For example, I smoked for over twenty years. Every method, every patch, every attempt. Nothing worked. One session of Belief Coding on myself and I stopped overnight. The next day, when the urge came, it felt like a passing balloon. Detached. Not mine anymore. I realised that when I reached for my tobacco, then later vape, I was trying to comfort a feeling of isolation.

That was the moment I understood what root-level change actually looks like. No longer did I feel like my challenges were being stage-managed in endless weekly sessions where I did most of the talking. Not coped with through tired hand-outs that offer cookie cutter advice that never landed with me.

The challenges of smoking / nicotine addiction had been dissolved. Their effect in my life gone.

But the work with smoking became a tripwire into something much deeper.

The belief driving it all was installed age six when I saw something into a situation the grown-ups did not (hello intuitive child) and was told to 'shut up'. That six year old chose to never speak up again and as a result, started to feel alienated from his caregivers and family.

Come the teenage years, he started smoking to repress his voice in moments where he should have spoken up. It also gave him a circle of connections that dysfunctionally filled the void left by his family alienation. Especially when I started having relationships.

While this was revealed to me during the smoking session, it kicked the ball forwards for what was to come next, leading me to the loose threads of a deeper pattern - being anxiously attached to others instead of securely attached to myself.

I realised there and then, that while I had vowed no more relationships where I have to fight for the bare minimum, to be seen, to be heard, to be appreciated and valued as a human being. It was all one big feedback loop from that decision to shut down at six years old.

I had been circling around the same wound in every relationship, choosing the same kinds of unavailability, thinking if I just jumped a little higher they would choose me, mistaking intensity for intimacy. All because I hadn't learned to choose myself again, at a much deeper layer of who I am.

This was a revelation because not only had I conquered something that was terrible for my physical wellbeing, I had found freedom from a pattern that was playing havoc with my emotional, spiritual and mental wellbeing.

The belief driving that pattern was a childhood reaction to criticism coming from the people who mattered most to me. It was totally illogical, and no amount of shutting it out or trying to mindset around it made any difference.

I was a child. An impressionable child who needed support, stewarding and then ultimately re-parenting as an adult.

This is far from uncommon. Chances are you are resonating with what I'm sharing if you have landed on this page.

I did not find my freedom and shift through therapy, though I tried for years. I did not find it through medication, I tried that too. I did not find it through positive thinking, journaling, retreats, meditation, or any of the other things I threw at it over two decades.

I was involved in a psychedelic research trial which did unearth some things, but that way of approaching inner change just wasn't practical for me. Nor did it go deep enough. It also required long cycles of integration on the other side of the experience. I was tired, fed up, looking for a more effective solution rather than just another quick fix.

While I have to give credit for the amount of foundational support this has given me for the bigger change, it wasn't until Belief Coding® entered my life that I truly became reborn as the man I always knew I was supposed to be.

Over the next few weeks, I started to work deeply on my attachment questions, becoming more confident and secure in myself. Even started asking out women without feeling the need to muster courage first (this was very new). I didn't feel the need to diminish or water myself down. I could be myself around people I didn't know with open-hearted honesty, warmth and curiosity. If someone wasn't for me, no harm, no drama, wish them well and move on.

Freedom to live on my chosen timeline as who I want to be.

Not endless nights of micro-analysis and trying to find ways to will the gods to make the connection work.

This shift happened over sessions, a few weeks, not years and certainly not by circling the issue endlessly.

That is what I mean when I say I have done the work. Not read about it. Done it. Fallen on my face, picked myself up, tried something else, fallen again, and eventually found the thing that actually shifts it at the root.