Human design offers a fantastic set of tools for personal growth.
The most fundamental tandem in the toolbox is following your strategy and decision-making authority. These are the hammer and the nail, the screw and the driver, the clamp and the glue that make everything else hold together firmly and correctly.
By following your strategy and decision-making authority, you reduce energetic resistance in your day-to-day, which sets in motion any number of positive arcs in your life’s story, even if they take months, years, or even decades to unfold. When you learn about human design and incorporate habits and routines based on your own unique design, you’re playing both the short game and the long game. Small changes repeated over a long enough span of time can profoundly change your life here in the now and much further down the road.
At HD&Me, we call this process living as your true self.
Following your strategy and decision-making authority is a remedy to the human tendency of not living according to one’s own unique design, but rather letting the conditioned mind make decisions. This leads to energetic resistance and an increased potential for needless suffering, unrealized potential, and a reduced quality of life.
We refer to this state as living as your not self.
The “not self” has been a central concept in human design ever since Ra Uru Hu first brought the knowledge to others more than 30 years ago. However, for beginners, it’s an odd concept, and it can lead to unfortunate misunderstandings that can hamper their journey through this wonderful framework. When you’re getting started with your human design journey, just remember this: Don’t get hung up on the not self.
Whatever you do, don't focus or fixate on it.
The worst thing you can do is treat the not self like an entity. It’s not. The not-self isn’t a devil sitting on your shoulder trying to out-persuade the angel sitting on your other shoulder. The not-self isn’t “evil.” It’s not something to be shunned, feared, or hated. After all, it isn’t you. It’s right there in the name!
The not self is simply a term to describe a set of effects and tendencies that result from not approaching choices according to your strategy and decision-making authority — in other words, by disregarding awareness of how your energy system is mapped. So when you’re living as your not self, you’re operating according to these less-than-optimal effects and tendencies, which result in the themes of frustration, anger, bitterness, or disappointment, depending on your energy type. These are consequences of making decisions with your mind, of allowing conditioning to dictate the course of your life.
From a certain point of view, the not self is simply energetic resistance. When you’re tethered to your mind to make choices, you invite resistance into your life, and it drags on every aspect: your health, relationships, and sense of direction.
So while the not self is a useful concept to be aware of, it shouldn’t be the central focus of your human design experiment. When you treat the not self as an entity, it can lead down a dangerous road where it becomes something you hate and fear, something you can find perverse comfort in, even something you communicate with. That’s…not good. When you focus on who you aren’t, then you’re far more likely to get down on yourself, whether that’s actively putting yourself down or harshly ruminating on why the world doesn’t seem to be treating you all that well.
What you should focus on instead is being proactive with living the life that’s best for you, according to how you’re uniquely mapped out, and with the powerful set of tools and knowledge at your disposal. When you begin to notice the positive impact on your life, then the not self becomes largely irrelevant. At worst it’s a simple reminder of your old way of doing things.
Your mind is an amazing tool, but it's not designed to make decisions.
That’s simply it. The ways in which the not self manifests itself in your life will depend on what your mind is keen on doing at the moment – whether it’s pushing you to act out of worry or concern or desire, based on conditioned feedback from the outside world.
Your human design experiment isn’t an arena battle between not self and true self. (It’d get pretty good billing on pay-per-view though!) When you’re living according to your design, you’re not actively avoiding bad thoughts or missteps; you’re simply acting in accordance with your decision-making authority and following your strategy. The rest will flow from there.
Keep your chin up. Don’t focus on the not self.