The Multidimensionality of Change

Kerry Jehanne-Guadalupe

Have you ever set an intention to change a behavior and then completely forgotten you wanted to change it? Have you carried a New Year’s resolution from one year to the next without ever resolving it? Or planned to eat well, only to find yourself finishing the entire chocolate cake?

I used to tell myself, I’m only going to have one bite of chocolate. I’m making a conscious choice to enjoy it in moderation. And then, after eating the entire bar, I would ask, What happened to my choice? How did it slip away so easily? Choosing between chocolate and vanilla was never the issue. Choosing not to eat the chocolate—or to stop after a few bites—was the real challenge, especially once tunnel vision set in and all I could see was chocolate. Like many resolutions that dissolve with ease, the deeper question became: How do I remain conscious and connected to my intention?

When someone tells me they want to exercise more but can’t seem to get to the gym, I don’t respond with, Just try harder. Set a stronger intention. This is mind over matter. Instead, I prefer to begin with curiosity: What subconscious patterns could be repeating? Are ancestral influences or collective conditioning at play? Let’s explore. Let’s make the intention more accessible. And let’s be gentle with ourselves as we do.

When I feel stuck or unable to follow through on change, it signals the need to look deeper. I ask questions such as: Does my unconscious mind believe this change is unsafe? Where is the causal point of the pattern I’m trying to shift? Over time, difficulty in changing behaviors, thought patterns, or life circumstances has invited me into a deeper exploration of my own multidimensionality.

In working with myself and others, meaningful change often emerges from identifying and transforming the cause of a habit—not just its surface expression. That causal point can be complex and mysterious. Is the challenge rooted in ancestral patterns? A subconscious belief or self-sabotage program? Unresolved trauma? A soul fragment? A past or parallel life influence? These questions may not always yield immediate answers, but they open pathways of compassion and possibility.

There can be subtle and insidious reasons we stumble when trying to create change. In such moments, navigating the complexity of transformation with understanding and grace becomes essential. When we illuminate the many influences shaping our ability to change, compassion naturally arises—and compassion itself becomes a healing balm, softening shame, easing heartache, and dissolving self-judgment and despair when progress feels difficult. Often this understanding arrives as a tender realization—oh my gosh, this is what I have been carrying—and in being seen, the burden begins to loosen. Compassion replaces judgment.

We are complex, fascinating, multiterminal beings. Learning to work with that complexity—rather than against it—may be essential for cultivating conscious choice and lasting transformation within the intricacy of an experience.

Where Change Draws Its Power: The Charge Behind the Change

For me, setting intentions includes not only asking what I wish to change, but why I want a change, and how I can gain access to the changes I wish to make.

Clarity of why carries tremendous energy—especially when that why arises from within rather than from external sources. I want to lose weight for my overall health is fundamentally different from wanting to lose weight to be accepted by others. I have seen many people attempt to change for someone else, only to lose momentum when the relationship falters—particularly in the realm of addiction. Change rooted in another person’s desire rarely sustains itself, because the external source of motivation can diminish or disappear entirely when disappointment or rupture occurs. In those moments, people often no longer see the point in continuing.

By contrast, the power and energy for lasting change that arise from our own will carries a distinctly different charge—one that remains accessible at any moment, independent of external circumstances or approval.

At times, it is also worth questioning whether the timing of change aligns with our own rhythms or with cultural expectations. Is January truly the moment my soul is ready to begin anew, or am I following a collective script?

While a why rooted outside ourselves may not always carry the staying power required for lasting transformation, there are times when the impetus to change for someone else—or in response to society—can be exactly what is needed. Holding these two truths is not a contradiction, but an acknowledgment of the complexity of being human.

The relationship between you, me, and us matters deeply in transformation. The change of one person can benefit many, just as the evolution of the collective can act as a powerful catalyst for individual growth.

And yet, if fewer than half of New Year’s resolutions succeed, it’s worth considering how collective consciousness influences both our efforts and our expectations. If less than half of the people who set New Year's resolutions succeed, it is important to consider how being in alignment with the collective consciousness might hinder our growth.

These apparent contradictions do not feel conflicting to me. They reflect the complexity of being human. We are shaped by both individuality and interconnectedness. Personal transformation can benefit the collective, just as collective evolution can catalyze individual change. At the same time, collective norms can unconsciously hold us back. Honoring this interplay deepens our understanding of change.

Willpower as Awareness in Action

How we create change is just as important to me as the why. Willpower is a significant component of change that can be used in different capacities. Willpower can be viewed as having a degree of awareness of what is needed, bonded with an ability to engage in an action that can lead to a desirable outcome, including restraining oneself from impulses and fruitfully overcoming a challenge. Two words are combined in the term willpower, reflecting the merging of a willingness filled with awareness and the power to perform, representative of an ability.

How I wield my will is essential in creating change. Sometimes, I use my willpower in a mind-over-matter way. When mind-over-matter isn't sufficient, when I see that I am struggling to change, I adjust the use of my willpower to gather the strength to be with what is. When ancestral patterns are active, or the subconscious is leading, I direct my will toward uncovering and transforming the cause rather than overriding the symptom. Using willpower not to dominate behavior, but to access the root of the issue, has often been the most effective—and sustainable—use of will for me. I have found that when a belief changes, the use of mind-over-matter willpower is negligible because the shift follows the new belief.

Sometimes habits feel stronger than one’s self-discipline—what I call habit-power over willpower. In these moments, recognizing that willpower is not absent—but being used for a deeper task—can be empowering. The degree of willpower needed to journey into uncomfortable experiences is sometimes much greater than the will required for mind-over-matter changes. An act of conscious willingness to be with what is, is extraordinary!

Great empowerment arrives when access to change has been acquired.

Reflecting on my own experiences with change and transformation, I began to recognize the quiet intelligence beneath the behaviors I once tried to control.

As a young child, I was placed on diets because others believed my weight made me unlovable. Despite the pressure to lose weight, no one ever asked why I was gaining it. My relationship with food and my body was complex and layered.

Over time, I came to understand that my body had learned to associate weight with safety following early trauma. At an unconscious level, thinness felt dangerous, and so my mind successfully sabotaged every attempt to diet. Food also served as a way to suppress emotions until it felt safe to feel them. In this context, weight was not the problem—it was a solution.

Finding the cause of the weight gain opened a genuine pathway to change. Healing the underlying pain, rather than controlling food, allowed transformation to occur naturally. As the healing deepened, the weight released with ease, as it no longer had a purpose.

When I entered the workforce, I repeatedly encountered exploitative employment situations. I was expected to give enormous amounts of labor for minimal compensation, often with the unspoken expectation that my life would be devoted to someone else’s vision. Over time, I recognized an energetic imprint of servitude—possibly ancestral or from another lifetime—shaping my sense of worth. Releasing that imprint allowed entirely new professional experiences to emerge.

In the realm of relationships, throughout my teenage years and into my thirties, I found myself in unhealthy relationships with men. When I later asked why I entered abusive dynamics, the answer was both simple and painful: this was how I had learned to define love. The meaning of love I carried was shaped by childhood experiences and reinforced by relational patterns present within my family and ancestral line. When relational norms are established early, they can be unconsciously repeated—whether or not they are healthy—unless deliberate, conscious intervention occurs.

Because of this understanding, I am never baffled when someone remains in an abusive relationship. I would never ask, “How can they stay?” Such a question overlooks the power of early conditioning, the influence of the subconscious mind, and the profound complexity of human attachment and survival. For me, lasting change emerged only when I accessed the underlying pattern itself and engaged in restorative healing. As those patterns shifted, my experience of relationship transformed in fundamental and life-affirming ways.

Cultivating the Capacity for Change

Physical health, work, and relationships are common areas where we seek change. Yet perhaps one of the most essential capacities we can develop is the ability to change.

Increasing our capacity for change is not about becoming more forceful, but more spacious. It involves expanding our nervous system’s tolerance for uncertainty, deepening our ability to feel without retreat, and loosening our attachment to fixed identities. As capacity grows, transformation no longer feels like a threat to who we are, but an invitation to become more of ourselves.

Along this journey, healing modalities have played an important role in increasing my ability to transform. Energy medicine, within the field of complementary and alternative therapies, offers a holistic approach to restoration by working with the vital energy that flows through the human body. They provide pathways of change rooted in presence rather than pressure.

Practices such as breathwork, EFT, and Light Language have supported my process deeply. Light Language, in particular, has helped me access and transform root-level entanglements—ancestral, subconscious, and soul-based—facilitating lasting shifts across physical, emotional, and spiritual dimensions.

While I am deeply grateful for the changes I have experienced, I know my evolution is ongoing. I see my life as a process of continual becoming—an unfolding rather than a destination. One of my core intentions is to keep expanding my capacity for change: to make transformation more accessible, more compassionate, and more embodied, and to remain open to the power of creating newness.