Subliminals Did Not Change My Life

In 2024, living in London, I was not thriving. I was surviving, and surviving looked like a lot of margaritas and doing something that is very expensive in Australia. I was coping, not consciously, and it showed up as self pity and habits I knew were not helping me move forward. I felt like I was drowning within myself.

I knew I wanted change. My best friend and I spoke a lot about mindset, manifestation, and creating money online, not because I fully believed in it all, though because I was searching for something that felt lighter than where I was. At the same time, I still wanted to be perceived as someone who went out and partied a lot. That identity was sticky, and it was one I had built and kept reinforcing.

Then one day, my beautiful friend asked if I had listened to any subliminals on YouTube. I said yes, even though I had not. Cheeky, I know. I still had this attachment to wanting to understand everything and be someone who knew what they were doing, even when I did not.

This is not a story about how subliminals changed my life. It is a story about curiosity, repetition, and unconscious learning, and how those things became something I clung to as I started to notice my patterns and behaviour more clearly.

At first, nothing really changed. I genuinely thought I had been lied to and remember thinking what is the point of listening to music with no words. It was completely outside of my comfort zone. At the time, I was living in a state of functional freeze, and my nervous system was being exposed to something new. This was unfamiliar territory, and even now as I write this, I notice how easily I forget the importance of repetition and routine when it comes to change. That bad boy has always been my growth edge.

My inconsistency with listening to subliminals showed up quickly. Some weeks I would listen daily, other times not at all. In the weeks where I was consistent, small and subtle changes started to appear that I did not think much of at the time. Kinder words internally. Feeling less stressed in my body in situations that would usually overwhelm me. Not jumping to conclusions or feeling like everything was piling on at once. It felt good to have some internal space where my inner critic and negative thoughts were not so loud.

I started to feel different, more like my old self. My confidence returned. When I began listening to subliminals around money, frustration crept back in. I saw little to no change, and at that point, I did not take much accountability. I expected something to shift, the way it had with how I felt about myself. When that did not happen, listening became less consistent. I swapped subliminals for high vibe lyrical music, which slowly became my default again, until subliminals dropped out of my listening cycle altogether.

What I slowly realised was that subliminals did not stop working. My relationship with them did. Feeling better created a quiet sense of completion, like the work was done. Relief made consistency feel unnecessary, even though nothing had really stabilised yet. I mistook subtle internal shifts for integration, and when results did not show up in the same way in other areas, frustration took over. It was not a failure of the tool. It was me stopping at comfort instead of staying with the process long enough for change to settle.

What I take from this now is not whether subliminals work or do not work. It is that they were never designed to do the heavy lifting on their own. What they shifted for me was my internal tone. My nervous system felt calmer, my inner language softened, and I felt more regulated in my body. That change was real and noticeable. The mistake I made was assuming that feeling better meant something had fully changed. Subtle internal shifts can feel like completion when they are really just the foundation.

The difference this time is consistency. I am listening regularly again, and I can feel and see the effects more clearly because I am no longer stopping at relief. Another important factor is that I now use subliminals I have written myself. The language is familiar, specific, and aligned with what I actually need. There is less resistance, less mental negotiation, and more continuity. Instead of hoping something will shift, I can track how repetition is shaping my internal responses over time.

Looking back, subliminals did not fail me. They did exactly what they were capable of doing. They supported regulation, softened my internal world, and created the conditions for change. What they could not replace was consistency, accountability, and time. Listening once things feel good enough keeps the cycle alive. Staying with the process is what allows those subtle shifts to settle into something more stable. That is the part of the conversation about subliminals that often gets missed.