Human Design Fear Gates and How To Transform Your Business

The Spleen centre in your Human Design chart reveals the answers.

Human Design is a reliable, accurate and sensitive tool that reveals your unique blueprint. It shows you how you can create the most success and fulfilment in your business and life overall. It provides mind-blowing, detailed and practical insights that people find deeply accurate.

Whether you realise it or not, fears can be a powerful driver in the way you navigate business, the behaviours that show up and ultimately, the way you make decisions. But they are like that girl from primary school who was always making up stories that never turned out to be true.

That infamous ‘fear of failure’ is one thing. Meanwhile fear of success and really standing out and shining brightly (which puts you at risk of getting cut down to size with ‘tall poppy syndrome’ here in Australia) is even bigger. That and a ‘fear of success’ are probably the most common ones you hear coaches talking about.

But there are others, and they can be just as influential in taking you off course- if you allow them to.

In Human Design, our fears arise from a number of areas, including the Spleen centre. Let me show you via John Travolta’s Human Design chart (bodygraph) so it’s fun!

(FYI he’s a 6/2 Manifesting Generator. It’s hard to believe he’s 70 now!)

The spleen is the home of your instincts, intuition, and fears. When you have certain Gates defined, it means the little numbers within that centre that are coloured in. For example, in the enlarged image of John Travolta’s Spleen centre, you can see he has the numbers (gate) 48, 44, 32 and 28 shaded (defined).

While these represent particular qualities and attributes, they also shed light on the origins of many of your fears. When you don’t know this consciously, these fears can drive your behaviour and influence your decision-making. These fears won’t take you in the direction you want to go. You’ll try to stop feeling the fear and somehow avoid it. But that’s like trying to change your eye colour or outrun your DNA – you may not love it but it’s part of you. So working with it, not against it, is the plan.

Let’s face it: we all want to be making decisions that are an undeniable triumph and not a complete blunder and perpetuating the business struggle.

When you look up your Human Design chart, take a look at the spleen centre. Write down which of the numbers, if any, are coloured in for you. For example, the ones (gates) that John Travolta has are:

Then take a look at the list below and see which ones you have:

48, 57, 44, 50, 32, 28, 18.

If you don’t have any coloured in (defined) you can be susceptible to all of these fears.

The fears of each gate are:

48 – a fear of inadequacy or not being enough 

57 – a fear of the future and the unknown

44 – a fear of repeating past mistakes 

50 – a fear of taking on too much responsibility

32 – fear of failure and whether something will lead to success 

28 – fear of not finding your purpose or something worth fighting for

18 – fear of judgement and criticism from others

There is more nuance to these for each person, but you get the broad gist.

John Travolta has gates 48, 44, 28 and 32 so that means that the following fears will resonate for him:

• A fear of inadequacy and not having enough depth
• Having a fear that past baggage will catch up with him
• A fear of not finding his purpose or something worth fighting for
• And a fear of failure.

With massive success in the ’70s with Welcome Back Cotter, Saturday Night Fever and Grease, followed by pretty grim pickings in the ’80s (he turned down American Gigolo, An Officer and a Gentleman and Splash), he was potentially not trusting his instincts and being ruled by fear.

Travolta should have looked to set his career on a different path than it had been on. Who he had been in the ’70s had a short shelf life as he got older, but after Blow Out’s commercial failure, Travolta went back to what was safe, next appearing in 1983’s Staying Alive, a Saturday Night Fever sequel directed by Sylvester Stallone. Critics hated it, but that didn’t matter — the public showed up at the theater en masse anyway. That turned out to be the last hit of Travolta’s early career. After that, his career seemed to nosedive – Collider.

His comeback came via Pulp Fiction in 1994 where I’m guessing he ‘Waited for Clarity’ given he has what’s called an Emotional Inner Authority. This means his best decisions happen when he gives himself time to ride out the emotion and feel calm, clear and sure about what to do.

When you know that your fears can be themes for you over your lifetime, it all makes sense. The fears remind us that they’re part of who you are but you don’t need to pay too much attention to them and let them call the shots. Instead, you want to return to your Inner Authority– how you make the best decisions for you.

In other words, you want your decisions to end up like John Travolta’s success from deciding to do Grease or Pulp Fiction, not his forgettable ’80s flops. This approach might be unconventional, but it’s utter magic in terms of taking you on an exquisite journey to your next right move.

Here’s what to do when fear comes knocking (which it will) and threatens to devastate your plans:

• Validate the fear and acknowledge how it makes you feel. What comes up for you when you do this?
• Remind yourself that this is not meant to influence your decision-making (eg I feel inadequate so let me sign up for a new course so I feel like I’ve got more tools in my tool belt and hopefully never feel like this again. Lol – it’s not going to happen. You’ll still feel just as inadequate but have done a course that you may never use. And then the cycle repeats). Follow the step-by-step process.
• Trust your authority– know how you make the best decisions for you that will catapult your growth, impact and results in a painless way
• Make your decision from THAT space instead even when you don’t know where it will all lead. Overanalysing it, making a list of pros and cons, or getting everyone else’s opinion won’t make it clearer for you. In fact, spoiler alert, these are more likely to sway you from the right decision for you. Learn to trust the way you make decisions and watch things start to fall into place. But make no mistake, it won’t necessarily feel natural or easy- you’ve had decades of making decisions a different way.

If you’d like to learn more about what your Human Design chart means and how to align with it for more success, ease, flow, fulfilment and impact, book a 1-hour Human Design for Business or Career session.