Your Human Design holds clues to your happiness.

Last year I reconnected with a friend from business school.

We hadn't spoken for maybe ten years, and at the end of our call, he asked me a simple question:

"On a scale of 1 to 10, how happy are you?"

My knee-jerk response was "a 10!"

Both of us were surprised. So much so that there was an odd silence in the space that followed.

He had been asking this question lately of people in his life, and this was the first time he had heard someone say "10."

I had just spent the last several months recovering from one of the worst seasons of my life, so I, too, was caught off-guard.

What happened next was fascinating to me from a Human Design standpoint. I started feeling the pressure to apologize for being so genuinely happy. But since I've been living my design, I now know that this behavior is a conditioned behavior from my undefined Solar Plexus to not speak my truth if that truth has the potential to make someone else uneasy or feel bad about their own situation.

I caught myself and quickly investigated my reaction (I have a "1" in my profile lines) and logically reframed it (I also have the Channel of Logic) for myself and my friend, that I could stand by my rating because if I were challenged to close the gap between a "10" and anything less, I wouldn't be able to.

Now, my life looks a lot different than my friend's life, particularly in the arenas of social prestige, career prestige, and financial success.

But that's the beauty of Human Design.

What makes me genuinely happy is going to be totally different than what makes him genuinely happy which is going to be totally different than what makes you genuinely happy.

In my case, my Human Design has a lot in common with that of Henry David Thoreau's.

We're both "pure" Manifesting Generators. We each have a "4" in our profile lines, which signals a desire for intimate bonds and connections. We share three life force channels: The Channel of Charisma ("The Energizer"), The Channel of Transformation ("The Entrepreneur"), and The Channel of Maturation ("The Gardener"). We also share conscious Gate 16 (enthusiasm and skills) and unconscious Gate 37 (friendship and family). But even more interesting, my conscious Sun is his conscious Earth and his conscious Sun is my conscious Earth.

Talk about soul mates!

It's no wonder I felt such a deep kinship and bond — okay, "crush" — after reading Walden during another difficult season of my life in the early aughts.

For the first time in my life, I felt fully seen. Thoreau described the simplicity and depth and quiet that I longed for in a world that was increasingly obsessed with artifice. His words captured the essence of what I knew was true for me but could not express as confidently or beautifully:

I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.

Look.

I know what it's like to be deeply unhappy.

I know what it's like to want to end my own life.

I know what it's like to struggle, to feel invisible, to feel alone.

Which is why I was so surprised when I heard myself say "10."

Out loud.

Because when I met my design in early 2022, my happiness was at a level 3 or 4 — at times maybe even a 2. I felt lost and had no idea why I was even still alive — I had already experienced everything I had ever wanted to experience. What more could there be? Why was I still here? I felt like I was just taking up space.

I had settled for a lackluster existence where I accepted I would never find the fulfillment that Henry David Thoreau found in his Walden.

I had given up feeling like my life had a higher purpose, a way of serving and creating value for me or others.

I had settled for a life that was about existence as opposed to thriving. I wasn't particularly happy, nor was I particularly unhappy. Life felt really dull. There just wasn't any sparkle.

I was equal parts unmotivated and uninspired.

Until I met my Human Design.

When I met my Human Design, I finally saw on paper the blueprint of the true me — the me I always knew was in there, but somehow I was always in the way of letting her flourish and just be. It was uncanny and life-changing, and every year I go deeper into the details of my design, life gets better and better, and here's why:

I've learned to lean in to who I am.

I am here to experiment — just like Thoreau. I love my own company, I love my solitude, I love my privacy. I don't care about popularity, I care about substance and depth and quality — in my relationships and in my work. I am suspicious of group think and abhor the should's. I am allergic to tradition for tradition's sake. Even though I have the intellect and ability to lead others, I feel boxed in by organization charts, so I lead with my ideas, and observations, and writing instead.

All of this is in my chart. It's where I now choose to lean in. It's why I don't need to look outside of it or long for something different because "different" makes someone else happy.

I've learned to let go of who I'm not.

Popularity is important in today's social media driven world. Contorting ourselves to chase algorithms for follows and likes is just how the game is played (unless you want to pay). But I'm not built that way. In fact, I'm built to resist conformity. I will never write for the all-knowing, all-powerful algorithm. I will never meet the social media "best practices" for regularly scheduled consistency or frequency, and there are real, measurable consequences for that — invisibility and a slow-growing following.

I'll admit that I struggle with this one, because I have something that I know is of great value that can bring great healing to the world, but how can I preach authenticity to others if I'm not an example of it myself? I trust my voice and point-of-view to carry and reach the people it needs to according to my own energetic algorithm.

The price of happiness

There is a price to being yourself and honoring your uniqueness in a world where we're encouraged to be the same, and each of us will pay a different one — but isn't it worth the freedom of knowing and being who you truly are?

Living my Human Design hasn't made me popular, but it has brought me deep peace, genuine satisfaction, and a level of happiness I didn't know I was searching for all along. It also gave me a reason for being — to guide others in finding their own version of "10" on the happiness scale.

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 Clay Banks on Unsplash