What If the Advice Was Never Meant for You?
When I first heard about Human Design, I said no thanks.
I had already done DISC, Myers-Briggs, StrengthsFinder, Flag Page and plenty of other assessments. I love this kind of stuff. I love patterns. I love understanding people. But those were assessments. I answered questions about myself.
Human Design wanted my birth information.
That sounded a little too much like astrology for me. And I didn’t even get to take the assessment myself? No thanks.
A couple months later, a woman didn’t ask if I wanted to know my Human Design. She just asked for my birth information. Then she told me that I was a Manifestor and that my strategy was to inform.
I remember looking at her and saying, “How did you know?”
Because she had just named something it had taken me years to learn the hard way.
Years earlier, my dad and I were working together in real estate development. We were converting vacant buildings into indoor storage, which meant conditional-use approvals and planning and zoning meetings. My dad was trying to mentor me. He gave me advice that had worked for him: keep your cards close to your chest. Don’t tell everyone what you’re doing. Specifically, he told me, don’t tell people what we’re doing.
So I tried.
Then I’d walk into a city hall meeting where we were literally asking people for permission to do the thing I wasn’t supposed to tell them we were doing.
I would lock up. I remember sitting in those meetings feeling like I could cry. It was horrible. I wasn’t afraid of public speaking. I wasn’t unprepared. Something inside me just knew this wasn’t how I was supposed to do it.
Eventually, I stopped following his advice and started asking a different question: What feels right to me?
Talking felt right. Sharing felt right. Informing felt right.
So before we even filled out the conditional-use forms, I started talking to everyone. Planning and zoning. The banker. The architect. Village hall. Here’s what we’re thinking. Here’s what we’re trying to create. What do you think?
Everything changed.
By the time we got to the meetings for approval, everyone already knew what we were doing. I’d sit confidently in my chair while other people explained the project. I’d nod at the appropriate times.
And we’d get approved.
Years later, this woman looked at my birth information and told me my strategy was to inform.
She hadn’t taught me something.
She had named something I already knew.
That was enough to make me curious.
What If “Normal” Is Just What Works for the Majority?
We started studying.
First ourselves. Then our kids. Friends. Clients. Couples. Founders. Parents and children. Over the last three years, Kevin and I have studied close to 500 reports for individuals and their families.
We started because we were interested in individual gifts. But the more people we’ve studied, the more interested I’ve become in something else: how much advice we give each other based on our own design.
Human Design describes four primary Types. Generators and Manifesting Generators make up roughly two-thirds of the population. Projectors are around one-fifth. Manifestors, like me, are less than one-tenth. Reflectors are about one percent.
In other words, most people are Generator types.
And that made me wonder:
What happens when the way the majority operates simply becomes the way humans are “supposed” to operate?
Work hard. Keep going. Build momentum. Be consistent. Make it happen. Don’t sit around waiting. Do more. Hustle.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with any of that.
But what if you’re a Projector?
Within the Human Design system, Projectors don’t have that same consistent Sacral workforce energy. Their gifts are much more connected to seeing—seeing people, seeing systems, recognizing what others miss, and guiding energy rather than continuously generating it themselves.
Imagine being left-handed in a right-handed world.
Except nobody told you you’re left-handed.
Everyone keeps showing you how to hold the pencil. They hand you right-handed scissors. They correct your grip. You try harder. Eventually you become pretty good at functioning right-handed.
You just can’t figure out why it’s so exhausting.
Then someone says: Wait. You’re left-handed.
Nothing about you changed. Your history did. And we’ve watched versions of that happen.
One of our Projector clients told us his dad is a Generator. His dad used to tease him for acting like he was a king. Why should everyone come to you? Who do you think you are? I don’t think his dad was trying to hurt him. I think he was trying to teach his son how to succeed.
Go do something. Work. Make it happen.
Generator advice.
Another Projector told us he knows what Human Design says about waiting for recognition and invitations. He doesn’t like it. He hustles. He’s good at hustling. And he’s burning out.
That’s the part I find fascinating. Finding out you’re left-handed doesn’t mean you immediately stop reaching for things with your right hand. You’ve practiced this way for decades. You’ve been rewarded this way. You may have built an entire identity around being the person who can push through.
Something can work and still be costing you.
Then there was the Projector who cried.
She told us that hearing about her design explained something she hadn’t been able to explain herself.
People had given her suggestions her entire life. Things that worked for them. She had tried to follow them and couldn’t understand why the same strategies weren’t working for her.
And suddenly there was another possibility.
Maybe she wasn’t failing at their strategy. Maybe it wasn’t hers.
We’ve had enough Projectors cry in these conversations that Kevin and I notice it now.
Maybe it’s random.
But I wonder if there is grief in discovering how long you’ve been trying to become right-handed.
I’m Not a Projector. But I Know the Feeling.
I’m a Splenic Manifestor. My particular Type and Authority combination represents a very small percentage of the population within Human Design.
And I’ve realized that most people don’t give me very good advice.
Ha.
Not because they aren’t wise. Because they’re usually telling me how they know. “Sleep on it” is a perfect example.
Kevin has Emotional Authority. Time matters for him. His clarity isn’t necessarily available in the moment.
I’m Splenic.
Sometimes I know.
Quietly. Immediately. Without being able to give you twelve reasons why.
If Kevin is forced to decide immediately because I know immediately, I’m asking him to operate like me. If I’m forced to wait because someone else needs time, I can start questioning a knowing that was already clear.
How many of us have learned to distrust ourselves because someone who loved us taught us to listen for a signal that belonged to them?
My dad wasn’t wrong about business.
The Projector’s Generator dad wasn’t wrong about the value of work.
The people advising the woman who cried probably weren’t wrong either.
That’s what makes this interesting.
Good advice can still be the wrong advice for a particular human.
And we see versions of this when we sit with families.
A child isn’t moving fast enough. A spouse needs more time. Someone needs enormous amounts of space. Someone sees things everyone else seems to miss. Someone knows immediately and can’t explain how.
Often, looking at the designs doesn’t reveal some giant family secret.
It validates what everybody already knows.
Oh. She’s always been like that.
That’s exactly what he does.
We’ve been fighting about this for twenty years.
The chart doesn’t make it true.
It gives us another way to get curious about why it might be true.
And sometimes that changes the question from:
How do we get them to do this differently?
to:
What if we understood how they actually work?
After close to 500 reports, I don’t think Kevin and I are nearly as interested in telling people what their Human Design says they should do as we are in watching what happens when someone recognizes themselves in it.
Because I know that feeling.
I remember sitting across from that woman and asking: How did you know?
She didn’t give me permission to become a Manifestor.
She gave me language for something life had already taught me.
I could trust myself.
And maybe that’s what’s underneath some of those tears too.
Not:
Finally, someone has told me who I am. But something much quieter.
I knew this. I just didn’t know I was allowed to trust it.
With love and belief,
Jaime & Kevin
