A note from your Chief Wellness Officer:
Yes, like many women of my generation, I am in my full-on, no-shame pivot era.
Is it a coincidence that I happened to have turned 40 this year, decided to change industries to pursue the endeavors I have always wanted but never had the courage to do so? Well no, not at all a surprise for a Manifestor.
For the un-initiated, that is one of 5 Human Design Types, as confirmed during my Human Design reading with Zazie Peltier, a Human Design practitioner based in Los Angeles. As a former marketing executive in the medical device industry, she had reached the level of success she’d been chasing but still felt unfulfilled. That’s when she turned to Human Design which gave language to patterns she’d spent years mistaking for weaknesses. She now works 1:1 with clients navigating career pivots, burnout, and major decisions and uses her practice to help people make choices from self-trust rather than external expectations.
I’ll admit, my first reaction to Human Design was to file it under astrology-adjacent and move on. I previously had some exposure to Human Design through an app that explained it via podcast-like audio clips. It was very clear but I didn’t ever apply it to my life nor did I ever refer back to the app again. But during my reading with Zazie, I was able to ask specific and personal questions and really enrich my own self-awareness.
Zazie explained that as a Manifestor, my energy is built for action, and that’s what powers my feelings. Turns out my pull toward independence wasn’t just restlessness. It’s literally how a Manifestor is wired, and definitely helps explain my midlife career pivot from corporate luxury beauty to integrative health and women’s wellness. Zazie also told me my Authority is emotional, meaning I only trust a decision once the feeling around it remains clear and steady. And the one thing that I’ve never doubted since my career transition was my decision to go into wellness. It’s felt right since day one, which, it turns out, is exactly the kind of signal I’m designed to trust. For me, it’s important to pursue “what lights me up” and this approach has truly driven me through a pretty seamless career transition.
Zazie’s insights helped me understand how I operate and the different strategies that can help me become even more impactful in my pursuits…and that is why Human Design goes beyond the “woo-woo” and can actually be used as a decision-making tool.
We explore more on Human Design in this week’s The Briefing below.
For the skeptic who dismisses human design as astrology, how would you explain what it actually is and why it’s useful?
Human Design is a very different system from astrology. It combines ancient observational systems and philosophies – the I’Ching, Kabbala, chakra system, and astrology – with modern science, to generate a unique graph based on your exact birth time and location.
Think of it as a practical framework that’s a lot like a user’s manual for your own life. It shows you how you’re uniquely wired to make decisions, use your energy, and move through the world. It reveals your innate strengths, challenges, and the path towards fulfilling your purpose.
Once you start applying it, you start to gain a deeper sense of self-awareness, make better decisions, strengthen your self-trust, and direct your energy towards the things that matter. Human Design does not ask you to believe anything, it offers the tools to experiment coming into alignment with yourself.
But before we go any further, let’s define some basic Human Design terms:
Type: how you are designed to interact with others in the world.
Strategy: how you navigate life according to your Type
Authority: your unique decision-making process
How is human design relevant to career decisions and pivots?
This question hits home! You and I have both recently navigated major career pivots.
Any significant career decision brings up doubt, uncertainty, and fear, especially once you’ve established yourself as an expert and built real professional success. It feels like there’s a lot to lose. Human Design supports you through this kind of change so you can stay true to who you are while still getting where you want to go.
During a transition, you’re making both big and small decisions constantly, and some of them are genuinely hard. You get stuck between what you want to do and what you should do. The mind wants to keep you safe and comfortable, and tends to side with the “should”. The bigger the decision, the louder the voice gets. Human Design gives you a reliable decision-making process that’s unique to you. It lets your intuition lead instead of the noisy, conditioned mind hijacking the process.
It also reveals how your energy works. This can be used to understand how you attract opportunities, where to find them, how to recognize the right one when it shows up, and how to put yourself out there in a way that resonates with others. It tells you what clues to watch for that signal you’re on the right path, or that perhaps it’s time to reevaluate.
Put together, this becomes a powerful strategy for pursuing your goals while staying true to who you are. Rather than copying someone else’s version of success, you create your own. Your career becomes a reflection of who you are, which is a far more powerful place to build from.
What patterns do you see in clients who are feeling misaligned, especially in their careers? Is there a specific Type that tends to end up in that place?
Misalignment shows up differently for everyone, and I see a few things repeatedly such as symptoms of burnout, feeling like their current role or environment is limiting their potential, or feeling like they could be making a bigger impact somewhere else. Usually, at the root of it, there’s a mismatch in values between the client and the company, industry, or role itself.
These are high-performing, ambitious women with high expectations of themselves, who are used to achieving. They know they want a change. What stops them is fear of the unknown, of “wasting” the time and effort already invested, of failure, plus the very real financial obligations that come with the life they’ve built.
They’re stuck and want help seeing the possibilities that exist, along with guidance and accountability to move toward them. They want more fulfillment and inspiration, and they want their work to be an extension of who they are, rather than separate from it. Living out your Design gives you the map for getting there.
Can you walk us through how you’d use someone’s human design to help them think about whether to stay, pivot, or leave their career entirely?
We always start with their professional status. I want to know how they feel about their job, and the change or clarity they’re seeking. It depends on the person in terms of where they are, where they want to be, and the gap we need to close. We use Human Design in all three scenarios, yet the focus and strategies shift depending on the outcome they’re after. If someone doesn’t yet know whether they want to stay, pivot, or leave, that clarity becomes the goal of the session.
From there, we look at whether they’re living according to their Type. Maybe they lack recognition for the unique skills they bring. Maybe they lack the autonomy to initiate and run with their own ideas. Sometimes there’s room to fix this within the current role. Sometimes it means moving to a different one. Sometimes it means doing something completely different.
We use their Strategy and Authority to identify favorable opportunities and make decisions that are correct for them, rather than decisions that look good on paper.
We also talk about their conditioning, which is how they are influenced and pulled away from what they actually want, often without realizing it. This is where people get stuck running the same loops, or doing what they “should” do instead of what they want to do. Bringing language to this enables them to start moving past it.
Finally, we get specific about their strengths, because the plan we come up with only works if it’s built on who they actually are. When a client is in congruence with their design, that’s when they become more visible and magnetic in whatever they’re moving towards.
You’ve navigated your own pivot. What did your design tell you, and did you listen?
I am all too familiar with career pivots, having navigated my own. It was a really big and scary decision to quit my thriving career in medical devices. I had worked and fought so hard over the years to get to the place I was in. I felt stuck, burnt out, and depressed – a tough combination when you want to make a change. I also felt deeply unfulfilled and disconnected from my purpose.
I was introduced to Human Design during a really difficult period, and it changed my life. Everything clicked in that moment for me. I was shocked at how accurate it was and it explained so much of how I had gotten to this point.
I realized I had been running on old programming and beliefs, inherited from the people and environments I had been surrounded by. My Design showed me that I was a Manifesting Generator, the type of person who has an unlimited supply of regenerative energy to build things. I was very aware of this, although I had gradually lost this energy over the preceding ten years. Had I known about Human Design, I would have understood that this was an important signal that something was wrong. I chalked it up to my age (even though I was only 30), the nature of my job, and the price you pay to move up the ladder.
It’s vital for me to work on something that excites me. Growing up, I learned that a job is a job, you don’t have to like it. The title and material success are what matter most. I had to learn to let go of this old programming. I also had no idea what I wanted to do, or what I could do. I had no idea where else my experience would be of value, outside of medical devices. Human Design helped me rediscover the things I loved doing, as my life had centered around my profession and the people in it. I kept following the crumbs life would give me, and trusted the path, thanks to Human Design.
I had fully committed to aligning my life and career transition with my design. I was unwavering in that. I started taking classes to learn about Human Design and using my Authority to decide whether I’d keep enrolling in the next course or not. Those questions about whether I should be doing this, what it would do to my career, and what would happen if it didn’t work out popped up, and yet I trusted my Strategy and Authority to continue, as it simply felt right for me. There was no mental explanation for it.
I ended up loving it, was genuinely fascinated by it, and as I kept following my Strategy and Authority, I officially launched my practice. Now I only focus on what I want to do, on what brings me joy, because that’s what keeps me aligned with my own design.
What’s the most practical thing someone can do with their human design today, without hiring a coach?
The most practical thing you can do on your own is to generate your Human Design chart. I provide a free chart calculator on my website, which includes information on the key elements you need to know to get started. Your Type, Strategy, and Authority are the most important and foundational aspects to understand. This is where everyone starts their practice.
Once you know your Type, Strategy, and Authority, begin to experiment with them daily. This becomes a practice in developing greater awareness and self-trust. At first, it’s likely you will feel at odds with your design. Over time, it will start to feel more natural. Living your design is a process that requires curiosity, patience, and conscious practice.
*There are a lot of great educational resources online about Human Design, and it’s important to know that some remain true to the source of this body of knowledge, while others may have been re-interpreted. Make sure it’s a reputable source.
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Who has had a Human Design reading before and how has it helped you decide your next era?