Episode 272: Building My Subconscious Capacity
If you’re a long-time listener to this show, you’re familiar with frequent guest Nadia Gabrielle. I’ve worked one-on-one with Nadia to expand my business strategy and subconscious capacity. As much as I logically understand what subconscious capacity is, it wasn’t until I started working with Nadia that I fully understood how powerful and necessary it is.
In this episode, I’m sharing some personal insights and takeaways from our work together on specific things I’ve done to expand my subconscious capacity.
Listen to the Episode:
Mentioned in the Episode:
Episode 179: Subconscious Capacity Building with Nadia Gabrielle
Episode 271: Two Shifts for Projectors Who Want to Scale Their Businesses with Nadia Gabrielle
Connect with Naomi:
Connect on Instagram
Share the Episode:
“I had a very strong belief that it was safe to share my voice, but I also had an equally strong belief that it wasn’t for me to share my voice. On the outside, it appears that I’m not making progress, but subconsciously, on the inside, it feels like I’m running a marathon all the time. So, it’s no wonder I feel so exhausted!”
Read the Transcript:
Hello there, and welcome to The Live FAB Life Podcast. I'm your host, Naomi Nakamura, and today I want to share some reflections on my Strategy and Capacity work with Nadia Gabrielle as a follow-up to the last episode, Episode 271.
If you’ve listened to Episode 271, you’ll know that Nadia and I talked about two shifts exhausted Projectors can make to scale their businesses to avoid burnout.
Our conversation resonated with me because I’m that exhausted Projector. I am her; she is me.
If you’re a long-time listener to this show, you’ll probably notice that this is the first year since the show started, and I've had this show since 2017; it's the first year that I’ve been so inconsistent with episodes.
And this is because I’ve genuinely been trying to honor my energy. After all, you guys, I’ve been tired. And as much as I’ve been prioritizing rest, and prioritizing sleep, and doing all the things that we know are restorative to help us manage our energy, boundaries, and all those things, I’m still tired.
I recently had some huge takeaways on this through my one-on-one work with Nadia, and I want to share these with you. That's what we’re doing today.
Now, if you've been a long-time listener, then you know that I’m an alumnus of Nadia’s program, Service Design School – I’ve taken it twice. So, I'm very familiar with the concept of service design. I’ve interviewed Nadia on Strategy and Capacity many times and understand those concepts.
I understand what that means and know the importance of a strategy and how we design our offerings. In my case, my service offerings. But we equally need to have the capacity to support the execution of our strategy.
But as much as intellectually and theoretically, I understand strategy and capacity. I only fully understood how powerful and necessary it was once I started working with Nadia one-on-one.
So today, I want to share some of the key learnings and takeaways I've had - so far -because I'm still working with her one-on-one.
I’m sharing these personal experiences with you because these reflective episodes with unique insights and experiments resonate most with you. It's ironic because I always hesitate to do these episodes, thinking, “Who’s going to care about this, but I’m continually surprised these are the episodes I get the most feedback on. These are the episodes where I get the most messages from people saying, “Wow, I completely related to everything that you said,” or, “I feel seen,” and so I hope this episode can serve you in this way.
I started working with Nadia one-on-one in July. I reached out to her because I needed help, and I knew I needed help with both strategy and capacity, but I needed to figure out where to start.
Now, I need help with strategy because while I knew I had a solid service design, I wasn’t thrilled with it and needed another set of eyes on it.
And when it came to capacity, I knew that I was holding back on certain things and areas, and I knew it was a capacity issue, but I needed guidance and support to address it.
I also have an Outer Vision Cognition, so I like personalized and customized things and experiences, i.e., one-on-one work. I wanted to work with Nadia because we both subscribe to Human Design and solid business practices. She’s already familiar with me and my work, and I greatly respect her work and character.
In our first session, she immediately identified how I could streamline my service offerings so they didn’t cannibalize each other. I didn’t even realize that my offerings were cannibalizing each other; I was just trying to offer flexibility to those who want to learn about Human Design and how it aligns with our health. But the way I had it structured was confusing, and yes, they cannibalized each other.
So, right off the bat, we streamlined my service offerings. If you go to the Services page on my website, you’ll see what I mean. There are only two ways to start working with me: ordering a Human Design Playbook or a Functional Nutrition Assessment. We can expand on those things, but that’s where the work begins.
I've struggled with social media for the past two years to expand my capacity. For context, when I say social media, I’m talking about Instagram because that's the only social media I use.
If you’ve followed me for a few years, you probably noticed that I used to be more active on the platform, face-to-camera, and transparent.
This has really changed, especially in the past two years or so. Despite having so many ideas and things, I'd love to share something people would be interested in; sometimes, I feel frozen, not knowing where to start or what to say.
And honestly? I’m so tired. I’ve shared this before, but when I finish a podcast episode and write a weekly email to my community, I have nothing left for social media because sometimes it takes me a whole day just to write a meaningful post. It can feel overwhelming and exhausting.
As I shared this with Nadia, we identified two statements, affirmations, if you will, that I needed.
The first is, “It's safe for me to share my voice.” the second is, “My insight is unique.”
When it comes to the first one, “It’s safe for me to share my voice…” we’ll I first shared my struggles with this almost two years ago, in Episode 214 on finding my voice and messaging versus tone, then in Episode 215 on being vulnerable in communications. So, this is something I’ve struggled with for a long time.
Now, I want to pause for a second and talk about affirmations. I've never really believed in affirmations; they never worked for me, and I didn’t think they’re effective.
But Nadia and I discussed this in a past episode where she said affirmations don't work if we can't back them up to support them. I can say, “It’s safe for me to share my voice,” but if I don't believe it, the affirmation will never work for me.
So, we identified these two beliefs that I had to expand my capacity for, and so Nadia did what I call “her witchy energy healing” -- if you’ve worked with her before, you know what I'm talking about.
She found that I was a “strong-strong” with two equally strong but opposing beliefs happening subconsciously.
This meant that I had a very strong belief that it was safe to share my voice, but I also had an equally strong belief that it wasn’t for me to share my voice.
On the outside, it appears that I'm not making progress, but subconsciously, on the inside, it feels like I’m running a marathon all the time. So, it's no wonder I feel so exhausted, right?!
Over the years, I’ve talked about why we're always tired. I used to even have a workshop called, “Why Am I Tired All the Time,” and we attribute it to the foods we’re eating and not eating, not prioritizing sleep, not making space for rest and relaxing, and yes, all these things are true.
But this is also another reason why I’m tired all the time. I have this internal struggle of two strongly opposing beliefs.
So, we had to do “neuro pruning” to reprogram beliefs.
Looking at my Human Design, we know that I’m a Projector, and what do Projectors want more than anything? Recognition.
About two years ago, I started to feel flabbergasted about social media; that was about the time that Instagram changed its algorithm. As much as I don't care about metrics, seeing engagement numbers drop messed with me. I didn’t feel recognized.
My audience grew, but engagement dropped, and then it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. I felt less recognized, so I grew inconsistent with the app, which affected my algorithm even more.
I also have a Defined Throat Center. You might be thinking, “Well, if she has a Defined Throat Center, why does she feel that it’s not safe to share her voice?”
We can either embody the correct aligned expression of the various parts of our design, or we can embody its shadows.
But here’s the thing - we can only suppress a strongly defined energy center for so long, and that pulled within me - two strong, opposing beliefs, and eventually, one will win out and must be unleashed.
I also have the 48-16 Channel, the channel of depth and turning skills into talent. This resonates with you because when I released Episode 210, which was on the 48-16 channel, the only channel I have in my Human Design, I was so surprised at how many of you related to this episode.
For those of us who have this channel, it can feel like an internal battle, but so many of you listening messaged me to tell me how much you felt seen and how you were inspired to do the thing you’d been holding yourself back from doing.
As for the other affirmation, “My insight is unique,” although my Profile Lines are 1 / 3, I do have a lot of 2nd Line energy in my design.
This was a classic example of 2nd Line energy, where I was oblivious to the fact that only some see and conceptualize what I see.
I’m a Projector, and we Projectors have X-ray vision to see things that need to be corrected and how to make the correction most efficiently. And we forget that not everyone has this x-ray vision.
I’d been oblivious to the fact that my approach and my insight were unique. It IS different, and not everyone sees things the way I do.
I hadn’t recognized my genius of this intersection between health and Human Design. I've even had several of my Human Design colleagues tell me my colleagues said to me that I had a unique approach that they hadn’t seen anyone take before.
But it didn’t click with me, and I’ve been oblivious that my insight IS unique.
When I see someone struggling with their health complaints, I’ve been trained to look at their situation from a functional nutrition perspective to help them address it. But using the same approach of searching for what’s at the root of their complaints, I also go beyond that and at how they can or cannot understand themselves and their energy and how it functions.
And then, as a byproduct of that, how they function within themselves, how they work with others, and how any gap or disconnects can manifest physically as health conditions and complaints.
That’s my insight, and apparently, it’s unique.
In Functional Nutrition, we look at diet, lifestyle, daily habits, family history, and lab tests and supplements, but what the whole approach is about is – putting our detective hats on and connecting the dots.
And we do that through self-observation that comes from collecting data through tracking. When I recommend tracking, some people have a misconception and say, “I don't like to count calories.”
I'm not talking about counting calories. I'm talking about tracking what you're doing, when you’re doing it, and how your body feels and functions as you’re doing whatever you’re doing.
What are you consuming – food, nourishment, what you’re taking in – the things you watch, the things you hear – all of it.
Track and plot your symptoms in relation and then connect the dots to see if there’s any correlation.
And then how does this align or not align with your Human Design? Are you aligned with how your correct energy is designed to function?
A part of me assumes that everyone knows and understands this. Still, I was reminded by Nadia, and the more I go outside of my close social circles and talk to other people, the more it's emphasized that not everyone has this insight; it doesn't come naturally to everyone. It reinforces that, “Wow, my insight is unique.”
So, how am I expanding my capacity?
Through repetitive and symbolic actions like journaling, tracking, and documenting. Nadia helped me put together some action plans of things that I continue to do today because I'm a work in progress and intentionally do a little bit of these actions every single day to expand my capacity.
And because we're expanding my capacity, I find that I have more clarity when developing my strategy.
If you’ve already listened to Episode 271 with Nadia, then you know her newest offering, Product Design School, is now open. I’ll be taking it myself because we’ve developed a roadmap, a strategy of the products I want to design (yep, there’s more than one, and I’m already deep into the creation process! – a little preview of what's to come!).
Now, because I am a work in progress and a 1 / 3, which is all about curiosity and experimentation, I want to try something new that I’ve never done before, and I’d love for you to join me.
This is coming full circle – you know how I talked about struggling with social media? It almost feels like having to train myself to start from scratch again.
Instagram has this thing called Broadcast Channels. I’ve observed how it works as a participant in other peoples’ broadcast channels. It feels like it can be a safe place to share information, insights, perspectives - anything I want, in a less curated way, very “behind the scenes.”
It's a place to experiment with what I want to share and how I want to share it. So, I will try it, and I’d love for you to join me there. There’s a link to it in the show notes for this episode at www.livefablife.com/272.
If you aren’t familiar with Broadcast Channels, you won’t be able to respond to me, but I can share text messages, links, videos, and photos, and I can put up question boxes and polls for interaction.
And, of course, my DMs are open to those who are kind and respectful.
I’m going to wrap things up here. I hope one little thing, maybe many things, resonated with you, and if it has, I'd love to hear from you. You can come over and find me on Instagram and join my new broadcast channel, or leave a comment on the show notes, and I’ll see you again next time. Goodbye 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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