Everybody Has a Stake in What You Say

People tell me things they have not told anybody else. There is nobody I do that with.

Not for lack of people. There are three or four I could call at any hour and they would pick up.

But every one of them has a stake in what I say. My family lives with whatever I decide. The people who know my work would be measuring it against what they already think of me. Somebody who loves you cannot hear you say you are unsure about something without wanting to fix it or take your side. They are on your side already. That is the problem.

So I do what everybody does. Each of them gets the part that is useful to them, and I keep the rest. That is where Candid Offload came from. Not from spotting a gap in a market. From twenty-five years without it, and working out far too late what it had cost me.

I did not expect how one-sided it would become. I now hear other people’s unedited version fairly often. Mine still does not get said anywhere.

You cannot do this for yourself. However clear-headed you are, it does not work inside your own head. It has to be said out loud, to somebody who has no stake in what you decide.