Episode 402

Hi, and welcome to Unshakable with Human Design. I’m your host, Nicole Laino, and. And you and I are here, just the two of us today. And this episode was inspired by a conversation I had with one of my clients. She’s actually a former client who sent me a message over Instagram because I keep in touch with all of my clients, or at least I try to. And I love that she felt comfortable enough to reach out to me and ask this, because we worked together for a year. She was in business by design, and now she’s actually going in another direction with her business. She’s going in a more creative route, so she’s exploring some other things. And I love that she’s still so committed to doing her own inner work through human design because it’s honestly opened up so much for her. 

She was one of those people that I read her chart, and it was so like her path was screaming at her, and she had the courage to make a lot of changes in her life so that she could actually follow the path of her design rather than staying with what’s comfortable or what made sense on paper. She really went with her heart. So. So her question was, she has an undefined ego. And she was like, I’m setting goals and I’m trying to get myself on track. And really, she wants to be successful like all of us do. And she’s like, I’m trying to set goals, but I don’t really know how to with my open ego. 

She’s like, I know we’ve talked about this before, and this is another thing that even when you’ve been doing this work for a while and you’ve had access to somebody like me who will answer your questions and can help guide you, it doesn’t mean you don’t have questions anymore. It doesn’t mean that some of these things that you thought you worked through don’t show up again and have you questioning them. So for her, it was definitely like, a mental question, because she’s like, I want to put these goals down on paper, but something doesn’t feel right. So I wanted to address the overall question. We’re going to talk about the ego center in this episode because it’s an Important center, especially when it comes to money and the material way. It’s all kind of connected to the ego center. 

It doesn’t mean that there aren’t other aspects of the chart that have to do with money, but the ego center really has to do with power. It is power and materialism are very much connected to the ego center and the ego circuit in human design. So what do you do if you have an open ego? Can you be successful? Shortcut answer is yes, but we’re going to explain to you how. And how do you set goals when this center is open and. And still be aligned? Like, can I still be aligned? Was sort of her question. Can I be materially successful and still be aligned and feel like I’m in alignment with my design, or is anything that I do gonna be not self? Okay, so I’m gonna break down all of that. 

I’m gonna go into a little bit about what the ego center is, what it signifies, and then we’ll dive into those questions. I’ll just talk about them kind of as a whole. Before we get started. I wanna remind everybody if I haven’t. Maybe if this is the first episode you’ve listened to in a while, maybe this is the first you’re hearing of it or you haven’t had a chance to. But if you’re interested in using human design to help you build an aligned and profitable business, I created a secret or private podcast just for you. It’s called Aligned and profitable. We’re not even being tricky with the name. We’re being pretty clear. It’s about building an aligned and profitable business with human design. 

So how do you build a business that’s really centered around your purpose, what is correct for your alignment, plus have it make you money and support your family, and give you the freedom that you really want from your business? Your business should support you should make money, it should be profitable. Or it will be very difficult to feel aligned because you’re always going to be in survival mode and that ruins everything. So we laid it all out in a private podcast. It’s 13 episodes. You can listen at your leisure, and all you have to do to get it is go to nicoleaino.com forward/secret podcast. You can grab the link right there, or you can DM me the word secret podcast on Instagram. I’m icoleno official and we can sign you up there and get you the link for you. 

To download the Secret Podcast on how to Build & Scale Your Business with Human Design click here: nicolelaino.com/secretpodcast 

It’s all linked up in the show notes as well, so feel free to go down There, if that’s easier. Okay, so let’s talk about the ego center. The ego center is also known as the will center, as in willpower. It’s also known as the heart center. Now in human design, we have nine centers. It would be just like the Hindu chakra system if it had seven, but we have nine. We split off the heart center is one of the reasons the heart chakra is one of the reasons why we have nine. We split off the heart chakra into two centers, the G center, which is about love, purpose, identity and direction. And then we have the heart center or the ego will center. Whichever one tickles your fancy, whichever one you like better use that one. 

I tend to call it the ego because I like reclaiming the word ego because I think that it has such a negative connotation to it. But that’s not at all what the ego center is about in its alignment. So the ego center is the other half of what would be the heart chakra. And this represents the masculine side of heart energy, which is determination, support, put your heart into it, commitment, that type of heart. Just miles and miles of heart. You remember that movie Miles and miles of heart. That’s the ego center because it’s the energy to commit. It’s the energy to say you’re going to do something and see it all the way through. It’s the energy to see a goal, tackle it and say, I’m going after that thing. And you put everything you have into it. 

That’s what the ego center is about. So let’s just talk about what it means to have a center open. A center open does not mean you don’t have that energy at all. It doesn’t mean you never have. It doesn’t mean it’s missing. It just means that your experience with it will not be all the time and it will not be the same way. So I have a defined ego and I have the channel 2644, the channel of surrender leading from the spleen to the ego center defined. That’s all I have, definition wise in my ego center. That’s my consistent way of experiencing that energy is through that channel and through gate 26. That’s kind of my way. It doesn’t mean it never comes in the other ways. 

It just means that is the most consistent way that I experience this energy of taking charge and committing and going after the things that I want. 26 is a transmitter. 26 is a messenger. 26 is a strategist. I’m thinking about ways to make money. I’M thinking about ways to succeed. That’s how it shows up for me most often. Okay, not exclusively, but most of the time, that’s how my ego energy will be expressed and experienced by me. Now, if you have a center open, what that means is that when I say open, it can be undefined or completely open. We’ll use the terms synonymously here. If you have a white ego center where it is not defined, that means that you’re going to have a variable way of experiencing this energy. 

This commitments might not be something that always feel easy for you to keep. You might not find that most people who have an open ego, and I’m not saying this is exclusive, but pretty much when I talk to people and I have these conversations, this is what comes out, is most people with an open ego don’t care about much. Like they do something. They want to survive. They want to feel free. They want to have the things that money will give them, which is to make them feel secure and to be able to do the things that they want. But the money thing doesn’t really turn them on. The money thing is not what motivates them. Money motivates me. I enjoy money. I love making money. I feel really good about it, and I had to build a healthier relationship with it. 

But it does motivate me. And I’m motivated by all those other things that money can buy. But I also love the accumulation of money. I also love the act of making money. I think it’s fun. And that’s a defined ego thing. An undefined or an open ego is not usually gonna be driven by that. And the minute they try to be driven by it, things start to feel off. Because now you’re doing what you should do, not what truly feels aligned for you. This is how open centers, I call them wagging the dog, the tail that wags the dog. They are the tail. They’re not your power. They are not your consistency. When you try to work from your openness, you’ll find that things feel harder. You feel off, like things are just not right. 

There’s an inner sense of like, oh, things are just not right. You’re stuck in a pattern. You’re not getting the results that you want. You might find that you are drained and things take longer or they’re taking a lot more energy. Because I always say that open centers are like buckets with holes in them. They’re a bucket with a hole in it. And what happens when you pour water or any other liquid substance into a bucket with holes in it, they come right out the bottom. You can’t fill that bucket until you fix those holes. Yours are open centers, those aren’t holes to be fixed. You’re not meant to hold water in that bucket. So what does that mean? 

That means as far as goal setting and as far as achieving and as far as making money, as somebody with an open or an undefined ego center, you can absolutely make money. Some of the most successful people I know have wide open egos. You’re meant to receive, you’re not meant to push. So when you actually clean out the open ego and you’re not pushing from it, you’ll find that it’s so much easier for you to receive money. That’s number one. Number two, when you have an open ego, then you can absolutely make money, achieve, have success, have like cross goals off your list. But the way that happens typically doesn’t happen because you chased a goal. The come from is different. 

It’s a different intention and a different motivation than I gotta get that thing because usually I gotta get that thing is not terribly motivating for you. And then you wake up, some days you feel like it and some days you don’t and then you feel like a failure and then you’re inconsistent and you’re supposed to be consistent. Now we’re into all of the conditioning of the outside world. You should want it, you should have the drive, you should go after it, you should show up every day, you should outwork everyone. All of those ego centered rules that have been set for us in the entrepreneurial space or in the personal development space about how we get more of what we want, that spits in the face of the open ego. Because the open ego is like, none of that stuff is really me. 

That’s not really my way. So what is your way? Strategy and authority will lead you to how this shows up for you. So an example is if you are a generator, it’s not going to because you chased the goal and you put 50k months on a board and you reverse engineered that number and you figured out how many offers you needed to sell and you broke it down. You can do all of that. That’s great information. But that’s not going to be the stuff that gets you up in the morning and pushes you to go. What’s going to get you to that $50,000 number is following the rest of your design. It’s following your profile. It’s following. 

If you’re a generator, you’re going to follow your joy, you’re going to follow the things that you just want to do, where your energy wants to go. Let it lead you. Because what happens with the open ego is you make a plan and you’re not listening to your sacral anymore. This can also be a problem for people with a defined ego. We still need to listen to where our energy wants to go. We still need to project or still need to pay attention to where the recognition is. And here’s the thing with the open ego. When it’s open, you actually might have something to offer people in the way of not needing to prove themselves. But you first must discover that wisdom and embody that wisdom in yourself. You can’t sell a gift until you’ve embodied a gift. 

So the come from is the big difference. The come from of where your action comes from. That’s the key differentiator. So it’s really about setting those goals, but then almost pushing them to the side and. And really getting into the rest of your design and the rest of the things that are driving your action. So if you’re a projector, you’re going to be all right, I have an open ego and I’m a projector. What do I do? Well, it’s still gonna be sharing your wisdom. It has to come from that place of like, I wanna help. And not because you’re necessarily sabotaging yourself to work from an egocentric place of wanting to achieve something. It’s just you’ll probably find that it’s not sustainable and it drains you quickly. 

But when you show up in love for what you do, or because you genuinely have something that you care about, that you want to share, and that’s coming from your truth and from your power in your design, rather than from your openness, which is meant to receive things about others and about other theme outside of yourself. If you paid attention as an open ego, you’d probably know a lot about the people who are running on ego fuel and how they’re out of alignment. You probably have an understanding. You probably know when somebody’s ego is really out of adjustment, when they’re really not as confident as they say, when they’re maybe posturing or showing up in authentic way and they want to make themselves feel big, you probably are very sensitive to that. 

You won’t actually be able to hone in on that wisdom unless you are leaning back into that and not working from it. So it’s really going to be you leaning back into your definition, into what’s consistent for you. That’s what leads you to everything that you’ve been waiting for. That’s what leads you to the project that you know your sacral is so excited about. That may not align with the plan that your ego set out. If you did it that way. Now you’re not listening. Now you’re not following your energy. Now you’re drained, now you’re frustrated. Why? Because you’re working out of your ego. You can get to the same result to the same end game, but it’s a different path that you take. Okay, you’re not here to prove yourself if you have an open ego. I am. 

And trust me, the defined ego has plenty of work to do because there’s so many people out there working from an unhealthy ego. It’s something that I need to be in check with all the time for myself as well. Am I in a healthy expression of this energy or am I pushing? Or am I feeling like I’m not good enough so I’m pushing harder again, come from matters for me too. Strategy and authority is usually what saves me from that and a lot of inner work on digging out and excavating all the past small T trauma that was built up in that center. But I hope that this helped. That was, I thought, a really interesting conversation that I had with her over the DMs. And I know there are. I mean Statistically, I believe it’s 65% of the world has the ego open. 

So it’s the vast majority of people. Yet we live in this ego driven world where we’re taught to embody and prize these very ego driven themes and characteristics and it’s out of alignment for most of the population. So I thought that this would be hopefully very useful and interesting for everybody about how the ego center plays in our goals and achievements and ultimately in our prosperity. So I hope you loved it. I appreciate you. If you want to get your hands on the Secret podcast because you want to build an aligned and profitable business for yourself or at least see what the whole plan looks like. I’ve found that so many people leave things out when they talk about what it takes to be successful. And someone asked me, I don’t even know how you get to 30000 months. 

Can you explain it to me? So that’s what I did. The aligned and profitable framework with human design is how you build your business to be profitable, but also to be an expression of who you are. So. So that every day you love your business a little bit more and every day it gives back to you a bit more. So if you want that DM me the words secret podcast on Instagram, I’m icoleno official. We’ll send you all the information there or go to nicolelaino.com secretpodcast and you can sign up right there on the website. All of it’s in the show notes for you. So thank you so much for being here. I appreciate you. And remember, in order to have an unshakeable business, you must first become an unshakable human. So thanks for letting us help you become unshakable with human design, everyone. 

To download the Secret Podcast on how to Build & Scale Your Business with Human Design click here: nicolelaino.com/secretpodcast 

We’ll see you next time.