Who are you, really?
There's so much talk about authenticity that it can sometimes feel like the word has lost its meaning. But what does "authenticity" mean if you're not tracking to some sort of baseline? That's the unique proposition and value of Human Design. Your Human Design chart is the single most powerful tool for you to know the energetic composition and gifts you came into this world to express and share — so that you can live your life with confidence, clarity, and ease.
Human Design is more than knowledge and awareness.
Deep self-knowledge and self-awareness are powerful tools to help you navigate your decisions through feelings of inner alignment, but even the most self-aware among us gets tripped up by the stories of the mind — stories that are often defending against painful memories or experiences of the past, or stories that exaggerate perceived threats, perceived inadequacies, or even perceived competencies that get in the way of your authentic engagement with the people and situations around you.
The earnest quest to live authentically requires a deep understanding of the true you, and that can be found in the perfection of your unique Human Design blueprint. At the most basic, foundational level, your Human Design chart will help you understand your energy type, your decision-making authority and mechanics that always serve your highest expression of self, your gifts you're meant to contribute, your role in moving through life, and your conditioning — all the places in your chart that leave you open to other people's messages and energies that can throw you out of alignment with who you truly are and the life you're meant to live.
Your decisions are the building blocks of your life.
Creating and living a life that reflects what is truly you, and attracting relationships based on who you truly are (instead of who you're pretending to be) has largely been a process of trial and error, one decision at a time. What if the formula and mechanism for making decisions was incomplete?
Decisions are the atomic building blocks of your life and your relationships, and every decision you make is a mix of intuition, logic, and conditioning from the well-intended guidance of our guides (parents, teachers, spiritual leaders, etc.), or the homogenizing influences of society and the media to convince us that our happiness and security and self-worth are outside of us — if we would only buy this or wear that or believe in something or someone other than our own inner truth and brilliance to guide our way.
If the life you've manifested feels like a compromise with what your soul truly desires, it's worth taking a pause and stepping back to look at the decisions that got you here. Our decisions empower us when made with full awareness of who we are, what we have to offer, and our true worthiness. But when our decisions are made out of fear or loss prevention or lack of self-awareness and self-worthiness, we create lives of chaos and drama. This is not to say that life doesn't come without obstacles or challenges — it is life, after all — this is simply focusing on the part of life you can control: your feelings, your reactions, and your decisions.
While Human Design is deeply layered with data and insights about the true you, the most powerful element is knowing your energy type and decision-making authority — living your life according to these calculations, one decision at a time, will lead you into the full expression of your gifts and purpose.
You have no idea how unique you are.
Your Human Design blueprint is a deeply-layered map of your energetic DNA. Your chart has 26 activations, and for every activation there are 64 individual gate options x 1080 possibilities (when you get into the deeper layers of base, tone, color, and line). Now, I'm no statistician, but I believe the range of options — at a minimum — is (64 x 1080) to the 26th power. That's a lot of options and a lot of differentiation, and even Chat GPT is stumped at trying to quantify the vast universe of options.
When you know your unique Human Design, you have the single most powerful tool to begin living your dream life and building your dream relationships based on what's uniquely true and meaningful to you. The external messaging about who to be or what to value falls away as you learn to trust your own unique blueprint and inner intelligence. Life gets inexplicably easier as you live more and more in alignment with the perfect person you were designed to be.
Who are you really?
In December of 2002, The UTNE Reader ran an article by Pythia Peay, entitled "Who Are You, Really?" (The subheading was "Listen to the call of your soul — and take back your life.") This article was deeply transformative for me, so much so that I still have this very issue in my archive 21 years later.
It found me while I was still coming out of a very confusing period of my life where my idealistic naivete about the role of promises, partnerships, and principles worked in the world of business. I was deeply devastated by having to shutter my beloved dot-com, PogoPet, and the deep deceit and absence of courage in some key people I met in the very early stages of building it that really rocked my world.
I had always believed in things like personal integrity and work ethic and "the best strategy will win," when it was really luck and timing and "spin" that had the greatest outsized impact on the fate of a start-up, especially when too much money was chasing too many deals — chaos and favoritism replaced confidence and clarity when building relationships and making investments.
I felt like I had been dropped into a murky, shadowy world of how business is built and how money is made and I knew I just didn't have the stomach for it — at least not without changing who I was in fundamental ways, which was not an option. I was faced with this giant question of what am I to do now with my MBA? I had no idea, and something told me I wouldn't know until I knew myself better. This article was a turning point that started me on that path — a path that finally became clear exactly 20 years later when I finally met my Human Design.
Your Human Design unlocks your mystery and your mythology.
Two years ago, when I met my Human Design, every twist and turn of my life (including the events of my dot-com decisions) and all the inner contradictions finally made sense. It was as if I had a detailed relief map showing me the different elevations and paths and detailed highlights of the way my mind, my energy, my decision-making, and my life story had unfolded to bring me to this exact moment in time, to this exact way of serving the world. Meeting my Human Design snapped me out of decades of confusion and feeling like I was at war with myself (and I was, actually, until I started making decisions in alignment with my design), and catapulted me into the work and role I play today — encouraging others to meet their design, their mystery, their mythology.
When to explore your Human Design.
If you feel like something is missing from your life, your Human Design will help you find it. If you're just going through the motions day after day, or settling for less in your work or relationships, your Human Design will help guide you to a life that is so much more dynamic and exciting. If you feel like you don't quite fit in or that you're not fully seen or appreciated by others for the magnificent person you are or the talents you offer, your Human Design sees you perfectly. When you see you and your gifts clearly, others see it, too. That's how the energetics of alignment work.
There is no greater prize in this life than to be the best version of you and to live the life that isn't just uniquely you — it's your energetic birthright. It's why I'm on a mission to help others meet, trust, and live their unique Human Design blueprint — their individual map of authenticity. I want everyone to experience the magic and ease and relief and clarity that Human Design has brought to me, my relationships, and my life — as well as to the lives of everyone I meet who is living their unique design.
