Episode 367
What if the chaos of your early life wasn’t a mistake—but a necessary part of your path to leadership? In this episode, Nicole unpacks the powerful and complex energy of the 3/6 profile in Human Design. Known for its tension between messy experimentation and visionary wisdom, the 3/6 carries a life story that unfolds in distinct stages—and understanding them could change how you view your past and your purpose.
Nicole explains how the 3/6 experiences a triple trial-and-error phase in their early years, followed by a reflective retreat in midlife, and ultimately steps into a role model identity. She shares how this transformation can feel turbulent, but is essential to living out your design. And if you’ve ever felt like your “mistakes” were actually lessons in disguise, this will resonate deeply.
You’ll also hear how this profile differs from others, like the 3/5 or 4/6, and why embracing both the messy and masterful sides of yourself is key. Nicole brings this to life with examples of famous 3/6s, showing how their success was born through bold choices and lived experience—not perfection.
If you’re a 3/6 or you work closely with one, this episode offers a new way to see the journey—not as broken, but as beautifully built for growth.
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Transcript
Episode 367
Hello and welcome to Unshakeable With Human Design, everybody. I’m your host, Nicole Ano, and we’re here for another episode in our profile series. For the first time on the show, we are diving into each of the 12 profiles, not just the lines, and we’ve gotten such great feedback for it. I’ve had so much fun diving into these.
It’s always fun for me to prepare these episodes and just sort of be like, yeah, what do I wanna say about this profile? What have I noticed? Working with all the people who had this profile, whether it be through readings or through coaching clients, what have I noticed or people in my life, I tend to run everybody’s chart.
If I know you well enough, I’ll ask you for your birth date and your birth time and I’ll be running charts all over the place for your kids and for you. So now we are halfway through the series. Okay? We are getting there. Where we’re at right now in the process is we have gone through all the ones with personality ones.
So 1, 3, 1 4. We’ve gone through the twos, the 2, 4, 2 5. Now we did the three five in the last episode, and today we are hitting the three six. So we are in the sixth episode of the 12 episode series. So we are at the halfway point. This is still a personal destiny, so this is still, and I’m gonna put a little caveat here.
So with a three in the front, you get a personal destiny, meaning that your purpose. Gets fulfilled through your own process. It’s less dependent on other people, unlike the transpersonal profiles that we have. And we also have the juxtaposition profile, which is there’s only one of them, the four one, and it stands on its own.
And we’ll talk about that when we get to that particular episode. ’cause they’re different. They’re different than the rest of us. They have a different path. Very fixed. Personal destiny is about the work that you do. It is about your personal process. And while technically the four six still has a personal destiny, it’s a different expression than a three six, because the four is connected to other people.
The four, we’re getting to that second floor of the hexagram. We have the one, two, and the three kind of sitting on the first floor of the house. And then the second floor of the house is the 4, 5, 6. When we get to the four six, we’re in upper house stuff, so it’s a different expression. It’s a different way.
Even though the destiny is still personal, there’s a lot more to do with other people in a four six profile than a three six. The three six is that personality. Three is driving a lot of that, of how this shows up, and the three is very much about itself and its own process. And it needs to follow its own process or it doesn’t get to live out its purpose.
So why are we having this series? Why is profile so important? Profile is important. I always say it’s the role that you’re here to play in this movie called Your Life. It’s like kind of your character description. What is this person gonna be like? What kind of behavior is gonna feel right for this character versus behavior that would feel really out of character for them?
What is important about this person’s journey? Your profile tells you all of that. And when we’re talking about now the relation to the incarnation cross. So our incarnation cross is the purpose. This is purpose theme that we all get. It’s the theme that we’re born under. It’s led by our conscious sun that is the one that leads the light that is shining in your personality.
There’s potential in that. Now we have the four gates of your incarnation cross, or your conscious sun, your conscious earth, your unconscious sun, and your unconscious earth. Now each of those gates, we all know the gates, right? Each of those gates has a line expression that tells you a little bit about what the flavor of that gate will be like.
A gate 22. So if you are a cross of rulership, there are four of those. That’s a right angle cross. It’s made of the 22, the 47th gate, the 26th gate, and the 45th gate. Now, depending on when you’re born, during the year. Are you a March birthday cross of rulership person where you’ve got that 22 leading you?
Are you a December birthday cross of rulership person where the 26 is the conscious son? It’s a very different expression, but then we also get, do you have the 22 and your conscious son leading the cross? You are a one line 22.1 is what it would look like on your chart. That’s gonna give us more flavor as to who you are versus somebody who’s a 22 6, very different expression, very different person.
So incarnation cross is known as like 70% of your chart and led by that conscious son. So it’s very important. It’s going to be probably more important than you think in your life. It’s gonna tell you a lot of what goes right for you and why, and what goes wrong with you and why. And you can look back through your life, certainly through profile, and you can say, where was I not being myself?
And if you’re not being in alignment with the gifts of your cross and the gifts of your profile, then life will probably feel. Difficult. And when we get into the expression of the incarnation cross, a lot of people trip up because it’s a little bit more complex. It can be esoteric to understand what your purpose theme means, and I never really recommend starting there.
I’ll talk about it with people, but I don’t necessarily say like, now go be in alignment with your cross, because that’s not really how it shows up. You live in alignment with your type. You live in alignment with your profile, not with what your mind is telling you to do, but actually letting your body lead you and your cross starts to show up.
Your cross just starts to become who you are. It starts to work through you. It’s a different process, but profile is how I get people there in a lot of ways. I mean, there are other aspects to it, but I’m always coming back to you are a three line. You are a three six. You are this and I guide you differently based on what that profile is because it’s so important for your journey for you to be playing the role that you were really born to play and not trying to be somebody else.
Profile is like the real core of that being who you’re meant to be. Okay, so let’s talk a little bit about this three six profile. This is the first time we’re seeing the six line. This is the intro to the six. We haven’t seen the six line come up yet. This is come up in a harmonic profile. Now Harmonic, this is one of those profiles again, that is like a step between.
There are a lot more three fives and a lot more four sixes than there are three sixes. This is that short period of time that you need to be born in, in order to be a three, six. Otherwise, you’re gonna end up a three five. You’ll end up a different profile. So this is harmonic, meaning that the three and the six are the top of both of the floors.
So we have the 1, 2, 3 on the first floor. The three is like the top stack on that first floor. If we use our house analogy. And then the four or five and six on the second floor. The six is the top, the roof of the house, so to speak. So we have two tops, right? We have two top pieces. So they vibe together.
They’re also very different. So just because we have harmony in the line doesn’t necessarily mean that it will be easy for these people because quite honestly, everything in human design has some sort of tension or pull to it. But when we understand what that tension or pull is, it tells us what our lessons are and how we can create balance.
We can actually find a process for creating balance when we look at it and we say these two things, and for a three, six. I’m a three who needs to have experiences, who has a trial and error process, who needs to be comfortable letting things go, who needs to be comfortable with failure and to see failure as a stepping stone.
So I have to be comfortable with all of those things. I’m also a six where I’m gonna need my alone time. I am maybe going to be a bit of a perfectionist. So that three line messy process, the six can have a little bit of a problem with that. So they pull at each other. But when we know these things. Now we know what to look out for.
Now we know how to nurture ourselves so that we can be in harmony and alignment with both of these things. When we do that, we become who we were always meant to be. We’re living our potential finally, right? And nothing feels better than that. Rather than looking around in all sorts of vague or impersonal places, human design gives us the ability to look at this and say, this is what’s most important for me, and that’s what makes it so powerful.
So let’s talk about this particular profile. ’cause it’s pretty fascinating. So we have this six showing up for the first time. So we’re seeing that three stage life process show up for the first time. So for those of you who are unfamiliar with the six line process, I’m gonna explain it briefly here. The six goes through three stages of life.
A six is born and they are born a three from birth to age 30. The first Saturn return, they are a three line. So technically these people, when they’re born and for the first 30 years of life, they’re a three. Three. I’m not gonna lie, this might get messy. I don’t think it’s necessarily, well, I shouldn’t say it isn’t.
I’ll say it really depends on your upbringing and your mindset, what it’s like to be a 24-year-old or a 16-year-old, or an 11-year-old. Three six. And the reason I say that is because both your personality and your unconscious side. Are trial and erroring through life bumping into life, and life is bumping into you.
I have seen three sixes who goes for a lot of six lines, but three sixes who have embraced. The rebellious fun. There can be like a devil may care kind of attitude with three six, or certainly six threes too. It’s the same profile, flipped a very different expression because the destiny is different.
We’ll talk about that when we talk about the six three in their own episode, but what I see with all of these people who have this phenomenon of that three, three lifestyle for the first part of their life is that they can have on the high end. They can have a screw it. Let’s do it. Attitude life is meant to be experienced.
I never fail. I only learn. They can either learn that really early on and have a whole lot of fun. And I don’t whole varying spectrum on the outcome of that, but a lot of them will have a lot of fun and they’ll talk about it like, yeah, you know, I was just like out there like I lived life. Right.
So you have that particular experience. Then you have the other experience where the three six, so that six line that’s going through that first third of life as a three, that six is different. It knows it’s different than the personality, a personality three or a true three line. Is just either in the shadow and feeling like a failure and being told that they’re a failure.
So like not living their destiny, not living what’s right for them. So it’s a shadow or they’re like, screw it, let’s do it. And they always have it right? They always have that kind of attitude. But when you have a six in that first third of life, they know they’re a six, they know they’re not a three. They know on some level that they’re preparing to be a role model.
They can be a perfectionist. They can have really high standards for themselves, and it can be an unconscious thing where they beat themselves up so much more than just a regular three would for the failure for not getting it right, for the relationships that truly aren’t really right for them. They are meant to be let go, but they’ll tell themselves, I should have made it work.
That wasn’t the person and I really wanted it to be the person. Why can’t I just settle down? The six is like wanting that stability, and the three is saying God no anything but that. The three wants to break things and the six wants to put ’em back together. That’s what we get here. Now, the three can also say everything breaks and it can be a pessimist, and the six in its highest expression is saying.
We’re building a new future, we’re gonna need to know what works and what doesn’t. So do you see how these might pull at each other that the six is saying like, calm down kid, let’s just settle down now, particularly when we’re gonna talk about that second stage of life. So in that first stage, that six, it’s in its three line stage, and it can resist it and it can beat itself up for the mistakes that it made, rather than really seeing them as experiences that were necessary for its growth and evolution.
So I’ve seen both. I have seen. The three, three phenomenon of that first 30 years where people were like, that was the most fun I ever had. Like my twenties were just so cool, so fun. And then I’ve had other people where they were like, I’ve never forgiven myself for this thing that happened when I was 22 years old.
And it’s a shadow. We’re moving now. Something that’s held them back ever since then. ’cause they have been holding themselves. They’ve been looking at it and saying, I should have been better. And that’s the shadow we have to work through. This is the shadow of that six. Right? So that’s the first stage of life.
Zero to 30, there are three. Three. That six is a three. Then at 30 shifts over. It goes onto the up on the roof, as we call it, where now it retreats from day-to-day life a little bit. It retreats from some of that trial and error. Now it’s an observer. So from 30 to 50, the six becomes a six, but it’s not a role model yet.
Truly not in the sense of what it will be when it gets to that third phase. But now it’s sitting up on that roof and it’s watching and it’s reflecting, and it’s processing that crazy first third of life. Now, it might feel crazy no matter what six, you are a four, six, a three, six, a six three, but it’s probably more chaotic for the three sixes in the six threes probably definitely feels more chaotic to them.
Okay. So how do we go about this? Right? So this second stage of life, it’s meant for reflection. It’s meant to feel like a pause. But for those people who were loving that three, three lifestyle of the first 30 years, they’re like, what’s wrong with me? Sometimes? Why did life just like come to a screeching halt?
But for those people who actually take that time. And go inward and learn how to connect with their intuition and learn how to process and really think about what they did and what experiences they had and what relationships they had. They start to develop something that is a really profound wisdom, and that’s what the 30 to 50 phase is about.
It is about nurturing the wisdom that’s within, and we can’t find wisdom if we don’t reflect. So you got 20 years to do it. So this is a necessary period but can sometimes feel like they’re in a holding pattern and they don’t like it. Most of them are not okay with that and some of them can fall. So you have that three that’s saying, come on, let’s go experience life.
’cause it’s still there and it’s their personality. In this case, there’s that three that’s saying like, let me out of this cage. And the six is saying, we just gotta like take a break for a bit. We just have to come up here. I have to reflect which one’s right. Both. They’re both right. There needs to be balance here.
You need to be nurturing yourself, and you do need to still be going out and breaking stuff and being free enough to have something not be perfect. And this is the big lesson for them. So they don’t get to have that third phase of life, which is I. 50 plus, then they get to 50, they come down off that roof with real wisdom.
They come down off that roof as a role model. And what that potential we’re always nurturing really becomes is we get that pessimist that maybe had everything break in that three line in the front. Met with this optimistic visionary in the back that the sixth line says, I think I know where we can go now.
I see something that I don’t know if anybody’s ever seen before. That’s the potential of the six, and that’s the potential of a three six. A three six is going to have a really rich life experience and they’re going to continue to have it. It’s not like a four six where that devil may care attitude might go away or definitely dissipate, and they become more of a 6 3, 6.
It’s still gonna get their hands dirty is still gonna be in there in the mix. It’s part of their destiny, it’s part of their process till the day they die. So we have to nurture both of these sides. We have to say, I have to figure out how both of these coexist, right? And that’s the potential with this.
So some famous three sixes are, I have a list of them here. I had to go dig some of them out because there aren’t many that like we know or that I knew off the top of my head. So I went and I dug around and there are some really cool ones. So be Arthur ’cause I’m a Golden Girls fan. I love the Golden Girls.
Be Arthur was from the Golden Girls, was a three six. Tina Fey. I think she’s a really great example of a three six. She’s an emotional generator, but somebody who has that, like, she definitely has this like leadership quality, right? Which is what the six is about. Leadership quality. There’s something about her.
People follow her. Her cast, her people, she’s very well respected, and Lauren Michaels put a lot of trust in her. She was head writer. I think he’s probably considers her the closest to his, who he would hand the baton to, to have that level of trust. She has that leadership. People trust sixes. I should say that a role model isn’t just about being a role model as like a figurehead.
A six is a leader, they’re the future leaders where they have a less selfish, I don’t mean to make the five sound selfish, but we have more of like a power, a little bit more traditional leadership in the five and the six is kind of that quiet leader, the leader that just people gravitate toward for their wisdom, not for their brute force or their power.
Tina Fey has also tried a lot of things. I think it’s interesting. She comes from an improv background. I think threes or improv is a wonderful playground for threes to go and exercise that. Why? ’cause you can’t think and you have to be willing to fail. And quite honestly, sometimes the best stuff comes from your failure on stage in the moment, and it teaches you to be in the moment.
And threes are in the moment of just that. Like, let’s do it. Let’s have fun. Let’s try something new. So I think she’s a good example from that respect of being a leader, but also just daring to try new things, break them, put yourself out there. And it does not need to be perfect, but she definitely does still have a high standard, right?
There’s a standard that she has for the work that she puts out. Barbara Corcoran from the Corcoran Group and from Shark Tank. she’s a three six, but I wanted to call this out because she’s an emotional manifester, very different energy between her and Tina Fey. Right? Very, very different. And Tina Fey is a cross of contagion, which is about taking care of your people, which is about writing a message, which is about spreading creativity, which she does.
Barbara Corcoran is across of Rulership. Different expression, right? Manifester. Very different way of going through the world. Different energy to a Barbara Corcoran, but same profile. Three six. And what has she done? Barbara Corcoran is a mentor and she’s also somebody, a manifester, like she’s a self-made woman.
Sounds about right tracks, but she’s also somebody who went out there and she just dared to do it. I mean, she built the Corcoran Group, which I’m from New York originally. It’s everywhere, and it has been for my entire life, pretty much. She’s been one of the biggest real estate companies in all of New York City.
She built that from nothing, and that’s a manifester, but that’s also somebody who dared to put themselves out there. She was also seen as a leader. She’s absolutely been a leader in the New York space for a long time, but now in Shark Tank, she takes other, she takes a chance on new people, on new ideas, on new businesses, and she mentors them.
Six is a mentor, so this is how these things show up, right? So those are some famous three sixes to just show you what it looks like out in the world for these people to walk around how it’s exemplified. And I’m not saying that any of them are perfect, but it does help us to see and get a gauge for, oh, I see the difference between the three five and the three six.
You’ll see the difference between a three six and a four six. There’s a daringness to successful three sixes, so I hope you had fun with this. I hope you enjoyed it. By the way, we have something very new that came out, which is all about writing content according to your human design. I know so many of you are entrepreneurs.
I know if you’re loving this series, you probably wanna know how do I incorporate my profile into my business and into my content writing? Which is all about your marketing really, when we’re talking about content, how do I incorporate my profile into my marketing? So we actually created a program on this, which goes through type and through profile.
It’s so cheap. I feel like I’m insane for offering it for the price that we’re offering it. It’s under $50. It’s crazy. It’s content by design. If you’re interested, DM me the word content, just that word. Please DM me the word content on Instagram. I’m at Nicole Leno official and we will hook you up with the details on that program and get it in your hands.
It’s really good. It’s what I teach all the people inside my actual business by design program. It’s a small piece of what we do there, but we wanted to share it with you ’cause we think that it could have a ton of value to your business and help you put your design into action, which is really what we’re about over here.
Don’t think about it, don’t learn about it. Go do it. Okay. So if you want that DM me content on Instagram and we’ll send you the details. Thank you so much for being here. And remember, in order to have an unshakeable business, you must first become an unshakeable human. So thanks for letting us help you become unshakeable with human design, everybody.
We will see you next time.
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