Episode 308: Self-Worth and the Undefined Heart: Breaking the Cycle
If you’ve ever felt like you had to prove your worth, work harder to deserve success, or constantly seek validation, your Undefined Heart Center might be at play.
The Undefined Heart Center is one of the most conditioned areas in Human Design, leaving many of us stuck in overworking, over-promising, and over-proving. But what if your worthiness wasn’t something you had to prove—but something you simply owned?
In this episode, we’re breaking down:
How the Undefined Heart Center impacts self-worth and validation
The sneaky ways it shows up in career, relationships, and daily life
How to stop the cycle of proving yourself and start trusting your natural value
If you’ve ever thought “I just need to work harder” or “I’ll feel worthy when…”, this episode is for you.
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“The idea that you have to prove yourself, and it’s only when you’ve earned it are you worthy, this is all conditioning.”
Read the Transcript:
How often do you catch yourself thinking, “If I just do one more then I'll finally feel confident. If I just run one more mile, if I just do one more rep, if I just drop one more size…” Or, “Once I hit this goal, I'll finally be worthy and good enough to deserve this one thing that I want.”
We live in a world that conditions us to believe that self-worth is something that we need to earn, that if we just do one more, say yes more, or push harder, we'll finally feel good enough.
But what if I told you that that's all a lie, it’s all conditioning.
When it comes to value and self-worth and value, it's all Heart Center energy.
Coming off of last week's episode, “The Relationship Episode”, I wanted to expand on that conversation and talk about the relationship that we have with ourselves, and we can't have that conversation without talking about the Heart Center and our self-worth.
The Heart Center is the small triangle on the right side of your Human Design body graph chart. It’s located to the right of the G-Center, between the G-Center and the Solar Plexus Center.
Projectors and Manifestors who have the Heart Center as the first Defined Center in their Human Design, have an Ego Authority, so that alone should give you an idea of what the vibe of the Heart Center's energy is.
Now, let's talk about the differences between a Defined Heart Center and an Undefined One.
The Heart Center is willful energy. If you have it Defined, you know what you want, and you're determined to make it happen. You thrive when you’re in control of your life--it’s "I do what I set out to do" ego energy. You can be counted on to keep promises and deliver results.
You’re willful, competitive, and have an "I work to play" energy. You know the true value of things—especially the value of yourself. You know your self-worth. All of this Heart Center energy is consistently present within you.
Opposingly, if you have the Heart Center Undefined, as I do, then that energy isn’t consistently available to you. You absorb it when you’re around people who have the Heart Center Defined.
So, you're not competitive. You can struggle with knowing the value of things, including how much you value yourself---your self-esteem, self-confidence, self-worth, which is why you tend to feel that you have something to prove, that you have to earn your worth.
It's important to note that approximately only 30% of the population has a Defined Heart Center. So, that means 70% of us have Undefined Heart Centers. Think about that -- 70% of the population struggle with understanding their self-worth.
And the biggest myth there is about self-worth is that we have to earn it, that we have to do something in order for us to believe that we’re worth something and this is what we're talking about today.
If you have an Undefined Heart Center, I'm talking to you. If you don’t and you have this center Defined, I want you to still listen up--this will be good insight for you because remember, there are only 30% of you with a Defined Heart Center so you undoubtedly know someone--a friend, a loved one, a colleague--who has this center undefined.
So, let’s talk about how you can finally break free from this cycle of feeling that you have to prove yourself.
How can you tell if you’re stuck in this cycle?
Well, some common signs of an Undefined Heart Center in action are:
Overpromising and struggling to follow through. Saying yes to everything and not being able to say no. Hustling for approval - at work, in relationships
I know that you don't want to overpromise and under deliver, but when you can’t say no and overcommit yourself, and quite frankly, don't have the energy or the capacity to fulfill your promises, not only are you disappointing the people that you’ve made commitments to, but you’re also disappointing yourself, which does nothing to boost your self-worth.
The Undefined Heart tends to allow other people to define what success looks like for you. In a sense, it's handing over your agency to someone else because hustling for approval is seeking external validation. And so you’re holding yourself up to a standard—a definition of success—that’s set by someone else.
Think of a Projector whose Signature is “Success” who allows their success to be defined by a Generator, Manifesting Generator, Manifestor or even Reflector? I’m speaking from personal experience as a Projector who, prior to Human Design, is what I did. And allowing someone else to define what success looks like has a direct impact on my confidence and how much I value myself. It’s no wonder why we’re stuck in a cycle of believing that we have to earn our worth, which is another common sign of an Undefined Heart Center in action—the belief that you have to earn things.
That you need to earn rest. That you need to earn love. That you need to earn success. That if you don't earn it, then you're not worthy of it.
“If I can just do this one more thing, then I’ll be deserving of a break.” “If I can just do this one more thing, then I'll be worthy of being loved.” “If I just run one more mile, or do one more rep, then I can have a cookie.” “If I can just do this one more thing, then I’ll have earned a promotion and raise.”
This is a conversation for another day, but speaking from firsthand experiences, I can tell you that promotions and raises do not happen this way, at least in the tech space. It doesn’t matter how hard you worked or all the things you’ve accomplished, it all comes down to words “budget” and “politics”, but we’ll table this discussion for another day.
The idea that you have to prove yourself, and it’s only when you’ve earned it are you worthy, this is all conditioning. Conditioning comes from society, families, the workplace…
A little while ago I received a DM on Instagram from a listener, who has a Defined Sacral Center. This listener was concerned because their significant other also has a Defined Sacral Center but none of their children do—they’re all non-Sacrals. And this listener was feeling guilty about how they may have negatively conditioned their kids to be achievers, pushing them to go beyond their energetic non-Sacral capacities.
But here's the thing: 70% of the collective has Defined Sacral Center--35% of the population are Generators and 35% of the population are Manifesting Generators, so 70% of the collective have Defined Sacral Centers. Our society has been formulated for the Defined Sacral Center.
Societal conditioning has driven all of us, including non-Sacrals to believe that we all have to operate as if we ALL have Defined Sacral Centers. So, the guilt shouldn’t be on the listener. It’s how the world has been formulated. In the U.S., the work week is defined by 40 hours per week and that’s if you’re lucky. In the tech space it's very common for the expectation to be more. And then many employers only offer two weeks of paid vacation a year.
This is the standard that the world has set that we’re all expected to live in, yet 30% of the population are non-Sacrals and simply not designed to operate that way.
The Heart Center is the same. While 70% of the population has the Heart Center Defined, society has set the expectations that we all have to earn our worth and the things that we most value.
So, how do we break free from this conditioning? How can we come to understand our worth and without overproving ourselves?
We need to shift our mindset – simple to say, not so simple to do.
Developing an understanding, deep knowing, within yourself that you have nothing to prove, will shift your mindset and I promise that when that happens, everything changes.
You’ll look at the world differently. You’ll approach your work and your relationships differently, because you’ll know your own value—how much you're worth.
You’ll know what’s worthy of your time, your attention, your energy – these are not things that you owe to anyone. And when you understand this, you’ll protect it, meaning you’ll be selective about who you share it with and establish boundaries around it.
There’s that often used saying, “You have to take care of yourself first so you can give your best to everyone else” and that’s true because if you don’t prioritize yourself, i.e., value yourself, then eventually you’re going to tire yourself out and there'll be nothing left of you to be there for anyone else.
There's nothing more tormenting than not valuing yourself, not having confidence in yourself and this is why Human Design is so powerful.
For years as a health coach, I solely focused on helping people balance their blood sugar regulation and optimize their digestion, their gut health. But when you peel back the layers, as we do in Functional Nutrition, the approach that I work in, when you peel back the layers, it's not just about what you eat.
Why do you choose to eat the things that you eat? Why do you choose the habits that you do, or don’t do?
When you peel back those layers far enough, it comes down to how much you value yourself, how much you trust yourself, how confident are you in who you are, and that's why, when Human Design came into my life, I immediately knew (Splenic hit!) that it’s what my community needed help them understand their value and worth, of how fully embrace the concept of bio-individuality by following their natural rhythms and what's meant for them, as opposed to fitting themselves into someone else's mold, measuring themselves by other people’s standards---societal, familial, external conditioning.
So that they didn’t feel like they needed to earn their next treat, or earn someone's love, or earn someone's attention.
Breaking this cycle doesn’t happen overnight, nor is there a moment where you declare yourself free of the cycle. Having an Undefined Heart Center, I still catch myself falling back into that pattern sometimes, but you have to start somewhere and it starts with following your Strategy and your Authority.
When you follow your Strategy and Authority, you trust your instincts and know what things are the best things to commit to. You know what’s the things that are worthy of your time, energy, and attention. You intimately know what your limits are, so that you don't over-promise and you don’t put yourself in a situation of under-delivering, and you're not setting yourself up for failure.
You understand your value, you understand your worth, you understand what you're capable of giving at the moment, and you're able to put up a boundary around what you're not so you don’t over-commit yourself.
You lower the risk of under-achieving, which means you also protect your self-esteem because you’re less likely to disappoint, not just others but yourself too.
So, stop chasing, stop succumbing to external influences to deem yourself “worthy,” say “no” without guilt nor the need to explain yourself.
Sometimes someone will ask me to do something that I know I can’t deliver on, at least not in the current moment so I’ll say, “I’m sorry but I’m not able to commit to that at this time.” I don’t say it in a snarky or sassy tone, but simply, “I don’t have the bandwidth to take that on right now.”
I know, I know, “bandwidth” is one of those overused corporate-talk words that I can feel you rolling your eyes at, but it’s the truth! “I don't have the bandwidth for this, and I don’t want to disappoint you (and me) if I know I can’t guarantee delivery of it, so I can’t commit to this right now.”
Not being able to say no, overpromising, these are all ways that you run yourself into the ground and then wonder, “Why am I tired all the time? Why am I anxious? Why am I stressed? Why can’t I sleep? Why am I addicted to sugar?”
Saying “no”, isn’t being mean, it’s setting an energetic boundary. And this is critical, especially in the workplace. It’s managing expectations.
Years ago, I used to have work-induced anxiety because I worked for someone who expected me to be available 24/7. If this person had an important presentation on Monday, I was expected to be available 24/7 all weekend in case they needed my help.
When I say anxiety-inducing, I had major stomach pains almost daily and knew that I couldn’t survive in this situation. It was a process, but I had to set a boundary around my availability and uphold it because if you don't uphold a boundary, it sends mixed messages. You can’t expect anyone to respect your boundaries if you don’t respect them yourself.
So, I had to set and uphold the boundary and manage the expectation around my time of when I wasn’t available to respond to text messages or emails.
It was scary but something I had to do because I was worth more than having my time, attention and energy controlled by external sources. And wouldn’t you know it, but once I set the boundary, it was respected. Since then, I’ve also come to make liberal use of using the “Do Not Disturb” status on WebEx (maybe your company uses Slack for your intercompany messaging).
When you work from home there can be that fear that if you’re not available 100% of the time you’re goofing off, but that simply isn’t the case. You know how when you work in an office, there’s always people stopping by your cubicle to chat? Or the gatherings in the break room? There’s so many distractions but I swear its worse when you work from home because the pings coming in can be non-stop.
So, when I need focus time, or need to take a break, or just don’t want to be disturbed, I turn on my DND.
I also block out my calendar. My calendar isn’t just for my meeting schedule, I also block out focused time to work on certain projects. This is how I know what I have the capacity to commit to and what I say “no” to.
It can be challenging to start saying “no” – you have to work up your confidence to do it, especially if it hasn’t been something you’re used to doing. This is where self-observation is so important. If you’re a long-time listener, I probably sound like a broken record, but self-observation is critical so you can recognize when you’re being influenced by external pressure.
We're talking about the Heart Center today, but the pressure centers are the Head Center and the Root Center. If you have these pressure centers undefined, in addition to having the Heart Center Undefined not only are you vulnerable to pressure, and not one to manage it well, you can also tend to doubt your self-worth. I have all three of these centers undefined, so I very much know what it feels like.
This is why it's essential to practice self-observation because you’ll inevitably feel pressure to overpromise, say yes to things you don’t want to, seek external validation and approval, but when you can recognize when you’re falling into those patterns you can recognize it, and course correct.
When you recognize yourself falling back into that mindset, pause and ask yourself, “What’s compelling me to think or act this way? What’s the catalyst and what’s the context of the situation?
When you’re able to connect the dots, then you can create a game plan so when these situations come up again, you know how to address it and what to do.
Hindsight is everything and looking back, I can identify so many instances of “Undefined Heart Center behavior.” The first one that comes to mind is from the time that I spent as an endurance athlete, which was a hugely influential time in my life.
Earlier, I used the example of running one more mile in order to feel worthy of the things that you desire, and that was me.
For a long time, I thought I was a competitive person, but honestly, I’m not. I was conditioned to believe that I was.
But as a long-distanced runner, what you’re competing against is the clock to see if you can beat your last time.
As someone who was never athletic, when I discovered that long-distance running was something that I could do, it was huge! Then I could run a mile, two miles, a 5k, a 10k and a half-marathon, 26.2 miles in a marathon--if you knew me when I was a kid, you probably couldn’t believe it!
I thought that I was doing so well with it, until I got on social media, specifically running social media.
I met some cool people who I’m still friends with long after my running days have passed, but at the same time, the community itself could be detrimental because so much of a runner’s worth was placed upon how fast they ran.
And compared to Running Twitter, I was not a fast runner. Compared to my past self, I was like an Olympic runner, but compared to people on the internet, I was really slow, and it made me very self-conscious.
My self-worth became dependent on my race times—a PR, breaking an hour in the 10K—and every time I didn’t run that extra mile or take that extra second off the clock, my self-esteem took a hit.
I remember the last PR I set for the half-marathon. I almost didn’t run the race because I had car problems. At that point in my running era, I was way into my head. My Undefined Head and Root Centers were hugely in play (of course I didn’t know it at the time), and I remember that to try to get out of my head, I covered my Garmin watch with tape so that I didn’t check the time every 10 seconds.
I ran by feel and ran a PR (personal record) by over seven minutes. In running, a PR can come down to seconds, so a 7-min PR is HUGE.
But as I celebrated at the Finish Line, the first thing someone asked me was, “So, are you going to try to score another PR at your next race?” which incidentally was only six weeks later.
I couldn't even enjoy the moment, because I immediately felt the pressure of having to beat this new PR and then placing my self-worth on the fact that I had to, or else I couldn’t consider myself a worthy runner.
There was another time where I was spectating a marathon with friends. When it was over, we went to lunch and were chatting about our friends who ran in the race. Someone in the group wasn't familiar with one of the runners that cheered on, and someone said, “Oh yeah, it’s so-and-so. She's slow, but still really nice…” as if being slow had anything to do with how nice she was. On top of that, I was a much slower runner than this person, so what did that imply about me?
Allowing external influences to formulate my self-worth and lessen my confidence as a runner and rob the joy out of me.
This was my Undefined Heart Center at work and it’s no wonder that during this period of my life, when you would think I was at my healthiest, I was actually extremely unwell – physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually.
But it ultimately led me to this work that I do now, which changed my whole way of thinking -- of looking at what's at the root of things, and not just what’s at the root of health problems. This mindset has taken over how I look at everything – and I suppose my Undefined Ajna Center – my ability to see many points of view, aligns very nicely with this.
My hybrid approach of intersecting Functional Nutrition with Human Design helps us to understand how my mental pressures, physical struggles, grappling with my sense of self-worth are all interconnected and having an awareness and being able to discern what’s energy from within me versus my vulnerabilities to external influences has been paramount to how I’m able to process life and see MY big picture.
When you understand this, you can let go of the idea that you have to prove yourself and you start to trust yourself.
Self-trust begins with your ability to remove challenges and have confidence in your decisions which comes down to, as it always does, your Strategy and Authority.
When you follow your Strategy and Authority you work in alignment with the nature rhythms of your energy. And this is when things start to happen. The more you do so, the more you trust in yourself. And that self-confidence, trusting your decision-making can feel like the biggest burden on your shoulders has just been lifted. It feels like freedom, and you start to see all the ways that you're worth it.
You're already worthy, just as you are, and you don't need to earn it, you don’t need to prove yourself.
So, I like to end each episode with a reflection:
What would change if you believed that you were already enough? What would you change if you believed that you were already enough?
Would you let go of the constant pushing and the need to exceed expectations? Would you simply allow yourself to rest and have peace of mind in doing so?
That's probably the biggest and most impactful shift that happened for me--that I don't need to earn my rest, I can just take it.
As a Projector with an Undefined Sacral, Undefined Head Center, Undefined Root Center, Undefined Heart Center, rest is essential for me, and I’m so much better for everyone when I rest, when I live the slow life.
When I slow down and let myself rest, I’m honoring what my current capacity is on any given day.
So, I leave you with these final thoughts:
You don't need to prove your worth, ever, ever, ever, ever.
Following your Strategy and Authority is how you start to learn to trust yourself. And you can start doing this today, you don't need to wait for anything or anyone - start following your Strategy and Authority today.
If this episode resonated with you, I would love for you to share it with someone who’d find it resonating too. And I’d love to hear from you. Leave a comment on this show notes for this episode at www.livefablife.com/308 for Episode 308 or find me on Instagram at @livefablifewithnaomi.
And with that, as my friend, Nadia Gabrielle, from the last episode, likes to say, “I’ll love you and leave you.” I'll 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!
Connect with Naomi on: Instagram
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