The Choose Again Method
Insight is not the same as change
Most people can describe their patterns accurately. They can tell you what they do, why they probably do it, and roughly where it started — and then repeat the whole thing by Thursday.
Understanding was never the missing piece. A process was. The Six Steps to Freedom are that process: six moves, in order, that you can run yourself the next time it happens.
We don't build people into something new.
We clear away what's been blocking the truth that was always there.
That distinction is the whole method. Nothing here adds a skill, a mindset, or a better version of you on top of what is already running. It removes what has been in the way.
The premise
You are the author of your experience
That sentence tends to land badly at first, and it should be said carefully. It does not mean you caused what happened to you. It does not mean you are to blame for anything done to you as a child.
It means the meaning you gave those events — the conclusion you drew about yourself — was yours. And anything you authored, you can read back, question, and write differently.
The Six Steps to Freedom
Six moves, in order, every single time
Not a philosophy to agree with. A sequence to run — starting from something that actually happened to you this week.
1
Awareness
Seeing the pattern clearly, without judgment.
You cannot work on something you have not noticed. The first move is simply to catch it happening — the flare of irritation, the withdrawal, the tightness — and to look at it without immediately deciding what it says about you. Judgment closes the door this step is trying to open.
2
Willingness
Choosing to look at what is underneath it.
This is where most people stop, and it is a genuine choice rather than a formality. Looking underneath means giving up the version where someone else is entirely the problem. Nobody can make this step for you, and it is the one the whole process turns on.
3
Core Belief
Naming the specific belief generating it.
Not a general theme — an actual sentence, in your own words, in the first person. I am not enough. My value is what I produce. If they knew me they would go. It usually arrives with a small physical jolt. That jolt is how you know you have the right one.
4
Responsibility
Recognizing you are the source, not the victim, of it.
The step people brace against, and the one that sets this apart from most therapy. It is not blame — what happened to you was not your doing. But the belief you drew from it is yours, and that is good news: a conclusion you authored is a conclusion you can revisit. Nothing you are the victim of can be changed by you.
5
Forgiveness
A specific process for releasing the belief.
Not condoning anything, and not a feeling you have to summon. It is a defined process — and it begins with yourself, usually with the child who made the decision in the first place. Only afterwards does it extend outward. People are often surprised by how much of this step is aimed inward.
6
Choose Again
Consciously choosing what replaces it.
A belief removed leaves a space, and something will fill it. This step is choosing what — deliberately, in words you actually believe rather than words that sound good. It is also where the organization gets its name, and where the work stops being analysis and becomes a decision.
Simple to read. Not always easy to do alone, particularly the first few times — which is what the circles, the counseling and the retreats are for.
Step one of the chain
A belief
Decided early, rarely revisited.
Produces
A feeling
Which arrives faster than thought.
Produces
A behavior
The reaction you later regret.
Produces
A result
Which then looks like proof of the belief.
Most self-improvement works on the third box. Change the behavior, manage the reaction, communicate better. It works for a while, because you are pushing against a current rather than turning it off. The Six Steps go to the first box.
The mechanism behind the change
Why this holds when other things fade
A belief survives because it is never examined. It operates below the level of argument, gathering evidence and quietly arranging your life to confirm itself. You do not argue with it because you do not experience it as a belief at all — you experience it as the way things are.
Bring it into the open, in specific words, with the moment it was decided attached — and it stops being the way things are and becomes what it always was: a conclusion drawn by someone very young with limited information.
That is the whole mechanism. It is why the change tends to hold rather than fade, and why people describe relief rather than better coping.
"I have done several other improve-your-life programs, but the effects did not last because the change was not deep enough or fundamental enough."
G.J., 64 — Chicago · January 2025
Independently evaluated
In 2014 the program was assessed in an independent prospective evaluation. Very few organizations doing this kind of work have submitted to one at all. Read it and judge for yourself.
Read the evaluation (PDF)Honest about what this is
What the method is, and is not
It is not therapy
Choose Again is not clinical treatment and does not replace it. Many people do both, and we will always tell you to stay with your therapist and keep taking what you are prescribed.
It is not positive thinking
Nothing here asks you to layer a better sentence over the old one and hope it wins. The old sentence is found, examined honestly, and allowed to fall over on its own merits.
Its roots
Diederik's own study of A Course in Miracles shaped this work, alongside twenty years of sitting with people. You need no interest in that, or in any spiritual tradition, for the steps to work.
It is yours to keep
The steps are written down deliberately, so the method does not depend on us. Learn them once and you can run them alone, for the rest of your life, at no cost.
Where the steps are written down
Choose Again
Six Steps to Freedom
Diederik wrote the book so the method would not depend on him. It takes each step in turn, and you can read it and practice alone at your kitchen table.
Most people do that first and come to a circle later, when they want someone alongside them for the harder steps.
About the BookPraise
"Direct and eloquent… a practical six-step program to self-liberation."
Gabor Maté, MD — bestselling author
Or try it now, free
The Six Steps practice guide
We will send you the practice guide — the six steps written out with an example, so you can use them the next time something comes up.
Where to practice it
Reading the steps and doing them are different things
Steps two and four are hard to do honestly on your own, because they are precisely the ones you have been avoiding. Most people need someone alongside them the first few times.
Open Circle
Monthly, online, pay what you can. Watch Diederik work the steps live with somebody. The cheapest way to see how this actually goes.
Dates & registrationOne-on-One
Private, at your pace, on your own material. Sessions are built around the steps so you leave able to run them yourself.
How counseling worksResidential retreat
One step a day for a week, in a place where nothing else is asking anything of you. The deepest version of the work.
Costa Rica & FranceChoose Again USA
Choose Again USA, Inc. is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit and the American sister organization to Choose Again, founded by Diederik Wolsak.
© 2026 Choose Again USA, Inc. · Choose Again is not a substitute for medical or psychiatric care. If you are in crisis, call or text 988.
