Episode 270: Three Key Lessons Learned From Human Design
It’s hard to narrow everything that Human Design has taught me to three things, but in this episode, I discuss three key things:
Energy Management
Boundaries
Managing Expectations
...that Human Design has helped me better manage in ways that are more comfortable and correct for me.
Listen to the Episode:
Mentioned in the Episode:
Episode 102: Mindset, Overcoming Challenges and Tips to Maximize Your Workouts with Martin Luna
Episode 103: Body Image, The Weight Room and the Importance of Rest for Runners with Coach Josh Maio
Episode 121: Understanding Your Priorities & Establishing Boundaries in the Workplace
Episode 179: Subconscious Capacity Building with Nadia Gabrielle
Episode 182: Human Design Non-Sacral Types and Their Strategies
Episode 219: How to Establish Boundaries with Diane Sanfilippo
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“We think of energy, or the lack of it, when we’re fatigued and burnt out. We also think of energy as the chemistry we may or may not have with another person, whether a significant other, friend, colleague or anyone we jive or don’t jive with – “full of chemistry” or “lack of chemistry.” And then we have our aura and energy in the context of Human Design – our vibe. We think of these as separate things, but really, they’re all the same - energy is energy. ”
Read the Transcript:
Hi there, friends. Welcome back to The Live Fab Life Podcast. I'm your host, Naomi Nakamura.
I recently had a conversation with someone unfamiliar with Human Design but very curious about it. They wanted to know how it helped me.
Well, it’s hard to name all the ways, but for today’s episode, I’ve picked three key lessons that I’ve learned from Human Design.
What I share today won't surprise some of you, but I hope it can be a reminder, and this can be a time of reflection on what Human Design teaches us. And as you hear about the three key lessons I’ve heard from Human Design, I would love for you to think about how these things show up in your life, if they do. What’s your relationship to these three things, and what role does Human Design play in it, if any? And if it doesn’t, how can it?
The first lesson that Human Design teaches me is energy management - how to manage my energy.
When I was exclusively doing health coaching, energy management was a critical topic before Human Design became a part of what I do. I taught a lot about why we're tired all the time.
Now, Human Design is an energy system, a framework, but it’s not thought about in the same way that we think about energy management and “why we’re tired all the time.” But really, it’s more connected than we realize.
We think of energy, or the lack of it, when we’re fatigued and burnt out. We also think of energy as the chemistry we may or may not have with another person, whether a significant other, friend, colleague, or anyone we jive or don’t jive with – “full of chemistry” or “lack of chemistry.”
And then we have our aura and energy in the context of Human Design – our vibe.
We think of these as separate things, but really, they're all the same - energy is energy.
Our energy levels determine how we show up every day - our ability to be focused, and productive, and what our everyday habits are. It impacts our relationships and how we treat and communicate with others, both personally and professionally, and then the energy within ourselves - how we conduct, take care of, and show up for ourselves.
What tools are we taught to do all of this?
We look at it as fuel, we know we need consistent, restful sleep, and we move our bodies, but what other tools are we given to help care of all the energies we have?
That's where Human Design comes in.
Human Design has helped me become aware of my energy, how it’s unique, how it works, and how I can best work with it. This alone has been monumental for me.
Human Design has taught me how to manage my energy so that I don't feel stuck, stagnant, or bitter - the emotion that Projectors, which is my design, feel when we're out of alignment.
By understanding my energy and how it works, I’m able to strategically protect myself, to the best of my ability from fatigue, burnout, and feeling tired all the time. It's been key in helping me take better care of myself, physically, mentally, and emotionally.
How?
I've shared in several past episodes that have an Undefined Sacral Center. Knowing that lifeforce energy is inconsistently available to me, has helped me not to be so rigid to any training plan or workout schedule.
Back in my days of marathon training, every week my running coach, who by the way, joined me in Episode 103, provided me with my training plan for the week, or my trainer, who joined me in Episode 102, had a workout schedule mapped out for me.
I was very rigid about these things, sticking to my plans no matter if I felt rundown, not sleeping, or even sick or injured. If I didn't stick to my plan, I felt like a failure, like I hadn’t done my part. I sabotaged my own successes and gave up before I even gave myself a chance.
Now that I know that I have an Undefined Sacral Center, I’ve learned how to go with the flow, depending on how my body is feeling in the moment.
My Oura ring helps by tracking my body temperature, heart rate, and sleep, all indicators of how my body has recovered and what it can do on any given day.
If my body isn’t fully recovered, I'm not going to do a 30-minute HIIT workout - maybe a 10-minute HIIT workout, or maybe instead of a hard workout, I do yoga, Pilates, or take a complete rest day. This is a completely different mindset and awareness from my marathon training days.
So, understanding this part of my Human Design helps me better manage my energy. It's helped me accept that the correct way I train and work out doesn’t look the same as other people, and it shouldn't because we're all individual and unique.
Trying to emulate how someone else trains is a disservice to myself, and it's not self-care.
And most importantly, my Human Design has helped me understand the importance of rest. Having this Undefined sacral Center, as well as having so much openness in my design - I only have two Defined energy centers and seven Undefined centers, I now understand that for me, rest is just as important, if not more, than a workout.
Taking a rest day used to be mentally challenging when I was working towards my goal. Still, now that I have this understanding about myself, I’ve come to realize that rest days are, at times, more important than a workout, and doing a workout when I’m depleted is can be more harmful than not working out.
Suppose I had understood myself during my days of marathon training. In that case, I think I would have enjoyed the process more and had more success in reaching my goals because I was not kind to myself and didn’t listen to my body – I didn’t know HOW to listen to my body during that era of my life.
Now that I understand this is how my energy works, I’m much more equipped to take better care of myself physically and mentally – it’s been a nurturing mental relief.
So, the first key lesson I learned from Human Design is energy management.
Second is boundaries, which feels like it’s become a bit of a buzzword, at least it has for me. Maybe I’ve been in a bubble where boundaries weren’t discussed, but suddenly, it feels like everyone’s talking about it.
I’ve been setting boundaries consciously since 2010 and 2011. Back then, I was in a highly stress situation at work. I was micromanaged. I had to be available 24/7.
One day, I sat in a conference room, and I heard a leader talk about how a colleague replied to their messages over the weekend and how that let them know it was okay to contact them during off hours because they responded.
That was a lightbulb moment for me. I realized that if I don't respond to their messages, that sends a message that I’m unavailable. And that was a boundary that I could put up that I never realized I had the ability to do so.
I’ve been working on boundaries ever since. It's been a learning experience, and Human Design has helped me better understand what kind of boundaries are best for me to establish based on the open centers in my design.
We know that Defined centers are where we have influential energy and influence over others. I only have two Defined Centers - the Throat and Splenic centers, which means my design's seven other energy centers are undefined.
These seven areas are where I absorb the energy around me and am vulnerable to being influenced by others. So, it behooves me to set boundaries around those areas.
What does this look like?
Well, I have an Undefined Solar Plexus, the center of emotions. Knowing this has helped me understand my feelings and recognize when they are my own versus when other people around me influence them.
I’ve come to recognize when I need to remove myself from a conversation or situation because the emotions I’m experiencing don’t mind – that I'm picking up on the energy of others.
This is one way that Human Design has helped me - to know what boundaries to establish.
Another protective boundary I set is around my thought process. I have Undefined Head and Ajna centers. That’s a lot of mental vulnerability.
It can be overwhelming to have so much information coming at me. I struggle with this and have my whole life. It feels even more amplified now with social media.
So, understanding that “Wow, something isn’t wrong with me, these are undefined centers in my design, and this is why I feel so overwhelmed with all the mental energy around me” felt like a weight taken off my shoulders.
I’ve learned how to put boundaries in place around this by being selective about what information I allow myself to consume.
This looks like being selective about who I follow on Instagram and what content I allow into my feed. It’s also being selective about the shows, podcasts I listen to, and what I read.
When it comes to my creative process, I feel overwhelmed when I create something for this podcast, Instagram, or even my website. It’s difficult to get started because it feels overwhelming, like having a white sheet of paper - all the possibilities are on the table.
So, I'm cognizant about what I expose myself to because I don't want to copy anyone else; I want what I create to come from me.
This is one way I have put boundaries around my creativity and my thought process and how it translates to my own creativity.
Another way boundaries work for me is understanding that I have an Undefined Root center. The Head and Root centers are pressure centers, undefined in my design.
This means that I don’t work well under pressure, contrary to what I thought of myself for much of my life.
“Works well under pressure” was something that I’d write on my resume, but what does that even mean? It’s something that we tend to take pride in, and I always thought I functioned best under pressure, but the reality is I don't. I crumble under pressure.
Coming to this realization has helped me plan accordingly with the situations that I have control over so that I afford myself enough time to do the things that I need to and want to do.
If you’re a regular listener, you know that I’ve had periods this year when I took a break and didn’t have new episodes because I was working on other projects.
The old me would have had a to-do list that was a mile long of things to do in a single day - every day for weeks. And then work me to the bone to try and get it all done. But all that does is lead to fatigue and burnout, and then I don’t put out my best work.
So, understanding this about myself and planning accordingly so that I don't feel under pressure has transformed how I approach work to manage my stress better, and as a result, I feel like I’ve put forth better work that I've put out.
I've touched more on boundaries in several past episodes – in Episode 121, I was joined by a colleague who talked about what boundaries look like in the workplace, and then in Episodes 154, 218, and 219. I'll link these episodes in the show notes you can find over livefablife.com/ 270 for Episode 270.
To recap, my first key lesson was energy management, the second was boundaries, and the third was related to boundaries and it’s managing expectations.
I've learned that if I can manage the expectations that I have of myself, I won’t disappoint myself. I'm not as hard on myself and don’t have negative self-talk.
I've also learned that if I manage other people's expectations of me, I’m less likely to disappoint them. It goes together with managing pressure and establishing boundaries.
What does that look like? Well, it comes to understanding how I'm designed, which has helped me be realistic about what I can accomplish in a realistic timeframe.
Remember how I just said I could have had this to do this? That was a mile long, and yet still trying to power through and come up with episodes every week. Well, understanding that
it wasn't realistic, given all the other things going on, instead of putting unnecessary pressure on myself as having an Undefined Root center. I just let it go. I allowed myself to skip a few weeks to focus on other things I had going on.
And because I managed my expectations and released the pressure, I managed my energy better, so I wasn't always exhausted.
And despite breaks in releasing new episodes, my audience has grown. So, it’s a testament to how working with my energy can be more fruitful and create more positivity, leading to great outcomes, as opposed to being rigid and trying to power through under pressure.
It’s also translated to my workouts. By not being rigid with my training and modifying my expectations, I find that I have more grace with myself, resulting from better self-care.
While it's essential to establish boundaries, it's even more critical to uphold the boundaries that have been established because if they’re not upheld, it sends confusing messages to others and us.
Without going into detail, I've had a lot of conversations here on the show, particularly with my friend Nadia Gabrielle. I'll link to the episodes with her in the show notes on subconscious capacity building.
By not upholding my own boundaries, especially to myself, it sends confusing messages to me as well as to others.
So, when I communicate and uphold my boundaries to others, I manage expectations of what I can deliver and what people and I can expect from me.
This results in better communication and healthier relationships. I demonstrate that I can deliver on my commitments, and that builds trust.
How often do we attribute our health complaints to stress? Okay, so what are we doing about it?
So, all these things that we talked about today - managing my energy more efficiently, setting and upholding boundaries, and managing expectations - help me manage my stress better.
Human Design helped me build awareness better to manage my physical, mental, and emotional health.
I don't have things keeping me up at night, so I sleep better. I am calmer and more collected. I make better decisions, and I’m more productive. I feel more settled within myself.
What are some key lessons you've learned from your Human Design, or did anything I share today set off a light bulb for you? L
You can leave a comment on the show notes for this episode, again at livefablife.com/ 270, or find me on Instagram at @livefablifewithnaomi.
Here are a few thoughts on Instagram before I close –
I set my Instagram settings so that only people who follow me can send me direct messages. So, if you send me a message but don't follow me, I won’t see it. It doesn't even show up.
Unfortunately, there's a lot of gross people and bots on Instagram that invade my personal space. So, this is a boundary that I’ve set for myself.
So, if you've tried to send me a message and I haven't responded, it's either because I haven't seen it, your question was already answered in an episode, or - and I’m being totally transparent here – your question goes above and beyond.
I've had people slide into my DMs asking questions about their personal designs that should be addressed in reading or my Human Design Playbook offering.
I’m not able to provide personalized guidance through direct messaging. That’s my boundary, and this is me managing the expectation.
So, with that, I thank you for your time, attention, and energy as always. I appreciate you being here with me, and I will see you right back here again next time. Bye for now!
Naomi Nakamura is a Health x Human Design coach who’s creating a healthier society through aligned energy.
She blends a bespoke mix of Functional Nutrition and Human Design to help others shift into alignment to leverage and correctly manage their energy to support their body, mind, and spirit.
She believes that when we embrace our authenticity and lean into our bio-individuality, we naturally live a life of freedom, empowerment, and optimal health.
Naomi resides in the San Francisco Bay Area and can often be found exploring the area with her puppy girl, Coco Pop!
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