at.

Which starts with strengths, strengths tests. There’s a million strengths, strengths tests. I can’t say that right to save my life. There’s the Enneagram one. There’s. Oh Kolbe. Kolbe.com. Start with their Index A.

There’s a place called Wealth Dynamics that does this very thing but for people who are entrepreneurial minded, I like those guys a lot.

There’s something called Human Design and there seems to be about a million and a half people that offer some version of Human Design. Human Design is like the, let’s just call it the, the industry for this perspective of understanding oneself.

And then there’s people that have their, their take on it. The, the folks I trust the most, have hired and talked to and had a blast with was a. They called themselves humandesignforusall.com. I’m honestly not sure if they still do or if that’s what they turned it into, but if you do a search, I’m sure it’ll link to whatever they are. If that’s not what it is. It’s a guy’s name is Chetan, CHETAN

British guy. One of the coolest people and most fun people you could ever talk to in your life. For any reason. You would love to just talk. You’d love to just sit and have coffee with this guy and talk about the weather. He he’s that fascinating, but you need, you need to start.

You need to start understanding yourself. You know, you need to see where your strengths are and you need to stop focusing on bringing up your weaknesses. Bringing up your weaknesses is some horse shit that got hammered into all of us in the school system. They want you to have an A across the board.

Or you need an A across the board so that if you come across everyone, that’s the same as you, looking for the same job and one of them got a B, you’re going to get the job. I get that. But that’s really in a very narrow window of career choices. You want your doctor being that smart. You want your lawyer being that smart sure. But for damn near everything under the sun, which is like 99.9% of us, we’re not going to be those things.

You don’t, you, it’s a waste of time trying to bring up your weaknesses. You want to maximize your strengths. You want to find out what it is that you’re good at. You, you want to find out like in Kolbe, regardless of all else, what you’re what you’ve been proven to do in various situations.

Regardless of what you think about it, regardless of how you feel about it, here’s how you’ve been proven to act. Kolbe all by itself will blow your mind when it paints the picture that is you. You can’t argue with it. You cannot.

And it’s a relief because you’ll finally understand why you struggle in some areas and excel in others. And once you make these clarifications, you can better align yourself with the job that you ought to be doing.

Or within the job you do, you can carve out an area that’s yours, because that’s what you’re good at, if there’s room for it and, and not struggle to be these things that you simply are not.

There’s too many people that just take a broad stroke approach to everything and try to be awesome at everything. And it’s, it’s, it’s inefficient, it’s stressful and for the most, you know, for the most amount of times, it’s, it’s, it’s pointless.

You want to find out what you’re best at, and it doesn’t matter what it is. And then find out where to put it. To ignore those things is to keep you forever away from living your dream or discovering your true purpose.

Now, in my opinion, I’ve heard this stated other places, your purpose on life is to make the best use of your time on earth to help as many people as possible with whatever it is are that are your greatest strengths.

Becasue you’re gonna reach a point that I’ve strived to reach since I don’t know. I can’t remember when I first said it. Somewhere in my thirties maybe? I’m 53 now.

I just want to get paid to wake up and be me.

There are people that do that everywhere. You’re still going to work hard. You’re still going to suffer. You’re going to sacrifice, but it’s all for something you care about the most. A job’s usually not that. If you care about doing a good job, just to be, you know, a good person and do quality work, that’s admirable and you should! Don’t be a slouch.

Don’t be a problem to your coworkers. Don’t, don’t, don’t bring down the system because you’re unhappy. It’s just an improper fit and that’s on you. It’s not the system’s fault. You went for the job. So do it the best you can. But off to the side get a better idea of who you are and why, and try to find a place that’s looking for that.

If you can’t do that, which I believe my own experience has shown me is frequently the case, or you don’t understand yourself well enough yet, because this can take some time, do the job that you hate, which is most of us, and slowly start building something like what I’ve done with Bipolar Excellence.

It’s going to take a minute. You got to get working on it as quick as possible.

After the strength tests, one of the next best steps that you could incorporate into tryin’ to figure out how to get closer to living your dream or purpose is Steven Pressfield. He’s got a string of books on Amazon that are all about they’re very, they’re short books. The chapters are sometimes just a paragraph or just a few paragraphs. And he puts down what it takes to make a dream come true.

And every chapter’s an action step, every single chapter. He, he weaves in some story here and there for context and to make a point, but the whole damn book, page for page, is action steps. All of them! And they’re little guys. You can get through them pretty quick. This is all going to take time.

You’re going to have to split your energy between whatever you do for a check and whatever you do to build out your dream. You’re not going to know what your dream is til you know what your strengths are. And you’re not going to know how to pursue this without instruction from someone like Steven Pressfield.

One of the reasons I send you his way is he calls himself a 17 year overnight success. He struggled for 17 years, while getting a jobs- that’s interesting. I just realized now this was not my original intent in this episode- he did what I just suggested in the whole episode. Started out with jobs he hated. Thought he was this thought he was that.

And he’s an ex Marine like me. That gives you strength and it’s also a problem, depending on whatever. And he was miserable for a number of years. Half starving for a number of years.

Slowly starts figuring himself out, slowly starts taking jobs that get him closer to what his dream career is and puts him in the path of people associated with his dream career. And failed. A lot …at the dream pursuit. Failed a lot, while getting paid better and getting better at doing his job side of things.

Until at one point he went and sold the script for The Legend Of Bagger Vance. He wrote that that script. And he made a million dollars. And prior to that, he was making like $300 or $700 a script, something like that. It was nothing. For the work he was putting in? It was absolutely nothing. Then he, then he had a million and then he’s been millions ever since.

But if he hadn’t a slogged out that slog and, and, and become higher qualified as he went. And be open to opportunities that would get him closer to his, his dream of choice, the dream of choice. wouldn’t have shown up. That’s the work guys. You’re not going to live your dream or too true purpose until you better understand yourself.

And then once you do, you’ll better understand who it is you got to get in touch with, or associate yourself with and the situations where you might find these people or to situations that do what it is you fall in love with. And you’ll learn how to get your way in to those things. You got to understand yourself better. This dream, with rare exception, is not going to fall in your lap.

If it does, you’ll be like a LOTTO winner. You’ll probably destroy yourself because you didn’t do the internal work. You didn’t do the exercise necessary to become the person capable of managing the thing, once it’s there. And you will not only lose it all, you’ll probably be in worse shape than when you started.

This is a mission. Doing what we do as former bipolar people or bipolar prone people are still dealing with a taste or two of it, and building out a big vision? We’ve got more work on our plate than the average Joe. But we’re also built for it, if we approach it appropriately.

I want to help you approach it appropriately.

Go over to bipolarexcellence.com. Sign up for my newsletter. That’ll be the first step. Read the guide that comes with it. Shoot me back a question or two. We’ll take it from there. All right guys. Be well, see you on the next episode. .