Hello, and welcome to Unshakeable with Human Design, everybody. I’m your host, Nicole Laino, and we are here today to talk about variables. Once again, we are in episode two of our variables series. For those of you just joining us. This is a series that I’m doing on the variables.

Those are the arrows when you’re looking at the human design chart that sit on either side of the head center. So there are four arrows. There are going to be four episodes to this series. This is episode two, and this one is going to be about environment. Before I do that, I do want to introduce the variables a little bit in case this is the first episode that you’re joining us, you didn’t listen to the first one, which was on digestion.

I want to give you a little overview of what variables are and why they matter. So variables are what we call below the line. This is the substructure of human design. This is what happens underneath. So it’s not the stuff that we necessarily have control over, but it is the stuff that influences us very deeply on an energetic level.

So this is stuff that it’s not so much that you’re like, I’m going to go use this out there. It’s not like you’re going to use it necessarily as a strength, but what this can do, what human design variables can do when you’re living in alignment with them, one, they can explain a lot about why things have worked or haven’t worked.

Why you might have a certain way of working that other people don’t really understand. They can contribute to making you more productive in a balanced way, helping you find your flow. What is your gas and your brake? Variables can tell you the ones that are really not obvious to you. So we obviously have with the five types, we get our strategy and authority.

We get our signature and our not self themes. These feel very much in our control. They give us something to show us our way of operating. The variables are much more subtle, so you want to do is, I would say like come to this with an open mind and a playful heart. Be willing to experiment with these aspects so you can find what works best for you.

Now, how is this different than reading a bunch of books and taking what works out, for you out of those books? Well, what we’re doing here is we’re giving you the sandboxes to play in. We’re showing you, here’s what might work for you. Play with these specific things. And if you want to dive deep into this, we’ve created a guide for you.

It’s a free guide on the variables that encompasses everything that we’re going to talk about in these four episodes. And it goes into a little bit more detail because we’re going to keep this high level, we’re still going to give you detail, but there’ll be more specific detail, obviously they’re written out carefully in the guide, and if you’d like to take this home with you, so after these episodes you have something to refer to. 

Please download the guide. All you have to do that is go to nicolelaino.com/variables. You can download the guide there, or you can DM me on Instagram. If that is easier for you, I’m @NicoleLainoOfficial, just DM me the word “Variables” and we’ll send you the guide. We’ll get you the link right through there. 

Download the Variables Guide

And if you’d like to, we’d love to get this series and this show out to more people. So we want to reward you for sharing. If you’re loving the series, if you’re loving the show. Please, take a little screenshot of it in your player, share it on social media, share it on your Instagram, tag me, I’m @NicoleLainoOfficial, tell everybody what you’re loving so much about this series, what you’re loving so much about the show, what you love about human design, anything that tickles your fancy, but share it and tag me, and you’ll be entered to win a reading here on the show.

Enter to win an HD Reading on the show by sharing the series on Instagram and tagging Nicole (@nicolelainoofficial)

We’ll do that for you. That’ll be really exciting. So all you have to do is just watch out for a message from me if you win so that you actually can take us up on that offer. So let’s dive in. Let’s dive into human design. Today we’re going to talk about the human design environment. We did human design digestion, variable of digestion.

Today we’re going to talk about environment. Now environment. Is still on the left side. This is the bottom left arrow. The last episode we did the top left arrow. We’re going to talk about the bottom left arrow. Now environment, just like all the other variables, it exists below the line and it’s about place.

It’s about the environment that we’re in. One of the mistakes that people make with environment a lot of times, when they see their environment on their chart. And they want to know what it means. You see the word mountains and you’re like, what does that mean? It doesn’t mean that you have to live in a mountain.

Don’t take things too literally. And I know that it can be literal, but we want to, again, play. Play with these things. These are going to be broader themes that are going to tell you what places or types of places. What types of environments set your nervous system naturally at ease. And also, which ones are just suitable to nurture your body, they nurture your nervous system, they nurture your energy, but there’s a bit of that right place, right time aspect of this as well.

So if you’re in the right place, then you have a greater probability of intersecting with the things that are right for you. There’s just some places that we feel really at home. You travel, you go someplace or you move to a new city and sometimes it fits and feels really great and other times it doesn’t.

You’ll notice that some of these environments are pretty flexible. This is all going to tie to your work environment. They’re all pretty flexible. I don’t think there are any of them where you could say, I couldn’t create this where I am.

Right? And I’ll talk a little bit about mine, and how mine and my husband’s are very different, and we currently live in one that’s a little bit more geared to his environment, but what I do to sort of play with that and try to work with what we’ve got. Because I didn’t find this information. This part of human design.

I didn’t know anything about this before we moved. I might have made some different decisions. I love where we live, but I might have made slightly different decisions about our house or maybe the neighborhood that we picked if I had known what I know now. But I do work with it still. I shift the way, where I work so that I can be more productive.

And that’s what really you can get out of this. The environment can be a very key aspect of your productivity. Again, if you find yourself not able to produce, you feel like you’re facing a lot of resistance in the way that you work or how you produce what you need to produce, maybe the right ideas don’t arise and you feel like you’re following strategy and authority. Environment very well might be something that you want to play with, that you want to experiment with.

Now it doesn’t mean you have to do it all the time. But it might help you to do it some of the time, particularly if you have a big deadline, if you are working on something really important. Again, I’ll talk to you about some of the examples that I have for my own life when we dive into and we get to my type.

So it’s going to tell you the type of places that nurture your body, calm your body, your nervous system, and each one has its own specific nuance. Okay? So let’s dive in. There are six different environments because we are always going on that line theme structure. There are six lines in human design.

When we get our profile, like I’m a 5’1 you might be a 2’4 or a 3’5. All of those profiles, they range from one to six. It’s a six line structure. And all of the variables are structured along that same six line framework. okay. The first one is caves and people might be like, Oh, I gotta go live in a cave.

No, think about like more the essence of what a cave would be. Caves people need to feel usually in control of their environment. They need to feel cozy. They don’t typically like being in wide open spaces. They don’t want, and I don’t mean that you never want to be in them, but what makes you feel safe or where you want to come home is having your own specific space.

So never knowing where you’re going to work, never knowing where you can put your stuff or how you can get comfortable. All of that is going to maybe make a caves person feel really unsettled and maybe they’ll feel like they can’t work. So when they get their own space, so this might be a digital nomad, might have a hard time if they’re a caves person, if they don’t have a specific place to work.

That doesn’t mean you can’t do it. It just means that you might have to get creative with the space that you create for yourself. Even if you have a tiny apartment, do you create a little corner, that’s yours, that makes you feel like you get to control that environment and it feels cozy and it feels good for you, right?

That’s what you want to try to cultivate. That’s what you want to try to create. And if you’re finding that when you move around and you don’t have that specific place I’m not a caves person, but when we renovated our house, I didn’t have my space. And I didn’t really know where I was going to work. So I got a WeWork space, I was going to a co working space, which I really enjoyed.

Like I said, I’m not a caves person, but they have little booths and certain corners there that maybe if a caves person felt kind of displaced, I could see that not being their most productive time. And then maybe having to take a little bit of time to get their groove with that. But they might pick a booth.

They might pick one of these little corners to tuck away and they might get there early. So they make sure that they get that same spot every day. That might be a way that they experiment with it to see how they feel, okay. So that’s caves. Markets. Markets is a funny one. It’s where you can showcase your talent.

 Think of the energy and the essence of buying and selling, commerce, trade. So a mall, a trading floor, a co working space could definitely be it. An office or a studio where people were able to come in and come out. I have a client who is a designer and she has a design studio.

So people can come in and come out of there. She can showcase her work. They can look at it. They could just say like, Oh, how talented are you? And then they can choose to work with her or not. She’s not necessarily actively selling herself. Now, that’s the type of environment. A town square would feel like that, potentially, for her, right?

So, this is how that sort of works. And when you’re in that type of environment, again, what we’re creating is a space where the wind feels like it’s at your back. Where you feel like you have energy working with you rather than energy working against you. You’ll also probably find that being in that environment, you’ll start to interact with the right people, the right opportunities will start coming to you.

Why? Well, if you feel better in your body, cause strategy and authority is all about strengthening your aura. Strengthening your aura is all about being in your signature theme, which signature themes are positive. No matter how much you’re in alignment outside of your life. So as you’re following your strategy and authority, you’re in alignment, you feel satisfied, all of that stuff that will take care of most of this.

But if there’s still a little unease, or if we want to turn that dial up, how do we create positive feelings in our body on an energetic frequency level through our nervous system? Well, let’s put us in the right environment. Let’s set our bodies and our energy at ease. And that’s what environment can do for you.

So if you’re a markets person, being in a market setting and playing with that and what that could look like for you, see how you feel. Try it and see. How do you feel when you’re not in that environment? See how you feel. Document it so that you can actually really reflect on it. Third type of environment is kitchens.

This is another one that’s really funny because people are like, do I have to work in my kitchen? No, but you could. There’s nothing to say that you couldn’t work in your kitchen and that might feel really good for you as well. Think about kitchens though. Kitchens are a place where production happens.

Things happen. They’re busy. They are lively. Things are transformed and created there. A shop, a lab, a studio, that kind of environment might feel really good for you. If you’re a kitchens person, you might like to be in the thick of things where things feel like they’re happening.

I also find that kitchens people can sometimes feel really good in like an urban environment because so much is happening there. I used to love to work at, again, not my environment, because mine is very simple to recreate if I want to. There’s lots of ways I can play with it. But when I lived in New York, so that was most of, like, all of my 20s I was there.

I lived there my whole life before that, but when I was working in New York, and even when I was in LA, come to think of it, I worked a lot in restaurants. I worked a lot, like, sitting at a bar, or sitting in a restaurant at a table, and just working, not coffee shops, I worked at restaurants.

And so that would be an example of how like just that lively atmosphere where stuff is happening, people are working, things are happening, that is a nurturing atmosphere. Mountains. Mountains is, this is my environment. So that’s the next one is mountains. Mountains. Yes, you could be in a mountain. And I do have to say, like my own personal experience with this.

My family and I went to Utah one summer and I love the mountains. I just do. And I always did. I always felt drawn to high altitude. I love to ski. I loved climbing trees on roofs. Being on the top floor of anything was always where I wanted to be. I never wanted to be on the ground floor. It was always way up high.

And we think that everybody is that way. We think like the way that we are, we just sort of like, well, everyone loves the top floor. True necessarily. I really love to see out a window, a top floor window. I used to love going to like the Rainbow Room in New York and just going up there and viewing New York City from up there, from that restaurant.

That is something that always made me feel good in my body. It’s not just, oh, it’s so pretty. It was like, no, I just feel good up here. And that’s what mountains is about. It’s about a vantage point. It’s about height. It is about altitude. It is about the quality of the air. So there’s lots of aspects to this, that there’s a reason why being on a high floor somewhere makes me feel something and makes me feel good.

So I usually ask for a high floor when I go to hotels, or if I’m choosing where to go work, and I know that I’m going to need that, I do pick places that have elevation. Our public library here in Austin has a balcony overlooking the river. So it’s like this unobstructed view and it’s up high. So I might go there and I might sit and work and look out at that view.

I get a different perspective. I get my best ideas there. So when I’m working on certain things, that’s something that I will absolutely make sure I have if I’m working on something really important. But there’s a difference why, so those things work for me. I can game it that way. It actually is very different when I do go to an actual mountain.

When I get to a higher elevation, I can feel my body just relax in a way that I can’t get it to relax in any other way, with any other method. We got to Utah and the second I got there and It was like, Oh God, I love this. I love this. I love this. I love it. It was like my soul was calling out about how much I loved being on a mountain.

Looking out at it all, but just the feeling of it. It was the energy of it. It’s the air quality, the thinner air. I really like the drier air is suitable for me. So that’s mountains. The fifth type is valleys. This is my husband’s type. So I’m mountains, he’s valleys. This actually has more to do with being close to civilization.

So being close to town, being close to things going on, but not right in the middle of them. So this can be very suburban, that feeling but it is an active environment. It’s not the burbs, it’s not rural, it’s not totally secluded. It’s something that feels like it’s close enough. Where we live in Austin.

We are about 20 minutes from downtown, but we’re about 10 minutes from another area that’s very bustling. We’re close to everything, we have access to everything, it’s very easy for us to get to where the action is. And that’s really kind of perfect for my husband. There’s also an aspect to valleys that has to do with sound.

It’s not too quiet. That there is something, that there’s noise that’s sort of carrying through, if you think about like how a valley noise would carry through and dissipate and disperse through the open surroundings, right? That would be another way that you look at this. Each of these types I should mention has two variations to them.

So there’s valleys, there’s narrow, and there’s wide. Mountains, there’s active, and there’s passive. We get more into that in the guide. I’m not going to go into all of that detail here, simply because I just don’t want to confuse people, and I want to keep it really simple and really tight. Because if you just start playing with this, environment is one of those things that you can really start to play with and start to see big impact with. 

This is honestly, I like them all. Environment I think is the easiest one to conceptualize and understand and play with and then I think motivation is also, which is the next one that we’ll do. Motivation is also just one that is super super valuable and you can start to see that work in your life. And all of these show up very differently for us and that’s what makes them so fascinating and so useful. So the last type, the last environment is shores. I will mention the variation for this one just because people can get a little confused.

There’s natural and artificial shores. So one’s man made, one’s natural. And this is really about transformation. This is about natural transitions between environments. Where does one thing end and the other thing start? So that you’re on the cusp of something. You’re on the edge of something. Something is going to stop being one thing and become something else.

It can be on the edge of town. It could be literally on a shore where the sand and the shore is ending and the water is beginning. The body of water is beginning. All of these areas, this is, again, something to play with. But if you’re natural shores, you might find that you really benefit from being around water.

That’s just something I’ve heard from people. These are the people that they’re like, I’m a water baby. I’m a beach person. I need to be near the beach. I need to be near this. And then when we look, there shore is natural. And I’m like, if that’s what feels right for you, I understand why. And maybe you reconsider moving because it might not be the best place for you.

And we don’t want to find out the hard way, by moving away and then being like, no I really needed to be there. Cause this can affect your health, this can affect your productivity, your overall happiness. And this is why when we’re in the wrong place and things just feel really bad and we don’t know why, sometimes changing place can suddenly just make us feel better and this is why.

Like we as people can’t really say, why do I feel better here than I do here? And then we get into, well, my family is in this place, and we have obligations here, and my job, and we’re not thinking about maybe what our soul is calling out for. And this is why moving place can have such a profound impact on our lives, right?

So, shores, natural or artificial, is it a man made shore? Is it a man made transition? That we’re looking at, and an example of that could be like, the edge of town. One of the things I’m thinking about is, like, because this would apply to mountains as well, but from a shore’s perspective, do you live on a hill where you’re overlooking the town but you’re kind of away from it and there’s some breaking point between the seclusion of where you are on that hill to the valley below?

That would be an example of an artificial shore. It’s not an actual shore, but you’re seeing a transition between one place to another. Okay? There’s that transformation that’s happening. So, I hope that you like this. I hope that you’re diggin this whole little series we have going on here. If you are, please share it on Instagram, take a little screenshot, share it in your stories, tag me, I’m @NicoleLainoOfficial, tell us what you loved about it, tell us what you’re getting from this. Tell us what human design is doing for you, we want to hear it all.

Enter to win an HD Reading on the show by sharing the series on Instagram and tagging Nicole (@nicolelainoofficial)

I appreciate you. And then if you want the variables guide, which I highly recommend, so that you can start following this and start experimenting more deeply with your variables, please go to nicolelaino.com/variables, or DM me the word “Variables” on Instagram. I’m at Nicole Laino official, and I’ll send it to you right there.

Download the Variables Guide

Thanks so much for being here. Make sure you tune in for the other two episodes in this series that are coming up. The next two consecutive episodes after this. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you loving the series and remember in order to have an unshakable business, you must first become an unshakable human.

So thanks for letting us help you become unshakable with human design, everybody.

We’ll see you next time.