Hey, this is Ken Jensen. I beat bipolar disorder in an all natural fashion back in the mid 2 thousands. 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. Hello, bipolar prone folk. Welcome to the show.

This is episode 54. Your value is not in what you do. There’s this thing with me that I’ve found over and over again where I get involved in projects of all all sorts. Not lately. I’m I’m actually going back a few years.

I I learned what was going on in a way that was not helping me. And I got out. But for a while, I was in a number of of projects, small business start ups. I was a team member of some sort in a couple cases.

I was a partner. We had clients who became partners. I I got into real estate. I got into banking. I got into some super high level tech stuff online that I didn’t know I knew how to do until I was forced to to learn it.

And 1 of the things that messed me up back then I I wasn’t bipolar anymore. I I had a certain amount of mania that lingered, but I was aware of it.

And it wasn’t it wasn’t troubling. I just was a high energy guy. But bipolar made it hard enough for me to figure out who I was as a person for any reason whatsoever, where I was going.

I just I just couldn’t understand myself. I lost the ability to understand life around me. Other people, big time. I just couldn’t figure out other people anymore at all.

They couldn’t figure me out. That’s bipolar. Somehow out of that, I became a better person than other people wished was around more often. Went from pushing me away with a 15 foot pole to embracing me with open arms.

Now As far as the value being not in what you do, I’d started a I did an earlier version, an earlier shot at this this particular episode and lost my train of thought and had to start all over again.

So I’m trying to keep it simpler this time around. I’ve had a very long day that was unexpected. So I’m digging this out of me. Real simple, I had a boss a former boss from a factory job I had when I first got out of the marines.

He like me. We were we weren’t buddies, but, you know, we got along really well. And I I eventually left that job in cross paths with this boss locally years later.

Now I’m involved with a new project. 1 of these projects I’ve spoken of before. I was I was part of a crew of 3, and we were to salespeople, for a technology that it did take it to take too long to explain.

But we had a real simple deal with the engineers and the inventors of this thing. The thing was a 2000000 dollar sale. You sell 1. We give you 20 percent. That’s that’s the whole deal.

So we like 20 percent of 2000000. That that sounded out standing for 3 guys up in the woods in upstate, New York. So we tried real hard to sell those things, and then we even helped the engineer and the inventor expand the vision.

I I turned into a real estate guy. I was all over the county looking for buildings where we had enough room to once we sold some of these things, then we’d have to build them.

So I was looking for space and buildings that would have the infrastructure necessary to put some of these these they were 2 story machines.

And we knew where we were gonna get the crew to build them. We were all over this thing before we ever sold a single 1. This boss gets pulled in because we ran into some kind of technological problem with what we were looking to do.

And we brought the boss in my my former boss to get his perspective because he was he had he had degrees and whatever, and he knew how to run production lines.

So I talked to him separately looking for his help to design this production line. And he quickly drew up some sketches, and he had some ideas.

And, you know, I was super pumped on this because in the back of my head is constantly thought 20 percent of 220 percent of 2000000 dollars. And I was gonna pay the boss well because we were buddies.

And and so that’s all that’s on my mind. And as he’s helping me figure out the technical issues with moving product and and building stuff on a production line, I could tell he just wasn’t all into it.

He didn’t need to be. That wasn’t even the problem, but I just couldn’t understand why he wasn’t so into it. And he kept veering away from the discussion at hand why we had agreed to meet and more more into his personal life.

And he it got to the point where I had to, like, change the conversation, like, in an attempt to be polite and just talk to him about his personal life.

Now this was I don’t know. This was like 15 years ago or so. I didn’t know then what knew now. I I did my best to say nice things and and help them.

But I was really annoyed that he wouldn’t just stay focused on why would agreed to meet. And especially since he he had appeared very enthusiastic when I first pitched him on this this meeting.

There was like 1 more meeting where we were pushing hard on the business of it and the development of it, And I could see he was flat out annoyed.

It’s a business meeting, and he still just wants to talk about his home life. And something happened and and the back and forth between us that, I realized we we lost him and and he’s just all focused on his personal problems.

That’s how I looked at it. These things were true, but it was a hint from the universe as to what it was I could offer people.

I was able to pick that thing apart, reverse engineer it across many years, and I realized he didn’t really give a shit about what we were doing.

He easily solved the problems we had, and and then he just wanted to move on. He saw something in me that he thought would help him with his personal problem.

He had marriage issues, other family things, money problems, just a lot of things went wrong on him. And he was feeling rather hopeless. He had dug himself a serious hole.

And and much much later, I could see how he just wanted somebody to lean on and talk to about this that he thought might be able to help. And for reasons, which back then were not clear to me, I was that guy.

Having done what I’ve done all the years since and all these different capacities with people and what I’ve done for a paycheck over the last 4 years in particular, Now I know what he’s saw in me.

And it’s just that you you can talk to me, and I’ll I’ll probably have something good to tell you that’ll help regardless of the problem, bipolar or not.

This kinda thing has happened to me time and again in my my non bipolar excellence life.

I had a guy on another job, a boss, a real nasty and just stupid work kind of job where I was making a lot of money, and all I had to do in in my case was was be awake and speak English and I was overqualified.

The job bore me to tears, but I was making a really handy paycheck. And this guy, he had issues. And and There was stuff going on. We worked we worked on his home property, and his family problems spilled over into the job.

And 1 day, he and I were talking about some things, and we were just talking about the job and the potential expansion of his company with me at the helm of that expansion.

Went out of nowhere, he just, like, asked me. People people confiding you, don’t they? It was out of nowhere.

And it stopped me in my tracks, and and at this point, I knew that to be true. I was like, yeah. They do. I said, I don’t know what it is. But, yeah, people come up to me. People come up to me in a grocery They don’t know me.

I could even be having an off day where I don’t I’m not looking to talk to anybody or make any friends, and and there’s there’s, you know I got an interview about me, like, give give me some space.

And they’ll come and talk to me anyway. And that’s happening off over the decades, and I realized it’s just a thing.

It’s a thing for everybody in my family, really. But this is what I’m getting at. No matter what I’ve done, no matter where I’ve been, people drop their problems at my feet.

People share their dreams with me easily quickly. People looked to me for leadership in situations where I’m not the guy in charge of whatever the thing is.

That they want to be led through. People develop a trust in me very fast. And that’s a large chunk of my value, even in what I’m doing with you right here now, listening to this. I’m podcasting. I have a website I do marketing.

I’m getting ready to do this insanely large thing on LinkedIn that’s gonna cause me to have to kick off this entire writing system But all of it is so I can have a chance to display what my value is as a person If I hang out with someone long enough and we talk long enough, We’d even announce a focus, and it might take days.

It might take weeks. Eventually, something’s gonna pop into my head that’s gonna brighten their day.

It could be an actual fix to a very large problem. Or it could just be a little something to get them over the hump, and that’s all they were looking for, or that’s all they can take for the moment.

Or it can be just out an an enough of a something with hope so they just don’t spiral completely down into the abyss.

I can do these things effortlessly. And it took me a very long time as I was doing these things, to try to figure out what it was I could do as a career and get paid well for it.

Because prior to learning what I know about myself now in in in the coaching industry, I didn’t know you could get paid for this.

I just noted this thing with me and people practically kept getting in the way of whatever it was actually drew us together, which was not this emotional, abstract thing that would eventually become.

I had to walk away from a lot of partners and a lot of things that went sideways or just fell flat.

And with with every single 1 of them, they were just destroyed that I was leaving, and I would tell them, like, this is not working. We’ve been at this for months. It’s it’s it’s flatlined.

Or it has potential. There was a couple cases, maybe 3 really, where I almost went big time, but I was carrying almost the entire a higher load of the dream, all doing all the labor, and I needed the other partners to to do more.

There was things the only they could do, but they never had the time or the energy because they normally had other jobs that ate up the bulk of their day.

I did a lot of my growth and learning and and dream building when I was on disability.

I started figuring out what I was about, then I started trying to figure out ways of making money to get off disability and it was gonna happen anyway. I mean, which is kind of a funny problem.

They tell you once you got bipolar, you’re fucked and you got it for for life and just live with it. Take your pills. Take your pills. Get used to it. Become okay with it. And just accept that this is your future.

Well, I did for a bunch of years until I didn’t. When I was forced to find another way out of that bullshit, and realized there was another way out of that bullshit. I couldn’t accept it anymore.

So I knew that my disability was was, you know, those days were numbered, and I was gonna have to go back to work and do something. But I’ve never liked going to work for anybody for any reason. I I wanna be in charge of my own day.

So I started going to a lot of soul searching and reading a lot of self development and personal development, personal growth books, you name it, trying to figure out what it is I could do for people and and really I didn’t really get the my head around it fully until I got certified as a life coach, and they clarified for me the difference between therapy and coach and then I realize I am not a therapist even though that gets requested of me a lot in so many ways.

I’m a coach. I don’t like pulling people up out of the mud all day long. I can do it, but it drains me but I will help shove you up a mountain and never run out of steam for the entire week on no sleep.

When I find someone that wants to excel, I catch a hold of their bug just as strongly as them as if it was my dream that I’m building and and not just theirs.

Now as a coach, you gotta, like, you gotta draw a little line in there. You you can’t own whatever is their thing. And they’ve gotta build it. And I learned I learned that lesson the hard way too.

I got sucked in some like a whirlwind. I got sucked in the projects here and there. I never should have been a part of not because of me, but I wanted it more than a person to suck me in.

So You layer bipolar on top of all of this when you can’t even figure yourself out, and then you realize there’s something about you that If you ever regain sanity, it wouldn’t matter because you don’t seem to fit anywhere.

I’m telling you maybe you’re not supposed to fit into anything.

There’s a strong chance you’re supposed to be just like you are And your resistance of that fact and your ignorance of what it really is and what it means is driving a large portion of your bipolar.

If not all of it. You’re driving yourself crazy. That’s not gonna be every bipolar person. Alright? I say things Just to prove points, blanket statements definitely do not apply with this illness.

I’m just saying, for some of you, you’re feeding this thing. And it and it’s and it’s looking you’re you’re you’re on your inability to reach your goals and the frustration it call causes is coming out of you in the form of bipolar.

For other people, it’s any any other any other mental illness. And then addictions get thrown on on the top all because you’re trying to figure out what to do.

Not who or what you are. Now if you want to put a different spin on it, if you do something Let’s say you’re really good at something that’s a commodity. There’s a thousand other people right in your county that can do the same job.

Now for you, more than anything, you really gotta figure out who you are as a person because that’s pretty much the only thing that’s gonna differentiate you from the are people that can do just as good a job as you at that task.

Do you see what I’m saying? Like computer coders and website designers.

Oh my god, they’re a dime a dozen. I was 1 forever. I’m 1 now for myself. They’re everywhere. They’re everywhere. Why would someone pick you to design their website. Now it’s gonna come down to who you are as a person.

What kind of energy you put off, How do you make people feel when you’re talking to them? Your ability to think outside the box. Maybe you open up a conversation with starting as a website design, but to help them see a bigger picture.

Maybe all they’re looking at is, well, we have a problem and a website would decide would would solve it. Maybe that’s not it. Maybe that’s a thing that would help.

But maybe they’re missing a larger point and as you as a website designer, You’d tell them my shirt, that would help, and I could do it, but now if you talk to me, my gut’s telling me and then blah blah blah.

They’re probably gonna hire you anyway because because of how you handled that situation.

You could’ve just sold them on your on your skills and and got hired. You decided to go bigger and wider with them, or go deeper in the conversation and learn learn about them more as people.

That’s what I’m doing with you guys right here. Right now. I got apologized. I really wanted I really had a I had quite a plan in mind for this episode.

But IIII ran out of daylight, and I am doing my damndest to keep to my my plan. 1 of 1 of the things that helped you succeed at anything in certain areas is consistency.

And I’m not real good with that, so the 1 area that I decided I will be good it is making sure that it well, 10AM is when the newsletter to my list goes out to let them know there’s a new episode.

But on Mondays, But to get that done, the podcast episode has to be done Sunday.

I wanted to go to bed 3 hours ago, but there was no way I was gonna do it till this episode was done. And that just happened inside your ears. Thanks for hanging out. Good night.