How Human Design explained my multipassionate career path
This new-age tool is actually quite useful for confused generalists.
You know the feeling when somebody sees something in you that you’ve always known but felt a bit awkward about? There’s a deep relief in having someone describe yourself back to you in a way that connects with your self-perception.
Finally, someone understands.
Finally, it all makes sense.
Finally, my random choices don’t seem so random anymore.
Well, I had one of these moments when I had my Human Design reading done a while back.
I first heard about Human Design in 2022 when I was in Portugal, hanging out with a bunch of people who could be labelled as conscious and highly attuned to self-development (this is a compliment, btw).
I then learned that it’s a self-analyis system that combines astrology with Kabbalah, the chakra system, spiritual traditions and modern psychology. At the time, I was already consuming so much self-help that I didn’t have capacity to take on a new approach. But I mentally marked it as save for later.
When I returned to Portugal at the end of 2023, human design caught up with me again. I was at a coffee shop and bumped into a friend who was accompanied by a human design reader.
He gave me a quick analysis of my human design type based on my birthdate and time, and in that 10 minutes, I already started to unravel some of the life choices that I’ve struggled with for decades:
Why can’t I just stick to one thing instead of scattering my energy across multiple different jobs that seemingly have nothing to do with each other?
Why do I have this intensity in what I do and struggle to work 8 hours a day?
Why do I feel social and antisocial at the same time and have never really been able to decide whether I’m an introvert or extrovert?
A few months later, I contacted the reader and made an appointment for an official two-hour consultation to explore my design further.
But first, I wanted to understand what I was getting myself into.
You can call it pseudoscience – the origin story of Human Design is anything but scientifically convincing
I ventured into Google to find out what was being said about this system. And I must say, the origin story is about as convincing as Santa Claus.
Human Design doesn’t have strong, solid roots in any spiritual tradition. Its founding father is a random Canadian guy who had an otherworldly experience in the 1980s. As this Vice article tells you, he was a former advertising executive and magazine publisher who heard a voice speak to him on a random night in Ibiza. He could well have been on drugs.
This voice gave him content worth of 400 pages, and that textbook later became known as Human Design.
(As always, I encourage you to make your own judgements about whether this is something you want to engage deeper in or not. But if I’ve sparked your curiosity, keep reading.)
What I personally got out of my Human Design analysis
As a person open to everything and anything that increases self-reflection, I see Human Design as another tool to mirror my traits and behaviours. To me, its biggest value so far has been its adaptability to a career and entrepreneurial setting – something astrology has never quite given me.
Below, I’ll share my chart so you can see what kind of information comes out of a reading. I also received materials that go much deeper than this but this is the condensed version.
As you can see, my type is manifesting generator. It’s a combination of two types, manifestor and generator. Manifestors are the ideas people and generators are little ants who turn ideas into reality. (Please refer to a Human Design reader for more accurate descriptions, since these are merely my interpretations).
Then there are projectors and reflectors. Human Design websites claim to be able to estimate the relative percentages of each type in the human population, with generators being the most common (70% or the population) and reflectors being the rarest (1% of the population). However, because the maths and evidence base behind these estimates are very vague, I personally wouldn’t rely on them too much.
I agree with what is said about my type and profile. I have ideas and can turn them into reality. I am highly receptive to surrounding energies and sometimes struggle to disengage my sensitivities. I have very strong emotions that I have to manage on a daily basis, yet these emotions also inform my greatest decisions. I am both a hermit and a sociable creature and tend to spot opportunities around me easily.
With my chart, I couldn’t be anything but a multipassionate, creative generalist
The biggest relief I got from my analysis was that as a manifesting generator, I’m meant to have multiple initiatives going on and they don’t have to “make sense” to the outside world. I’m not designed for a single occupation or life path. Change and adaptation are natural parts of my design.
In fact, experimentation and sharing are some of the primary ways I live in this world and serve others.
No wonder I’ve never been able to fully commit to a single career path. I’ve always felt best when I’ve had multiple things going on and been able to experiment with a wide range of projects.
I don’t need to sell myself on social media because my best projects find me in their own, mysterious ways
One of the most useful answers I got from Human Design is how it describes strategy, i.e., how you should move through life to achieve the best flow and least resistance.
As my strategy is to respond, I need to use my receptiveness to identify projects and missions that I can contribute to. Responding means that my best work comes in response to something I see going on around me.
Even though I have the capacity to initiate, I need to look outside of myself for signals about what to initiate. Things are not born in isolation within me but in collaboration with the world around me.
The good thing about this strategy is that I basically just have to look for signs and follow them, and I will find my success stories.
However, the downside is, that if I’m not present and receptive, I might also miss the signs.
Also, I have to accept that I can’t force things. As a business-maker, things like cold-calling or preaching aren’t the best avenues for me but instead, I need to respond to the energies and needs around me.
This in itself is a relief because it also explains why it’s so darn hard for me to do things like advertise on social media. Those types of self-promotion feel pushy to me and haven’t led to much success. Instead, I’ve always thrived in sales situations based on connecting with and helping others.
(If you want to read about all the different strategies that one might have, you can check out this website for an in-depth explanation.)
The balance I’m seeking in life is combining the energies of a lone wolf and a social networker
My HD analysis tells me that I have a personality with both hermit and opportunist energy. I don’t think the word opportunist fully describes what they’re trying to convey here, as it’s not about using others for individual success but about needing social networks and contexts to identify opportunities in the first place.
The real puzzle for a person like me is to find a balance between solitude and social engagement.
Now, this is something I’ve struggled with my whole life. I always find myself yearning for one or the other: social engagement or solitude. If I get an overdose of either, I need to fully engage in its opposite for a while. This type of personality isn’t always easy to explain to people as we are often categorised on an axis of introvert-extrovert: you either thrive and succeed in social settings or you stay away from them and enjoy life on your lonesome.
So, you can imagine that unravelling this bit of my personality is like learning a new language.
The words are slowly coming to me: I need to interact with people as much as I need to wander the streets in solitude. I need to be alone to hear my deepest wisdom, yet I need to engage in social settings to find opportunities.
It’s not one or the other, it’s both.
In conclusion: Human Design can be hugely helpful for career-confused generalists
You can get your profile done online on multiple websites for free, or you can seek a reader who can explain your profile in detail.
Important note: your profile is more than your HD type!
Before I had my reading done, I obviously tried the free online tools first. However, the complexity of the chart is similar to astrology and takes quite a bit of dedication to understand. There’s much more to a person’s chart than the type, e.g., manifestor, generator, etc.
What I’ve shared here about my design is a very superficial description, but hopefully, it is enough to help you get an idea of what you can achieve with this tool.