Human Design for Beginners: Why I Can't Just Pick One Thing

You're always so busy. I have heard that my whole life. Not as a question, more as a statement. And for the longest time I did not have a good response. I just knew one thing would never be enough for me and I genuinely thought something was wrong with me for not being able to just pick one thing and stick with it.

And then I found Human Design. And it finally explained everything.

This is Episode 1 of my Human Design series. I am not an expert. I am someone who discovered this relatively recently and is still unpacking it. But what I found described me so specifically and so accurately that it kind of made a believer out of me. In this episode I am sharing what Human Design actually is in plain language, the first thing I read that stopped me cold, and how it completely changed the story I was telling myself about doing multiple things.

We are also getting into the gut health and alignment connection and why I do not think it is a coincidence that my gut issues disappeared when I finally stopped overriding my Sacral authority.

Want to pull your own chart? It is free. Go to my friend Tracy Hill's page at abeautifulfix.com/pages/hdchart and all you need is your birth date, birth time, and birth location.

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"I decided to stop performing and start telling the truth."

Transcript

Always Busy And Finally A Clue

Jama Pantel 0:00

You're always so busy. I have heard that my whole life. Not as a question, more as a statement. Sometimes with admiration, sometimes with exhaustion on my behalf, but most of the time, probably a little bit of both. So you're a photographer, you run marathons, you work in politics, and now you have a podcast. Is there anything you don't do? You're always doing something. Gosh, you're always so busy. For the longest time I didn't have a good response to that. I just knew that one thing would never be enough for me. I tried to explain it, I tried to justify it, and I genuinely thought something was wrong with me for not being able to just pick one thing and stick with it. And then I found something that finally explained it all. It's called human design. And this is the episode where we start talking about it. Hey y'all, it's your podcast, Bestie Jama again. Today we're starting something new. Over the next several episodes, I'm going to do a deep dive into human design, what it is, what mine revealed about me, and why I think it might explain some things about you too. But before we go any further, I want to be up front. I am not an expert in this. I discovered human design relatively recently, and I'm still unpacking what it all means to me. So this is not a master class. This is me thinking out loud about something that has genuinely changed how I understand myself. And I have a feeling some of you are going to hear things in this series and go, oh yeah, that's me. That's exactly me. That is exactly how I felt when I found it. So let's dive into this together. Before I launched this podcast, I took a podcast course. The course was so not for me. The approach did not resonate, the language felt off, the whole vibe was not really my thing. But the people I met in it are my thing, and they're still my podcast sisters today, so I don't want to minimize that. But one of the assignments in the course was to pull our human design chart. So she gave us a link and told us to do it, so I did, because it was homework, and that was before I was disillusioned. Sometimes the wrong teacher gives you exactly the right thing. I went and pulled my chart, I started reading, and the first thing I read stopped me cold. We'll get into that in just a minute. So

Human Design In Plain Language

Jama Pantel 2:28

let me give you the plain language version of what human design is because when I first looked it up, I got a little overwhelmed too. Human design is a system that combines elements of astrology, the I Ching, the Kabbalah, and quantum physics to create what is essentially an energy blueprint based on your birth date, time, and location. I know that sounds like a lot. Stay with me here. You do not have to believe in all of those systems for the output to be useful. Honestly, I'm shocked I believed in it, but I did a deep dive and it is starting to make sense. So it kind of has made a believer out of me. What I have found is that the results described me specifically, accurately, sometimes uncomfortably, in ways that no personality test had ever come close to before. And I know some of these tests are used in certain leadership courses, but my Myers Briggs told me things that were sort of true, and the whole Enneagram thing was interesting. Human design, however, felt completely different. It felt less like a description of my personality and more like a description of my energy. How I am actually wired to move through the world, make decisions, work, rest, and connect with people. The thing that got me the most in all of this, it's not about what you should be. It is about what you already are. For a woman who has spent a lot of her life

The Hermit And Needing Solitude

Jama Pantel 4:06

trying to be what other people needed her to be, that distinction mattered more than I can fully explain. The first part of it that stopped me in my tracks, the hermit. I have a two-four profile in human design, which means one half of my design is called the hermit. And the moment I read that, I said out loud, that is so me. It is exactly me. I need solitude to recharge. I know I've talked about it on here before that I'm an introvert. I need time alone after people- ing. And yes, peopling is absolutely a word in my world. Not because something is wrong with me, not because I'm antisocial or unfriendly. However, I've been told my whole life I have a resting B face. This is a clean podcast, so I won't say it. Um, but I am literally wired this way. My energy goes out when I'm around people, and I need time alone to bring it back. I've spent years apologizing for that, feeling guilty for backing out of things I originally said yes to, wondering why being around people I genuinely love left me completely drained afterwards. My time on the Brooks Run Happy team is the perfect example for this. I love being part of that team. I love the people. I still talk to a lot of them today. I had so much fun at every event in person we attended together, yet I was absolutely wiped out after every single one as well. I used to wonder what was wrong with me, and now I know. Nothing was wrong with me. I was just a hermit showing up in an extrovert sized event and wondering why I could not sustain it. One word y'all hermit.

Sacral Authority And Gut Lessons

Jama Pantel 5:54

And I suddenly stopped needing to explain myself. Here is where it starts getting a little personal, and I want to share that because I think it is important, and this is unfiltered after all. I've mentioned it before, I work in politics. There was a period in my career where I stayed in a role much longer than I should have. I was miserable. My gut was telling me to leave loudly and consistently for a very long time. And I did not trust it. I kept overriding it. I kept telling myself to push through, to be tougher, to stop being so sensitive. I kept over functioning and over controlling and trying to make something work that was not working. I kept trying to justify that I should be grateful I had a job in the first place, and I was scared to venture out and find something new. And then my gut literally started breaking down. I've talked about my gut health issues earlier this season in my health series. I always wondered how much of that was stress and misalignment. My body trying to tell me something in the only language loud enough to make me stop. What I know now is that I have a sacral authority in human design, which means my gut response is literally my most reliable decision making tool. And I spent years not trusting it. My body had to get loud enough to finally make me listen. I'm in a very different place now, much, much happier. And the gut issues are gone. And I don't think that's a coincidence. The biggest thing human design has changed for me so far is the story I was telling myself about doing multiple things. For the longest

Being Multipassionate Without Guilt

Jama Pantel 7:44

time, I kept my photography business and my political career completely separate. Two different worlds, two different identities, and never the two shall meet. I was protective of both in different ways, and I did not want one to affect the other. And then I was published in the New York Times for my photography. And shortly after that, I was at a work meeting and someone at the table took what they called a minute of personal privilege. They said, I want to recognize someone in this room. She has been keeping a secret from us. She was just published in the New York Times. Clearly she has skills as a photographer. And I laughed and thought to myself, I guess people do actually read newspapers. I was not expecting any of that, and honestly, in typical JMA fashion, played it off like it wasn't a big deal. And that was it. The two worlds collided whether I planned it or not. And nothing bad happened. In fact, things got so much better. I actually started photographing people in my political world. I started being more open about all of it, and the more I stopped trying to control everything and keep them in separate boxes, the more everything started to work together. Human design gave me the language for why that felt right. I am a pure manifesting generator, someone who is literally wired to work across multiple things at once, who generates their best energy when they're not confined to one thing, who gets drained by repetition and energized by variety and challenge. I was not scattered, I was not unfocused, I was not doing it wrong. I was just designed differently than the pick a lane the world told me I should be.

What We Explore Next And How

Jama Pantel 9:35

So over the next several episodes, we're gonna go deep into each piece of my human design chart, my profile, my authority, my channels, my life's work, what each one means in real life, not just on paper. We're gonna talk about the money line and what it actually means when you have it and are still figuring out money. We're gonna talk about the surrender channel and why that one has been the hardest for me to actually live. And we're gonna talk about what it means to have a design that explains so much of your past that you start looking back at your whole life differently. I'm also hoping to bring on an actual human design expert at some point, someone who can go deeper than I can and answer the questions I'm still sitting with. More on that soon if I can make it happen. For now, if you want to pull your own human design, it's free to do, and you can go to my friend Tracy Hill's page at a beautifulfix.com. I'll link it in the show notes. All you need is your birth date, birth time, and birth location. Then come back here next week and we'll keep going. And that's all I've got. Until next week. Bye for now, y'all.