My life changed because I wrote what I wanted down.

I grew up in a South African village, in a strongly religious family and a community rooted in culture. Like many people around me, I went through traditional education and learned what a respectable life was supposed to look like. But beneath that, I carried a poor image of myself. I had come to believe that struggle and suffering were simply the way life worked.

At first, I only wanted financial freedom.

My first self-help book was Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. My second was Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich, where I first encountered the word “subconscious”. I did not understand everything I was reading. In fact, I stopped at chapter 2 and left the book for a year.

I followed the instructions in chapter 2, “Desire—The Starting Point of All Achievement”: think about what I wanted, write it on a piece of paper and read it morning and night. I reluctantly wrote that I wanted to double my income within a year. I read it, but I did not fully commit.

Over four years, I earned two promotions and my monthly salary grew from R6,000 to R25,000. I returned to the book again and again because that was a significant change in my life. Yet the money was only part of what had happened.

I was becoming more confident. I related to people differently. I was setting goals and taking responsibility where I had once complained. Something about the way I saw myself was changing, and it was showing up in the way I lived.

I wanted to know why. What had actually changed in me? Which principles had I applied, and how could I understand them well enough to use them deliberately and teach them? I had once looked for any excuse not to speak to groups of people or be seen. Now I had a burning desire to teach.

The question became bigger than money.

That curiosity took me deeper into self-development, spirituality, the Bible and different ways of understanding the mind. Over half a decade, I studied, applied and questioned. I was not simply collecting ideas that sounded good. I wanted to understand what they meant in an ordinary life like mine.

I left my job, opened a business and pursued different opportunities. There were successes, but also failures, losses and deeply painful seasons. I had to face doubt, guilt, regret, shame, fear, depression and grief in my own life.

By then, my goal card said R80,000 in two months. I met the target, but it did not bring freedom or fulfilment. It brought more hustle. As I wrote R1 million, I paused and began asking why. Why was I still doing it wrong? Why did I still self-sabotage? Why was I not doing what I greatly desired and teaching yet? Why were my relationships still the same? Why did the car, job and business not bring the promised experience?

My questions were no longer theoretical. At one point, they meant life and death. Had I been wrong all this time? What was the truth? What did it really mean to be me? Where was I, and why was I here?

Through seven days of isolation, planning my exit and barely eating, my ego surrendered and no fight was left in me. Then came a moment of awakening that brought life, answers and indescribable internal freedom. I began seeing as if I had not seen before. The studies and experiences I had gone through became crystal clear.

Eventually, being an employee or an entrepreneur was not the answer I was looking for. I wanted to understand what was true and what I had accepted as true because of my upbringing, circumstances or the people around me.

Metaphysics gave me a language for those deeper questions. It invited me to examine consciousness, identity and my relationship with life—not only the circumstances I could see, but the assumptions through which I was seeing them.

Freedom began to mean more than a better income or a different title. It meant a different relationship with myself, alongside the ability to act more deliberately in the world.

That is why I teach.

I teach from study and lived application, including the mistakes that forced me to look again. My position is that self-development begins with awareness: understanding what you believe, how you see yourself and how that understanding shapes the choices you make.

I am not asking you to exchange your judgement for mine or depend on a teacher for every next step. I want you to question, understand, practise and discover what you can apply for yourself. The point is not to feel inspired for a moment. It is to become more capable in your own life. You can awaken yourself.

New Thought Academy is the vehicle through which I share this work. It brings the teaching into a practical guide, conversations and structured learning, so that what I have studied and lived can become useful to you.

I know what it is to begin with a limited picture of yourself and limited resources. My intention is to help you examine that picture, understand the principles I teach and participate more consciously in the life you want to create—internally and externally.

That is the conversation I am here to have with you.

Khwezi Feni