Confession: I check my horoscope daily. When I flip through the digital edition of my local newspaper each morning, I always read my horoscope. I don’t believe that it means anything, but I am always interested to see what it says and how it relates to the day ahead.
It was with this same cheerful curiosity that I approached my Human Design insight session with Edjacent Designer and Certified Life Coach, Christina Owens. She helps professionals and caregivers who are feeling overwhelmed prioritize and protect their well-being. Christina and I have been talking about Human Design lately, and after getting my Energy Guide, I was interested and excited to learn more about the concept of Human Design.
Christina plans to share more about Human Design with the Edjacent community. This post describes my personal experience, before, during, and after the session and how it relates to the concept of self-authorship for educators.
I entered my information on Christina’s website and got my Energy Guide prior to our session, which had detailed information about what the day and time of my birth revealed about my personality. I read through the reports and found it interesting, but was not clear what it meant for me beyond a basic horoscope kind of sense. After meeting with Chrstina, however, it became much clearer about how the information related to my life. As a person dedicated to personal development, I gathered a variety of helpful insights and, as you can see in the picture below, I took extensive notes:
My type is “Generator,” which means I passionately pursue my interests and seek a state of “flow.” Christina helped me gain other insights as our conversation continued:
My inner authority is emotional. I seek satisfaction, which often leads to frustration. I tend to seek balance, need strong boundaries, and have a high tolerance for give and take.
I seek community. My emotions tend to be contagious and I am wide open to new ideas, which I take in and then amplify and share with others.
Yes/no questions are good for me. These types of questions help me access my gut feeling so I can respond or wait to respond to determine what is worth my time and energy
Getting things done creates a false sense of satisfaction for me. I seek deeper connections, but I can get trapped by things that I am good at or come easily to me, missing out on deeper experiences
I value words. Talking and thinking allow me to be a chameleon of sorts. I think out loud and am designed to channel expression. I struggle with scripted control of messaging and prefer to speak from my heart without planning.
I need a balance of research/learning and time to process. Once I have achieved alignment between my goals and my actions, I need to push myself to try things out, releasing the pressure to have an “answer” before moving forward.
My strengths are empowering others, focusing on the journey vs. the destination, and emotionally investing in others. I am often able to expose the big picture for others, providing inspiration and accessing my social capacity and benefit from exploring options and trying things out.
Throughout the process, as Christina explained my chart, I was able to react to what she was saying, letting her know which aspects of my chart resonated with me and my life experiences and which ones did not. Just like in a life coaching session, Christina balanced sharing information with listening to my responses and asking questions.
What I appreciated about the insight session most was that I was the one to do the heavy lifting, making connections to my life and what it might mean. This aligns well with my philosophy of identity development: We learn about ourselves in a variety of ways, using personality assessments, reflective questions, coaching, reading, and listening to develop a sense of self. Our sense of self is flexibly rigid: We know the basics of our values and personality traits, but explore and acknowledge how they evolve and change throughout our lives based on our experiences and needs.
Like other assessments I have taken, such as the Enneagram and Myers-Briggs, some aspects of my Human Design chart felt very characteristic of me. Some of it revealed parts of my personality that I have not considered before. Other parts did not seem to fit with who I am, but gave me something to think about in order to understand myself better.
In the weeks since my insight session, I have had a few changes in my life, both personally and professionally. The language of my insight session with Christina helped me understand how to describe and leverage my strengths and challenges as I’ve navigated those changes. For example, in a job interview, I was able to emphasize my ability to see the big picture, while also advocating for my need to think out loud while working in a group.
I have also enjoyed receiving just-in-time emails from Christina’s mailing list every few days. This advice came just as I was considering taking on a project that involved joining a new community:
These suggestions reminded me to check in with my body, which often reveals information that my thinking self cannot access or understand readily. When I took the time to check in, I felt tension and stress in my body thinking about the project I was considering, even though it cognitively checked several boxes for me. This reminder allowed me to gracefully decline, freeing my time for the commitments I have already made.
Developing and leveraging my intrapersonal identity is a lifelong process. Self-authoring educators constantly seek new information about who they are, who they want to be, and who they are becoming. An insight session with Christina helped me to continue on my journey to be my best self - for myself and for others. Learn more about her work at https://stinagene.com/ and https://www.edjacent.org/christina-owens or download your own Energy Guide here.
