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.