Shift into Your Body, Shift into Your Innate Worth + Connect with Your intuition

Letting go of weight loss, your ‘ideal body,’ and why loving yourself as you are right now is the key to getting through to your intuition

The biggest myth we face in our culture right now is that changing your external body will shift your internal worth.

OOF, this crock of SHIT… Y’all, if I could wave a magic wand right now and fix one thing, it would be to lift the veil and show anyone that believes changing their body will change their confidence how flawed that logic is.

First, if you are in IF then thinking or When then thinking, you’ve got it twisted. We must love AS WE ARE in order to move forward in our authenticity. Being rooted in the present is the only way we can be in touch with who we are. If we’re living for a future that hasn’t arrived, we’re missing the power in the present moment.

Loving your body right now and celebrating what it can do is how you connect to your intuition and find real confidence from within.

Not only does weight loss not solve confidence issues, but being overly focused on your appearance and controlling your body’s shape can be deeply damaging to your intuitive abilities. If you only see your body as an external appearance, you are cutting yourself off from your own power.

As someone who chased the thinness ideal for most of my life, I can tell you firsthand that this is myth. A new body will not improve your life. The only way to move the needle on your confidence is to look at your internal programming.

Despite the messages you’ve been receiving your entire life to the contrary, attaining a certain external look is never going to make you whole. Chasing thinness and youth is a losing game because you are making a tacit agreement that thinness and youth are “better” than growing old or having your body present differently that the cultural standard and ideals presented through mainstream advertising. (If you aren’t familiar with the work from Lindsay and Lexie Kite, who have literally written the book about self-objectification, check out Beauty Redefined, right now)

Your worth comes from within and it starts by being inside of your body instead of focusing on how you present to others. The biggest leap I made in my self-confidence and living my life for me, came when I began to understand this and integrate it into my life.

You do not have to change how you look to feel good about your body and about your life - you have to change how you look at yourself.

It’s not about how you look or how others perceive you, it’s about how you feel. If you need help with this, go on Instagram and see all the influencers who are outside of the very narrow mainstream beauty standards that are living their best lives and loving themselves.

What we want isn’t to fit the beauty standard, it is self-love. We conflate beauty standards and accepted norms as self-love and that’s why so many people are trapped on a hamster wheel of despair that they don’t know how to get off.

THE GOOD NEWS. THERE IS AN EXIT. You can unplug from these wild standards and start living from your authenticity (it does take practice and time, so be patient)

We transform our day to day experience when we shift from living outside of ourselves to living in our body. If you’re stuck as an observer to your life, you’re losing out on truly living your life.

The culture we live in disconnects us from our body, deceiving us into believing that our body must look a certain way before we can achieve our goals.

We take our power back when we root back into our bodies and connect with our innate power within.

If you do not connect to your physical experience, you cannot connect to your intuition. GO BACK AND READ THAT AGAIN.

IF YOU DO NOT CONNECT TO YOUR BODY AND LIVE INSIDE YOUR PHYSICAL BEING, YOU ARE CUTTING YOURSELF OFF FROM YOUR POWER SOURCE. I know this because I lived outside of myself for most of my adult life. I was watching my life as a 3rd party instead of living firsthand in my own body.

If you are disconnected to your body, it’s likely for very good reason. We shift out of our bodies for many reasons, trauma being one of the big reasons and diet culture being another. If you’ve grown up in a woman’s body - then you’ve grown up in a world that has trained you to objectify yourself. Women learn and internalize from a young age that how men perceive you is your value (thanks patriarchy) While this is not true, it’s a powerful message that has been perpetuated in the media and is used to keep women small. (Another reading recommendation - Burnout by Emily and Amelia Nagoski)

If we are so self-focused on how we are perceived, than we cannot enjoy our lives fully. Living fully happens when we let go of what it looks like and enjoy the physical experience of being present and in our bodies. We cannot go full throttle on accomplishing our goals if we’re too distracted trying to make ourselves acceptable from the outside.

I spent years on the loop of believing that my worth came from my external appearance until it dawned on me that all that pressure I was putting on myself was slowly killing me, what was the point of trying to look good if I didn’t FEEL GOOD?!?!

My brain was dedicated to beating myself up and there wasn’t any space to really let loose and enjoy my life. I was living my life as an observer to myself - stage mothering myself; over-controlling every move, worried about how others might perceive me instead of living from my heart and body.

I was so miserable I had to give up. What was the point? What was all of "this” performance for? Certainly it wasn’t for me. If my life wasn’t for my enjoyment, then what? When I let go of trying to be everything for everyone else, I opened up space to truly find out what it meant to be me.

Your worth isn’t what someone else thinks. Your worth and experience is centered in being YOU.

It takes time to let go of your old mindset that keeps you small and build a new one that supports you.

If this is new work for you (and even if it’s not) being gentle leads to more growth than being harsh on yourself (trust me, I’ve done both).

TAKE ACTION

Practice + Reflection Questions:

How can you be kind to yourself and your body today?

Are you listening to the messages your body is sending or are you too worried about what it looks like to listen?

If you know you aren’t treating your body with respect - see what happens if you get curious about what’s happening in your body instead of having expectations.

Who benefits from your negative self-talk to your body?

If you’ve got the time today - assess your relationship to your body and your intuition. Are you expecting your body to be something different than what it is? Why? How is that affecting your ability to listen inward?

Shifting into the driver’s seat of your life is letting go of any external expectations and checking in with your energy and needs. Affirm that you are making progress just by considering these questions.

What I Learned from Trusting Myself (and my career journey to Human Design)

PLANT YOURSELF WHERE YOU WANT TO BLOOM

If you told me when I was in high school that I would be spiritually advising people, I would have been like THAT IS RAD and also how is that a thing? I’m grateful for all the twists and turns my career path has taken because without the duality to life, I wouldn’t know the depths of life as I do now. If you’re reading this and you’re feeling stuck or unsuccessful right now, remember that we’re always changing and evolving.

My perceived “failures” (how I saw things at the time) led me directly to my successes. I definitely know that I would not have ended up here had my first career path been “successful” instead of deeply frustrating.

So, how did I end up here? My career path has been a weaving of retail, teaching, and wellness. Figuring out how those pieces fit together has been a journey. I’ve found my footing by taking agency over my life, my experiences, and most importantly, my body.

My 20s felt out of control and held some very high highs and low lows. I was living OUTSIDE-IN. Hoping that if I could get the external circumstances right, my internal life would calm down.

I know now that the only way to get out internal life calm is to go INSIDE OUT. We must begin within.

Now, I live an incredibly low-key lifestyle. Every day is a wonderful day because I’m right within (and if it’s not a good day, I have the tools to realign). I see clients, I work at an indie retail shop here in Austin, and an exciting night for me is making art in my own home. I love it. Super slow living.

HOW DID I MAKE THIS SHIFT HAPPEN?

Let’s start at the beginning. I used to like to learn my lessons the hard way. Why do I believe in body wisdom so deeply? Because I’ve lost my health multiple times from not listening to myself.

After graduating college (undergrad) with a degree in fashion (and another one in communication, because hello, I was your typical perfectionist overachiever) I began my professional career bright-eyed and oh-so-naive in NYC.

My first year of city living caught up with me by blowing out my immune system. I think it only took about 6 months. I had to do all the things. Be amazing at my job, go to all the happy hours, make friends outside of my office, be the perfect girlfriend to my boyfriend at the time. I’d been so out of place in college, that I was determined to make up for “lost time.”

In reality I was a people-pleaser trying to be everything to everyone, seeking approval and validation, and desperately trying to fit in. I was living for the checklist. I figured I could find salvation through achievement. If I have a brag-worthy job and am in a relationship with someone who also has a brag-worthy job and we look good and do cool things, then I’ll be happy, then I’ll feel successful and not this empty void. I was totally caught up in my perception instead of how I was feeling, cultivating externals and completely ignoring my internals.

All of this trying-to burned me out. I hated my job, I didn’t know if I liked my boyfriend, and I barely had friends. I didn’t know how to cope. That first winter, I got sick with a fever that nearly wiped out all my white blood cells and bone marrow. I was grateful to have to go to the doctor’s office at least once a week as an escape from the office. My doctor tried to figure out why I barely had an immune system left as a 22-year-old who seemingly had just had the flu. They tested and tested me for months and finally settled on the solution being gain some weight, but really, no one had answers.

The “great recession” hit and I got switched into a position that was a terrible fit for me, but I was grateful to be employed. My Projector vision showed me that commerce was rapidly changing and that millennials were not mini-boomers. HOW WOULD WE CHANGE AND ADAPT? I had ideas to reach out to marginalized communities and to younger people. No one would listen to me because it wasn’t “worth it” financially. It was unproven. I continued to give unsolicited advice and provided endless ideas to my team to no avail (ahem, not-self Projector) and I became increasingly depressed as I kept hoping for someone to see my value and put me in a position that was a better fit or give me more power (haha, I would have had to have been much better at doing my ASSIGNED work).

Why wasn’t anyone listening to me? During those 5 years that I spent in corporate merchandising and buying, I learned many invaluable lessons.

1) How we run businesses is absolutely insane. If you are a good individual contributor, you are rewarded with a completely untested skill set of managing people. Not all individual contributors should be managers and people who would make good managers may not be good individual contributors. We promote to the level of incompetence and that’s why there is so much ineptitude in business.

2) Just because a lot of people believe something, doesn’t make it true or the best. I call this the myth of the best-seller. General wisdom is that something that sells the most is BEST. No. It just means a lot of people bought it. Validation isn’t the same as quality. When we would go to market, it was so depressing to see all these incredible products that would never make it to mass market because they were new ideas or not broadly enough focused. This is illustrated best by watching Shark Tank. Good ideas aren’t always marketable ideas. Things that are good for society don’t typically square with the principles of capitalism which is solely focused on growth and profits.

3) Betraying yourself to belong comes with a hefty price tag. If you give up on being yourself, your insides go to shit.

4) RESISTANCE IS A CALL FROM THE UNIVERSE TO LET GO. Learn to cut your losses. Admitting defeat is a good thing. When we keep trying to make something happen and it’s not happening - it’s time to look at your ego. Resistance is a sacred call from the universe to take another path.

SILVER LINING! Being in a job that wasn’t the right fit gave me an amazing opportunity to get clear on my values. If it wasn’t for the rampant waste I was exposed to and the insanity of our capitalistic society that centers on growth at any cost, I wouldn’t know that I am all about sustainability and minimalism. It was only through experiencing corporate values firsthand and seeing how mainstream companies are run that I found out that I was personally driven by the values of minimalism, sustainability, and understanding entire the life-cycle of a product.

When I finally accepted that the only person who could fix my life was me, I went back to my roots. When I finally realized the mainstream retail industry wasn’t going to bend to my value system, I quit my job and started again. I had loved being a camp counselor in high school and college, so I went back to school to become a teacher. I was still tethered to old paradigm programming, so I didn’t fully go for my dreams which at the time were a recurring fantasy of working on an organic farm or becoming a body-image and confidence counselor for young women. I let other people’s opinions and my own practicality get the best of me and I landed in a master’s program for special education.

My first teaching job was hectic and an extremely unsupportive environment. I was scared, out of control, and I headed straight back to burnout town. My health problems came back even worse and I ended up needing a lot of medical care. However, the lessons came through strong:

1) We live in an extremely racist society. During grad school I faced my white privilege more than I ever had to before. It was extremely eye-opening as I realized how many internalized biases I had to dismantle (this work continues to this day).

2) Resources pool at the top. Rich schools have rich PTAs and access to resources well beyond what the school system provides. Schools on the other end of the spectrum are underfunded and overwhelmed with a lack of resources and adequate help.

3) Our educational system is backwards and broken. Testing students is the focus of schools because of educational policy at every level of government. It is ineffective and goes against how students learn best. Every single student has different needs, strengths, and weaknesses, but traditional schooling elevates a very small skill set and ignores many skill sets that are deeply needed in life. Students who excel in school may be very ill-equipped for “real life” many students who have incredible skill sets that would serve them well in “real life” aren’t celebrated or acknowledged in a traditional school setting.

4) A warm, safe environment is the root for learning and collaboration. If our emotional and physical needs aren’t being met, we cannot learn or grow. If you are actively facing trauma or are feeling unsafe, you cannot learn (and may not even be physically growing). Environment is critical for our wellbeing. Until we are safe, we cannot thrive.

I was so lost and confused, but along my way I found kundalini yoga and an entirely new world of thinking. I read Conscious Loving by Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks and I was hit with lightning. I understood my health issues in an entirely new light. I also understood that I was quite far from operating in my zone of Genius.

A new chapter: discovering body wisdom + the power of being present

If students can’t learn when they are actively in a traumatic environment, what does that say for those of us who inflict trauma onto ourselves?

My health was out of control. Since I was so out of alignment personally, my body was screaming at me to change course. In Conscious Loving, the Hendricks identify that tamping down our emotions manifest as illness later on and if we fight our natural rhythms, our bodies will fight our battles for us.

When I didn’t know how to communicate for myself that my boundaries had been crossed or I was in the wrong place, my body would generate illness so I could escape my circumstances. Since I wasn’t listening to my body or allowing myself rest (and my internal environment was a wreck with perfectionism) I would manifest sickness as an escape or an out from life. I didn’t know another way to stop the train.

Lessons:

1) We are most effective where our passions and skills lie - if we are happy we create positive environments for others and ourselves. If we’re unhappy and not using our talents, we’re not being effective for anyone.

2) Our bodies hold so much intelligence. Honoring our energy and feelings is the key to finding our correct path.

Now that I know my body communicates what is right and what isn’t, I listen to my body and let it lead me. In the years since reading Conscious Loving, I’ve only had one major relapse with my health (and it was very much stress-related).

Armed with a new way of thinking, I completely stayed in the present moment and let go of the future entirely. We make leaps and bounds in our life when we can be here now (thank you Ram Dass). By feeling my feelings, honoring my body, and acknowledging what I was going through internally instead of burying it deeper and deeper within (and pretending everything was fine), I changed my life.

My job (actually my whole life at the time wasn’t the right fit for me) but I focused on taking it one minute at a time. Slowly, my circumstances began to shift. I was grateful for all the good things. I realized my external circumstances didn’t dictate how I felt.

Lessons:

1) WE ARE NOT MEANT TO DO IT ALL. Teachers, especially special education teachers, have an impossible job. My colleagues that felt that they had to do everything and save the day were drowning. Since I had so much on my plate and had gotten so behind in my school work from my health problems, I had to let go of doing it all. I just couldn’t.

2) You can let go of your baggage at any time. Since I was so overloaded, I became free. When everything is a crisis, nothing becomes a crisis. I was able to stop thinking about what could happen, or what would happen, and was radically present in my life.

Serendipitously, I found another teaching job much more suited to my skill set in a much more supportive setting. Some might call this manifesting. I’ve found in my life that the next step comes the more that I detach from the outcome. Many teachers talk about how being present is the secret to co-creating with the universe and when I look back over my life, that’s certainly been the case for me.

The new school I worked at was wonderful, and the quality of my life improved. I love being around people and especially kids, but even in this better suited job, I was present enough to see how our education system is so terribly broken. At first I wanted to work against the system, but I realized that it absolutely drove me mad that my students were so aware of their “shortcomings” and not given more time to work on their incredible gifts and talents. Why did we work in a system that focuses on where a student doesn’t thrive instead of supporting them in their interests and talents?

lessons:

1) keep clarifying your values. As a special education teacher I realized so deeply that everyone deserves to be celebrated and acknowledged for who they are. Celebrating our differences became so much more important to me than test scores.

2) Not every fight is your fight. I feel so strongly about education, but just because something is important to you doesn’t mean you have to make it your life work. My mother and grandmother were both teachers and it is a very noble profession. Allowing myself to leave was critical to my evolution. Just because you care or you tried it, doesn’t mean you have to do it forever.

I didn’t want to do my job, I wanted to work with students on their self-worth and self-esteem.

The way I see it is like this: if we erode your self-esteem how will you even have energy left to do what you love? If you aren’t doing what you love then the world misses out on your talents and joy. It would keep me up at night that I wasn’t able to help these students in their area of interest but had to sit with them while they did the subjects they hated the most. I just didn’t agree with the school system at all, even though I loved my students and my school, teaching just wasn’t the right fit for me.

So after teaching in public schools for 5 years, I had a revealing moment of clarity. Who was I living for? What was the point of everything I was doing? I could stay and teach forever at the incredible school I was so blessed to work at and feel like I was compromising, or I could follow that nagging in my heart that said I hadn’t really let myself chase my dreams.

I was done denying who I was. I was done hoping I could wrangle myself into submission, hoping I could fit myself into the mold I felt I needed to succeed, so in the summer of 2017, I traveled to Texas, following my intuition that I was meant to live here and I quit my stable life.

I FINALLY SAID TO THE UNIVERSE, WHAT’S THE WORST THAT COULD HAPPEN IF I BET ON MYSELF?

And it turns out, the doors just keep opening the more that I listen and am honest with what I am feeling. Living my values and staying true to my heart are the things I believe in most.

It was here that I serendipitously found out about Human Design.

Finding Human Design (and finding out I was a Projector) was one of the biggest aha moments for me. All of a sudden my life made sense. As a Projector I operate differently than most - I work in intense bursts, I work best one-on-one (no wonder teaching was so draining!) and I am meant to share my unique perspective with the world.

I realized we don’t have to fight our nature, we must embrace it.

When we make a commitment to ourselves to be authentically us, we are able to cultivate a sense of stability and inner peace that grounds us in who we are.

We can become unshakeable.

The amazing thing is it’s never too late to find your truth and find yourself.

I’ve rebuilt my life completely by learning to trust myself and living my design. You can too

I used to feel so frustrated that I hadn’t just followed my heart right after college, the heart that would routinely keep me up until 2 in the morning googling life-coaching and freelance writing wondering if a 22-year old could be qualified to tell anyone anything about life. No, I would think, I can’t do that - it doesn’t have health insurance.

Now, I am thankful for all my experiences. I don’t hold a grudge against my younger self for not knowing what to do or feel confident to follow my heart (I have an undefined G-center and ego after all) and everything has had a lesson and has enriched my life. Showing me what I want and what I don’t. The duality of life and our experiences is what brings richness and meaning to our experiences. If I hadn’t experienced such low-lows and found myself in so many doctors offices, I would never appreciate and treasure my time and health like I do now.

Things that felt like wrong turns have taught me so much about my boundaries and my self-worth. Living my values and allowing my values to evolve have brought me to this moment in time where I can now help facilitate this experience of clarity for others.

Finding our way is a winding road and there’s no destination. It’s just one long journey of self-exploration. We lead with our hearts when we’re ready to tune into what our heart has to say to us.

I had a memory recently about a talk I attended at my old corporate job where our CEO urged us to bloom where we are planted. I would say it to myself all the time to try to find the good even thought I knew the situation I was in wasn’t right for me. Now I know I it’s actually the reverse that true for me- plant yourself where you can bloom.

If you’re ready to live more embodied - reach out. I’d love to talk to you - drop me a line at hello@jenigage.com, I’d love to hear your story.

Understanding the Sacral Center - do I know when enough is enough? perfectionism, burn out, performing life, and arbitrary goals

Do you know why I love Human Design? It has built-in signposts that we can use to evaluate if we’re balanced and in our authenticity.

The not-self themes of the energy centers and aura types are incredible tools to evaluate our wellbeing.

We don’t need to learn everything there is in our charts, we just need to understand some key elements. One of those crucial elements - especially in our culture of productivity and more is more? THE SACRAL CENTER!!

When we’re out of balance in the sacral center - or swept up in someone else’s sacral energy - we can massively overdo things.

GATHER ROUND DEAR ONES BECAUSE IF YOU LOVE TO GO OVERBOARD AND YOU DON’T KNOW WHEN ENOUGH IS ENOUGH - THEN YOU’VE BEEN SEDUCED BY SACRAL ENERGY!

Discover & share this Funny GIF with everyone you know. GIPHY is how you search, share, discover, and create GIFs.

YES FRIENDS, HERE’S OUR POSTER CHILD FOR DOING TOO MUCH.

Jessie Spano put herself under constant pressure to perform. If you aren’t familiar with this iconic episode, the TL;DR is that her high standards had her stressed out and making questionable decisions.

If you’re a perfectionist (recovering or not) and hold yourself to impossibly high standards that drive you crazy - you likely don’t know when to stop.

Why do we put this pressure on ourselves to do the most?

Because we’re hoping that if we do everything perfectly and overachieve, we can free ourselves from feeling pain. We’re trying to run away from life’s realities by attempting to make our lives bulletproof. Perfectionism + impossible standards is a coping mechanism we apply to ourselves like a shield. We believe that somehow our achievements will allow us to fly above those who get criticism and that we can escape without being seen or evaluated.

Perfection is a distorted coping mechanism designed so that we don’t take a look at our vulnerabilities and real needs. Perfectionism takes the sting out of the hurt and rejection of life - “HAHA. YOU CANNOT HURT ME AS I HAVE ALREADY HURT MYSELF,” WE THINK.

We can beat ourselves up first, so you can’t hurt us... but the problem is - perfectionism is a self-fulfilling prophecy. We live constantly under the shadow of our own expectations, idealism (ahem, delusion) and the constant barrage of internal monologue THAT NOTHING IS EVER GOOD ENOUGH.

We’re here to enjoy life - not blaze through a checklist and amass achievements. Achievements mean nothing if they are done for external approval.

Perfectionism is performing life for validation. Performing life for validation is a vapid existence.

HOW DO I KNOW? BECAUSE I HAVE LIVED IT.

Performing life doesn’t feel good.

If you think you might be performing life - it looks like this:

• Achieving the goal you were obsessed over, but when the reward comes, it feels empty instead of satisfying. We’re supposed to enjoy the journey and not race to the destination. When I achieve a goal only to find it was an empty milestone, I can then reflect back and evaluate- was the goal process or product? If it turns out it wasn’t thrilling or engaging during the process, then it was probably for show.

• Believing there are winners and losers. We believe we have to compete or fail. If this is the loop you’re caught in - getting a reading can really sort out what the best path to your success feels like.

• Worrying or living by what others think of you. Thinking you have only one option because of family expectations or cultural expectations. Examining where this pressure is coming from and who’s benefitting from this pressure is super critical here to begin to untie this know.

• FULL ON BURN OUT. If you are getting sick or injured or if you are losing interest in life or if you are just done - you aren’t living for yourself. I HAVE BEEN THERE.

BUT THE GOOD NEWS IS YOU’RE HERE NOW AND HUMAN DESIGN CAN BE A TREMENDOUS TOOL TO HELP YOU OVERCOME YOUR SELF-SABOTAGING WAYS. 

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First, let’s take a look at the power of the sacral center for sacral beings:

The sacral center is sacred for Generators and Manifesting-Generators.

If you have your sacral defined (Generators + Manifesting-Generators) understanding your sacral energy will bring you greater alignment as your awareness of how your energy operates increases.

Developing a relationship with the frequency of yes and no is absolutely paramount for your wellbeing. You must respect what your energy is telling you and listen to it if you want to live your best life.

To feel satisfied and aligned as a Generator and Manifesting-Generator follow the sacral energy as it alerts you to your passions and lights up for things that make you feel enthusiastic - the sacral doesn’t follow where you point, it points where you’re meant to go.

The sacral doesn’t care what’s cool - it’s showing you what you’re designed to do.

Fueling your passion = satisfaction.

Chasing achievements that aren’t rooted in passion = frustration.

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How do you relate to sacral energy when you are a Projector, Manifestor, or Reflector?

If you DON’T have a defined sacral center (Projectors, Manifestors, Reflectors), understanding how you REACT to and AMPLIFY sacral energy can change your life.

The energy coming from the sacral center is super seductive. Generators and Manfesting-Generators are designed to pull others towards them with their sacral energy. We get caught in their sacral tailwind and think that we can do what sacral beings can do.

Non-sacral beings can have shadow around being thought of as lazy or not as tough as others, so we’ll catch that sacral wind and ride it hard to prove we can hang. Well, the Generators we’ve been hanging around are fine the next day, while we’re completely and utterly depleted.

Non-sacral beings can easily get hyped up on the powerful sacral energy that Generators and Manifesting-Generators are providing and we can push ourselves out of our natural range. It’s a little bit like a sugar rush and sugar crash. We have to understand how to balance our sacral intake so that we’re not crashing all over the place because we’re the ones left to deal with our own damage when we’ve set out to prove we’re just like the sacrals.

Borrowed sacral energy is like running up a credit card.

We’re going to have to pay the bill eventually. Sacral energy used incorrectly fuels us to live hard in the paint, blinding us to our own reality. Allowing us to push into the not-self even more.

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Because we’re all conditioned (sacrals and non-sacrals, perfectionists and non-perfectionists alike) to believe that our worth is our productivity, we’re all seduced to push (or surf) the sacral energy as hard and as fast as it will go.

No matter your energy type, pay attention if you are forcing your energy - because if you force your energy too much? It’s burnout city (and if you’re a non-sacral burnout typically lasts a long time).

Think of your body as a car. If we’re constantly pressing on the gas pedal, but never stopping for fuel or maintenance, we’re headed for a spectacular breakdown (and not to mention a whopper of a bill at the auto shop).

The same thing happens to us when we try to force our sacral energy (or surf sacral energy that’s not ours) for too long.

If we’re performing life or trying to keep out or outrun our pain - we’re never going to learn when enough is enough. We’ll always be striving, hoping the next thing will be the thing that protects us.

We can’t live a pain-free life, no matter how much we achieve. Living comes with bumps and lessons and hurts.

Doing the most does not protect us from hurt, so use your energy to do things that make you happy instead of feeling like you’ve got to perform.

If you do not know what it means to break out of performing (and I know for myself unlocking from this mindset took years…) Begin by noting the things that make you feel excited.

When shifting from performance to progress, it’s not about the end result, but the exploration and the discovery inherent in life. You do not have to be good at something to explore it. You do not need permission to do what your heart desires.

When we’re engaging in activities that fill us up, it’s easier to know when it call it a day. When we’ve put in enough time and it’s time to rest.

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WITH HUMAN DESIGN WE HAVE OUR MAP TO GET BACK TO REAL SELVES. WE CAN MAKE A HOME IN OUR BODIES AND FEEL GOOD.

When we connect to our bodies and our own authority that we can begin to break the cycle. We have to connect to our bodies to hear our authority, otherwise we’re going to think someone else knows better and we’ll be seduced by FOMO.

We are meant for so much more than this. Understanding who we are at our core means we can combat the pressures that take us out of ourselves.

Use the roadmaps of the not-self to guide yourself back to your own authority.

If you are in your frustration, bitterness, anger, disappointment and you keep doing instead of slowing down, you’re in the not-self.

The medicine of truth is that you don’t need to achieve or perform your worth. You are already innately worthy. Use your time and energy to fill your cup.

You are not here to be validated by anyone but yourself. Likes and popularity will never fill you to satisfaction, they create an endless cycle for more.

You can validate yourself and it feels much better than seeking external validation. On the road to your own validation you will face challenges. You need to be able to face obstacles and keep going with your own path. This is the work.

I pulled myself out of the hole by listening to my heart, journaling, creating a support group, seeing a therapist, seeing a psychic, doing a LOT of yoga, meditation, sound-healing, using crystals, learning what foods were good for me, reading all the self-help books, reiki, learning how to do reiki, moving my body regularly, riding bikes with friends, and most importantly, allowing myself to do the things that sounded fun to me.

A Human Design reading is a wonderful place to learn to strip back the layers of conditioning and learn what energies you have with you so you can work with what you’ve got instead of being seduced by the performance lifestyle.

Further recommended reading for unplugging from perfectionism:

• Gay Hendricks, The Big Leap

• Celeste Headlee, Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving

• Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

If you’re curious to chat before booking with me - you can text me (310-919-0678) or schedule a free 15-minute Zoom meeting here.