A&A Ep. 101
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Karrie: [00:00:00] Welcome to Awakened and Alive After 40.
Dominique: If you're searching for inspiring and easy to apply Enneagram and Human Design content, then you've come to the right place. We're your hosts, Dominique
Karrie: and Karrie, two friends and coaches who are passionate about sharing our knowledge and insights on these two powerful self awareness systems to help you step outside the box and into a life that is true to who you really are.
Dominique: We're so grateful to have you here. Let's jump into today's episode. Hey friends, and welcome back to Awakened and Alive After 40. In today's episode, we're going to be sharing some of our thoughts on how to actually start the deconditioning process. We have an episode a few back that talks about the importance of deconditioning and why we might want to [00:01:00] look at the ways we're conditioned in our lives. Today we're going to break it down a little bit more and talk about the how. One thing that I think is really important to note is that everything begins with awareness. So we're going to be sharing a few different how tos, if you want to call it that, on how to start your own process. But really, the first step is just simply being aware that themes playing in your life may be beneficial and they may not be beneficial any longer. It's really paying attention to those themes and gaining more awareness on what it is that you are desiring to change. Karrie, when we were talking about the deconditioning process, let's review what conditioning really is for our listeners out there. So what are some thoughts that you have on conditioning that you could share?
Karrie: I think it's really important to remember conditioning [00:02:00] happens to all of us. It's not something we can avoid. It happens from the time we are born. It is really just how we subconsciously start picking up on all of the nuances of life. We start observing from a very young age, how to fit into our family structures, how to fit into our cultures, how to fit in as a human in a global society. We learn how to potentially suppress some of our natural tendencies because of this, because maybe in our culture, they aren't accepted or they aren't celebrated. When we start changing who we are, at our core, in our essence, that is what conditioning is, and we start trying to fit in, in order to be accepted and loved by acting or taking on traits that we subconsciously see others around us celebrating.
Dominique: Yeah, exactly. I [00:03:00] remember when I started my deconditioning journey, one thing that I was asking myself is who was I before the world told me who I needed to be or who I believed I needed to be in order to stay safe. That ultimately is, in my mind, what it's all about because, yeah, we go to school from a young age and we're following along with the rules and how everyone does school in general or a life and family and upbringing, whether it be religious upbringings, things that we're picking up from extended family members. All of this compounded then starts to create a belief around who we are, who we need to be. Ultimately it's a wonderful thing because it helps us to fit in with society and our families. But then you might be wondering, okay, why am I experiencing these repeating themes in my life that seem to get me in trouble or just [00:04:00] seem to keep me stuck? And that's the area that you really want to try to gain more awareness on. And so that's what we're talking about when it comes to deconditioning. We're all conditioned. There's nothing wrong about it, however, when it starts playing out in our lives in ways that are no longer serving us or aren't for our highest good or even for the good of others, that's when we want to maybe take a step back and start to look at things a little bit more closely.
Karrie: I think another important thing to be aware of when we're talking about this topic is another red flag potentially that someone needs to take a deeper look at their own belief system and conditioning and what they're prioritizing in their life, is when we start to prioritize a label that we see ourselves as over love, kindness, compassion, and accepting others. An example, may be two [00:05:00] people who identify with labels of a nationality and they clash over that, or two people who, deeply identify with religious labels like I am this and you are that and that makes us different. Anytime that we are using labels in order to make ourselves feel better than is a huge red flag, in my opinion, that people need to really examine their thoughts. In the United States it happens a lot with politics because we only have really the two party system. People identify with one party over the other, and they look really down upon the other party or anyone who associates with that party because they've elevated their label to be the better label.
Dominique: Yeah. I'm so glad you brought that up because that is a really important point. When I look at deconditioning through the Human Design lens, this is where initially when I entered into the world of Human Design and started to learn about it, traditional Human Design was a beautiful tool for [00:06:00] me to learn more about who I was not. That was great. That served me very well to start identifying all of the themes and better understanding the themes that were coming up for me in my life and recognizing that this was energy that I thought was mine, but actually wasn't. So wonderful. I learned who I wasn't. But then I was like, okay, how do I start understanding who I really am? How do I start implementing that and putting my actual energy into practice in my daily life? That's where Quantum Human Design entered my life and really changed everything for me because I am a huge believer that the stories we tell about ourselves are what create the reality we're experiencing. So if you're telling yourself a story, and this was my story, not being good enough, I'm gonna act as if I'm not good [00:07:00] enough. My energy is gonna be at a really low frequency, because I'm not acting from a place of love, acceptance, or gratitude. I'm acting from a place of not enoughness. That energy is not serving me for what it is that I desire to create. So say I wanted to start my own business, and the story I'm telling myself is that I'm not enough. I don't know enough. I don't know how to do that. Then I'm really putting myself in a situation to where the actions I'm playing out are going to keep me in that place of feeling stuck. If my belief is around the not enough, again, this is what is going to be created because I can't think bigger than that, and that is something that played out in my life. And I'm not going to say that it's completely gone now. These are themes in my life that consistently come up because I'm meant to grow and learn from them, and I meant to enter the next level [00:08:00] and then the next level. And so it's something that I look at now as an adventure. It's a journey. When we're thinking about the types of conditioning, Quantum Human Design and science now shows that there's five kinds of conditioning. There's openness by your center, there's imprinting, there's generational family dynamics, there's genetics, and there's life experiences. I talked a little bit more about these in the previous episode that we did. But today I want to just touch on how Quantum Human Design helps you to better understand your story, and what is the story that you're telling yourself right now. When you look at your graph, you can kind of think of it as ,my mentor likes to call it a Rolodex, and of course that might be outdated for some, but it's a Rolodex of the archetypes that every human being experiences in their lifetime. If we can look at these parts of our story, these [00:09:00] archetypes through the lens of Human Design, through our charts, then this is where we can start to shift the story. One area of mine is about endurance and it's knowing what to fight for what is worth putting my energy into. Burnout has been a big theme in my life, focusing on the wrong things has been part of that and not really focusing in on the most important impactful areas. When I can look at these parts in my chart and other people's parts, then this is where we can start to ask, what is your definition around endurance or your definition around struggle, which is another theme of mine. Everything operates from a high end and a low end, and that's how an archetype really fluctuates. You're never going to be perfectly on top of things. You're going to be operating good days, bad days. So there's no judgment around that, [00:10:00] but you have to realize though, this is where, again, your chart gives you a choice. Once you know your archetypal themes, the ones that are more prevalent in your life, then you have more choice on how you want to act those themes out. I chose to view struggle as an adventure, as a journey, not as something that was out to get me, not as playing a victim. So when we can look at these tools, and like you mentioned earlier, Karrie, labeling systems is not what we're looking for here. We're looking for tools to help us break out of that box, to give us more clarity on how we have the ability to choose the direction that we want to go into. So first off, looking at that chart as a Rolodex of your archetypes of your story. And the openness that I mentioned, the centers of energy that we all have, is what traditional Human Design will usually talk about. So when you have an open center, you're absorbing other people's [00:11:00] energy and amplifying it. You also absorb energy from the planetary transits. This is where we can believe we're a certain way, but in reality, it's another person's energy that we're playing out, and we might identify as that. For me, it was very much around the emotional solar plexus where you could be high end or low end. You can be operating from a place of speaking up for yourself, not necessarily fearing stepping on eggshells, just making sure your truth is heard. For me, I was shut down because I was too uncomfortable with confrontation or hurting someone's feeling. And so once I understood more about these open centers and once a lot of my clients started to understand, then there was acceptance around it too, which also starts to shift the story that we might be carrying about ourselves. The open centers, I think, is one of the easiest places to start with when you are diving [00:12:00] into Human Design and looking at your chart. Each center carries a different theme, and I think that's something that could be really impactful to start the process of understanding who you are in the world.
Karrie: Yeah. And Dominique, correct me if I'm wrong, but the open centers are where we're like the most susceptible to conditioning because of that lack of consistency within ourselves there. Right.
Dominique: Yes. But here's the, this is where it gets tricky too, and this is why you can't have a labeling system. Even the defined centers, the ones that are colored in, can carry conditioning. They're not as susceptible because yes, you're correct, the openness is where we're really drawing in a ton of energy outside of ourselves. But I like to say both are susceptible to conditioning, openness a little bit more so. It's just really looking at them and having the awareness and asking yourself, am I operating from the high end or the low end [00:13:00] of this center.
Karrie: That's really helpful. If anyone has their chart or is familiar with their chart, you can always click the link in the show notes if you want to see your chart and you've never looked at it before. It's totally free. Because it is really interesting, even if you have just a basic understanding of the chakra system and the energy centers, that's basically what the chart is showing. Being able to better understand how your energy flows through these centers will be really eye opening in terms of conditioning the way Dominique said. Each of us is, super unique. So each of our journeys through this process is going to be just as unique as ourselves are. And for me, finding the Enneagram system was what led me on my deconditioning journey. So that was like my gateway into this whole process, and then Human Design supported me after that. For me, finding the Enneagram, really helped me be able to open my eyes to the patterns and behaviors I had [00:14:00] just thought were who I am. Like, this is who I am. This is just how I am and I can't change, really opened my eyes that these are not who I am. These are conditioning. These are my personality that was molded, and I accepted and rejected that molding along the way. And I just had accepted some of these traits as, this is me and I can't change. And when we become that stuck and rigid, that's sort of a recipe for staying stuck, not having a growth path, not going through this journey that as humans is sort of our purpose here is to have these learning experiences and to grow and up level and move beyond them. Whether you want to look at yourself through the Enneagram or through Human Design or through any other modality, anything that helps you recognize where you have stuck patterns that you've never looked at, and you just think, this is who I am and I can't ever change it, that's where you want to focus. [00:15:00] That's where you really want to figure out, Hmm, where did that come from because my true self, my higher self, whatever you want to call it, this isn't them. This trait, whatever it is we're looking at, isn't them. This came from somewhere else, somewhere outside of you.
Dominique: Yeah, absolutely. And we get so tripped up and we start creating a life that we don't really want. I mean, I think a very common one is a kid grows up and wants to be an artist and family's like, Oh no, no, no, no, no. You don't want to do that. You're going to struggle. You're not going to be able to take care of yourself. Money's going to be hard. You want to go into business or you want to go into being a doctor, whatever it might be. And then you assume like, all right, well my family knows what's best for me, so if they're saying this is going to be a struggle, they have more life experience, I guess they're right. And you put it on the back burner, then you start creating a life that you don't really want. You're just kind of doing what you think is the best and [00:16:00] right way to do things. And so we start to create a life that isn't actually right for us. It's like you said, you start looking at those patterns, and I mentioned the themes that come up. Ultimately those keep coming up because they are trying to show you where you have maybe navigated off of your path, and that means they also give you a way to get back on your path.
Karrie: And something that we have talked about plenty of times in other episodes, but very specifically how it relates to this, a way that a lot of times is suggested for people to get back to that true self and your true meaning, like why you're meant to be here, your life path, whatever it may be, is to venture back into your childhood days and years and really think about when you were a kid, what could you just get lost in? Or what did you just connect with naturally? Not because anyone told you to do it or [00:17:00] another friend was doing it, but you just, loved doing it. This can sometimes be a little bit of a hint or a key for us to follow in order to understand what we really, truly, passionately enjoy outside of all the conditioning that was put upon us year after year after year of our lives that made us start to follow a different path. So Dominique's example of the job or the career, what you should study when you're in school is so classic for so many of us. I know I've told that story before on other episodes. That same thing happened to me. And we just get really conditioned into following this path of practicality. We lose the fun. We lose the joy. We lose the playfulness of life because of that.
Dominique: And when I think about deconditioning and like the whole purpose behind it, for me, I like to think, I'm in the school of life and what I'm meant to learn here in this [00:18:00] lifetime at school is how to be who I authentically am. And that means peeling away all of those layers of who I am not. And that's what that deconditioning journey, in my mind, is really about and what we're all here to experience, all the ups and downs of the process. But ultimately bringing ourselves back to who we were born to be before the world told us who we needed to be. I think when it comes to, we've mentioned a couple of ways here that you can start your journey. First off is just simple awareness that something is happening that you're not liking anymore, and you want to make that change. And Karrie, you've talked a little bit now about noticing your thoughts and the meanings around them. I think those two starting points are really powerful because if we don't know what it is we're telling ourselves, then how are we supposed to make the changes necessary to move [00:19:00] through that?
Karrie: And once we start noticing those thoughts, I know, Dominique, you have mentioned this, how important the next step is in some other episodes, the whole process that Byron Katie developed about taking the thought and then asking yourself, is this true? And hint, most of them aren't. Most of our thoughts are not true 100 percent of the time. That can be really unsettling at first when you start going through this and realizing the foundation that I have lived my life and built my whole personality upon is not actually true. And that is not always an easy process, but if you continue through it, then you start to trust your true self more and more and you can let those untrue parts go.
Dominique: Yeah, absolutely. And that's where the Enneagram and Human Design also come into play here is as you are looking at these thoughts, these meanings, and trying to figure out what is [00:20:00] truth for you, that's where these tools can just help level it up for you. By Human Design, showing you your pure energy, who you were born to be here and how you're meant to interact with the world. No one else is ever going to be like you. And then using the Enneagram to work even deeper into the deconditioning process because it's part of that ego structure as well, which we all have. The ego is necessary. It's not a bad thing. But again, when we start getting tripped up and start acting on that low end of the spectrum, this is where the Enneagram is another tool to help us move back up and enter into that higher end of expression. I want to just end here with a couple of clarity questions that I think could be really helpful to start this process. And just to recap real quick, we shared few tips here. Number one being awareness [00:21:00] that there's something you want to change, that you want a better life. You want to create differently. Number two is looking at the stories and the meanings coming up for you that are repeated themes and are maybe keeping you stuck in repeating patterns that are unhealthy or just no longer serving you. And then number three, asking the question of is it true, starting to get curious, starting to get curious about what is truth and what is no longer something you're willing to accept as truth, because like you said, Karrie, it's when you ask, Is this true? Most of the time? No, it's not like 99. 5 percent of the time. So starting with those three areas and the clarity questions that I think could be really helpful to sit with are number one, what repeating themes in your life no longer serve you? Number two, how are they manifesting in your life? So these themes that keep replaying, it could be in relationships. [00:22:00] How is that manifesting? You keep picking someone who is a narcissist or you keep picking someone who just doesn't see you the way you want to be seen. So looking at those repeating themes, once you identify them, and identifying how they are actually showing up in your life, how they're being manifested. Cause again, our stories, our meanings create the life that we are currently experiencing. And then number three, most important one, what is one small action step you can take to begin changing your story today? And I mean small action steps. So, all right, yeah, you identified the repeating themes, you identified how it's showing up in your life, so what is one small action step? And it could simply be tonight I'm going to journal more about what it is I do want, what it is I know is my truth and start digging into that. Maybe that's your one small step is just start a small journaling [00:23:00] practice. Maybe it's starting a gratitude practice. Maybe it's saying no to one thing today that you would maybe say yes to if you didn't give it much thought. So what is one small action step that you can take to begin changing your story today? And I mean, start small because that's where the biggest changes come from.
Karrie: Thank you for listening to this episode. Your support is so appreciated.
Dominique: If you'd like to have a question answered about your Human Design or Enneagram type in a future episode, you can submit it through the link in the show notes, we'd love to hear from you.
