How Human Design has changed me

and made me realize I never have to play another board game again if I don't want to!

"I've never been a natural, all I do is try try try” - Taylor Alison Swift, a 5/1 Splenic Projector

I’ve always been a misfit in certain ways. I think a lot of us can relate.

Not just with self-consciousness at social gatherings/forced-participation sessions going all the way back from school dances and Girl Scout meetings to (ughhhhhhhh) networking events. (Guess what? No one is looking at us being awkward. Everyone else is in their own head about feeling awkward!)

But in the sense that I was always trying to be that star-shaped peg in a square hole, to squash my dreamily chaotic ideas into a more well-rounded package and pick a lane. To hone the squiggly edges of my personality and be a more polished, professional, traditionally successful human being.

There was a lot of compare-and-despair and fear of making a fool of myself in public.

Then I found out I’m a 3/5 Emotional Manifesting Generator in Human Design terms, and suddenly I saw how my puzzle pieces fit together. And that my puzzle doesn’t look exactly like anyone else’s.

What is Human Design?

It’s a meaning-making system and tool for the self: self-reflection, self-diagnosis, self-identification, and self-awareness.¹

Some people call it a roadmap, some call it a blueprint. Some call it “the new astrology.” Some call it an experiment for living.

My personal definition? Human Design is a permission slip to be who you are.

When we start looking at ourselves through the lens of Human Design, we can see how we’re designed to live at our best — how our energy moves through life, how we interact with others’ energy, and how we can work with these energies (instead of fighting against them) to have less friction.

Why do we need a permission slip in the first place?

Because so many of us feel like we can’t — we caaaaan’t— go ahead and do what, deep down, we know we really want to do. We’re afraid to say no to things that make us feel icky inside, worried that we’ll be considered a failure if we want to be different. If we don’t follow the path that everyone else is walking on, how will we ever succeed?

one of my favorite little jokes from the Sol Lewitt galleries at MASS MoCA

After spending so much time hiding my inherent creative weirdo-ness, attempting to fit into a few different prescribed career paths that made me miserable, and feeling like a failure every day despite my punishing productivity, I gave myself a whole new perspective on life with my Human Design permission slip.²

I first learned about Human Design in summer 2019 through

Kelsey Banfield

. I’ve always been drawn to the spiritual self-definition systems of astrology, numerology, tarot, and the like. They’ve always felt pretty accurate to my sense of being.

But my Human Design chart was so on-point on so many levels, it was scary. And it changed everything.

Human Design hasn’t fundamentally changed who I am. It’s made me much more aware of who I am, and who I am not, and why it’s OK not to fit into any one perception of who we “should” be.

Because I now know:

• what my zone of genius is and why it feels so naturally good to play there

• that I am just not a competitive person and that it’s fine if I don’t want to compete with anyone (even in a board game situation)

• that my emotional waves and my frustration have a lot to do with unmet expectations

• how to recognize when I’m not setting boundaries and overcommitting to stuff that’s not my problem!

And looking back on so many moments in my life, I can see with clarity when I was being blissfully aligned or woefully out of alignment with my design — even before I was aware of it. For example:

I am not meant to be a PR person.

I remember how I used to get physically sick, felled by a full-body cold or other illness, after every major event or project I did as a PR girl. Sometimes it would even happen in the middle of a multi-day event — I once had to stop and take a bath for an hour in my Atlanta hotel room during the High Museum of Art re-opening.

My body was reacting to all the emotional misery and internal pressure to perform a role I’m not suited for. I’m not here to cold pitch stories when I’m not excited about the topic; I can’t force or will things into being if they’re not personally interesting to me. I’m only working at my best when I’m responding to something that lights me up.

And don’t even get me started with open plan offices, because. . .

Knowing that my Environment variable is Caves makes so much sense.

My favorite class in high school was yearbook because I got to spend the first period of every day in the tiny yearbook room tucked into a corner of the building, working by myself. I needed to have a single dorm room in college — the half-semester I tried to live in a double with a friend was ruinous to our relationship.

Living in a campervan on our cross-country trip was heaven because I felt so cozy and in control of my space. Even now, as I write this, I’m in my slim little office cave before going up to my attic cave to work out. Open gym? NO THANK YOU. Give me a space where I feel safe and contained.

ERRE, “Crossroads,” installed at MASS MoCA in August 2021

Is Human Design a magical cure for every problem? Is it going to give you a golden ticket, a surefire answer, a super-powered water slide to the easy life? Hell no.

I’m not drinking that Kool-Aid of blind belief in anything. We see what we want to see, what resonates with us, in any experience.

As Amanda from Barney + Flow writes,

“If you come into a reading looking for all of the challenges in your chart, and all of the reasons why life is hard and you are suffering, why you’re stuck, you will find them. If you approach your Astrology and/or Human Design as a victim, you will find perceived validation.”

But because of my understanding of Human Design, I have a better grasp on my unhealthy learned behaviors and knee-jerk tendencies. And I work on the self-doubt and impatience and inadequacy and perfectionism.

Not every day is a rainbow, but when I remember that no one is “normal” — we are all wired in our own ways and the grass is not greener anywhere else but in my own big backyard — it’s a lot easier to handle.

Curious about your Human Design?

I’m here to help you uncover what makes you YOU and unlock a deeper self-understanding!

My 30-minute Human Design Download session will introduce you to the basic parts of Human Design and explain how YOU personally are wired. We’ll go over the essentials and you’ll get bite-sized, actionable suggestions to start incorporating your specific design into your life.

If you are like, “Casey, I love the idea but this feels crazy overwhelming!”, then THIS IS THE EXPLAINER YOU NEED.

I’m offering these sessions at the introductory rate of $27 for now to test the waters, so why not give yourself this chance?

Or if you need to hear it from someone else, as some of my recent clients said:

“It’s resonating deeply, and helping me understand myself at a new level. That’s such a gift. I’m deeply grateful, and I look forward to learning more.”

“Dude this is amazing and I totally see myself in a LOT of this!!!”

Book a session here.

Additional Resources

There’s so much information out there on Human Design, so pick and choose what resonates with you! Personally, I don’t love the “official” O.G. takes on Human Design from Jovian Archive, and prefer to work with the interpretations of these and others.

The following sources offer blog posts, podcasts, communities, and more. So learn the way you want to learn:

• Pure Generators

• The No BS Human Design Podcast (Disclosure: I produce Adriana’s podcast, so I get to listen every week to edit the content and write the show notes.)

• Kelsey Abbott

• Emma Dunwoody

• Interior Creature

Interested in hearing more about Human Design? Have questions? Drop them in the comments because I’d love to hear from you!

1. Erin Claire Jones, in this 2021 Allure article, articulates it more specifically when she says, “Human Design is essentially a mix of Kabbalah, I'Ching, Myers-Briggs, astrology, biochemistry, genetics, and the chakra system all in one.”

2. My profile is 3/5, which means that I’m really meant to try everything and anything that speaks to me and see what happens as an experiment — no expectations of the outcome! But it also means that people see me as an inherent “fixer,” someone with all the answers and practical solutions.

Yeah, that’s a fun tightrope to balance.

And I still get caught up in worrying about everyone on the internet seeing my mistakes, but I try to remind myself that I don’t need to solve anything. I can just say, “this is what I tried, it did or didn’t work for me, you’re welcome to try it too.”