Episode 200: My Human Design Determination & Cognition
As introduced in the last two episodes, 198 and 199, in Human Design, your Determination and Cognition are how you nourish your brain and “digest” information.
In this episode, I share with you what my Determination and Cognition are from my own Human Design, how they resonated with me, reflections on the role they played in my life prior to knowing about Human Design, and how I integrate them today.
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“I’ve observed that my best ideas and moments of clarity come to me when I’m in the car or walking my dog while listening to a podcast, or while I’m listening to music while on a run or working out. Those moments don’t happen for me in silence. I didn’t think about this until I learned about my High Sound Determination. Silence does make me feel uncomfortable. On some level, it gives me anxiety and I’m not as focused.”
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Hello, my friend and welcome back to The Live Fab Life Podcast! I'm your host Naomi Nakamura and I’m excited to be here with you today for the 200th episode of this show!
Although technically it’s the 202nd episode because there is an Episode 000 and Episode 005.5 But regardless, we’re celebrating this episode as the 200th one of the show.
Back when I hit the 100th episode a couple of years ago, I did a recap show. I think I did the Top 10 episodes to date. We’re not doing that this time, but I do want to commemorate this milestone because it's been a lot of work, but it's been equally gratifying to be here with you for the past almost 4½ years.
Rather, today I’m going to be talking about my Human Design Determination and Cognition. And I'm going to be sharing my experience in how I felt when I learned about these variables of mine, how I'm learning about them, and how I'm integrating them. These are deeply personal topics, so what a great way to commemorate Episode 200.
To provide some context, I introduced what the Human Design Variables are in Episode 197. quoting this statement from one of the Human Design thought leaders that I’ve learned from:
“When you're in your correct environment, it sets up your perspective so it's easier to be motivated and nourished.”
And the “nourished” in that quote refers to Determination and Cognition.
In Episode 198 I explained what Determination is, so if you haven’t listened to that episode yet, please go back and do so but in a nutshell, in Human Design, your Determination is how you literally and figuratively nourish your brain - what's the best way for that to happen for our body, through the food you consume, but also the information that you take in.
How does your brain process information? What's the best way for your brain to be nourished?
And in Episode 199 I talked about Cognition. Cognition is your strongest sense. It’s your super sense, your Spidey-sense.
Along with your Determination, it's what we refer to in Human Design as your digestion.
So, today I want to share my Determination and Cognition with you.
On your Human Design chart, if you look at the top left, that's where you’re going to find what your Determination and Cognition are.
On my chart, on the top left, there's a number 5 and that indicates that my Determination is Sound, and the arrow points left, which indicate that’s active for me.
So, my Determination is High Sound. What that means is that I best digest when my body and brain are stimulated by sound, by noise.
When I first learned this, it felt abstract. I had a hard time comprehending it because with Determination there are ones like Taste or Hot and Cold Thirst.
Conceptually, these are easier for me to comprehend, as opposed to High Sound, because the first three Determinations are conditions of your food, whereas the last three are circumstances - what are the circumstances in which you’re consuming your food?
Having been a health coach that specializes in digestion, the circumstances took some time for me to comprehend.
So, when it comes to High Sound, how do the acoustics, how does noise, support my digestion - literally and figuratively?
I've spent a lot of time thinking about this. I've done a lot of research, a lot of learning around what High Sound means.
One thing that you’ll notice in Human Design is that when you start to follow different Human Design people, you'll see that we all have our own different “flavors,” or our take on things. I just had this conversation with another Human Design coach about how you can very much see a person's design in their approach to how they teach and share Human Design.
So, I have studied with a few different teachers, different thought leaders, and what I've come to learn about High Sound is that:
Foods that are full of flavor, that have a lot of ingredients, feed my brain.
In learning this, the first thing I thought about was condiments. I’ve been known to be someone who isn’t a condiments person. This has caused some contention with friends who are like, “I don't know if I can be friends with you if you don't enjoy condiments.”
That's not to say I don't enjoy the flavors that the condiments add. I just find them to be messy and I don't like to be messy when I eat. That’s the only reason I’m not a condiment lover, not because I don't like the way it tastes or the flavor it adds to the meal, I just don't like being messy. Adding ketchup and mustard to a burger just makes it messier, right? That doesn't mean I don't like flavor and that doesn't mean I don't like a lot of ingredients on my food.
Some of my favorite foods have a lot of ingredients and are so flavorful, and as a side note, just because I don't enjoy making them myself, doesn't mean I don't enjoy them.
Some of my favorite foods are Cuban and Peruvian food. They have sooooo much flavor and speak to my soul. Then of course one of my all-time favorite dishes is paella. Not surprisingly, the best paella I ever had in my life was when I was in Barcelona. And I don't know a more complex dish that's full of flavor than paella. I mean, it has saffron in it for heaven's sakes! And saffron is complex! I'm afraid to cook with it and it's expensive, but it’s among my most favorite foods in this world. So, this is an example of different ingredients and is full of flavor. These foods soothe me.
Then there's the condition of the environment that I'm in when I eat. Naturally, with a High Sound Determination, the environmental conditions are about the noise going on around me.
Some of my most enjoyable meals that I've observed having, since learning about my Determination, are ones where I have the TV on in the background while reading and while eating at the same time. I know may sound odd to some of you. It may be even sound counterproductive especially if you don't have a High Sound Determination. But honestly, it feels natural to me and helps me take in what I'm consuming.
In terms of how a High Sound Determination nourishes my brain like I said when I'm eating and there's noise on – like in a restaurant, I tend to feel more focused, even if it's just background noise, as long as there's no silence. Silence makes me feel uncomfortable.
I’ve also observed that my best ideas and moments of clarity come to me when I'm in the car or walking my dog while listening to a podcast, or while I'm listening to music while I'm on a run or working out. Those moments don't happen for me in silence. I didn't recognize or even think about this until I learned about my Determination. Silence makes me feel uncomfortable. On some level, it gives me anxiety. I’m not as focused.
Now, a lot of our conditioning happens in our childhood - in our early years, our formative years. As a kid, some of my most vivid memories are when I was told by the adults in my life, not necessarily my parents, I mean, I had a lot of adults in my life, but I was told to be quiet. Or to shut up or to not speak up.
And there are times where I was upset, and I’d be crying because I was being disciplined or scolded, or I was just upset, and I was told to stop crying. Stop making any noise - period.
I remember the physical sensations in my body during those moments, as a child, physically trying to stifle the uncontrollable sobs that were coming off my body. In hindsight that really affected me. I can see now, how these kinds of experiences from our formative years can really condition us and have an impact on us. I'm sure there are lots of things that happened in my childhood, but I remember these moments vividly and they have always stayed with me.
Now of course all of this has come to me after months and months, over a year or possibly two, of learning about this, observing it, processing it, and experimenting with it.
First, to see if it’s in fact true for me, and turns out it is, then secondly, how has it unconsciously, unknowingly shown up in my life in the past before I even knew what Human Design was. Was I already following my Determination? This is what a lot of us have found with Human Design – that we’ve always been living parts of our design. But also, how does it show up now? How can I continue to nurture and foster this part of me? So, this has been my experience with discovering my Determination.
Now, when I did Episode 198 on Determination, I specifically didn’t mention what my Determination was because I had already planned this episode. But I did mention in Episode 199, that my Cognition, my super Spidey sense, is External Vision, or as some people call it, Outer Vision. I've seen it referred to with both terms. I call it External Vision.
So, if you haven't yet listened to Episode 199, having an External Vision Cognition is about being a visionary. It's about being seeing the big picture. It's about seeing how things can come together. It's about seeing possibilities for other people. It's about seeing things that other people don't see. This is my super Spidey sense. And it's about appreciating visual aesthetics, obviously.
So how does this show up for me?
Now, this is not bragging or me being conceited, but I find this to be true for me.
I do see things differently than others. I didn't appreciate this as deeply as I do now until I came to learn about Cognition and what my Cognition is and how it differs from other people.
If this isn’t your Cognition, don’t feel bad about it, this just happens to be mine. You have your own Cognition, your own Spidey sense that’s so unique to you that I don’t have. This is what makes Human Design so awesome!
So, when it comes to External Vision, I’m often the one to point out the big picture of a situation to someone who might not see it.
In my corporate career as a Program and Project Manager, I do see things how things can come together. I've been in situations where I'm bringing a cross-functional group together that I have no expertise in but I can offer my perspective on how they might be able to come together and get their desired outcome.
I don't need to have expertise in whatever that particular group does, but I often have a perspective on how things can come together to help them move things along. I also have an ability to see the potential in others, sometimes before they even see it for themselves.
When I meet someone who either has an entrepreneurial dream or an entrepreneurial ambition, or they're starting a business, I'm already formulating in my head ways they can like get started, or what they can do with it, how they can grow and expand, things that they can do. Unfortunately, it sometimes overwhelmed people, so I've learned to taper it down.
Even in my own work, a couple of years ago I was in a mastermind with two other coaches. We affectionately, jokingly called ourselves “Dumb It Down” because it was a reminder to us that sometimes we speak and focus too much on the big picture and we speak at a level that's so far above our clients and community that we really needed to bring things down and speak in a way that's consumable and understandable so as not to cause overwhelm.
As far as seeing things that others can't see, I don't quite know how but I’m convinced that there’s some connection to my Splenic Authority because seeing things that others can't feel very intuitive to me. A Splenic Authority, which is my Authority is all about intuition.
An example of this, and it's not the best example but it's the only one that comes to mind at the moment, is that I can pick up, and I guess you can say “see” things that might be going on behind the scenes with someone based on their social media posts.
Whether I actively engage with them, or I've spoken to them recently, or even if it's been years since I've been in touch with them, or even if it’s someone who I don't even know that person in real life.
I can't explain it, but there's something where I can intuitively sense, I can see that there's something going on behind the scenes, and then, when it’s revealed, I'm like, “I kinda already knew that.”
There have been times where I’ve told friends that “Hey, I think this mutual friend of ours, may no longer be at their job, or with their significant other based upon their Facebook posts. And my friends will look at me like I just grew a second head.
They'll be like, “There's no way” and they'll go and look at the same posts that I saw. They’d be like, “I don't know what you're talking about. There's nothing here that indicates that” and then, a short time later, my super Spidey sense turns out to be true. I can't explain it.
Some of the practical ways I've worked to refine this sense of seeing things that aren't obvious to others is by doing word search, or “find-a-word” puzzles, or doing magic eye puzzles where you search for differences in two pictures. I spend a lot of time doing puzzles like this. I don't know if it helps or not, but I find them enjoyable, and I kind of feel more in tune with my Cognition when I do these things.
Going back to social media, when it comes to visual aesthetics, the images, and more recently, the audio that has evolved into what we now know as Instagram well, it's no wonder that’s my social media platform of choice. There's a couple of things that I've noticed that I’ve been unconsciously doing there before I even knew about my Cognition.
I noticed that I’ll not follow accounts, even if it's real-life friends, that post poorly lit photos. It's not happening. Poorly lit photos are not visually pleasing - to anyone. They hurt my eyes and it's not the kind of content I want to consume.
I’ve also noticed that I will follow accounts and will consume content from accounts that I may have nothing in common with, topics that don’t even have any real interest in, but they post beautiful photos, that please me so I'll follow them. I don't even read their captions, but the photos are so aesthetically pleasing that I want to consume more.
Then, there’s nothing that impacts my food cravings more than seeing it on Instagram. Someone posts a picture of a chocolate chip cookie, then I must have chocolate chip cookies. Someone posts a picture of sushi, then I must have sushi. It’s just how I am.
So, there you have it. This is how I've come to learn and observe my High Sound Determination and my External Vision Cognition.
This is how it’s shown up for me, both in hindsight, before I had any awareness of Human Design, and now that I do. This is how I'm trying to lean into it and observe how it naturally shows up in my life without me even trying to force anything.
Like anything else, I'm still learning, observing, and experimenting with how these things show up for me. I imagine, like all the other parts of my Human Design, it'll continue to be a lifelong experiment for me.
Now I want to hear from you. I'm curious, have you looked up your Determination and Cognition yet? If so, how did they resonate with you? When talking to my Human Design colleagues, some of them say, “My Determination doesn’t resonate with me at all”, and say, “Oh, it’s totally me!”
So, I'm curious if you know your Determination and Cognition, how does it resonate with you? How do you feel about it? How has it or how does it presently show up in your life? How are you integrating it? I'm so curious – tell me!
But as a reminder, the Variables are advanced topics in Human Design and so while they're exciting and extremely intriguing, don't forget about your Type, Strategy, and Authority.
And while in the past I've shared about my free guide that helps you discover your human design, called “Get to Know Your Human Design,” I think I'm going to rename it to “Your Human Design, Discovered,” because I also want to share that I recently expanded my suite of services.
I recently rolled out what I'm calling, “Your Human Design, Explained,” which has three ways to work with me to understand your Human Design.
First is simply getting a PDF that's about 35 pages long that explains your Human Design. This is something that I’ve provided to all my clients after we had a live session. Now, I'm offering this as a standalone service. When someone comes to work with me, I pull their Human Design chart, I spend about an hour studying it, and then I'll spend about another hour putting this PDF together that breaks down your specific design, the different elements of it, and how they come together.
The second option is a PDF plus a recording of me doing a reading for you. It's not live interaction, but you can still hear me break down your design explain your design to you. You can watch or listen to the recording and along with your PDF.
For those who really want to dive deep, there’s a third option for a live session where we can discuss, and you can ask questions about your specific design.
You can find all the details over on my website at www.livefablife.com/services. I'm excited to roll this out. It's been a long time coming.
For the past year, I've been putting in the work with people and letting things emerge on how I want my services to evolve, and this is what’s come out and I'm really excited about it. I feel good about it.
In the next couple of weeks, I’m going to be joined by some guests coming on to share their Human Design experiences, and then come the new year we're going to come back to the Human Design Variables and explore the others.
So, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for listening to Episode 200, whether this is your first episode, or you've been here from the very beginning. I appreciate your time and your attention, and I'll see you right back here again next time. Bye
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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