Episode 225: Projector Invitations
In my observations (and from first-hand experience), Projectors, more than any of the other Human Design Types struggle with their Strategy of “Waiting for the Invitation.”
In this episode, I share:
A recap of what “Waiting for the Invitation” means
What are invitations and how to recognize them
If invitations can be created
Observations from my experiments with invitations and what made it all “click” for me
Listen to the Episode:
Mentioned in the Episode:
Episode 215: Finding My Voice: Vulnerability in Communications
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“I think you can create invitations if you’re acting from your correct Motivation and I’ve experienced this when I’ve expressed recognition in other people.”
Read the Transcript:
Hello there and welcome back to The Live Fab Life Podcast. I am your host, Naomi Nakamura.
Today's episode is all about the Projectors’ Strategy of “waiting for invitations.”
In the last episode, Episode 224, we talked about what is Strategy in Human Design strategy and I covered the Strategies for all the Human Design Types. But today we’re exclusively discussing Projectors and waiting for invitations.
As a Projector, I can speak with firsthand knowledge about invitations, and I also know how confusing invitations can be.
I think that Projectors, more than the other Human Design Types have a hard time grasping and conceptualizing what it means to wait for invitations.
But before we get into that, let's do a quick recap on what is Strategy in Human Design.
Human Design is an energy system and your Strategy is how you maximize the energy that's available to you; it’s how you maximize your energy potential.
So, when you hear people talk about how Human Design has taught them, how to move through life with less resistance, more ease, and more flow, a large part of that is attributed to following their Human Design Strategy because when you follow your Strategy, then you're maximizing - using your potential energy efficiently.
Because when you don't follow your Strategy, you likely will encounter resistance and that's going to make you use more and drain energy unnecessarily. It's an energy leak.
So, Projectors, our Strategy is to wait for invitations and when we don't follow this and encounter resistance, leaking, and draining energy, we fall into our Not-Self feel bitter.
But when you’re first learning about Human Design, and even when you’ve known about it for a while, the idea of waiting to be invited is confusing. You think “Am I supposed to wait for invitations. What does that even mean?”
It feels confusing because we’ve been taught to go after what we want and not to let anything stand in our way, to just do it, just go out there and be proactive. Right? These are all the buzzwords that people use to encourage us to be assertive.
There’s nothing wrong with being assertive, but we all have ways for us to go about it. And for Projectors, we do it through invitations. Let’s explore what that means. What are invitations?
This is the question that I had when I first learned about Human Design and that I was a Projector. What does ‘waiting for invitations’ mean? Am I supposed to sit around and wait for things to come to me? What if invitations never come to me?
I didn't understand what this meant or how I was supposed to follow it because it felt like not being in control and I'm someone who likes to be in control of things. And waiting for invitations feels very much like I'm not in control. It also feels that I'm not supposed to take initiative to make things happen.
So today I want to share how I've come to frame invitations.
I don’t see it as, “You’re invited to come to my party. Please RSVP.” I mean it can be that way, but rather, I see invitations as recognition from another person, as openness to receive whatever it is that you're offering.
Again, Human Design is all about energy, so invitations are an energy that’s receptive to whatever it is that you're offering. It’s when someone sees you and recognizes you and needs what you have to offer.
They’re welcoming to you, and your guidance because remember Projectors are here to improve efficiencies, to show others a different perspective, hot it’s not about working harder but working smarter. Essentially, it’s about giving advice and so when a Projector senses is there’s a receptive energy present, it’s an invitation. So, it’s a matter of who's asking for your help or who's seeking your advice and that's when you can energetically sense and feel that an invitation is there.
What it comes down to is discernment - discerning when the receptive energy is there, when there is that openness to whatever it is that you're offering.
So how do you do that? How do you discern this?
It’s different for each Projector. In the last episode, I talked about the versatility of Projectors and the different kinds of Projectors there are. So, I think I think leaning into your Authority, depending on the kind of Projector you are will help you to discern when that receptive energy is present. Because you’re trying to decide you should move forward with sharing and so using your authority to trust your discernment is a key to doing that.
In my Human Design experiment, I’d like to share some observations I’ve made when it comes to invitations.
One, we Projectors need to let others know what it is that we do – what are we offering, and how we can help them. Because if no one knows what your expertise is and that you can help them, they won't know to invite you.
A great way to do through, depending on what active gates you have, particularly in the Throat center is by taking people behind the scenes, on your journey with you. Transparently speaking, this is something I struggle with.
Part of it is a need for perfection, which I know is actually fear. It’s never feeling ready enough or qualified enough to be able to say, “Hey, this is what I can do and how I can help you. It’s never feeling ready or prepared enough.
Now, in my Human Design, I have only one channel, the 48-16 channel. This channel is learning something new and refining my skill and becoming an expert through practice and repetition. If you’re interested in hearing more about this channel, listen to Episode 210.
So, letting people know what I do and then taking them along my journey, sharing as I go is something I struggle with it because I don’t feel confident when I’m still in learning mode, but at the same time, as per my 1 / 3 Profile Lines, I kinda always feel like I’m in learning mode.
But this is where knowing and understanding my Human Design has really helped me because it helped me understand this about myself – that it’s perfectly normal for me to be this way. It put me into context for me.
So, when it comes to invitations, take people along on your journey, sharing along the way.
But in doing that, it must be done in a certain way. I personally feel that the sharing needs to be in a tone, with a certain energy, so that you’re not overextending, especially when an invitation is not yet there.
I talked about my struggles with this in Episodes 214 and 215. In hindsight, I realized that what I failed to connect, within both of those episodes, is that part of my struggles with that was due to that I was so afraid of sharing, introducing new service offerings, and saying “Hey, this is what I do.” Because I was scared that it would come across as doing so without an invitation.
It's such a fine line to share without crossing the line and assuming an invitation when an invitation hasn’t been yet. This is whereas a Splenic Projector I need to trust my instincts and lean into my discernment to say, “Hey, this is what I to do”, and message it in ways to not give unsolicited advice while sharing how I can help.
It's a fine line that’s defined by experimentation. As I’ve said, Human Design is about experimentation and so be willing to experiment with invitations. It’s likely that at times, we’ll cross the line and extend ourselves without an invitation and it's inevitable that things are gonna fall flat and we’re gonna feel bitter, but there will be times that it will work out. But in those times when it doesn’t, understand that those times aren’t failures – it’s all part of your Human Design experiment so you can say, “Okay, now I know what feels like to not have an invitation, here’s how I can do it differently next time. Now I know how to message this for next time or how I can take people on my journey with me.”
Particularly if you have a 3rd Line in your design, understand that your 3rd line is about trial and error. It's about trying things out and being willing to “fail” because when you experiment, that’s how you gain your wisdom. This can also apply to people with 6 Lines because before you reach your Saturn Return, and 6th Lines operate as 3rd Lines. So, as you experiment with this, have grace with and for yourself.
Another observation I've made in my experiments with invitations is that if I don’t value myself and what I’m offering no one else is going to value it either. This really comes down to my self-esteem and having confidence in who I am, and what I do, and that what I'm offering not only is of value but that I can offer it in a way that's helpful to others – that’s going to make life better for them.
It doesn't mean I have to be the smartest, most experienced in my field, means being the best one for the person who wants my help, who wants me to guide them. It means being the best one for them.
I’ve learned that I need to have confidence in myself, in my coaching skills, and in what I can offer people because if I don't value myself, no one else is going to value and recognize me and be open and receptive to what I’m offering.
And the third thing I’ve observed that I find to be the most interesting is that when I extend recognition to others it's mirrored back to me. There's a synchronicity that happens and I've observed that I've unconsciously created invitations by recognizing other people.
So, when people discuss if you can create invitations for yourself, I think you unintentionally can. I also think that the keyword there is unintentional.
Of course, you want to follow your Authority and Strategy, but there is also your Motivation – your Human Design Variable – Motivation, where when you act from the correct place – and you can hear more about the Motivation Variable in Episode 206.
And so again, I think you can create invitations if you’re acting from your correct Motivation and I've experienced this when I've expressed recognition in other people. When I’ve done that, synchronicity happened where the recognition was mirrored back to me, and an invitation was extended that I didn't expect because there wasn’t anything calculating behind it.
I didn’t offer the recognition in hope of getting an invitation back, rather I did because I truly valued someone and I wanted to acknowledge them and say, “Hey, I think you're really great at this or I really appreciate what you did here.” It happened organically and that synchronicity was mirrored back to me and created invitations.
When I first started learning about Human Design what really made it click for me was invitations.
No not only am I a coach, but I'm also a Beautycounter consultant. If you aren’t familiar with this or my back story with it, I’ll link to some things in the show notes, if you’re curious to hear more.
Long story short, I had been struggling with hormonal imbalances after overtraining, specifically adrenal and thyroid dysfunction. Through that process, I learned that there’s a lot of ingredients that are harmful to human health in the beauty products that we use. Now, I'm a beauty product junkie and had no idea about this.
So, I spent a full year trying to find safer beauty products. This was back in 2015, so seven years ago when clean beauty was not really a thing at all – definitely not mainstream. It was hard to find any information, let alone products.
When I went to Sephora and Ulta, the staff there just wasn't on the same wavelength. They’d talk to me about vegan products which is a totally different conversation. I was frustrated that I wasn’t able to find high-quality products. I was someone who was used to using MAC, Urban Decay, and Smashbox the clean beauty products I was finding at that time were basically coconut oil and apple cider vinegar, which hey, if you’re into that, great, I need things that are more high performing. And so, as you can imagine, after a year-long search, I was discouraged.
This was about the time that I had just gotten my health coach certification and I was starting to work with clients who also struggled with hormone imbalances. So, when I found Beautycounter it was such a huge solution for me and really met this gap, this need that I had, I want to share and offer it to my clients too.
As it turned out, being a Beautycounter consultant has been a real growing experience for me in that:
One, it helped me with my money mindset problems, which is a whole ‘nother conversation. but you know when you start a new sales job, the company puts you through sales training that’s based on tried-and-true practices, a lot of which is based upon cold calling.
We live in such a Manifestor / Generator / Manifesting Generator world that cold calling works for us, but as we know, that doesn’t work for everyone.
But I didn’t know anything about Human Design, being a Projector, and invitations back then so went through the training and tried the steps that they taught us on how to go about starting your Beautycounter business.
And guess what – it didn’t t work for me the way it worked for other people. It was a lot of cold calling that fell flat, didn't go anywhere, and left me feeling bitter and discouraged.
It really wrecked my self-esteem because I thought, “I’m terrible at this. I wasn’t meant for sales. How can I have a coaching practice, if I can’t even start a Beautycounter business?”
I mean, especially women, we already have our own money mindset issues for any number of reasons and we build these stories around money and worthiness and the worthiness we have to have to earn money and judging and then judging others for selling.
A lot of people have feelings and opinions about this and if you don’t understand your Strategy and how it can help you in business, my goodness, its no wonder that so many people not only quit but never try or start to begin with.
When we follow our Strategy, things flow with less resistance.
In hindsight, as I looked back on my early days of being a Beautycounter consultant, there’s where Human Design and invitations really hit home for me.
That, when I did cold call, it never went anywhere, but when I simply shared, invitations organically happened, and some of my most fruitful relationships, with clients and colleagues, not just in terms of the sales and the overall growth of my business grew, and as a result, so my self-confidence.
I rewrote that story that in the fact, I can sell. I can build a business, my business, I don’t have to feel timid or ashamed about selling. Selling doesn't need to feel gross.
Understanding invitations totally shifted not only my money mindset but also how I approach my coaching practice and as a byproduct, my self-esteem grew.
I suddenly had, not only the permission but the evidence that I could let go of all the stories that I had been telling myself – that “I can’t sell” and “I'm not good at this.”
I just needed to do it in my own way – and following my Human Design Strategy and listening to my Authority, understanding my Type, and all the other parts of my Human Design just helped it all fall into place for me.
That was a bit of a tangent.
Now, one of the frequent questions that I get from Projectors who are new to Human Design is, “What am I supposed to do while I wait? Do I just sit around and do nothing and wait for things to happen? Wait for people to come to me?”
No, not at all.
You can refine your skills around whatever it is that you're offering - get better at it and as you get better your confidence grows and you start to value yourself more and then you think “You know what? I'm good at what I do, and I can help people, so I just need to share about it.”
And then, when you have that confidence and share what you do, you’ll attract people. And so, when we go about living our lives, and align with our Human Design, we learn to trust and love ourselves. And we start to do things with less resistance, and more ease and flow. And we get a deeper self-appreciation - an appreciation of who we are and what we can offer and as a byproduct, you feel good about yourself, and people are drawn to that kind of energy.
So, you’re not sitting around doing anything, waiting for things to happen.
You’re refining your skills, living your life, aligning to your Human Design, and sharing what you do, taking people along for the ride with you - sharing your journey along the way.
I really wish I did this when I was in nutrition school. I really wish I shared my journey along the way because once I was certified and starting to take on clients, I don't think I would’ve had to spend so much time educating people about what I was doing because had I taken them along my journey with me, they would’ve already understood what it was I was doing and perhaps there would’ve been invitations already waiting for me. People would’ve been like, “I get what you're doing. I understand it and I need your help.”
So don't be afraid to do that. As I said, I still struggle with this, and I'm still experimenting myself so we can go on this journey of experimenting with invitations together.
Lastly, be generous, gracious, and genuine with your recognition of others because as you do so I fully believe in synchronicity and that when we do that, recognition is returned.
So, these are my thoughts on invitations for today. I always have more thoughts formulating so I'm sure that there will be more conversations on invitations to come.
Now I want to hear from you. What have your experimentations with invitations been like? How have they worked, or not, for you?
And if you have any questions about invitations that can contribute to the conversation so that we can continue having more chats about it, I'd love to hear from you.
Come on over and join me on the show notes for this episode at www.livefablife.com/225 for Episode 225; you can leave a comment there or come on over and find me on Instagram at @livefablifewithnaomi.
As always, thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for your openness and your receptivity to what I share, and for offering and sharing your energy with me.
I so appreciate it. Take care 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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