Episode 203: Reflections On A Year Immersed in Human Design

PodcastSelf-DevelopmentHuman DesignHuman Design for HealthHuman Design for Self-Development
Written By Naomi Nakamura
The Live FAB Life Podcast Episode 203: Reflections On A Year Immersed in Human Design

In this episode, I reflect on what happened after spending a full year deeply immersed in Human Design - how it expanded my body, mind, and emotional awareness, what I learned about myself, how I interact with others, and the impact it had on my overall health. 

Listen to the Episode:

“Human Design is about self-awareness. As we become aware of ourselves, it can help us work through personal challenges, build self-confidence, and help us learn self-acceptance and self-trust; which leads to learning how to love ourselves. ”
— Naomi Nakamura

Read the Transcript:

Hello, my friends. Welcome back to The Live FAB Life Podcast! I'm your host, Naomi Nakamura.

Here we are at the end of 2021 and our second year of the pandemic. Can you believe it?

In looking back, I just realized that for the first time since starting this podcast in August 2017, I brought you an episode for 51 Tuesday’s this year. I only missed one year, the October 26 episode, which by the way, I fully give myself grace for!

For about 6-8 weeks, I’ve been thinking about how I wanted to wrap up this year here on the show. I’ve planned and scrapped probably about half a dozen ideas of what I wanted to share in this wrap-up episode.

Not so much on podcasts, but I know on social media, people tend to spout on about how great their year was, how perfect year it was, yada, yada, yada.

And hey, that may be very true for some people, but the truth of the matter is, on social media we show people what we want others to see, and it isn’t always the reality or complete story.

But lately, I’ve seen a shift, especially since the pandemic started, of a lot more transparency; a lot more realness, and people sharing a lot more vulnerability. Because life has always been hard, but the pandemic has taken life difficulties to a whole new level.

And I think now that we’ve spent more time at home than most were used to, the realness had no choice but to come through and with it, the releasing of the need for perfection or some distortion of reality.

So, all that said, today I want to share, openly and transparently, how my year went, and the role Human Design played it in - a day-to-day basis.

While my year was far from perfect, it wasn't a bad year either. In the grand scheme of things, it was pretty good meaning, that my problems were dwarfed compared to other people's problems. My basic needs were provided for and very little has changed for me. Having worked from home for a decade, my pre-pandemic life wasn’t a lot different from pandemic life.

However, just because not a lot changed for me, I don’t want it to lessen the struggles and challenges I did have. They might not have been #firstworldproblems, but they impacted my well-being. I think it’s important that we acknowledge that we all have challenges and difficulties that impact each one of us in different ways to varying levels of severity.

But at the end of the day, or in this case, at the end of this year, I’m very grateful for the year that I had and for the things that I experienced.

And today I want to share a reflection episode with you on the role Human Design played in my life, on day-to-day over the past year.

Long story short, it's helped me to come to further understand myself, it's helped me work through some long-standing personal issues that I've had, and it's also helped me become aware and acknowledge parts of myself that were sitting in my periphery, blind spots if you will, that was uncomfortable to deal with, that I may have avoided but really needed to be dealt with or at the very least acknowledged.

As I've shared before, Human Design is about self-awareness. And as we develop an awareness of ourselves, it can help us work through personal challenges, build self-confidence, and because of that, help us learn how to accept ourselves – self-acceptance; learn how to trust ourselves – self-trust; which ultimately leads us to learn how to love ourselves.

And an extension of that is helping us learn how to interact with other people, better communicate with each other, have better relationships with others. It’s an ongoing, lifelong journey – at least I know for me it is.

I haven’t huge strides, but I’ve taken baby steps, and along the way have become more aware, more observant. In my client sessions, I often talk about “self-observation with non-judgment”, and that's something that I have really been practicing myself.

And if I were, to sum up, the past year, that’s what it would be: practicing “self-observation with non-judgment.”

So, when I talk about Human Design helping me become more self-aware, I’ve observed it in three areas:

Mental Awareness Emotional Awareness Physical Awareness

And these are the three areas of observations and lessons learned over the past year that I’m sharing today, so let's dive in, starting with Mental Awareness.

I asked myself often, “Why am I the way that I am?” “Why do I have these thoughts?” “Why do I have these judgments?” “How am I being influenced?

Because if you listen to Episodes 185-188 on the 9 energy centers, then you know that your Undefined and Open centers are where we’re vulnerable to being influenced. And I have seven Undefined centers, so I am easily influenced.

In asking myself, why am I the way that I am, a lot of it came down to how I doubt myself? There are many areas when I feel self-assured, like here on this podcast, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t feel vulnerabilities.

While I feel very comfortable putting out podcast episodes, there was some doubt, or rather, a lack of clarity because I shifted the focal point of my business and coaching practice, making Human Design the center of it.

In many ways it felt like starting over again while many of you are still in my community, meaning a listener here on the show, a subscriber to my email list, or a follower on social media, the reality is, not everyone wants to stick around for the shift and have left.

I understand that I do the same thing with those whose communities I may have once been a part of it, and I expected it, but it does leave me feeling a bit vulnerable, and with that, some doubt – am I doing the right thing? Am I a voice for this work? What do I have to contribute?

And as a result, while I’ve been consistently putting out podcast episodes, I became inconsistent in other areas, like my weekly emails and on social media.

I know some struggle with social media, but I feel like I have a healthy relationship with it. I’ve established boundaries around what I consume and if something feels unsafe or harmful, I’ll disengage or unfollow.

That’s consumption, but what about what I share?

Having a new focus, and essentially moving into a new “space”, I’ve had to find my voice in Human Design. What’s my point of view on Human Design? How will I share about it? What tone will I take? Will I become an account where I just post educational graphics and become less visible as a person?

These are all things I’ve gotten in my head about – that Undefined Head and Ajna awareness.

Oh, and by the way, I decided that I don't want to be that kind of account. I’m a real person, not just educational graphics and I still want to share and document my day and my life.

And so with all of these daily observations and conversations with myself, I repeatedly had to observe and ask myself, “Are these my thoughts, or am I being influenced?”

And to figure that out, I experimented, particularly with my Type, Strategy and Authority. And if you missed Episode 184 on Authority, please listen to it.

As a Splenic Authority, I best make decisions in the moment by following my instincts and one way I’ve experimented with this is how I show up on social media, specifically Instagram.

The businesses coaches of Instagram will teach you that you need to consistently show up. Well, if we’re connected on Instagram then you know that this past year has been my least consistent year on the platform.

There’s a part of me that feels guilty about this because it’s not the way you’re “supposed” to do things, but I’ve leaned into my Splenic Authority, waiting for the instincts to tell me when the right timing is to show up and how to show up and what to say.

I’m in a place where I only want to put things out there that I feel instinctually inspired to share. It’s an “in the moment” knowing that feels like, “Hey, this is something that I have to say, that needs to get out right now!”

And so, I feel like what I’ve shared, even when in my Instagram stories has been more intentional and thoughtful than in the past.

But it’s also been a fine line between waiting for the urge to share versus overthinking. Overthinking is not in alignment for anyone, no matter what your Human Design is.

And so, over the past year, I’ve battled that fine line, or what I like to call “experimenting” between when it feels like oversharing versus when it feels instinct instinctually good to share something, express my voice, and share my truth.

I’ve observed that as I continue to observe, experiment, and lean into my Human Design, I gain clarity around things that I’ve doubted about myself.

When it comes to Emotional Awareness, I can think of a couple of different ways I’ve observed this.

First, why do I judge others? This may seem like something that would fall into Mental Awareness, but it actually falls into Emotional Awareness for me.

When I talk about observing why I judge others; I'm mostly referring to people I don't know in real life – like celebrities. I want to call myself a pop-culture enthusiast, but I can't really say that I am these days.

I don't listen to the radio, so I don't know any of the current pop music artists and I don't watch a lot of movies. I just rather spend my time doing other things. But while I’m not an obsessive reader of TMZ, I do have a Twitter list of celebrity news that I scroll through once a day.

And lately, I’ve found myself feeling overly emotional in a judgmental way towards different people in different situations, more strongly than I ever have before.

I don’t know, maybe it's because I'm looking at life through a new Human Design lens, but I’ve found myself asking more than once, “Why am I feeling so judgmental towards this person or this situation?”

I've noticed a pattern here, and maybe it's because I'm older and have more perspective, I don't know, but what I’ve observed is that I have very strong opinions about men who mistreat women and the women who enabled that mistreatment of other women. And I'll just leave it at that.

But it's been an interesting observing to see what emotes me to feel what I’ve felt, asking myself, “Where am I being influenced here?”

Related to this, I’ve also observed, and I don't have any scientific correlation here, but I've observed that there are a lot of synchronicities between these emotions I have and my Enneagram One.

The Enneagram One is about justice and doing what’s right. So, when I open my Twitter Celebrity News List and see a story about some dude mistreating or cheating on his partner, I’ve strong opinions that have taken me by surprise because most of the time I don't even really have a personal interest or opinion on any of the parties involved.

Yet I’ve observed myself to have strong emotions and I’ve asked myself, “Where is this coming from? Why is this happening? Why do I care so much?”

And I don’t have an answer, but this is how my mind randomly thinks and has done a lot of observations over my emotions and why I react the way that I do to certain people and situations.

Also, regarding Emotional Awareness, I've taken a hard look at my relationship with others and how they make me feel. I’ve done assessments to see if boundaries need to be established.

A friend of mine, Diane, has recently started teaching workshops on boundaries. I attended her first workshop, and it was very insightful and helpful with practical action steps to take so I’ll link to it in the show notes for this episode if it’s something you're interested in learning more about. I highly recommend it.

But getting back to observing how people make me feel, and again, asking myself, “Am I being influenced by energy external to me, I’ve used my observations I've taken note on what boundaries needed to be established and with who, to preserve my relationship with whoever those people are, but most importantly, to preserve my own emotional health too.

While I did establish some boundaries, admittedly, I didn't do so great on how I established and communicated some of them. In fact, I probably caused some damage and made things worse a situation or two due to emotional avoidance. Emotional avoidance is a big thing when it comes to the Solar Plexus center, also known as the center of our feelings and emotions, our emotional awareness. It's a big shadow that we need to all be mindful of and how it impacts us, and this is one area that I’m very much aware that I need to work on.

As a side note, that’s one thing that I want to focus on in the coming year. I can share all about Human Design with you, in fact, my voice in Human Design is to teach you how to understand your Human Design and empower you so that you can use it as a tool and so you don't have to be so dependent on people like me for it, so you know your Human Design for yourself.

But once we know our Human Design, what do we do with it? Next year I want to open the conversation around the tools, frameworks, and approaches that we can have in our toolbox to help us support our mental, emotional, and physical health.

And learning how to do deal with emotional avoidance is something that I need to work on. I have no problem establishing boundaries, but perhaps the way I go about it is in a gentler, more nurturing, more supportive way for everyone involved.

But then that leaves me asking myself, “Where’s the balance between establishing a boundary and protecting myself and feeling guilt for putting up a boundary that could potentially hurt someone else’s feelings?

I've journaled and asked myself this repeatedly over the past few months I don't have all the answers, but I do know it’s unique with every situation.

This is how I’ve been using Human Design daily over the past year.

Then lastly, there’s Physical Awareness and for me, over the past year, it’s been all about learning how to rest, making it a priority, and not feeling guilty about it. It’s really been about managing expectations of myself.

So, I celebrated a birthday this month and I had my second solar return reading with Julien Elizabeth - the first one being a year ago. Julien joined me here on the podcast is back in Episode 144 I'll link to it in the show notes. If you’re not familiar with a solar return, it’s the exact position the sun returns to when you were born – so around your birthday.

Before this year’s reading, I looked back over my notes from last year and almost everything we talked about happened but not in a way that I expected, it all unfolded in ways that were totally unexpected, yet it all happened.

That was really a testament to me to just let things happen. Things will happen but not always in the ways that we expect.

I like to control things – I admit that I have control issues. So, this was a lesson for me to let go of outcomes and expectations, and just let things happen. Because I truly believe things will happen in the way that they're meant to.

Okay, that was a bit of a tangent, but getting back to in my solar return reading with Julien last year, at that time I was struggling with burnout and fatigue.

In Human Design, we look to the Root Center because it’s the center embodied by our adrenals, and it’s a pressure center. And I have an undefined Root Center in my Human Design chart.

So, I'm not someone who manages pressure well, and if I'm not careful and don't balance the rest, then I can easily succumb to fatigue and burnout, which has been a theme for me for many years.

So, during my reading last year, Julien recommended that I welcome rest. I took that advice to heart prioritize it with afternoon naps.

This time of year, during the winter, I go to bed early - I'm in bed by 8 pm every night, but during the summertime when the days are longer, I would take a nap at 2 or 3 pm in the afternoon. I made it a habit and it was huge and helped me manage my energy.

But making the time for naps and giving myself permission to rest meant I had to learn to give myself grace and let go of self-imposed expectations.

I talked about how I put out 51 podcast episodes this year, only missing one week, but ironically, I didn’t put pressure on myself to do that – by doing less, I did more.

Also, in past years, I was constantly churning out content - free guides and PDF downloads, running group coaching programs, being active on multiple social media platforms.

And doing all of that while producing a podcast all by myself. I’m a solopreneur which means I don’t have a team. Everything you see from me is my own work, although now I have a podcast production company that does the editing for me. But for years I did it all myself and I still do all the other things it takes to put out weekly episodes on my own.

I have a couple of other folks who helped me on a contract basis but everything you see from me, I mostly do myself. On top of that, I have my actual client work and my full-time job. And my personal life and all of life's responsibilities that we all have. So, there’s a lot going on.

But in welcoming rest, I took the pressure off myself, and ironically, my output didn't really change.

Yes, I was less consistent on social media, but I was consistent on the podcast, I resumed my weekly emails to the subscribers in my community, and I actually took on more client work this year. But somehow, I managed to be more efficient and productive with my time.

How? More with mindset shifts and little things:

I accepted the fact that I only had the energy and mental capacity to do one thing a day and stopped having to-do lists that had 20 items on them.

I stopped doing any work in the evenings. In the past, I’d work a full day for my full-time job, spend the next five hours in the evening working until like 10-10:30 at night. I don't do that anymore. The only exception to this is that I do client sessions one weekday night per week.

It came down to managing my expectations and what my realistic output limits are. As a result, I've felt that I’m more efficient and more productive, which also leads into my Human Design, where my strategy is not to push for things to happen but rather to wait for invitations.

As I've done that, opportunities have come to me and again, this is all an experiment with my Human Design, but as I’ve learned more about my design, I feel like my life has moved smoother.

That's not to say it isn’t without problems or that there isn’t resistance, but I feel like those things happen in different ways that feel less angsty and stressful. I’m finding that the more I lean into and live my Human Design, the less of those things happen. And when problems and frictions do happen, I feel more equipped to deal with them.

There's one thing that I want to point out before I close. I want to go back to what I shared about how it’s been hard for me to figure out what my voice is in Human Design and to feel a level of comfort in talking about Human Design and feeling like I'm a subject matter expert, that I have something to contribute to this community and feel qualified to work with clients.

I’ve felt this way whenever I’ve embarked on something new and in the past, it’s paralyzed me. But now that I know my Human Design, I understand that this comes with having a 1 / 3 profile line, which means that I find safety in knowledge and have to get to the bottom of and know everything about the things I’m interested in, and then having to experience it and live it before I feel like I'm able to share and do anything with it.

Then there's also my channel. Every person has different channels, even a different number of channels in their chart. I have one channel, the 48-16 channel that connects the energy of the Spleen center to the Throat center. This channel is about having depth and becoming a master of your craft through repetition.

Knowing this gives me an understanding of why I felt that it was so necessary for me to do the episodes on the foundations of Human Design that I put out this earlier year - the episodes on the different Types and Strategy, the episode on Authorities, Profile Lines.

While I hope you, as a listener, certainly learned something from these episodes, they were so necessary for me to do because as I recorded them, literally speaking the words, and as I prepared for those episodes and put my thoughts together, the process helped me refine my voice - not only finding the literal words of how I speak about Human Design, but also developing my confidence in the way I process my thoughts around Human Design and feeling secure in speaking about it because it's one thing to have all the knowledge about something, but it's another thing to be able to articulate and speak about what you know and share it with others.

As a result, I’m thankful for the clients that have put their trust in me to introduce their Human Designs to them.

I'm also really for the people who have joined my community. I talked about having a transitional community because I've shifted, or rather expanded, what I focus on and how I approach it, my community is in flux – something I expected to happen.

And with that transition, I’m humbled and grateful for those who spent some time here, and those who have recently come into my community because it’s an invitation (remember, invitations are super important to Projectors) that says, “I like what you're sharing, and I want to learn more.”

So, there you have it – what my day-to-day with Human Design has been this year.

It's been fascinating and eye-opening. I’ve learned a lot, some of which has been hard to take in because I’ve realized some not-so-great things about myself, but in the end, it’s awesome and I love it and this is why I love Human Design so much.

Well, I've taken enough of your time and rambled long enough, but hey, if there's even just one of you who has gotten something out of this share, then I’m glad I rambled.

Whether you’ve been here since the beginning, or this is your first episode with me, thank you so much for being here. Happy New Year and I'm looking forward to what’s to come in the year. I'll see you back here in 2022!

Related Posts
Episode 281: Why Are People Interested in Human Design?
Episode 277: Astrology Highlights for 2024 with Julien Elizabeth
Episode 276: Setting Yourself Up for Success (in the New Year)

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 | Pinterest

Naomi Nakamura

Hi, I'm Naomi!

I’m a Certified Holistic Health Coach who helps people who suffer from fatigue and digestive distress learn how to eat real food and adopt clean living practices for better health energy, and endurance. Why feel tired when you can feel fired up and ready to go every single day? 

I love running outdoors, connecting with like-minded people, and exploring the San Francisco Bay Area with my pup, Coco Pop.

Connect with me:  Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Pinterest

http://www.livefablife.com
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