Who Told You That? is a book — and a set of tools — that helps you find the inherited beliefs holding your life back, and build something true in their place.
For people who have worked hard, done everything right, and still feel like something is quietly off.
Where would you like to start?
The Freedom Assessment reveals which of four core belief patterns is holding you back — and which domains of life it's showing up in most. 10 questions. Instant results. Your personalised starting point.
Take the Assessment — FreeChoose Forward Together brings the Freedom Assessment into relationship. Couples gain mirror insight. Teams unlock collective blind spots. Facilitators hold space for real conversation.
Explore Choose Forward TogetherOr start with the book — Who Told You That?, available to pre-order now →
The cage was never locked from the outside. That's the hardest thing to understand — and the most freeing thing to know.
— Mariyah Acka'a, Who Told You That?
The Work
Every person is formed by a matrix of influences — family, culture, class, place, faith, expectation. When you've grown up inside more than one of them, those influences don't just shape you. They argue with each other inside you. Who Told You That? names what that costs — and shows how to examine the inherited scripts, understand which ones still serve you, and begin building a life that is genuinely yours.
A 24-chapter guide to identifying, understanding and dismantling the inherited beliefs that shape every domain of your life — from money and relationships to identity and purpose.
The hands-on companion to the book. Structured exercises, reflection prompts and tools for each chapter — designed to turn insight into lasting, embodied change.
Read Chapter One — Free
Full page-turn reader with bookmark, highlights, and chapter reflections. No download needed.
Your Ecosystem
Create your free account to access your personalised tools — the progress tracker, The Circle (unlocked through doing the work), and your Choose Forward certificate.
Mariyah D. Acka'a writes about the invisible beliefs that quietly shape our lives. Formed through multiple matrices — Nigerian, European, Jamaican heritage, raised in New York, building a life in London — she is a senior leader, entrepreneur, and mother of two who wrote the book she wished had existed.
Most of us grow up absorbing more than one worldview — from family, culture, community, or the places we move through. You might be born in Lagos and raised in California, born in Idaho and shaped by years in India, or simply move between different worlds within the same country. Each leaves its imprint.
Over time those influences become the lens through which we see ourselves — often without ever questioning whether the stories we inherited are actually ours.
Mariyah wrote Who Told You That? after a deeply personal period of grief that forced her to confront those hidden frameworks in her own life. Through that process she began developing the Choose Forward method — a way of identifying the beliefs that hold us back and consciously choosing the ones that move us forward.
Her work invites readers to pause, look inward, and reclaim authorship of their own path.
Because the most powerful moment in a life is often the moment someone realises:
I can choose forward.
