This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - Self Discovery And Human Design with Karen Curry Parker | 227

Episode Date: August 21, 2024

We continue with the theme of building healthy relationships with ourselves, and then with others, by talking about Human Design in today’s episode. Karen Curry Parker is our guest and she holds a Ph.D. in Integrative Health, and is an international Amazon best-selling author of multiple books on personal transformation, spirituality, and Human Design. She is the creator of the Quantum Human Design™ and the Quantum Alignment System™ and has been coaching, speaking, training, and podcasting on these topics for over 30 years. Her core mission is to help people reconnect with their natural creativity, manifest their desires effectively, and consciously use the frequency of language and narrative to craft a life that best serves themselves and adds more love and joy into the world. What would happen if you practiced curiosity over judgment and celebrated all that is vs. trying to find fault or worrying there’s something wrong or missing? What if you appreciated that you were designed exactly as you were meant to be? Get to know YOU. I mean, seriously, can you imagine anyone more fascinating?! Connect with Karen: Website: https://quantumhumandesign.com/ IG: https://www.instagram.com/karencurryparker/  Human Design Chart & Other Resources: freehumandesignchart.com  Human Design Workbook: Link Like what you heard? Please rate and review  Thanks to our This Is Woman’s Work Sponsor: Go to AquaTru.com and enter code TIWW at checkout for 20% off any AquaTru purifier to get yourself, and someone you love, purified water!

I am Nicole Kalil, and you're tuning in to another episode of This Is Woman's Work. And if you've been listening regularly, you may be noticing a pattern in that we've been recently covering a few different tools, assessments, and resources that are popular in business and in life for learning more about how we're wired, our personality styles, motivations, preferences, and more. But this theme is less about the resources and more about you getting to know you. Our goal in doing this series of episodes is about increasing self-awareness, self-acceptance, and self-appreciation. It's about building your confidence because confidence is all about trusting yourself,

which requires you to build a deep, intimate relationship with all the things you are and are not, and it invites us to embrace ourselves just as we are. So today, we continue with this theme of building healthy relationship with ourselves and then with others by talking about our human design. This tool is all the rage right now and helps us to understand how we can best use our energy and make decisions in our lives. My understanding is that it leverages and combines many old practices like astrology and the chakra system, but we'll all learn more about that today.

And before we dive in, I want to remind you that I am not advocating for any tool to be the end-all be-all of our understanding of yourself or others. And I'm especially not advocating that you run around telling other people about themselves or what you think they are. It's a dangerous game if you think you can understand everything there is to know about yourself or others just because of a tool or a resource. Rather, think of these as breadcrumbs that can lead you to a greater understanding of self,

an amazing opportunity to practice curiosity and to ask great questions. There are lots of amazing ways to utilize and leverage the human design. Putting yourself or others in a box isn't one of them. So let's learn more about it, shall we? Karen Curry Parker is our guest, and she holds a PhD in integrative health and is an international Amazon bestselling author of multiple books on personal transformation, spirituality,

and human design. She is the creator of Quantum Human Design and Quantum Alignment System and has been coaching, speaking, training, and podcasting on these topics for over 30 years. Her core mission is to help people reconnect with their natural creativity, manifest their desires effectively, and consciously use the frequency of language and narrative to craft a life that best serves themselves and adds more love and joy into the world. Okay, Karen, I'm excited to talk human design. So first, thank you for being here. And next, what is human design and how is it different from maybe some of the other tools? We just talked about Enneagram and we have a few more coming. So if you could give us some context for what it is

and maybe a little bit what it isn't. Okay. Well, first of all, let's start with what it isn't, because I think I like to start and kind of just take a thread that you began in your introduction, which is so, so powerful. What human design is not is a labeling tool. It is not something that, as you just said, locks you into a box. So the origins of human design is basically it's a synthesis of Eastern and Western astrology, the Chinese I Ching, the Hindu chakra system, Judaic Kabbalah, and quantum physics. And basically, just like you would with an astrology chart, you use your birthday, birth time, and birthplace, plug it into a computer program, and it spits out this chart. The chart looks very much like a triangle and a map. And it's a triangle with all kinds of geometric shapes and lines in it. It's a

very different looking chart. And that chart is really literally a map of how you use energy. So it's not so much what you are or who you are as much as it is how you are. So when you look at your chart, you can see, for example, what are your inherent gifts? What are you here to give the world? Most importantly, especially when we talk about this in the context of your relationship with yourself, your relationship with your own connection to your authentic identity, and even your relationship with others, your chart shows you what you get from others energetically and how sometimes that energy that you're receiving from someone else can cause you to lose your connection with your authentic self. Or I like to think of it as get your energy hijacked by somebody else's

energy. We sometimes call that drama. I know a little bit about that. Right? Okay. So that's really helpful for context. Now, I have my human design chart and I don't think that there's any way that I could decipher this myself. So what tools or resources would you suggest people leverage and utilize if they plug their information in and get the chart back? So first of all, you should hopefully when you plug your information, you should wherever you plugged in and get at least a little bit of an overview with it or report with it. But I think you're right. And I would say the chart itself can seem highly complex. And certainly as somebody who's been working with human design for 25 years, there's a lot of parts. I think I'm still learning about it. But at the heart of it,

there are really some very basic concepts that you certainly can learn about from books. There's lots of great books on Amazon. I certainly recommend that everybody should get a reading. I have a fantasy that someday, you know, we'll live in a world where when every baby is born, we can look at this baby's chart so that we can optimize this person's potential from the start. At the heart of the complexity of the system is the idea that there are five different energy types. That's just the basics of the system. And if you only know that, that's actually going to give you a lot of information. Those five energy types each have a different way of making decisions, a little bit of a way, a different way of working with energy. And really when we talk about working with energy,

what we're really talking about is the theme of sustainability. How do you leverage your energy in such a way that you don't burn out? Because oftentimes what we see is that when we're struggling with burnout, particularly as women, that's a big deal for us, that oftentimes why we're burning out, in addition to the energy that we're spending trying to be something that we're not and all the other things that go into why we get burned out, sometimes we're burning out because we're not leveraging our energy correctly, especially because our conditioning as women is that we have to work 24 hours, seven days a week. We're meeting, you know, we're doing the work part. We're doing the family part. We're doing the

kin keeping part. We're doing the child rearing. We're doing all those pieces. And very few people are actually configured to work that way without breaks, without rest, without self-renewal. And the chart itself is going to tell you a lot about how do you actually need to structure your daily life so that you can sustain your energy and avoid at least some of the pitfalls of burnout. I know in 30 minutes, we couldn't possibly cover something this deep and this complex. My brain went to maybe talking about the five different energy types,

but you're the expert. Is there some other place that would make sense for us to dive into a little bit? I'm very curious about the energy piece. I can't imagine a woman listening in who's not like, how do I leverage and manage and maintain and utilize my energy better? I think it's a good place to start for women, especially because some of the things that we understand about the different energy types also kind of blows up a lot of the stereotypes of what we're supposed to be doing, according to society. So there are five energy types, as I said. Three of those energy types do not have natural sustainable energy. So the first type is called a manifester. Manifesters are approximately 8% of the population. The manifester has a role in life of learning to follow what is an internal

nonverbal creative flow. Meaning if you're a manifester, you tend to think more in action than in words. And when you're moving through life, whether you're moving through the kitchen or through the boardroom, you're oftentimes in your head, but you're not talking in language in your head. You're actually moving or thinking in action. And that movement in action and you following through on that action really initiates the people around you. You sort of set the stage, if you will, for other people to then be able to take your ideas, your concepts, and then expand upon them, build them, grow them, put them out into the world. That's actually really good oftentimes for a leadership role, but it's really challenging in a family role in particular, or even in a regular work role. If you have a job where maybe you're not actively tapped into that leadership

role, then oftentimes that can put you in a position where you can't naturally follow your own inner creative flow and you have to sort of suppress your own creative energy. The biggest drawback when we talk about the manifestor in the context of sustainability is a manifestor doesn't have that sustainable energy. And so working Monday through Friday, nine to five, a regular kind of a job, and especially working and then going home and maybe having responsibility for the household or taking care of kids or even the emotional labor of a relationship can sometimes be very, very taxing when you're configured that way. And what often happens, and there are two other types that have the same theme, is that when you're trying to fit into this ideal, this cultural idea around, I'm a woman, now I'm a

modern woman, I have a job, I go home, I take care of the family, that when you have the quality of energy that a manifestor type has, you don't have the sustainable capacity to actually do that job. And that's not you failing as a mother or a woman. That's just your energy doesn't work that way. And that really you have to maximize your capacity by learning to outsource oftentimes and really knowing how to outsource effectively and not feeling guilty or shame around that piece. The other two types that also have non-sustainable energy are the projector. The projector is about 20% of the population. Projectors are here to manage and guide others. And they have, really, their natural brilliance is in their ability to see other people's potential to guide and manage them

towards the fulfillment of that potential. They know. I always say the projectors know. If you're a projector, you walk into a room, you instantly know what the potential is. And you instantly know how to guide people towards the fulfillment of that potential, which is great until you have teenagers, right? And then you can share all the potential you want, but they don't want to have to hear anything you have to say. The challenge with the projector type is that you're not actually here to manage and guide everyone, even though you can. Technically, you could. You're actually here to manage and guide the people who see the value of what you have. And so self-worth for the projector is really, really important, especially in the context of staying sustainable. Because

the way in which you go about making decisions as a projector is you have to wait for people to signal their readiness to you. Because otherwise, you're sharing all this wisdom wisdom and nobody hears it and it kind of drops on the floor and nobody picks it up. So you're really looking for people who recognize you, who invite you to in some way call you out to share what you know. And the way that you know these are my people that I'm here to manage is they really value you. And if you're struggling with self-worth, the tendency is to either push

yourself into situations where you don't belong and that can burn you out. And certainly when we go into that idea of work-life balance, it's often the projector that first of all struggles with knowing when enough is enough. And secondly, goes home after being at work all day, after already utilizing that energy, not having that energy, extra energy available for family and knowing exactly what needs to be done, but then not being heard and not being able to activate their purpose. And if their self-worth is low, if you're not really seeing or owning your value, you're probably pushing beyond the exhaustion to keep going because we learn again, especially as women, we learn to be valued by the caring,

the nurturing, all of those things that we're trained to offer. And a projector that isn't valuing themselves enough to stop and say, again, I need to outsource or I need to rest and I need to be selective around what I choose to do and see that as an outcropping of my natural energy rather than taking that on as a place of shame because of that capability piece is huge. The third type, which is fairly rare, that is not sustainable is called a reflector. They are less than 1% of the population. You won't see a lot of, obviously you won't see a lot of reflectors, but again, just like the manifester and the projector as a reflector, you don't always have that sustainable energy. And so again, that not being able to work Monday through Friday,

nine to five, and then go home and continue to work, that can sometimes be a really challenging piece without, again, those cycles of consistent renewal and respite. And very much like the projector, the reflector oftentimes falls in love with other people's potentials or sees the potential and gets exhausted trying to drag people into the fulfillment of the potential. And it can be really disappointing. The other two types, the generators and the manifesting generators, are actually designed to be able to do it all, if you will, provided that they're doing what they really love to be doing. So it's hard when you're a generator type to go out in the world and compromise and do something that you feel like you have to do or do something that doesn't stir your passion and then go home and have to also take care of the family. Everybody needs rest. So I do want to be really clear when we talk about the five types,

all of the five types need rest, but the generator types have the ability to push through that need for rest and basically have the capacity to live life at a mediocre level. So the manifestor types, the reflector types, the projector types, they're much more prone to the typical definition of burnout that we all embrace, right? The, I can't do it anymore. I'm exhausted. I can't move. I have an autoimmune disorder, all those things that we typically define as part of burnout. That's oftentimes more limited to those other three types. Generator types can burn out as well, but when they burn out, what happens is they tolerate mediocrity. They, they, they will numb themselves out to the fact that the passion

has had to be suppressed. The excitement about life is just not happening. And they will oftentimes go home and do the motions, go through the motions, but the emotional, spiritual, excited energy of being fully alive doesn't get tapped into. So their challenge oftentimes is really learning how to find the right work that turns them on and how to find oftentimes the thread of passion within whatever they're doing to keep them turned on and excited. There are a couple of things that pretty much everyone in the health and wellness industry can agree on. And one of them is the importance of drinking water. And having safe, clean water is the last thing we should have to worry about. And yet, according to extensive

research by the Environmental Working Group, three out of four homes in America have harmful contaminants in their tap water, which is why I personally use and endorse AquaTrue. Their purifiers use a four-stage reverse osmosis purification process and remove 15 times more contaminants than ordinary pitchers. And their purifiers fit every type of home, from installation-free countertop purifiers to higher capacity under-sink options. And the AquaTrue filters are affordable and long-lasting. Plus, big bonus, you'll save the environment from tons of plastic waste. Listen, if I'm going to drink 80 ounces of water a day, I want it to be the very best water.

AquaTrue comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee and my listeners receive 20% off any AquaTrue purifier. Just go to AquaTrue.com, that's A-Q-U-A-T-R-U dot com and enter code T-I-W-W at checkout. That's 20% any AquaTrue purifier when you go to AquaTrue.com and use promo code T-I-W-W. So I'm a projector and literally everything that you said, I was like, yep, yep, yep. It couldn't have been any more dead on to my personal experience. Which brings me to the question, whether you're a skeptic or you just don't understand how this works, what would you say to the person who's like, there's no way you can figure all of this out or know all of this, or that this could be accurate just based on the time and place we were born.

How does this work? I don't have the answer for that. I mean, I think sometimes we have to just say there's a cosmic mystery that seems to work out. I will say that I have done thousands of reading and I've been doing this for 25 years. It is very rare. I mean, I would say I could count on one hand the amount of times I've had a person say, oh, that doesn't sound like me at all. And I would say of half of those people it's because the birth time was wrong. I think part of what we have to look at when we talk

about human design is that it is a synthesis of ancient and modern archetypal systems. And some of these systems like the I Ching, which is a part of it has been around for more than 2000 years. The human story, as much as we are each unique and incredibly complex and delicious expressions of each, you know, of the human story, the human story itself is kind of a small box of options. And so, you know, really what we're doing when we look at a human design chart is we're just putting together those little puzzle pieces out of that human story box into a kind of a unique micro story of the macro story. But we're not really all that complex and different from each other. And I think that common thread is held sometimes in those ancient and modern archetypes. So I have to tell you, I freaking love that answer. I love it

because I love this idea of it is a bit of a mystery and there is something to being open and curious and trusting the universe. And I don't know, I just really liked your answer. I especially liked it because you didn't go the route of, well, this is why it works and the one thing that we should all listen to. And anyway. I'm a scientist. I know enough to know what I don't know. And there is cosmic mystery. And I would just add that I think we can talk about human design or any other system and we look at all these different systems, but in reality, in human design, we all have all of the chart, right? Just like we all have all of the human genome. We have our unique configuration, but we're all still playing in the same story. And that's, I think, a really important and

unifying thread. And it really allows us when we understand the human story to foster compassion within us because we've all experienced the human story and it's various different iterations. And that understanding, I think, especially in the context of relationships, gives us a lot of room for compassion for each other and even ultimately for ourselves. Agreed. And well said. So after the energy types, and I don't know if I'm saying that right, what would be some other part of human design that people either find really fascinating or would be a good next step to dive into? So if we think of the chart as being sort of layers in a story, your type is going to be sort of the main character in the story. The next layer in the story is what's called the profiles. And so if you have your chart in front of you, your profile looks a little bit like a fraction that's on your chart.

It's comprised of two numbers. Those two numbers tell you a lot about your learning style, what you need, what part of your life purpose, kind of quirks of your main character in your story. They tell you a lot about what you need to be grounded and what you're here to do. So the profiles are 12 different profiles. They are comprised of six different lines. The line one in your profile, if you have a one in your profile, you're here to investigate and explore and pursue information because information gives you a foundation that allows you to combat your fear of the unknown. So information allows you to navigate the world and you're here to share that information with others. You're really a resource for others.

The line two is sort of an introverted, means you have an introverted quality to your personality. You need alone time for self-renewal, for reflection, for integration. And I often find that people who have a two in their profile are often very sensitive. So you need that quiet time and that alone time just to discharge everybody else's stuff. If you have a three in your profile, you're an explorer and an experimenter. So your learning style is experiential. So you have to try things to know what works and what doesn't. And I always say for my third lines, you've never made a mistake in your life because it's your job to try what doesn't work so that you can better

suss out what does work. And then of course, tell other people what to do and not do based on your experience. The next number is a line four. We call the line four the stabilizer. So people who have fourth line energy are people who like to, first of all, usually you like to construct multiple contingency plans because you like to be prepared for anything unexpected, right? So you'll have multiple contingency plans. Whenever you make change, you usually move from one foundation to the next. So you're not going to leave a job until you have another job lined up because limbo is hell for fourth lines. You're not going to leave a relationship till you have the possibility of another relationship. You're not going to move out of your house until you have another house. The purpose of the fourth line is to teach people how to navigate change by learning what's important to have in place when things shift and change so

that you stay connected to your values and you transport those values to the next situation. The fifth line is a little bit tricky. You have a fifth line. The fifth line is what we, I like to consider the, I call the fifth line, the visionary leader. When you are a fifth line, you're very similar to projector energy when we talked about types of fifth line walks into a room and absolutely can see the potential of everything. And your job is ultimately to compel people. Sometimes we say seduce, but that always has a little bit of a weird connotation,

but you know exactly how to lead people into the fulfillment of the potential. But there's a little bit of a weird quirk with the fifth line. If you have fifth line energy, you're also unconsciously healing people. You have something within your energy field that other people need. So they're drawn to you. They're compelled to follow you at times. But if you're not taking care of your own self-worth, you'll tend to attract people who match the quality of your self-worth.

And then they project their expectations onto you. Instead of you leading, they have an expectation that you're going to save them or rescue them. And sometimes you get into situations where people might have expectations and you might be, you personally might be very confused. Like, why does this person have this expectation of me? Or they may have fantasies about what they think that you promised that you said you were going to do. The final line is a six line. If you have a six in your profile, you're a role model.

You have a big, long, triphasic life cycle where you go through a cycle in your youth of experimenting and exploring, just like a third line. In the second cycle of your life that goes from about 30 to 50, you go through a deep integration phase where you are healing, watching, learning, studying, building up energy and information to go into the third and final phase at 50, where you emerge into the world as a role model. And your job is to just, through embodiment, show people how to live an authentic life. I'm sure as people were listening, if they don't or haven't done their human design yet, they would hit pause and just ran and took it themselves. Because as you were talking, if I didn't know, I would absolutely want to know. And as somebody who has mine in front of me, it, again, feels very accurate and was interesting to me.

So I'm a projector with a 2.5 profile. Am I saying that right? Yep, you are. And you mentioned in almost every one of those self-worth and how important that was. I find that very interesting given that I've made my life's work the topic of confidence and self-worth because I very much experienced periods of time where I didn't know what confidence was and I just was certain I didn't have any of it. And I could feel some of what you were saying when self-worth is low and people have expectations and sucking in other people's energy and all that, like everything you were saying really rang true.

So I want to go back to where we started. If this is about self-awareness, self-appreciation, self-understanding, what do you suggest we do with the information as we begin to learn and read and figure these things out? What do we do with that? Well, human design gives you a prescription for what to do with it. So most people, when they encounter human design, I find they often are encountering it sort of in a crisis, not so much now as it's a little bit more popular than it was in the beginning. But basically, most people that I've, when you encounter human design, you're on an exploration of who am I and what am I here to do and how do I bring myself back into harmony with the person I was born to be. In human design, when you come into human design, you go through a process that's called deconditioning, meaning over a course of time, you start to explore the question, who am I and how am I? And where have

I been told that it's not okay or safe or valuable or profitable for me to be who I am and how I am? And so each one of those five types that we talked about has a different decision-making process that is really a decision-making process that's designed to slow us down. So to a certain degree, the manifester has to learn to wait. And there are specific cues that you learn depending on your unique configuration in your chart. You have to learn to wait for internal alignment with right timing. The generator types, that's the manifesting generator and the pure generator, they are here to wait for things to show up in their outer world, signs, cues, clues, and then respond to them rather than getting up in your head and creating

things out of your head. Projectors are taught to wait for recognition and attention as a way of gauging whether they're in the right environment where they're truly being valued. And the reflector process is very unique. Reflectors really have a process of needing to wait the full cycle of a moon and to really take their time to make good, important, big decisions. One of the key factors in all five of those strategies is what we call strategies for each of those types is waiting. And what human design does is it gives you a prescription to learn how to wait correctly, not because you have to wait forever, but because oftentimes we need the time to slow down and stop reacting in the ways that we've been trained to react and to stop making decisions based on things we think we need to do to prove our value or our

worth, ways in which we have been trained to follow the formulas for success. We need those pauses in our decision-making process to begin to reconnect, first of all, with the wisdom of the body, because our bodies are pretty wise. And that's really why burnout, I think, is so important to talk about, because really, I find that burnout is about the body finally saying, that's it, time out, we're done, I can't do this anymore. But it really gives you an opportunity to reconnect and sink into what does my body feel like when a decision is right for me? What does my body feel like when a decision is not right for me? So that you can get familiar with that inner wisdom that is so visceral and somatic, and then ultimately begin to experience yourself in the world,

living and making choices from that place of authenticity. Karen, I have at least 7 billion more questions and we are tight on time. Thank you for going through this. And again, I'm sure people who've already heard of it have taken it and now you're encouraging them to dive deeper. But those people who are listening who haven't done it yet, please, for the love of God, go to freehumandesignchart.com to get your human design chart along with a bunch of other amazing resources and information, whether you want to dig deeper or take it for the

first time. And also, please know that you can go to Amazon and order the human design workbook for more information, deeper learning. And I think that opportunity to learn about how to wait and use our gifts and find our purpose and all those fun things. So Karen, thank you. Thank you. All right. Let me end our episode with this question for you. What if you valued getting to know yourself at least as much as you value getting to know others and definitely more than you value what other people think of you? What if you practice curiosity over judgment? And what if you celebrated all that is versus

trying to find fault or worrying that there's something wrong or missing? What if you celebrated all that is versus trying to find fault or worrying that there's something wrong or missing? What if you appreciated that you were designed exactly as you were meant to be? What if your biggest opportunity is to learn how to wait? Remember, how other people see you is a reflection of them and what they perceive and value. How you see yourself is reflected in everything that you do, your relationships and reactions, your wellbeing and your energy, your choices, and your confidence. Get to know you. I mean, seriously, can you imagine anything more magical and fascinating

than you? Be and become more you. That is woman's work.