My experience as an Emotional Projector and entrepreneur has been an interesting one.
I won’t focus on a description of what it means to have an emotional inner authority or being a Projector in this article because you can easily find that information elsewhere. Rather, I’m going to share my personal experience of being an Emotional Projector in business.
Disclaimer: I’m not a Human Design expert nor do I strictly adhere to its teachings. In fact, I’m somewhat of a Human Design rebel. If you’re looking for technically correct advice, please go to the experts, but if you’re interested in this Emotional Projector’s personal experience, read on.
My Life Before Human Design
I’ve been an entrepreneur for over twenty years, and for most of that time I had no idea Human Design existed.
My ex-husband and business partner is a Manifesting Generator, and the two of us lived by the predominant message in business of, “Just do it!” We made things happen by sheer force of will.
It worked (sort of) but my life was filled with striving and stress. I set deadlines, pushed myself increasingly hard to get things done, and crammed my schedule for maximum productivity. By the time I was approaching age forty – about the time when Projectors who are working like Generators start to burn out – I simply couldn’t push myself the same way.
I knew there had to be a different way of being in business.
Human Design Discovery: You’re a Projector!
I encountered Human Design and took an instant dislike to it. My chart seemed complicated and incomprehensible, and who wants to be a Projector who has to “wait for the invitation?”
But something about being a Projector designed to “wait for the invitation” felt true. People had often described me as intense and “too much,” and yet I had a knack for sensing the aligned path for people. If only they would listen to me!
For years I’d said that I was like a vampire; you have to invite me in. Now I had an inkling of why.
In this talk about Projectors given by Ra, the creator of Human Design, he calls us “bizarre, singularly focused parasites,” and basically expresses how sorry he feels for the perfect storm of Projector design: those who also have an emotional inner authority and a split definition.
Of course, my Human Design chart revealed that this was the case for me.
Being a Projector means my strategy is to wait for the invitation before acting. Then, I am advised to follow my emotional inner authority and wait even longer for my emotional wave to complete before making a decision. Plus, to add to the uncertainty, my design has a split definition, which is said to contribute to the nagging feeling of something missing.
Can’t you give a Projector a break?
The Waiting (For the Invitation & the Emotional Cycle) is the Hardest Part
Waiting. It’s beyond frustrating when you think about what you’d like to be doing that you can’t. Like sharing that critical piece of information you know will make someone’s life better, or saying yes to that new client.
In a world where we’re conditioned to be decisive, waiting for anything seems intolerable and even rude.
But there’s no rule that says you must wait for something and think about it the whole time. That’s a fast track to miserable!
While you’re waiting for an invitation from the universe, you can forget about waiting and just live your life. Spend time with loved ones, read books, visit art museums, hang out in communities that inspire you. You don’t need to obsess while you wait.
The same is true for the clarity that comes from riding out your emotional wave. There’s no need to sit in frustration. In fact, that’s probably going to make the frustration persist.
In business, I’ve found that giving myself permission to delay a decision even 24 hours brings immense relief.
I can take my time and wait for my emotions to settle until I know what to do. When I give myself that space, eventually I’ll come to rest in the place of knowing.
Now, this is true for every human, regardless of Human Design type. When you’re caught up in emotions, you’re feeling Thought, the creative energy of the Universe. The only thing your emotions tell you is the quality of thought you have in the moment. Your emotions DO NOT tell you what to do.
Knowing is completely separate from your thoughts and feelings, and knowing is neutral.
This neutral knowing is what Human Design instructs the 50% of the population with an emotional inner authority to wait for, but this applies to anyone.
Whenever you’re caught up in thought and the emotions that come with it, you’re unsettled and it’s hard to sense your inner knowing. So wait.
Over time as I’ve become more familiar with the emotional wave, I’ve noticed that sometimes it moves through very quickly, and other times it takes time.
Whether it feels helpful to wait out your emotional cycle or an entire lunar cycle (for Reflectors) or whether you know, in the moment, it’s all the same.
Your inner knowing is neutral. It’s simply: yes, no, or I don’t know.
If it’s yes, you know what to do. If it’s no, you know what to do. If it’s I don’t know, just go live your life and eventually, you’ll know.
Can An Emotional Projector Ever Be 100% Certain?
According to Human Design, the answer is a resounding NO. You’ll never feel 100% certain.
But even if that’s absolutely true – and that’s a big “if” in my book – this isn’t a problem because the feeling of certainty doesn’t tell you what to do. Your knowing does.
Sometimes I have an inner knowing: yes, no. Go right or go left. It’s simple and neutral.
The knowing is clear, but then my thoughts and feelings about that choice may feel anything but neutral!
There’s a difference between knowing something and having feelings about it.
As an example, five years ago, I knew in my heart that it was time to leave my marriage. Our agreement was done.
Knowing this was neutral, but I felt every emotion under the sun about it. Sad. Fearful. Confused. Excited. I was all over the place. But even still, I knew what to do.
For me, the benefit of thinking about an emotional inner authority and waiting for that wave to play out is in waiting for my inner knowing.
Emotional Projectors put far too much pressure on themselves to get it right. Just do the best you can and begin to notice what a yes or a no feels like to you.
You never have to feel certain; just wait for the knowing.
Projectors with an emotional inner authority can get a sense for the difference by running their own personal experiment. At first, the difference between emotion and knowing will be almost invisible. It seems tough to tell the difference between them.
But over time, the difference goes from being invisible to being subtle, like trying to tell the difference between two blades of grass. “Is this my inner knowing? Or is it my emotions? I’m not sure.”
As you stay with it, and you keep noticing and experimenting, eventually it will become obvious, as obvious as telling the difference between a blade of grass and a tree.
This distinction is something you can only experience for yourself.
The Gift of Emotional Inner Authority in Human Design
When I first began noticing emotions and thoughts as they moved through me, I was astonished.
I could go from happy to fearful to sad within seconds! I wondered how we’re not all going crazy?
But now I see that the gift of Thought is that we can feel it, and then use thought to create our world, both the meaning we make of it and the physical things we create.
I love being sensitive enough to feel everything as it moves through me. Knowing that my emotions and thoughts are NOT me, and they don’t mean anything about me, gives me tremendous freedom.
I can be incredibly aware of the energy around me, without being disrupted by it. When I’m feeling upset, the feeling’s simple message for me is, “Come home to the present.”
This moment, now, is where my inner knowing arises. Not from my thoughts or my emotions.
Begin Your Experiment As An Emotional Projector
Imagine for a moment:
What if you can’t get it wrong?
What if anything you do is perfect?
When you see this as true, the whole argument about, “Have I waited long enough?” becomes irrelevant, and you just get to live your life as best as you can.
This feels so much better than obsessing about the details.
As I warned you, this is not a technically “correct” exploration about emotional inner authority according to the dogma of human design, but it’s far more helpful, because it gets you in the game of exploring what it means to you to be an Emotional Projector.
Living into your Human Design chart and having a personal experience of it with your own experiment – that’s what Human Design is really about. Not trying to get it perfect.
The only time being an Emotional Projector doesn’t seem like a gift is when I think that I should be having a different experience than the one I’m having. This is never a good idea because you can’t think your way into knowing something and you can’t force the timing of it.
Either you know or you don’t, and if you don’t know now, at some point you will. Just go out there, enjoy your life, and live it.
If you happen to be a Projector in business, you might be interested in this workshop made just for you.
Marketing For Projectors | The Workshop
In this 90 minute workshop, we’ll explore:
- Why mainstream business concepts such as “showing up consistently” and “being visible” don’t work for Projectors.
- What “waiting for the invitation” looks like when you’re doing mass marketing online, launching products and hosting events.
- How to know which invitations to accept and which to ignore.
- Specific business models, marketing routines and strategies well-suited for Projectors.
