So, the REAL payoff of having that essentialized version of day-to-day business life – the real unicorn reality – is that it’s not so much unicorn, it’s more like inevitable when you’re following your proper work style.
(That’s what I’m leaning on to make sure I’m not giving you all that “works for 9 out of 10 people” “how to set up your life” advice, when you’re actually the 10th. ‘Cause there’s a way to know that.)
But basically, if there was a way to follow even the slightest details of your personality, and then to embed them in every aspect of your business – and let’s go the whole road, also in your off-duty/with the kids day – wouldn’t you have to have an easier time moving through all this?
Like, I don’t think it’s even possible to not.
‘Cause if you’re not working against yourself, trying to stuff your square peg self into a round hole, constantly forcing all these ways of operating and doing and being, and performing and checking my to-do list off and showing up for people, that aren’t actually in your wheelhouse – and in fact, are actually subtly harming you every single day you do them….
Wouldn’t stopping all that make it so much better for you??
Here’s what I mean. Take a random morning for an example.
You’ve gotten up, moved through your 14-step daily checklist, aren’t you so blessed to have a morning routine – except you really kind of hate it, not being able to change anything, and today you really wanted to skip the meditation and the gratitude journaling and just get right into some intentions.
But you shouldn’t, since it’s the practice. And you’re supposed to follow the whole practice.
So you make yourself do it – and then you hop straight into your workday. (Or your “take the kids to dropoff” day – whichever you’ve got set up first in your schedule.)
And now you’re wishing you could just dive right into whatever’s most fun-looking on your to-do list – not necessarily check Slack and keep up with your VA and answer eleventy-million questions from your current crop of clients….
But, a good business owner would check on them first. Just to make sure they’re prioritized and all that.
And by the time you finish that… all that early morning energy and all your creative brain juice is gone. ‘Cause you’ve been using it on those client q’s and their problems, not in how you wanna approach Q1’s marketing.
But if you’re someone who’s supposed to be allowed to operate in flow – to always change deadlines and project due dates and swap around pod episodes and just generally drive your team crazy (wink wink), this kind of schedule rigidity is going to make you hate entrepreneurship.
You may even sabotage your growing team just so you don’t have to deal with everyone else’s expectations at some point. ‘Cause it’s easier to be free-flowing when it’s just yourself who’s affected.
But anyway. Let’s say you do push through and you do force yourself to grab that next to-do off your list and you do somehow get into it even though your brain is at half par. Now what?
Well, you started work and then remembered to haul yourself off to that coworking session or take yourself off to a coffee shop. ‘Cause that’s what “good” entrepreneurs do, right, is work in collaborations and non-competition and other-women-partnerships. Except….
You’re actually designed to go it alone, and then hand stuff off to your team when you’ve got in 70% where you want it. You weren’t set up for all this back-and-forth-ing and “collabs all the time” feeding off each other distractions kind of thing.
So that’s not going to go so well, is it.
And then you come home thinking, “Well, I didn’t get all the stuff I wanted to do done, but I guess I had fun talking to people and I’m supposed to be making connections and I did knock off some of it…..”
And off you go to the next part of your day, or off to pick up your kids, never stopping to think that most of your “not quite satisfied” angst can be traced back to not showing up as your real self, which happens to be quite different than the standard “rising tide/promote each other/lift all boats” thing that’s going around at the moment. (Okay, has been for a long time.)
You were meant to do work differently. And you’re not going to feel fulfilled and lit up and just thrilled with entrepreneurship….
Until you give yourself permission to quit acting like them, and lean into you.
But sometimes, admittedly, the difficulty is knowing what your own version is. ‘Cause if you knew it, then of course you’d follow it, right? And cut way down on the every-couple-hour clashes between how you’re supposed to run your life vs. how you’re designed to run your life, right?
(Which would be so great, to just cut out 80% of the stuff, in one go, ‘cause you knew this and this and this weren’t right for you and never would be?)
So this is where Human Design comes into it – spoiler alert – ‘cause that’s how I know what you’re going to need here (that’s different from all the other people at your coffee shop).
Now, you can of course figure this out by yourself – I’m not gatekeeping any of this. I mean, I’ve figured out a few of my own hacks that I’ve never read anywhere or heard on podcasts or anything of that sort, but fundamentally, you can get the basics of Human Design from practically any practitioner out there.
It’s a matter of do you want to spend your time doing this, to get sucked into the rabbit hole, or do you want me to shortcut it for you and tell you the only things you need, sans the jargon, and specifically how they’re going to apply to you.
Like, let me show you what I mean here. And I’ll do it with a kid, ‘cause sometimes it’s easier for you to see the impact as a mom with your own kid.
So, I’ve got a kid. (Well, okay, 5 of them.)
But, for this example, I’m thinking of one kid in particular. So a kid’s version of business and work is their school, right? That’s their job.
So that’s how we’re going to look at him. How is he designed to show up in his day-to-day, “got to get the math done” life? And how’s that different from how the school teachers expect him to show up?
(Now, he’s got an unfair advantage in this – I’m his teacher, and I know this, so I’ve not got the same expectations on him that an outside-of-Human-Design-informed person would. But he’s going to have to navigate this himself when he goes off to college.)
So, this kid is actually designed to work in bed, on the sofa – in a lounge state wherever possible. Not at a desk sitting all nice and tidy and upright.
And then, he’s not a chop-chop study person either – he’s more of a free-flowing “let me absorb all this and just immerse myself and I’ll have it” type. So, no traditional study methods for this one – and no desk/official schoolwork position or being at the table.
Now, see, if I were fighting him – if I were saying “but this is the way it’s done, behave, grow up, deal with it”….
How much do you think that would help him? Like not at all, right?
It would mostly frustrate him, and then he’d get the notion in his head that school is all about grownups forcing you to do things you don’t want to do in all the ways you don’t want to do them.
Whereas, if I let him curl up on the sofa with his math lesson, he’s going to be a lot happier about doing it, right? ‘Cause at least he’s in the right environment. But it goes further.
He’s always telling us what’s right and what’s wrong about certain videos he’s watched – like he can’t stand it when they get the facts wrong. He has to correct the record.
And if you ask him what he thinks about a topic – like, what movie should we watch tonight, and why don’t you want to watch that one – you better be prepared for some pretty blunt analysis, ‘cause he’s going to tell you exactly why he thinks Lord of the Rings is stupid, and not real life, and what’s the point of it all anyways. And that he’d much rather watch a military history documentary and actually learn something with his time.
(Of course, I like Lord of the Rings, and think it’s good literature, but I can’t actually argue with movies not being the most worthwhile form of entertainment….)
So when I looked at his Human Design details, his strongest personality themes are analysis and communication. In fact, he has a double shot of analysis.
Like, of course this is happening. Good luck getting this kid to shut up about it. He wants to evaluate all the information – decide what’s correct – and then tell you all about it. Whether you want to hear it or not. ‘Cause that’s how he’s built.
Now if I start squelching that – telling him to be polite and not hurt people’s feelings and other people like cartoons so they should watch it, and now he has to, too, to be part of the family, and to stop interrupting the 1940s Bugs Bunny with a question on how accurate this WW2 portrayal is….
How is he going to take it? Is he going to see I’m just trying to squelch him to make life easier on others so they don’t have to feel uncomfortable when their brother says “you’re effectively choosing to spend your time on brain fluff tonight, and I don’t want any part of it”?
Uh, yep, I would be. And he sees it. (That analysis, remember?)
And then what sort of message does that send him? Especially because, it’s not like you can turn these traits off and on in him. Like, these abilities with strategy and analysis and cutting right to the heart of the issue (and then being willing to say it, which is a whole ’nother thing) – they’re going to be part of his life going forward. Like, what he’s known for in the workplace.
So, if I stop his analysis and don’t help him get more accurate about investigating or try to halt all his “I just found out about this and I want to tell you” communication…..
How is that helping him when he actually has to go out into the workforce and make his special mark on the world? Be known for what only he can do??
I’m not – in fact, I’m sabotaging it. Just like blowing up a ship. ‘Cause I’m not growing him and his unique abilities. Which is the entire point of what a parent ought to do.
But when I tell him, “Hey, we’re going to homeschool like this. You’re going to work on the sofa. You’re going to work in bed. You just show me that you’ve completed it, and we’re good. And I’m not going to make you do flashcards or take notes to “prove” you learned this. Your test score is proof enough. And then here, let’s do some analysis work on this. Grab me a couple of your favorite videos and let’s see how they argued for their conclusions and whether you’re seen any of the sources for all this. And then I wanna hear all about how you think about this, when you’re done, ‘cause you’re pretty smart about this and I haven’t studied it much. And this is kind of an interesting subject.”
How much better do you think that’s going to go?
But all I did was look at his personality and see how he likes to work (i.e., school), and how he most likes to approach any topic in school (you know, criticize it and tell you) – and then expect that from him and redirect it to something useful.
‘Cause I mean, that’s going to be a so useful skill in the marketplace, being able to see right through it and make a logical case for why this and this and this are the right direction to go here. And then be totally up front with presenting that to your boss and no problem telling him so. Like, tell me that’s not going to be a huge asset!
But if I just said, okay, this kid is calling me on the carpet and asking me why I like watching movies or reading fantasy stories or pushing back on that he doesn’t need to study per se and why am I making him do this….
It could be a really uncomfortable homeschooling situation. But it isn’t. ‘Cause I’m Human Design informed.
(And of course then I have to multiply this times five, for all my other kids, ‘cause they’re all going to need this same level of attention, too. And you better believe this is pretty useful with my husband, too.)
‘Cause there are some themes here – we’ve got some overlap (I’m not a traditional study methods person either, and I sure do like my communication – here I am saying all this to you, haha) – but in other ways we are fundamentally different.
And me knowing how to test for all that, then what accommodations and shifting to make, in a very practical way times like a dozen things, instead of having to spend all 18 of his years figuring it out and hoping I’ve finally got the hang of it, and that I’ve not made too much of a mess of it, for him….
Yeah, that’s what I’m not mourning skipping by shortcutting this. No, thank you.
Human Design is very practical, and that’s why it’s so complex. ‘Cause we’re so unique. And it has to be able to handle all that, not put you into a 4-option DISC box or anything.
Okay, you get the picture. I think I’ve jawed about this long enough.
Long story short, you’ve got all kinds of ways to set up your day-to-day work structures to operate like you – not the other way around – and if you do this, you’re going to remove so much of the friction day to day.
Like, it’s not even funny how much you’re just not going to have to deal with ‘cause you didn’t let it in the door. Didn’t even try to “square peg into round hole” yourself there.
So Lord, show us where we’ve been denying the unique way You’ve made us today. Show us where we’ve been conforming to something of this world, or our best friend’s, or our mastermind coach’s, instead of how You made us. And then would You bring us the right examples, Lord. For what we need to do instead; how we could behave in this; in just the different ways of operating so we know how to show up. ‘Cause You gave us these lives for a reason, Lord. These families. These businesses. And a big part of showing up and honoring You to the utmost in them is by aligning most closely with the way You made us work. Because You are the ultimate designer. And we love that about You, Lord. (Though not as much sometimes as we should have been. We spend too much time griping that we’re not like everybody else – like it’s a flaw. When it’s actually Your gift.) Save us from that, Lord – save us in the day to day. Save us in our workflows. In our standard operating procedures. In our rhythms with team. In our rhythms with family. In how we do life and what we expect from ourselves, as high-performing entrepreneur women, day to day and hour by hour. This we ask of You, in the mighty Name of Jesus, and for His sake and for His glory. Amen, and amen.
Well, I hope that brought some freedom to you. That’s all for now, and have a wonderful day!
