Episode 288: How Are You Influenced?
How are you influenced? It’s a simple but pivotal question to consider.
Much of Human Design is about “deconditioning” and in order to know what you need to condition from, you need to understand how you’re influenced.
This episode examines:
What happens when you live in alignment with your Human Design
What happens when you don’t
What I’ve had to decondition myself from
Listen to the Episode:
Mentioned in the Episode:
Episode 287: How Did You Form Your Beliefs: Collective Shifts in Health and Wellness
Healthy x Human Design: Decode Your Health Using Human Design
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Share the Episode:
“Limiting beliefs leave us feeling disempowered with low self-worth because we’re carrying a burden of living up to someone else’s standards and other people’s expectations. When you know who you are you can set your own standards for yourself based on how you’re designed. That’s how you take care of yourself in the way that’s correct for you. That’s how you shed the tension, the chronic low-grade stress and become self-empowered.”
Read the Transcript:
Hey there - welcome back to the show!
Last week’s episode, Episode 287, sparked some conversation on how we came to form beliefs around health and wellness. So, I'd like to dig into this conversation and expand on it - explore how we’re influenced.
Much of Human Design is focused on the importance of “deconditioning.”
Deconditioning means releasing, resetting, and reframing ideas, beliefs, practices that you've adopted, essentially things you’ve been influenced by that aren’t correct for you, because if they’re correct for you, you don’t need to be deconditioned by them. These are things that aren’t in alignment with who you are and how you’re designed.
So, to decondition yourself from these things, you have to understand how you’re designed. What is correct for you, and equally, what is incorrect for you, so that you can identify the ways that you’ve been conditioned in the things that you do, the thoughts that you have and the things you believe in.
You start the deconditioning process by asking yourself, “How have I been influenced? How have I come to form this belief that I have?”
For example, I’ve asked myself, “Why do I believe that multitasking is a good thing?”
In the early days of my career, I remember writing on my resume, “ability to multitask.” Why did I think that multi-tasking was a good thing?
As I’ve lived my life and come to know my Human Design as a Projector, I’ve come to understand and accept that I’m meant to slow things down. I’m more efficient when I’m able to focus on one thing at a time. Slow living actually makes me more productive, efficient and effective. So, why did I think that multi-tasking was a good thing? Why did I feel that I needed to be the Energizer Bunny and live my life by going a mile a minute? How did I come to form this belief? More on this later.
Other examples of how we’re influenced are viral trends.
Side note: If you know me, when something is viral, I’m usually not into it which is why someone will reference something that I don't know anything about, so they’ll explain how it’s a viral thing, and then send me the link to it, whether it me a meme, a word, a style, a challenge, a video, a celebrity-something.
Jumping on viral trends are a way of being influenced – no judgment on whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing – it’s simply a form of influence.
Why do we have to do things in the same way that everyone else does? These are ways that we're influenced; in other words, it’s how we become conditioned.
How about the way you eat? How have you been influenced in how you eat? If you’ve tried Keto, Vegan, Paleo or any one of these ways of eating, what prompted you to do it? How were you influenced?
Do you assign labels to certain foods as “good” or “bad?” And if so, are these based on personal experience, or because someone labeled them as “good” or “bad?”
And just to be clear, I’m not saying that every influence or conditioning is bad, what I’m saying is that we recognize how we’re being influenced and how we let it affect us.
How have we formed our beliefs on what healthy means and what healthy looks like?
As discussed in the last episode, are your beliefs based on personal evidence or on trends and things that you've seen in the media, whether it be mass media or social media?
How did you come to form our beliefs around fitness? As I've repeatedly shared over the past seven years, my beliefs around fitness have shifted dramatically, based upon my personal evidence and experiences I’ve had over the past several years of twists and turns.
I’ve shed the belief that it doesn't count as a workout if your workout is less than an hour or if you didn’t sweat, it doesn’t count. I’ve released the idea that a workout has to be “beast-mode” or “no pain no gain.”
Now, workouts for me are dedicated time for intentional movement – a long walk, yoga, Pilates, strength training, or yes, even a run and it’s been working really well for me.
How did you form your beliefs about what relationships are supposed to look like?
I had developed a belief that all friendships have to look like the women on Sex and the City and if my friendships weren’t like that, something was wrong with them. I’d even had an argument, well, I wouldn’t say an argument, but a debate with a long-time, close friend of mine about it. I’d felt frustrated because our friendship didn’t look like Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha’s friendship, but why should it?
I’d been holding our relationship up to the standard that I saw on television, but we aren’t those people. Those people aren’t even real. And it was up to us to define our friendship.
So, how have you come to form your beliefs? How have you been influenced? How have you been conditioned? How are we designed and what do you need to be deconditioned from? It’s important to make this differentiation.
When you allow yourself to be influenced and act in a way that doesn't sit right with you, it’s a sign that you’re not in alignment with your design, not in alignment with who you are.
You carry a tension in your body, a burden - it's a form of stress, whether you realize it or not. I just had a conversation with a colleague, and they shared how they recently saw their chiropractor, and their chiropractor made a comment that was something like, “Hmm, you're having a stressful week.”
She didn’t think there was anything particularly stressful that happened, but then she thought about it, we peeled back the layers, and uncovered areas of unconscious tension that she wasn't aware were there.
Because when you act in ways that aren't in alignment with who you are, and do things that don't sit right with you, it takes its toll.
I’m a Projector but I spent many years of my life living as a Generator, as if I had a Defined Sacral Center - as if I had unlimited energy.
That’s how I'd been conditioned, because I'd never been shown, given permission, or even allowed myself to explore the possibility of living a slower paced life.
That it’s okay if not everything on my to-do list gets checked off today. It’s okay to think of yoga as my only workout for the day. These are things I had to decondition myself from.
If you're an Emotional Authority, are you making spontaneous decisions? Were you programmed to be spontaneous and make spur of the moment decisions? Sounds fun, but if you're an Emotional Authority, that's not the correct way for you to make decisions.
You may not get the outcome that you desire, or you may get the outcome, but the path to get there may be unnecessarily more challenging than it needs to be.
If you have an Emotional Authority, you need to take time to make sure that you're calm, not emotional – that’s when you’ll have the clarity to make decisions that are correct for you.
If you’re a Manifestor, your power is initiated. You don’t need to ask for permission or wait for something to happen in order to take action. A Manifestor waiting for permission is not in alignment with their design.
If you haven’t felt empowered to take initiative, you’ll feel your Not-Self of anger which is your surefire sign that you’re not in alignment with your Human Design.
Living out of alignment translates into that tension that I talked about earlier - stress that you carry – so, when you don’t follow your Authority and make incorrect decisions, especially in regard to how you take care for yourself in the habits that you practice every single day, how you interact with others, and how well you set yourself up for success – when you don’t follow your Authority, that tension and stress unconsciously or not, is constant – it’s chronic.
And chronic low-grade stress, when not addressed, is how chronic health conditions develop, this is how dis-ease happens – this is something that I cover in my program, “Energy Management and the Nine Centers.”
Every day you’re making decisions that affect your quality of life – are you going to stop scrolling, put the phone down and go to bed? Are you preparing a nutrient-rich meal or eating fast food? Are you going to sit on the couch and watch television or are you going to intentionally move your body?
Poor sleep affects your mood which then has an impact on your relationships with others. Do you show up to work grouchy and take out your anger, frustration, and moodiness on your colleagues, friends or family? If so, that then creates other tension, and so you carry this constant low-grade, chronic tension.
So, what are some of the things that you allow to influence you? You might reflect as far back as to childhood influences - parents, extended families, teachers, friends.
I grew up in a really, really small community on a really small island. It’s a little isolated and doesn’t have shopping malls, chain restaurants, or movie theaters. So, growing up, my only access to McDonald’s Happy Meals and finding toys at the shopping centers were limited to the once or twice a year trips we’d take to neighboring islands with larger cities.
In hindsight, I can see how that was influential in creating this almost hoarding-like mentality I have. I have a scarcity mentality - I’m afraid to run out of things. I still carry it with me today, and I have to consciously be mindful of it as I'm making decisions on whether I need to buy a case of something or just a pack of it.
Here’s a story I’ve never admitted to anyone, when the pandemic started, in its very early days the Bay Area, where I lived, was the one of the first areas to go into shutdown. There was a rush to get essentials, like toilet paper. I remember going to the store the day before the shutdown was set to begin and nowhere could I find toilet paper.
I went to my local grocery stores, Target, even Whole Foods and I'd never buy toilet paper from Whole Foods! I couldn’t find toilet paper anywhere, not even on Amazon! Now, here’s the kicker – I still had a case of toilet paper in stock, but I was afraid of running out of it, so what did I do? I bought toilet paper from an Instagram ad and it turns out it was from Sweden. I had toilet paper shipped to me from Sweden.
If that’s not a scarcity mindset issue, I don’t know what is. Oh, and it was the worst quality toilet paper I’ve ever seen. But you get the point – this was something I developed in childhood that I still carry with me today.
So, moving back to the present day, what do you allow to influence yourself? In the last episode, Episode 287, I talked about the influence of mass media and now social media, and they consciously and unconsciously influence us.
You’re also influenced by your communities - the people that you spend your time with, your friends, family, colleagues – they all have influence on you and that influence bleeds into all parts of your life.
In Episode 189, almost 100 episodes ago, I reflected on what it was like growing up as a Projector surrounded by Generators and Manifesting Generators because my family are all Generators and Manifesting Generators. I lived my formative years forming beliefs that working hard meant living like the Energizer Bunny, that rest for the weak, that - going back to a point I made earlier – multi-tasking was a good thing because that’s how everyone who was around me growing up lived.
All of that was correct for them but as the lone Projector with an Undefined Sacral Center, that way of living wasn’t – isn’t - correct for me. Not only didn't I know any different, because now I know that there wasn’t anyone else around me who was also a Projector with an Undefined Sacral Center who no wonder, I had formed the beliefs that I had.
So, how are you influenced? What do you allow to influence you?
In hindsight, I can see other ways that I’d been conditioned.
Growing up in the 80’s, there was the belief that eating “fat-free” was “how you got healthy. Now we know that “fat-free” likely means more sugar but back then, no one talked about the nutrient values of food. As long as a food was “fat-free” that meant it was “healthy.” I carried that belief for a long time into early adulthood.
Today we know about Paleo, Keto, Vegan, etc., but the one commonality most of these ways of eating have is that they all agree that processed sugar isn’t good for anyone.
During my running years, I tied my self-worth to how well I ran races. I defined success and accomplishment by the time on the clock. I thought I was a solid runner until I joined running communities. It was there that I learned that in fact, there were a lot of people who were faster than me – a lot faster than me.
So, when those communities became my primary social community, how fast I ran, or didn’t run is what I tied myself worth to. Had I not allowed myself to be influenced by that community, I’d still believe that I was a solid runner. It sucked the joy of running out of me. I had to go through a process of deconditioning those beliefs. Another belief I had to decondition myself from is what a health coach is “supposed” to look. It’s not about doing yoga on the beach in Bali in a bikini. Nor is it posting about green juice all the time, although I do enjoy a good homemade green juice from time-to-time.
People have commented about my lack of cooking content on my Instagram. Well, that’s because I’m actually a terrible cook. Where does it say that a health coach has to know how to cook? It doesn’t say that anywhere, but in the early years of health coaching, I held a belief that I wasn't a good health coach because I’m a terrible cook.
I know how to feed myself, what a healthy plate looks like, and how to make it. That’s what matters.
These are examples of how I’d been conditioned, i.e., influenced which led to the formation of limiting beliefs about myself.
Limiting beliefs leave us feeling disempowered with low self-worth because we’re carrying a burden of living up to someone else’s standards and other people's expectations.
When you know who you are you can set your own standards for yourself based on how you’re designed. That’s how you take care of yourself in the way that’s correct for you. That’s how you shed the tension, the chronic low-grade stress and become self-empowered.
It starts with knowing your Human Design and then learning what it means. What does it mean to be a Projector? What does it mean to be a Manifesting Generator? What does it mean to have a Splenic Authority? What does it mean to have an Ego Authority? What does it mean to have an Undefined Sacral Center? Understand your Human Design, then observe how you live your life.
Are you living in alignment with your design? Are you not in alignment with your design? And how does it show up for you?
This is how we practice self-observation, always with compassion and non-judgment.
Then, as you build self-awareness, experiment.
If you have an Emotional Authority, but you've always made decisions spontaneously, try waiting for moments of calm and clarity to make decisions and what the outcome is.
Experiment with your design. That's how you get to know it. That's how you get to understand what being in alignment feels like - and what being out of alignment feels like.
You won't know differentiation unless you experiment, staying in the mode of self-observation.
How am I influenced? It’s a simple but pivotal question to consider . Human Design is about deconditioning, and deconditioning starts with asking yourself, “How did I come to form this belief?”
If this is all new to you and you want to explore it further, start with my free program, “Healthy x Human Design.” It’s an introduction to my approach on bridging the gap between you, your energy, and your health and how that translates to the things we do day in and day out.
You’ll find a link to it in the show notes at www.livefablife.com/288 for Episode 288, and its also listed under the Work with Me section on my website.
As always, thank you for your time, energy, and attention, and I’ll see you right back here 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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