This January I asked for a week off work because I knew I needed it. I spent the beginning of the month really dialing this website in and getting clear on what I wanted to share in this space. Work was also ramping up and I could just tell it was going to be one hell of a month already. All of that took a lot of energy out of me and I knew that down the line I would need a break from everything.

But, let’s rewind for a moment. Last year, I would never have dreamed of doing this. I wouldn’t have thought to myself “oh, you need to rest or you will burn out.” or “you need rest so that when you do launch something like this website, you will have the creative energy to deliver all that you dream of delivering to your readers.” 

I would have thought “Just keep GOING. Nothing happens if nothing happens! You can do it and you can do it tired!” 

Friends. YIKES. Like big big YIKES. And yet, there was something deep inside of me, a little voice trying to tell me “hey, sister. There has to be another way to get to where you want to go, right? Are you sure you are meant to be this tired? This feels kinda ick ick.” It was a very quiet voice so it was hard to hear but that same intuition led me to my first Human Design reading. 

I kept seeing my now business coach living the kind of life I wanted to live. To be clear, it’s not that I wanted to have her life and do exactly what she was doing, rather I wanted to feel the feelings she talked about: freedom, peace, joy. And she kept talking about how she learned to make decisions and live from her Human Design. So, with a bunch of fear I booked a reading.

And that was the beginning of a new chapter in my life as I knew it. 

That one reading led to a program where I healed some of the deepest parts of myself, a retreat in Costa Rica with some of the most amazing women I’ve ever met, The Eras Tour (yes, T-Swift), and the releasing a lot of pain and limiting beliefs that I had been holding onto for literally years. It cracked my heart wide open and allowed me to live life in a way that I couldn’t have ever dreamed for myself just by living from my Human Design.

You may be asking, “So, Mary, what does that really mean? What is Human Design? And I love Costa Rica and Taylor Swift! Go Chiefs!”

If you were like me and don’t know what your Human Design is, put on your fun pants and let’s talk about it. Because, it is literally a joy giver. 

Human Design is a blueprint for who you came here to be. When we look at your Human Design chart we are able to look at the best way for you to lead yourself to feel your most aligned and most fulfilled. We use your birth date, time, and city where you were born to bring your chart up. So no, it’s not like any of the personality tests you may have taken; it’s literally based on how the stars were aligned when you were born. 

Each Human Design type (there are 4) have a different energy battery. Meaning, that each uses energy differently. For example, I am a Manifestor. My type (manifestor) has very limited energy, needs rest and works in creative bursts. Other types have consistent energy, some have inconsistent energy and others have energy that fluctuates a lot. 

Because I know that I have limited energy, I have learned to listen to myself and know when I need rest. I cannot and am not meant to push, push, push, and go, go, go. Rather, I am meant to allow myself long rest periods and when I finish a rest cycle I can move really quickly and put full focus into something and will probably do what some people may take weeks to do in a very short amount of time. 

So, what does this look like for me as a person who has a normal 9-5 who is also creative and has other endeavors such as this blog that I want to put energy towards? 

First, let’s look at my day to day in corporate. I know that on a regular day my natural energy wave is high energy in the morning, it slumps off sometime between 1 and 3, and then picks back up late afternoon. I use this to my advantage by doing everything that requires the most amount of brain power in the morning and I work as quickly as possible to get as much off my to-do list as I can. So that, when I start to feel a slump in the afternoon I can spend an hour of that slump resting. This can look like sitting outside in the sun, going for a walk to take a mental rest, or taking a nap (I know, a nap during the work day – scandalous!). When I come back from a rest, I am much more efficient. However, if I’m still in a slump, I know I have put items that require less brain power for the afternoon. Then, energy picks back up around 4 (always) and I finish out any of those morning day tasks aka the more taxing things in the last 2 hours of my day. Boom. I make my energy type work for me and not against me.

What does this look like for me when I am working 9-5 and still want to pursue creative endeavors? It is actually a totally separate energy from my 9-5. So, I might work all day and then find that I want to write for a few hours because I have a creative urge to do so. Unless I’ve set some deadline that I absolutely need to hit, I will not work on something creative unless the urge strikes. I have learned to trust that the more rest I have, the more productive and interesting my work is. The project is always better when I’ve given myself space around it. ALWAYS. 

The world loves to tell us to “hustle hustle hustle!” and “You can rest when you’re dead!” and I used to really buy into that. I used to believe that running myself into the ground was the only way because that’s what everyone around me was doing. Guess what? I NEVER got very far because I was working AGAINST my own energy. That way of working was never it for me. My Human Design says so. And maybe, just maybe yours does too. 

If you want to unlock all that you can be and how to do it in a way that actually feels good, let’s do it with a Human Design reading. I would love to help you unlock the next level of living a life that feels good on a soul level.

With so much love, 

Mary