Emotional Healing · Workshops · Counseling · Retreats

The peace you seek may be closer than you think

If you're struggling with relationships, anxiety, self-worth, emotional pain, or a lack of purpose, Choose Again offers a transformational path to greater peace, freedom, and connection.

Through awareness, self-inquiry, forgiveness, and compassion, people around the world have discovered a new way of understanding the beliefs and patterns that create suffering.

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Not a replacement for professional support. Many people come alone or with a partner, a sibling, or a grown son or daughter.

Since 2006 — twenty years of this work · Max 12 people per retreat · Workshops & counseling year-round · A registered 501(c)(3) non-profit

Why People Come to Choose Again

The same pain, in a different form each time

Some are struggling in relationships. Others are carrying anxiety, fear, loneliness, self-doubt, or a sense that something important is missing. Many have spent years trying to change their circumstances, only to discover that the same challenges continue to appear in different forms.

Choose Again offers a path to understanding and transforming the beliefs beneath these experiences — so that lasting change becomes possible.

Relationship Struggles

The same argument, the same distance, the same ending — with a different person. Understand the belief that keeps recreating it.

Explore relationship healing

Anxiety & Fear

Managing anxiety is not the same as ending it. This work goes to the fear underneath the symptom, not the symptom alone.

How to stop anxiety at the root

Self-Worth

"I'm not enough" is a belief, not a fact. Improving self-worth begins with seeing where that belief was learned.

Improve your self-worth

Emotional Pain

Anger, shame, resentment and numbness are messengers. Emotional healing starts when you learn to read them instead of fight them.

Explore emotional healing

Grief & Loss

Loss can leave you feeling stuck in life for years. Grief moves when it is met with compassion rather than managed alone.

Find support through grief

Purpose & Meaning

Successful and still empty. Finding purpose is less about choosing a direction than about removing what is blocking it.

How to find purpose

You are not broken or stuck.
You just forgot the truth of who you are.

What Is Choose Again?

The beliefs we hold about ourselves and the world shape our experience of life.

Choose Again is a transformational approach to emotional healing and spiritual growth founded by Diederik Wolsak. At the heart of the work is a simple understanding:

When those beliefs are rooted in fear, we suffer.

When those beliefs are brought into awareness, transformation becomes possible.

Through the Choose Again process, people learn to

Recognize recurring emotional patterns
Understand the beliefs beneath those patterns
Respond with greater awareness and compassion
Experience more peace, freedom, and connection

Learn About the Choose Again Method

A Choose Again group session at El Cielo

You are not your patterns.
You are not your past.
You can choose again.

Diederik Wolsak, founder of Choose Again

Meet Diederik Wolsak

He was not looking for a method. He was looking for relief.

Diederik was born on Java in 1942 and spent the first three years of his life in Japanese concentration camps. That self-hatred made him a successful businessman and an international athlete, and allowed him almost no joy. He was fifty when he arrived at the point that brings most people here.

What he discovered became the Six Steps: a practical, repeatable process for finding the belief beneath a reaction and choosing differently. He wrote them down so the work would not depend on him.

"Direct and eloquent… a practical six-step program to self-liberation."
Gabor Maté, MD — bestselling author

Read Diederik's Story

Transformation Stories

What changed for people like you who attended our events

Relationships & Self-Worth

"I am no longer acting out from my main issue — which was, yes was, feeling unlovable."

"I went with an open heart and mind. When it came time to do the steps I jumped at the chance — I opened the flood gates and let myself be vulnerable to your guidance. I knew there was a shift almost immediately."

Cece Cerletti — Participant, France 2024

Anxiety & Worthlessness

"They showed me a way to freedom from sadness, anxiety, and worthlessness — to joy, peace and love."

"How empowering is it to be told you have a choice, when it is said from an undeniable truth? With forgiveness as a key, they allowed me time to discover my true self. They guided me through meditation, yoga, coaching and group work. I am immensely grateful."

Michel, 60 — Medical Doctor, Pennsylvania · January 2024

Purpose & Meaning

"This program created a knowing of purpose, and a way of experiencing everyday life that brings the peace I have always wanted."

"It far exceeded my expectations. I have done several other 'improve your life' programs, but the effects didn't last because the change was not deep enough or fundamental enough."

G.J., 64 — Chicago, U.S.A. · January 2025

After Years of Therapy

"For the first time in my life, I see that total healing is possible — and that I now have the tools to make it happen."

"I've spent two decades doing the standard, accepted types of psychotherapy, even majoring in psychology at university to find relief from inner pain. The idea that I was a poor little victim was drilled into me over and over."

C.B., 37 — English Teacher, Egypt · January 2025

Where This Work Happens

Start online. Go deeper at our retreat centers when you're ready.

Most people begin with an online workshop or a one-on-one conversation. From there, some choose a residential retreat — seven to ten days at El Cielo in Costa Rica, or a single small cohort each year in the South of France.

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