Read the Transcript:

Hello there, welcome to The Live FAB Life Podcast. I'm your host, Naomi Nakamura.

Today, we’re revisiting a topic we last covered in December 2019 in Episode 110.

Now, I don't know about you, but I've come to divide my life into two phases – pre-pandemic and post-pandemic times, and 2019 seems like a lifetime ago.

But that episode's topic was, “What will be your catalyst for change?

If you’ve listened to the past several episodes, you’ll have noted that the theme has been that we’re all different. We’re all unique.

And if we all know this, why do we try to be like everyone else?

Because what we see of the people we’re trying to be like is what they want us to see - what they selectively allow us to see, especially on social media, because what we see on social media are highlight reels; very rarely do we see the full picture.

We all want to be the best versions of ourselves, especially during the new year when everyone sets goals and resolutions. Still, yet when it comes down to it, the vast majority of people aren’t willing to commit to whatever the necessary changes are for their desires to come to fruition.

So, nothing changes if nothing changes. And that’s kinda why setting New Year's goals and resolutions can seem trivial.

So, what is the one thing that compels you, that motivates you, that makes you commit to doing all the things necessary to transform and reach your goals?

What will be your catalyst for change?

In December 2019, I said that lasting change starts with deep introspection. And I still do - self-observation with non-judgment, though I didn’t use those exact words at the time.

Back then, I also shared two frameworks that, at that time, helped me – The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin and The Enneagram.

The Four Tendencies is a framework created by the researcher, author, and podcaster Gretchen Rubin. My tendency is that of a Questioner, which means that I’ll do something once I understand why it's important for me to do so.

In the Enneagram framework, I’m an Enneagram 1, which means I’m motivated by freedom and justice and feel called to a higher sense of purpose.

As for other frameworks, my Myers Briggs INTJ profile and my love languages are Quality Time and Words of Affirmation (it’s a tie every time).

What’s the commonality with these frameworks? And how are they different from Human Design? The latter question is one I’m frequently asked.

Well, The Four Tendencies, Enneagram, Myers Briggs, and Love Languages - all require an assessment to be completed in order to calculate your results.

While I agree with my results for all of these frameworks, the reality is that some of your conditioning will likely influence how you answer some of those assessment questions.

It’s why we struggle with some of those questions.

I remember taking the Enneagram assessments, which, if I recall correctly, is fairly in-depth, and thinking, “Well, this answer could go either way,” so I just picked one.

If you’ve taken that assessment or any other one, you might have had the same experience, which is why some people doubt their results.

I know people who simply picked another Enneagram that they liked better than the results they got. So, how accurate is it?

Other people have no idea what their Enneagram is – or what it “should be.”

Human Design is unique in that all you need to find out what your design is, is your birth date, birth time, and birth location. In other words, there is no room for conditioning to influence your Human Design. You are who you are - it’s the real you.

And since learning about my Human Design, my goodness, it’s been the catalyst for change in every part of my life because I felt I was seen completely for the first time. All the parts of me that made me small, that I minimized, that I didn’t allow myself to recognize, accept, or explore, were validated that those parts are indeed a part of me. They are me!

My Human Design, as a 1 / 3 Splenic Projector, with a single definition, Active Brain, High Sound Determination, and Outer Vision, Need Motivation with a Right Angle Cross of Rulership (4) incarnation cross - all of it plays a role in how I listen to my body, how I approach fitness and decide what workouts to do every day, how I manage my productivity and day-to-day schedule, how I feed myself, what context I process information in, even how I evolved my approach to my work as a health coach.

So, those frameworks and Human Design were part of my catalysts of change because they, particularly Human Design, allowed me to see, accept, and embrace who I really am, what my purpose here is, how I’m meant to go about fulfilling it. That’s given me the permission nad empowerment to make hard changes, some that I was worried how I’d be judged for making, to bring me closer to bringing my goals and dreams to reality.

There’s this quote by Gandhi that I love that says something like, “Your beliefs become your thoughts, your thoughts become your words, and your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits, your habits become your values, and your values become your destiny.”

In other words, you are what you think and believe, and that’s what you become. It becomes this self-fulfilling prophecy, a cycle, doesn’t it?

So, what has been, or what will be, your catalyst for change?

If you’ve held yourself back from doing things that you know will bring your goals to fruition if you’ve set the same goals over and over without making any genuine effort towards achieving them, why?

In the spirit of practicing self-observation with non-judgment, always, here are some questions to consider:

What attitudes that are currently holding you back? What do you think about yourself and your life? Do you think of it in a positive or negative light? What makes it positive or negative? What do you consider positive or negative? And why? What’s influenced these perspectives and perceptions? What would you attempt if you knew anything was possible and you could succeed?

I ask myself these questions often, and believe it or not, they’re not easy to answer if I really stop and think about it.

I often ask myself, “Is this what I want to do? Or am I doing this because it's expected of me?

Just four episodes ago, in Episode 276, I talked about setting yourself up for success.

Two episodes ago, in Episode 278, I talked about taking an integrative approach to optimize your health with Human Design.

And in the last episode, Episode 279, I talked about listening to your body, because this is the season where this is the vast majority of you are thinking about. This is what's on your mind.

First, I just want to put out there that you’re not limited to only thinking about these things at the start of a new year. So, if you happen to come across this episode in August, these questions and considerations are applicable to wherever you are in your life right now.

Personal growth is timeless information. I think about these things all the time.

I found this piece of paper. I’m not sure where it’s from, but I scribbled down an idea that must’ve just come to me in the moment - I’m guessing it was a Spenic hit - that read:

“How do you define healthy?”

People say, “I made these healthy cookies,” or I got a text over the holidays from a colleague asking me for my smoothie recipe because they wanted to “be healthy in the new year.”

But how do you define healthy? Because “healthy” is just a word, and “healthy” means a lot of different things to a lot of different people and shifts at different times in our lives.

Healthy isn't what we eat or don't eat. It isn't what's on our plates. Healthy isn't whether we exercise or not. Healthy isn’t how many steps we take every day. Nor is it what the scale says or calories in versus out.

These all contribute to our physical health, but if we’re thinking functionally and peeling back layers to see what's really at the root of things, “healthy” is our ability to trust ourselves.

It’s having confidence in ourselves enough to trust our decision-making abilities because if we can’t do that, that’s when we look to other people to see what they’re doing and try to copy them when we’re completely different people from different circumstances, different genetics, in different environments at different stages in our lives.

Being an athlete, especially an endurance athlete, was new to me. It wasn’t something I’d ever done before, and I didn’t know what I was doing. So, I read all the running blogs, followed other runners on social media, and followed everything they did, to the detriment.

I allowed myself to be influenced - conditioned - into doing things that my body wasn’t capable of, or rather, going about doing things in ways that my body wasn’t capable of versus allowing myself to explore and be different and do things in ways that were correct for me.

On paper, I looked so fit and healthy. I wore a size four and ran 40+ miles a week. I’d work twice a week with my trainer and followed a strict, restrictive diet for performance.

Behind the scenes, I can tell you that not only did I harm my physical body, but it also wrecked my mental health.

My insides, meaning my digestive system, were a mess. My nervous system was wrecked. I wasn’t sleeping. My adrenals were dysfunctional. My body wasn’t recovering from its workouts, but I kept demanding more and more from it. So when I wasn’t able to keep up with what I repeatedly asked for, I saw it as failure, as incompetence, and boy did that wreck my self-confidence because I just kept comparing myself to other runners.

And it's all because I lacked awareness and confidence.

Long story short, this is why I no longer define healthy ONLY by the conventional ways society defines healthy. There is no “mental health” and “physical health” - we’re a full person, so there’s only one health.

At the root of being “healthy” is our ability to trust ourselves, our decision-making abilities, and knowing how to navigate through life confidently so that we live our lives with ease and flow versus feeling like salmon swimming upstream against resistance.

Now, I don’t want to make it sound like that’s all we have to do, and life will be unicorns and roses. There's always going to be challenges - some in our control and some beyond it.

But, if we know what our gifts are, our strengths, and how we’re vulnerable to outside influences, then we can arm ourselves with the tools and skills to build, communicate, and uphold boundaries to protect ourselves and have the confidence and trust to make decisions that are correct for ourselves.

Imagine navigating life with that kind of awareness, knowledge, confidence, and discernment to know what your body needs - what and how it needs to be fed, how it needs to move, how to know what relationships are supportive to have and are not.

It’s having an x-ray vision for yourself that no one else has.

It all comes back to understanding how your energy flows – your Type and Strategy, how you're meant to make decisions – your Authority, and your personality and learning styles through your Profile Lines.

And while there are many other parts and configurations to your design, when you understand these foundational pieces - your Type, Strategy, Authority, and Profile Lines, well, that's plenty to work with.

So, instead of living life based on how we’ve been influenced and conditioned, let our catalyst for change, growth, and transformation be healthy living aligned with who we inherently are and how we’re uniquely designed.

There’s no need to find a “new you.” it’s about discovering, uncovering, and returning to the real you.

If you haven’t already taken my newly released training, “Healthy x Human Design: Decode Your Health Using Human Design,” please do so. I guarantee that you've never thought of your chronic symptoms this way! You’ll find a link to it in the show notes for the episode at www.livefablife.com/280 for Episode 280, right on the home page of my website, or if we’re connected on Instagram, in the link in my bio.

That’s it for this week, as always, thank you for listening, and I’ll see you back again next time - bye!