Avoid Taking Other People’s Advice When it’s Not Right for You: Insights from a Human Design Perspective

Let’s face it – we’ve all heard the following expressions umpteen times:

• Follow your heart
• Trust your gut
• Sleep on it
• Trust your intuition

The thing is, it doesn’t necessarily help you to make a decision that’s right for you. When I say ‘right’ I mean aligned, and by that I mean a decision that you don’t end up regretting; that felt ‘wrong’ quickly; or that when you look back in time you realise was not the decision towards a path, goal or outcome that you wanted.

Here’s why.

According to Human Design, there are 7 different ways of making decisions. Some involve trusting your gut or your intuition; others are about following what your heart is in, and others are about giving yourself time to wait until you feel clear about the decision. We each have one best way to decide on important things.

We aren’t meant to access all of these ways of making decisions, but you might notice that you’re encouraged to do exactly that by various people. They do this unknowingly because it’s something that works well for them.

Take Light Watkins for example. He’s a 4/6 Manifesting Generator with a wait for clarity authority AND a defined ego centre – this is about working out what you have the willpower for and/or what your heart is in (the Ego is the heart/will/motivation centre and only 37% of people can rely on this consistently. Only 1% are meant to make decisions from this space). Light often talks about following your heart. He says things like ‘how to know when you’re truly following your heart’:

This implies that you’re unwilling to take chances or will be uninspired by those who do, if you don’t ‘follow your heart’. When actually, they just have a different approach.

I’ve listened to some of Ant Middleton’s interviews on Head Game and he talks a lot about trusting his gut. While this works well for those with a Sacral or Trust Your Gut authority, it’s not going to be helpful for 30% of the population (ie Projectors, Manifestors and Reflectors).

In Richard Branson’s recent interview in Business Insider on his Four Rules for Making Difficult Decisions, the first rule is ‘Don’t act on an emotional response’. He is an emotional aka Wait for Clarity Generator which means it’s so important to avoid making decisions in the heat of the moment or in the excitement of a situation, and instead to wait to feel calm and clear about the way forward.

I shared this post about the difference between our intuition and our gut, and why we can’t all access one or both of these consistently.

Knowing your best way to make decisions is so key for making the actual decisions, as well as not getting swayed by how others inadvertently share the ways that you could/should make decisions.

If you’re a Reflector, almost nobody (apart from Human Design people) is suggesting that you take a lunar month to consider bigger decisions! But they might be telling you to trust your gut, follow your intuition or to sleep on something.

Know yourself so you can let what’s right for you land, and what’s not filter to through the sieve. 

If you’ve ever been to a ‘ra ra’ seminar (think coaching gurus who get people pumped up, get you into a ‘peak state’, exhaust you and then sell (hard) to you, you will know exactly what ‘selling from the back of the room’ means.

If you’ve been in coaching rooms, you’ll probably know about selling with scarcity, urging you to part with THOUSANDS of dollars in a program, without having time to think it through and without a cooling-off period. It’s getting you to make a more spontaneous decision in the emotion of a moment, without having time to reach clarity. So unless you have a ‘tune into your intuition or sacral (gut) decision-making style, this buying style won’t suit you. And chances are, there’s no way you’re going to be able to connect with your intuition in a loud, noisy room. Luckily these shonky methods are on their way out.

But if you know that you need time to gain clarity (aka 53% of the population), you are far less likely to say yes to something on the spur of the moment; especially when it involves thousands of dollars and no ‘get out of jail free’ card.

It’s not to say big investments are the problem. High-ticket coaching per se is absolutely fine as long as you respect a person’s decision-making process and don’t question their values or integrity if they choose not to sign with you.

It’s also about:

• how to decide who to partner with (in your business or personal life)
• your decisions around the services or products you offer
• your career path;
• which job to apply for
• the way you encourage your children to make decisions. (is it like you or is it the right way for them? For me, I trust my gut. Waiting for clarity is best for both of my teens and my hubby.
• the space you allow for team members to make decisions differently to you
• a mentor or coach that you engage
• a web designer, copywriter, photographer, virtual assistant or social media manager you want to hire, and so it goes on.

Be selective about who you listen to. Be discerning about whose strategies you adopt. And be certain in yourself and what you know to be true. Will you always get it right? Unlikely!. But you’ll get it ‘wrong’ far less often. That can create incredible differences in your business, work, relationships, finances and life overall.

Kylie x

PS – to find out more about your best way of making decisions, plus many other pieces of your unique Human Design, book a 1-hour 1:1 Human Design session here

Or get in touch to explore other ways of working together.