5 ways Human Design will improve your life.
Once you get past the information overwhelm and jargon of Human Design, you open yourself to a world of positivity and possibility that comes from living in alignment with your unique energetic blueprint. (Download your blueprint here for free.)
We are all energetic beings, attracting and repelling experiences based on our energetic frequency. If we're living in the dense, slow-moving frequencies of shadow — fear, lack, anger, blame, shame, resentment, regret — we attract more of the same. We can recite positive affirmations morning, noon, and night, but if our frequency is stuck in shadow, we'll still attract shadow.
In the world of energetics, like attracts like. So if you want something better in your life, it's up to you to change your frequency first — by raising it. You can do that by living in alignment with your Human Design blueprint.
(Isn't that empowering?)
Your Human Design is your own personal circuit board
Your Human Design chart tells you how your energy works. It tells you where the levers of strengths and conditioning are and it provides a wayfinding mechanism to support you in your decision-making that is informed by your higher intelligence instead of the ego-mind that is limited by stories of fear, lack, and separation.
Once you understand the basic mechanics of your chart, you can use it strategically to improve various aspects of your life. This is what the mind is good for — helping you to analyze and understand your energetics, and prioritize their application to different parts of your life.
The five high-impact areas Human Design can improve in your life include: Confidence, Stress, Energy, Decisions, and Relationships.
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The Heart center in Human Design contains the energy of willpower, self-worth, and self-esteem.
Those who have a defined Heart center (where it's colored in) usually have a clear sense of their self-worth. They're good at establishing boundaries and they're excellent at following through their commitments. It's seamless and effortless for them. But just because a center is defined does not mean it is not affected by external programming or conditioning. Those with defined Heart energy can also have an exaggerated sense of their worth and importance.
When your Heart center is undefined or open (it is not colored in), you may find yourself saying 'yes' to a lot of things you would rather say 'no' to because you feel pressured to prove yourself to others in order to earn their acceptance and approval. You'll also probably work for less than you're worth, and you'll later become angry, frustrated, and bitter for not demanding more.
When your Heart center is undefined or open, you are not here to prove anything. You're here to learn what it means to say 'yes' to that which you feel is worth your time and energy. You're here to say 'yes,' not because you have to but because you want to.
If you have undefined or open Heart, it can be very difficult to know what to commit to, especially when you're surrounded by others with defined heart — you'll actually "borrow" their willful energy when you're in their presence. Their energy can make you feel invincible in the moment, but the second their will is no longer in your aura, you'll feel depleted and defeated. This is your friendly reminder to avoid saying 'yes' until you run it through your Strategy and Authority.When you know the definition of your Heart center (only 15% have defined Heart, the other 85% are undefined) — you can start to work with that energy consciously to make sure you're not under the spell of conditioning when making commitments or choosing how, where, and when to show up.
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Your Human Design chart is helpful when pinpointing your propensity for stress and anxiety.
There are three energy centers of fear and anxiety: the Ajna (or third eye), containing mental anxiety; the Spleen, containing survival fear; and the Solar Plexus, containing our emotions and nervous system.
When these are defined, we have a fixed way of processing the energies that flow through those centers. When those centers are undefined, we're at the mercy of all those energies projected by others, exaggerating them as we come into contact, until we become aware of our design and consciously create a screen to manage the many shades of survival fear, mental anxiety, and nervousness that are flowing through our aura.
In addition to the centers of anxiety, there are two centers that create enormous pressure: the Head and the Root. When these are defined, there is a fixed and reliable energy source to process information coming through — when these are undefined, there's a tendency to feel overwhelmed by the pressure to "know it all" (Head) or "to make things happen" (Root).
When the undefined centers of anxiety are combined with the undefined centers of pressure and stress, it's a perfect storm for feeling like you and your life are out of control and everything has to happen now. You can also see how, when these centers are combined with an undefined Heart that is conditioned to say 'yes' to prove themselves or gain the approval of others, you create even more anxiety, stress, and overwhelm in your life.
The goal with these centers is to figure out how to harness the pressures and stresses to fuel one's thinking and strategies, not to get carried away or overwhelmed by them. Becoming aware of your definition is the first step.
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In Human Design, there's a wonderful concept called "Energy Type."
It depicts various energy constructs, from the "Generator" type who creates their own energy when they're plugged into doing things they love, to the "Projector" type that sometimes comes with a motor and sometimes not. The Projector type is not built to create their own energy source — which is why they must be fiercely protective of their finite energy resource by saying 'yes' and 'no' according to their Strategy and Authority.
We each wake up with a full tank of energy every day, but only the Generator type (~70% of humanity) has the ability to keep topping it off throughout the day — provided they're doing things that light their fire. All other energy types have a finite amount of energy to spend (which is why they love having Generators and Manifesting Generators in their lives to help advance their aspirations and initiatives), which means non-Generator types need to be judicious about following their Strategy and Authority when deciding how to spend their energy. It means honoring their need for rest — and lots of it — without self-judgment.
And just because Generator types appear to be a never-ending resource of energy (that must also be used up by the end of the day in order to sufficiently recharge for a new day), that energy is only vital when it's in response to doing what that Generator type loves. Unfortunately, too many Generator types are saying 'yes' because they have energy in their tank rather than saying 'yes' because it matches their desire. This becomes a never-ending cycle of frustration and anger when they're subsequently not valued or recognized for their contributions — especially when they also have an undefined Heart center.
70% of us have self-generating energy, 30% of us don't. When the 30% stop trying to be like the 70%, and the 70% start operating more like the 30% — saying 'yes' only when it's in alignment with their true desire — we will finally become a society that embraces the joy of simply being and becoming rather than being a slave to the never-ending pressure and pace of doing.
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How many times have you made a decision to do (or not to do) something, when a deeper part of you wanted to do the opposite, then lived to regret it? That deeper part of you that knew better is your higher intelligence. It's your "embodied" intelligence that is felt in your bones, organs, tissues and cells, and the way to access it is through your decision-making Strategy and Authority.
Knowing how your Strategy and Authority work — and putting it into practice — is table-stakes for any of the work you do in living your Human Design. This is your rudder in the sea of dilemmas, conflicts, and decisions that form the timeline of your life.
One of the first things I did to fully connect with my decision-making mechanics, was to create a high-level map of decisions I had already made in which the consequences were either really good or really bad so I could see the patterns.
Here's how it works:
Grab a sheet of paper and draw a horizontal timeline from the time you were born to today. Think back to your highest highs and your lowest lows and plot those experiences above and below the line.
Now get yourself back into the memory of the series of events and decisions that led up to the highest highs and lowest lows — I guarantee you'll find them. Feel the feelings behind your decisions when you made them.
What you're feeling is either 1) your Strategy and Authority guiding you toward the correct decision for you and nobody else, or 2) your conditioning that is leading you away from the correct decision for you and nobody else.
The more you connect with these feelings, the more you are connecting to your wayfinding mechanism for all the future decisions of your life.
There are 13 different decision-making archetypes defined by the combination of your energy Type, Strategy, and Authority. It's important that you embody the energetic of "guidance" toward and away your decisions, or guidance that says 'wait--I need more information.'
The more you honor your decision-making mechanics, the more you'll be able to avoid friction and create flow in every area of your life.
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When you live in alignment with your Human Design, miracles abound. One of the more interesting miracles is how your relationships improve almost overnight.
What happens when you meet the uniqueness of your design is that you first have enormous empathy and understanding for yourself — you can see how all the "trying" led to feelings of inadequacy and disappointment and failure and jealousy and how you actually were never designed to be or desire all the things you were told you should. Suddenly you have a new lease on life. You shed all the parts of you that you were "trying" in their attempt to make up for some "deficiency," and you simply lean into the parts of you that you can rely on — the parts of you that were meant to be expressed to inspire, lead, reflect or guide others.
A great example in my life is in making commitments, "sticking with things." I'm a Sacral Manifesting Generator with an open Heart and an undefined Solar Plexus. My mom is a Sacral Generator with defined Heart, undefined Root (Pressure and Stress center), and open Head (Pressure center).
When I started working for myself after graduating business school, this created enormous stress for my mom who worried for my financial safety and security. She has "The Survivalist" channel that connects the Sacral and Spleen which is all about alertness to survival fear. The entrepreneurial path did not feel safe to her — and she projected her fears of that safety onto me and my choices, even though I'm built quite differently.
What my mom is exceptional at is crisis management — I mean, the more chaotic and stressful the situation, the clearer my mom gets. There's nobody else I would want to consult with in a crisis.
When I was in my 20-year cycle of exploration and discovery, I felt alone and disappointed that my mom only seemed to see the problems rather than the possibilities. She would greet my experiments with tepid support and anxiousness, dampening my own enthusiasm to the point I had to stop sharing.
Through Human Design, I now know that my mom was showing up the way she's designed to — and that's a great thing. I no longer have an expectation that she should embrace the possibilities I see, which means I'm no longer disappointed, and because I no longer carry the energy of expectation, I can now receive my mom's hesitations and devil's advocacy with love — because that's actually where they're coming from.
My mom feels the energy of being seen and appreciated for who she is instead of the invisible energy of disappointment and judgment for who she isn't, or who I want her to be.
Our relationship has never been better.
Human Design can bring you more Happiness
When you're living in alignment with your unique Human Design, you're living a life of empowerment and flow. You're no longer living in the energy of "trying" — you're living in the energy of being.
The more consistently you live in alignment with your highest energetic frequency, the more easeful and magical your life will be. But you can't get there without knowing how you're built, becoming aware of your energy "mechanics," and practicing them — each and every day.
Note: Every Human Design chart is more than the sum of its parts, and every element of a chart affects — and is affected by — every other element. Human Design is a deeply layered, complex system that integrates eastern and western traditions and wisdom. When I share discrete elements of a chart, I am simply sharing glimpses into the mechanics of Human Design (and the Gene Keys) to show others how they, too, can discern practical insights from their own charts into their uniqueness and the patterns of thought, behavior, conditioning, emotions, and psychology that keep them from achieving their highest potential or living their best life.
Photo by Peter Conlan on Unsplash
