Be Steady
When the day has already gone sideways, this is the one that puts your feet back under you.
Each one opens with a two-minute talk, the way I'd explain it to a friend. Then it takes you under for ten to fifteen minutes on one thing: nerves, anger, eye contact, energy, finishing what you start. Headphones help. Lying down helps. Nothing else is required. New session every week.
When the day has already gone sideways, this is the one that puts your feet back under you.
Most people who come across as closed aren't cold. They're careful. And careful reads as cold from across a room. This session lets the careful part stand down.
Charisma isn't volume. It's feeling something for real, letting people catch it, and not catching theirs. This session finds a time you were lit up and teaches you to carry it into a room.
The voice that says "that's not me" isn't telling the truth. It's reading back what was true once like it's a law. This session replaces it with a more accurate one.
The tell was never the problem. Being embarrassed about the tell is the problem. Stop minding it, and it mostly stops.
We hold on to the familiar even when we don't like it, because known-bad feels safer than unknown. The way out isn't duty. It's wanting.
Letting somebody know you like them is a gift to them, not a risk to you. Holding it in isn't modest. It's withholding.
Anger makes you strong and stupid at the same time. Step out of the scene for one second and you keep the strength and lose the stupid. This session teaches the step.
Most of us play not to lose. That gets you average. You have to want it, out loud, inside yourself, to play to win.
Not coffee energy. The quiet kind that gets things done and lets you take the day as it comes. It's already in you; this session goes and gets it.
You don't pick your feelings any more than you pick the weather. You just have to be honest about the forecast so you can decide what to wear.
You already know how to look at somebody; you learned it before you could talk. Nerves make you try to do it on purpose, and that's the only thing that breaks it. This session gets you relaxed enough to let your eyes do their job and forget about them.
Starting is a rush. Then the new wears off and what's left is the work, and that's where most things die. This session takes the decision off the table: you decide once, before you start, and "I don't feel like it" stops being a reason.
The fear of being turned away makes you grab, or makes you leave first. Both come from the same mistake, thinking you couldn't stand on your own. You can. You already have.
The feeling of being sure isn't coming. Nobody gets it. You decide with what you've got, and then you dig one well instead of twenty holes. For the person standing at the fork too long.
The sessions are becoming a book, Be Clear: every talk and every script, so you can read them at your own pace or record them in your own voice. Leave your email and the first chapter comes to you now, and a note when the book is out. Nothing else, ever.
I'm Randy Clinkscale. I've spent twenty-plus years as a finance executive, and I write the Free and Clear books about starting over. These sessions came out of the same place the books did: a hard year, and the realization that I needed something I could put in my ears and let do the work. I made them in my own voice, for anyone who wants them, from one man's side of it.