“If I don’t like the rules, I’ll find a new game.”

"Sometimes you have to play the game."

This was the advice my manager gave during my exit interview.

I was 25 at the time and about to head to Europe. I had never been out of the country and planned to backpack solo for 2 1/2 months before starting business school in the Fall.

The advice held nothing for me.

It was completely empty and uninspired, and I rejected it out of hand:

"No, I don't. If I don't like the rules, I'll find a new game."

To me, this brief conversation sums up the difference between Tribal energy and Individual energy in Human Design.

Human Design circuits are about the way energy flows through the centers. Pictured are the Individual circuit of Empowerment/Self-Empowerment and the Tribal circuit of Support.

Tribal energy is all about hierarchy, power structures, fear, and control by a self-selected minority — it has nothing to do with earned trust or wisdom. It's a brutal "us" vs. "them" energetic impulse to support those who "toe the line." It's the classic formula of carrots, sticks, and quid pro quos. It rebukes individuality and innovation (until proven to help them sustain their dominion), and grips tightly to what it already knows — using force as necessary to stay in power.

Individual energy is anathema to everything the Tribe stands for. It's here to shake things up — it cannot be manipulated or controlled and it bristles at the idea of shrinking to fit into contrived constructs. This is an energy of self-empowerment and empowerment of others, helping them to experience their own individuality, which is more than just a threat to the Tribe — it has the potential to destroy it, weakening it from the inside out.

With every "stray" Tribe member that recognizes their own power — their sovereign aspiration and will, their unique capabilities and desires, their individuated potential – they awaken to realize they've been living in a made-up system of rules that have nothing to do with their expansion and expression and everything to do with fear, control, and suppression.

"Sometimes you have to play the game" is excellent advice for someone who is built with Tribal energies — they will navigate the made-up system of power structures and controls effortlessly and seamlessly. It's actually second nature to them, like a fish swimming in water, and they will succeed with ease. This is "home" to them.

But if you're energetically "wired" as an Individual, Tribal structures will feel toxic and suffocating. They will slowly and steadily strip you of your spontaneity, light, and joie de vivre, because that's the only way the Tribe can survive. Outliers will be branded as "trouble-makers" or "difficult to work with" or "not a team player."

There's a place for the Tribe and the Individual to intersect, though, and it has to do with the Individual who, through their uniqueness, creates some sort of new value that allows the Tribe to evolve and sustain itself — because without progress in a broader world that keeps changing, where the circumstances of safety and resources become more dynamic and less predictable, the Tribe will sow its own end by desperately clinging to what it already knows — just ask Kodak or Blockbuster.

And while the Tribe needs the Individual to perpetuate itself, the Individual also needs the Tribe to survive — but it has to be correct, according to your aura's strategy and inner authority.

"Sometimes you have to play the game" rang hollow to me because I'm just not built for it, and my body knew it in that moment. This was my Sacral talking, my inner authority guiding me — concepts I would discover and verify when I eventually met my own Human Design 30+ years later.

I do have one Tribal channel — but it's the most "anti-Tribe" of them all (there are seven). It's the Channel of Transformation, a design of Being Driven, and it's there to alert the Tribe of the potential and possibility to change — especially in the context of material exploration, growth, and enterprise.

Interestingly, this is the part of my Human Design clients hire for transformative storytelling — to bring the from-to of their evolution to life in a way that speaks to all audiences (investors, customers, employees, partners) so that change can happen on a grand scale and in harmony around shared purpose, vision, values, and strategy.

At the same time I have three Individual Channels of Empowerment/Self-Empowerment. This is the energy that recoils at the prospect of retainer agreements — I do my best work when I'm free to be candid, sharing what clients need to hear instead of what they want to hear. Retainer agreements create a condition of compliance for me because of the openness in my Ego and Solar Plexus centers, making me feel like I need to prove myself and that I can't speak truthfully (unless my Sacral is on board).

All this Human Design wonkiness is to say that my own design has deep inner energetic inconsistencies and conflicts that I battled for decades between the inner pressure on one side to "play the game" because I had the skills, the intelligence, and the pedigree, and the inner call on the other side to be free and unencumbered, honoring my own principles and following my own convictions wherever they guided me — without interference or rules I didn't value because they were rules that were designed to keep me static and small.

On paper I looked the part and played it well during the first few years in my first corporate job out of college, but I quickly caught whiff of a system that I couldn't see but I could definitely feel that was only interested in what I could do for it without recognizing or rewarding me equally, and that just wasn't going to work for me.

So I made my own road. Quietly, but persistently, which led to a series of amazing adventures and discoveries. It also led to some great successes and great “failures,” which became some of my most profound learning opportunities.

As one person observed about 10 years into my “undoing,” I had become feral. Untamed. Wild. A Boundary Breaker. They called me “fiercely independent,” and I don't think it was a compliment.

The thing about going feral is that, once you do, there's no going back:

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.”

— ROBERT FROST, The Road Not Taken

In Human Design, there's a thing called "genetic continuity," and it's incredibly powerful when you grasp it. It means that everything in your design — I mean everything — the activated gates, channels, lines, centers, and even your openness are designed to support you in the expression of your highest alignment and life purpose (or Incarnation Cross). So those feelings of inner confusion about who you truly are vs. who you're trying to be are actually invitations to greater harmony. They are a chance to explore your own mythology and to create the conditions that allow you to do your best work and serve the world in a way that aligns with your true nature.

The peace I now feel, having found inner harmony between the Tribal ambition and the stubborn Individual, has been life-changing — it brought me the radical clarity to release what wasn't me and shift into a whole new experience and timeline that was always there waiting for me — a timeline that is aspirational and grounded no matter what's happening around me.

If you're struggling to fit in because you're actually here to stand out, you may have some "competing" energies in your Human Design.

Let's investigate and rework that, together.

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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.

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