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Ever wonder why success doesn't always equal fulfillment?
Join Tim Salmans on "Powerful and Unpolished" as he challenges the status quo with this question: what if the key to fulfillment lies in recognizing and breaking free from energy-draining patterns? This podcast isn't just about success stories; it's about the unspoken challenges that high-achieving individuals face. Tim Salmans will unpack the complexities that cause frustration, offering tangible strategies to navigate personal challenges within professional landscapes while maintaining your authentic self. Subscribe now for a transformative journey - where authenticity meets success on your own terms.
Good day everyone. Welcome to Powerful and Unpolished. I'm Tim Salmans, your host. For those of you who have been listening or following along, I've been on a hiatus for a while. I've been traveling, celebrating my 20th anniversary with my wife, and just took some time off to reground and nurture myself, exploring life. Even though it's been a while, I just want to say thank you very much. If you're tuning in and listening to this, I appreciate you taking the time. I appreciate you opening up to maybe what this will have to offer for you, or maybe I won't have much to offer. I don't know.
That's one thing about Powerful and Unpolished: we're always exploring what the possibilities are, how you're receiving the information, how you're processing that information, and what shadow areas get in the way. That's the whole purpose of why Powerful and Unpolished was created, along with my business, Insights for Choice. Because if we dig deeper and discover the insights that are speaking to us, it empowers our choice. And when we stand in choice, then what we can create in this world is usually beyond our expectations. So that's what I'm welcoming you back to. You'll probably listen to some of these podcasts and I'll be tripping all over myself. Other times, the energy and clarity will succinctly come through. For all of those moments, I hope that you are open to that for yourself. I hope that as I discuss and talk about ideas, there are just one or a few concepts on the available spectrum that speak to you, because we all have engagements with people, with situations, with our expectations that can trip us up and get in our way. Oftentimes when we get stuck in that stuff, that's the problem: the stuckness, the thing that keeps us caught up in the expectation, caught up and attached to the way it needs to be or should be, or people tell us how it could look. It's always nice that information is there. It's when we get stuck on it.
With that said, today I didn't dial into one specific concept other than the fact that I wanted to get on here and let you know that Powerful and Unpolished is planning on doing two shows a month, maybe a bonus show here and there. Some of our episodes will have guests. We have some great guests. Anytime I meet a person who is skilled in their profession, but even more impactful as a human being, someone who shows up with genuine, authentic personal possibility of what they have to share, what their expertise is, what their insight is. Because as you're listening to this, and hopefully you're doing this (most people do, I know I do it a lot): as I'm listening to something, I'm also processing. As I'm processing, I'm processing for me. Does this open me up to be stronger in what my intentions are? Does this open me up to a concept or awareness that I hadn't quite considered before? And if I did consider it, what would it do?
The ongoing messaging for Powerful and Unpolished, for Insights for Choice, for my book Inner Wisdom, Outer Impact: Leading Your Life from the Inside Out is about the individual stepping further and further into their own fulfillment, into their own creation, into their own empowerment, and to look at the stuff that gets in the way: the things out there in the world that catch us up, the things in our inner world that catch us up, our shadow side versus our light side. You will cross paths with so many concepts. I get caught up in them, I lose myself in them. Sometimes I start swimming up the wrong path or going into an area that doesn't serve me in my headspace in certain situations.
One of the conversations I will let you know is that I can be very extroverted, but honestly by nature I'm kind of introverted. I like taking in information, I like exploring the possibilities, and I have to remind myself from time to time that getting out and putting energy into those concepts brings it to life because all of what we're talking about through Powerful and Unpolished, through Insights for Choice, through Inner Wisdom, Outer Impact is about application. How are you taking the information that's growing you, that's discovering you, that's fertilizing your path, that's fertilizing your possibility? How are you putting it into practice? And when you put it into practice, how are you listening? How are you processing? How are you engaged with your own expansion, with your own development? Because ultimately it comes down to this: this is your path, this is your life, this is your possibility.
We're in a time, in a day and age that's quite interesting. I make comments every once in a while. You know how they say life imitates art. I found that to be true quite often and throughout the ages, not just today, but throughout the ages. The interesting thing is when I have conversations with my wife now, I make a comment about the Hunger Games. When the Hunger Games came out and you had the city Panem, where it was all plush and vibrant and successful and full of public displays of abundance. And then you had all these districts that were on the outskirts that supported and enabled this abundant or exuberant city of wealth and expression, if you will. And when I make the comment to my wife about Panem, I look around and I see people with their temporary eyelashes. Some people call them fake eyelashes, but whatever they are. I mean, some people, it's just part of what they put on, which is great. You know what, I have nothing wrong with being creative and putting yourself out there if that's what makes you feel good and you feel good about it.
The interesting thing is to witness and recognize: in the last 10 or 15 years, I have seen more people put on these eyelashes. I saw some on this trip, this vacation trip that we took recently, and I was like, how do you keep your eyelids open? I mean, if you look at me, I have very small eyes and they look like I'm asleep half the time anyway, but I see these other ladies with these heavy duty eyelashes and I'm like, oh my Lord, I couldn't even wear my glasses if I had those. And I said to my wife, this is like Panem. I wouldn't have seen these eyelashes this big, this verbose 15 or 20 years ago. I see it in the makeup. I see it in our culture. And it's great that people are putting themselves out there and expressing themselves.
I highlight that only for this purpose: I hope these people are putting that much effort into their inner world, their internal world, because oftentimes when someone puts that much stuff on the outside, they're trying to make up for something on the inside that's just not gelling, it's just not quite working. And I wonder sometimes when somebody is so put on. I've heard it over the years, I've seen it over a number of decades where someone will work hard to be successful, to look good, to put on that outer world, the world of Panem that I think about, and inside they're alone, they're untrusting, they're missing their own value, they're missing their own gift. And I highlight this only to bring awareness to it so that there is an opportunity for abundance. And the abundance is that you can find that kind of stuff in your inner world if you put some energy into it. If you want to go crazy and dress up however you want to dress up, by all means do what you want to do, do whatever empowers you, as long as it truly empowers you.
Going out to energetically make an appearance to suck energy off the world around you because you can't do it internally is a missed opportunity for you. It's not the world's job to feed you energy. It's your job to roll up your sleeves, to find your possibilities on all levels, on all avenues, however it may come to you, but to find your value and truly be with it and relish it. Because if you're seeking it from the outside world, you may look good for a short time, but I don't want you to become a statistic. I want you to be able to embrace yourself. And it's amazing when you see someone who energetically is dressed up to the nines and they're putting themselves out there and you interact with them and they have just as much depth and wealth to their inner world. It's a blessing. It's like, oh wow, this person's really playing, taking care of themselves, putting themselves out there. But it only happens few and far between, which is one reason why there's so much angst and fear and trepidation and struggle that is currently happening in our world and has been happening for quite some time. But it's amped up right now, and this is the possibility for you.
This is just awareness. Whether you're in District 9, District 12 of the Hunger Games or you're in Panem, the opportunity is: how is your inner world? How do you want to show up and what do you want to create both internally and externally? That's today's conversation: be aware of the world around you. And one reason why I wanted to highlight this awareness is just because someone's putting on a good show and you can feel like, wow, maybe I'm not up to par, or maybe I'm not doing what I should do. People will say, I don't care. People do care. There's a reason why we're losing so many people to statistics who are very successful, very accomplished, and very unfulfilled, and very depressed and very let down.
This is about having real conversations about exploring real possibilities, about finding true value and love for yourself externally, but more importantly internally and giving yourself the ability and freedom to create. Which is why when we bring guests on to this show, it's to relish the expertise that they bring, but also to learn who they are as human beings. Why is this important to them? Why is this kind of work so important to them? I mean, sure, we all want more clients. We all want to be more effective in the world. And when I say we all, I mean that's still general. Some people are content doing their thing and they're not worried about it. God bless. But this is our possibility to play with possibility and to bring life to possibility. That's why Powerful and Unpolished: there are times I'm probably on here and I sound pretty funny or look pretty funny, and I cringe at myself sometimes and I laugh at myself at other times, and maybe not always where people would expect. But this is the heart, the soul, the essence I want to extend to you.
If you're putting out a lot of energy into the world, are you putting just as much into your inner world? And not just convincing your ego that you're good and you do this. I mean, our ego is our biggest nemesis, our ego is our biggest challenge, our ego is our biggest liar. It just is, because it fights to feed itself. These are ideas and concepts to play with, to pull around, to stuff like this. And when I do these solo events moving forward, it's to stoke up thoughts, stoke up opportunity for people to be aware, to grow awareness. I hope this is helpful. I hope it helps to honor who you are because your path, the lessons on your path, you are worth it. You are worth learning those lessons. I am worth learning my lessons. And as we move forward, as we grow ourselves, as we find people of like-mindedness who we can support, who can support us, but more importantly, who can support us in being us and we can support them in being them. And it's not just for attention and it's not just for validation. It's for actual honored purpose of who we are as individuals.
I put this out there because, again, Powerful and Unpolished is meant to be this opportunity of thought and support. Insights for Choice, same thing. At Insights for Choice, we are launching a membership community to support people in having ongoing, deeper conversations. That's going to be launched in February 2026. You might want to check it out or ask questions about it because it's going to be a private membership collective so that we can support one another, but we can also stay in this conversation. We can have a safe space to possibly grow deeper in our ability to be vulnerable as well as strengthening who we are through vulnerability, because that's where real strength comes from. And personally, I know that intellectually. Personally, I know emotionally it freaks me out, but it doesn't freak me out in a bad way. It shuts me down and I hide out, or my ego has me hide out and I justify myself. And then I go, oh, wait a minute, I'm here to do something. I'm here to connect. I'm here to have an impact because I can, and you can, and each one of you can, not for the purpose of edification, but for the purpose of: this is who you are, this is what has impact for you personally, externally, as well as internally.
With that said, I just wish you all the best. We're going to keep rolling these out. We're planning on two episodes a month, but we may get an extra one or two in there. We're planning on officially releasing at least the second and fourth Thursdays of the month. That'll give you an idea of when these episodes are going to roll out. If you're still listening, if this helps you, supports you in exploring your own internal world, just know that we are here with you while we are exploring the expression at the same time. This is about participation. This is about being in the practice. It's about your becoming. It's about my becoming. It's about us focused on what's important, which is the essence and the power and the truth that we bring to our daily walk.
Until next time, and I do have a guest coming up on an episode next week, I think, I hope you find this useful. Maybe you find it entertaining. Like I've said in the past, maybe there's some college students that'll have drinking games around this. God, I love creativity. Anyway, I am grateful if you're listening, and I wish you all the best in this next week. Stay open to the possibilities. Stay open to your possibility and know that you truly do bring impact beyond what your awareness is. You make a difference whether you know it or not. You do. Give yourself the gift of just holding space for who you are. Until next time, I wish you all the best. And if this sounds like it might support someone who might be struggling or someone who's open to their growth, please ask them to come on and listen and check it out.