Read time: 7 minutes
The Story Behind Claspal
By Reigo Sinisalu, Founder
I built Claspal because so many of us feel heavy, numb or quietly broken, but never look inward, we just keep running. And even when we finally stop long enough to see what is really going on, life rushes back in and the clarity slips away.
This is the story of learning both lessons the hard way.
On March 23, 2020, I sat alone in a locked-down apartment in Portugal and wrote this:
"I have 59.95€ in my bank account. 20 euros in coins. I need to pay 2,000€ in 8 days. I'm on the edge of bankruptcy. And yet today I watched 5 episodes of Narcos.
Why don't I feel anything? For 2-3 hours I was shitting my pants, but then... nothing. Numb."
That was the darkest period of my life.
Portugal wasn't my home. When lockdown began, the borders closed and I was cut off from everything familiar. For weeks, no face-to-face conversations. No friends. No structure. Just me in a foreign apartment during a pandemic, watching my bank account drain.
I tried to push through but nothing worked.
The numbness was the worst part. I should have been terrified: broke, isolated, life collapsing, but I felt nothing. Just hollow. Like watching myself from outside my own body.
I’d wake up and stare at the ceiling. Let hours pass without meaning. Let days blur into each other.
And I couldn't find my way back.
Three years earlier, in 2017, I was 21 - studying, working two jobs, hitting the gym, maintaining relationships - and convinced myself I needed to start MORE businesses. At a real estate seminar, a coach named Paavo Siimann pulled me aside:
"You don't need more ideas. You need clarity."
He was right. I had endless energy but zero focus. My mind was a storm of possibilities with no center.
He offered to coach me for free, with one condition: someday, I'd do the same for someone else.
Those sessions changed everything. For the first time, someone saw through my chaos to what I actually needed. Not motivation. Not information. Clarity about who I was and what mattered.
I never forgot that feeling. Or that promise.
The Pattern
After that coaching, I felt unstoppable. I joined mandatory military service in 2018 with a focus I'd never had before.
But a year and a half later, the clarity had faded. I was lost in the noise again.
So I reached out to Peep Vain, who is Estonia's most respected personal development trainer. By autumn 2019, I was helping create transformation events, learning how change actually works.
I felt alive, purposeful, aligned.
However, at the end of 2019, he ended our collaboration. Everything I'd been hoping for, dreaming about, was gone overnight.
Three weeks later, I left for Portugal for my six month exchange studies.
And then Corona hit.
That brought me back to that moment: broke, numb, unable to feel my own life falling apart.
The Way Back
Eventually, something shifted in Portugal.
I stopped trying to feel better and started trying to understand. I took a personality test, genuinely asking: Who am I? What drives me? What do I need?
That inquiry gave me clarity about who I actually am. Not universal truths, but personal ones. What mattered to me.
With that clarity, I could finally act.
I built structures. Got into the best physical shape of my life, learned that discipline pulls me out of darkness. But none of it would have worked without clarity first.
I came back to Estonia in June 2020 with one truth: real change begins with clarity about yourself.
When Success Isn’t Enough
Back in Estonia, I dove into real estate. Within two years, I had the apartment on the 18th floor. Sports car. Money in the bank. And a job in a 27th floor office overlooking the city.
But I'd wake up at 3am feeling the same hollowness I'd felt in Portugal. My relationships were falling apart. I could feel patterns but couldn't name or stop them.
Success didn't fix what was broken inside. It just gave me a nicer place to feel empty.
On January 9, 2023, my manager asked if I was satisfied. I was honest: No.
I wrote to my journal: “Would one more year here make me 3x smarter? Maybe 30%. But happy? Satisfied? Inspired?”
Four days later: “If I want to live the 1% life, I have to do things 99% of people won't do.”
My last work day was February 12, 2023. That was the day I stopped settling.
The Deep Work
From that moment on, I focused on understanding myself.
I took courses about holistic psychology and reconnected with Peep Vain. Over 1,000 hours of deep work: trauma, attachment, unconscious patterns, values, shadow work, embodiment.
I helped create transformation events, watching how people changed, and how I changed. In winter 2023, I started weekly coaching for six months.
During these times my fundamentals shifted.
I stopped trying to be impressive and started being honest. The armor came off. The performance ended.
I learned to let love in. People had loved me before, but I couldn't receive it. The walls were too high. When they came down, I finally understood family and closeness. Not as ideas, but as lived experience.
From that place of connection with myself and the people I love, work became different. Not something I did to prove my worth, but something that flowed from who I actually am.
The Two Gaps
Through understanding myself and others, I saw two problems:
First, most people never start. They're too busy. On autopilot. They sense something's off but never stop to ask: Who am I? What do I actually want? Why does this keep happening? They keep running, hoping things will magically improve.
Second, even those who do the work, who have profound insights, lose it. They leave seminars transformed. Clear about what needs to change. But without integration, the insight doesn’t stick. It fades.
Then three months later: "I haven't had time." "Been too busy." "I'll start again next week."
People change when they're hurt enough to change, but without regular practice, even the hurt fades back into numbness.
The first gap is never starting. The second gap is not continuing.
The most powerful insight becomes just a beautiful memory without continued work.
And it's not just about integrating big breakthroughs. It's about staying clear in everyday fog. When life gets busy. When the noise returns. When we drift and don't notice.
Real change doesn't require thousands of hours of training. It requires starting, then continuing: one honest question at a time, understanding ourselves a little better today than yesterday.
I couldn't find a tool for both problems.
So I built it.
What Claspal Is
Claspal is regular practice for self-awareness, whether starting for the first time or continuing work already begun.
Not therapy, not meditation, not coaching, because those are irreplaceable. Claspal is what helps people start getting clear and what maintains that clarity between sessions.
Guided questions that adapt to where someone is. The AI remembers history, asks follow-ups, helps reveal patterns that have been invisible.
Over time, clarity compounds. The real self emerges. The gap between "I have to" and "I actually want to" becomes visible. Autopilot ends.
A way to get clear. And stay clear.
What Qualifies Me
I'm not a therapist. I don't have a psychology degree.
But I've lived this: 8 years of personal work. 1,000+ hours at Holistic Institute. 2+ years organizing transformation events. I've built Claspal as the tool I needed for my own clarity and growth.
I know what it's like to have clarity and lose it. Over and over again. To live in the best apartment and still feel empty. To face bankruptcy and feel nothing.
I understand the cycle: Clarity → Action → Drift → Realignment.
We all drift. The question isn't how to stop drifting. It's how to realign faster.
What I Believe
In 2017, Paavo told me I needed clarity, not more ideas. He said someday I'd do the same for someone else.
I'm not doing this because I owe him something.
I'm doing this because I've seen what's possible when we start with clarity about ourselves.
I believe the answers are already inside ourselves. We have just been moving too fast, performing too much, to really hear them.
I believe that when we slow down enough to see ourselves clearly, and keep returning to that clarity regularly, everything starts to shift. Not overnight, but in a real, deep way.
I believe we are meant to stop pretending and start being honest with ourselves and each other, and to build lives we actually want, not the ones we think we should want.
And I believe that world starts with clarity. One honest reflection at a time.
If you recognised yourself in any part of this, I built Claspal for you.
Start with one session. Give yourself 10 minutes and see what happens when you put your thoughts into words instead of carrying them in your head.
And if something in this story resonates, I would genuinely like to hear from you.
Reach out on social or write me an email.
Share where you are right now. Share what hit home. Share what feels off. Ask questions. Tell me I am wrong. I am listening.
I'm not doing this because I made a promise to myself. I'm doing this because I imagine a world where we all get to live our dream life.
Let's build that world together.
Reigo Sinisalu
Founder, Claspal
reigo@claspal.com
P.S. If you're currently where I was: numb, achieving but not feeling, successful but empty, there's a way back. Not through more achievement. Through clarity. First with yourself. Then with others. Then everything else follows.
