Find Your Life’s Purpose One Feeling at a Time: A Human Design Approach to Alignment

Lisa Cooper Ellison [0:56] Welcome to Writing Your Resilience, the podcast for writers who want to write and live the story that sets them free. I’m your host, Lisa Cooper Ellison — a writer, transformational and trauma-informed coach, story alchemist, and fellow traveler on the winding road of healing and creativity. Each week I’ll share tools, practices, and conversations that will help you let go of what no longer serves you as you create stories that change lives, especially your own. Together, we’ll explore how to trust your creative voice, support your mental health and resilience, work with your nervous system and unique design, and stay connected to your deepest calling as a writer, even when life gets messy. It’s time, my friends, to write and live the story that sets you free. I’m honored to walk that journey alongside you, one story and one episode at a time.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [1:51] Welcome, everyone. I’m Lisa Cooper Ellison, your resident story alchemist and the host of this show, and I am so happy to be here with you today to talk about one of the big “aha”s that I’ve had in the past year — and a passion of mine. I want to talk about it because we are now in the Year of the Fire Horse, and I am a triple fire sign. So, I have lots of fire, and I am a wood tiger in Chinese astrology. Being a wood tiger works really well with the Fire Horse — I have the fuel that can get the fire going. But here’s the problem, and this is true for many of us: while we might be feeling a little more energy, we may have more creative urges, we may be more excited about what’s to come — even if what’s going on in the world is not that great — we can still burn ourselves out if we are not paying attention to where we’re going.

So, it is really important for you to pause before you gallop and ask yourself: where am I going, and do I know where I’m going? And if you don’t, how can you figure that out? Because that is the question I am asked all the time — as a writing coach, in Akashic Records readings, and in Human Design readings. The question is: am I on track? Variations include: how can I get on track? And the deepest version: how can I know my life’s purpose, and how can I live it out?

That’s some huge stuff, and it’s so fundamental to who we are, because the two biggest questions most humans wrestle with are: who am I, and why am I here? These are questions we can put a lot of pressure on ourselves to answer. So, I want you to pause for a second and ask yourself, listeners: are you trying to figure that out? Do you want to know if you are on track, or what your life’s purpose is — and are you putting pressure on yourself around it? If not, I’m going to give you some kudos, because that means you probably know you’re on track. Either way, I’ve got you covered. I’m going to help you out.

But even if you are aligned — even if you have a lot of clarity around your life’s purpose and where you’re going — we can still ignore those little acts of misalignment, which are the ones that actually burn us out. Again, in a Year of the Fire Horse, if you’re spending a lot of time pushing, forcing, and going against what’s best for you, you will burn out. And if you do burn out, you’re going to have less energy for your creativity, less enthusiasm about what you’re working on, and less joy in your life overall. You’re going to feel exhausted all the time and may not know why.

Here’s the reality: there are a lot of things happening out in the world and in our families that we can’t control, but whether we burn out isn’t one of them. We are fully in control of whether or not we burn out. What we need to do is pay attention to whether or not we’re in alignment. The path to either preventing burnout or getting out of it is very simple: you need to pay attention to your emotions, because your emotions are telling you whether or not you are in alignment. Instead of always focusing on that capital-A Alignment, pay close attention to the little-a alignment details in your life.

So how can you do this? Number one: if you don’t have a copy of your Human Design body graph and that interests you, you can get a free copy on my website by clicking the link in the show notes. Do that if it interests you — and after listening to this episode, it may well be something you’re really curious about. Even if you’re not, though, that’s okay, because I’m going to talk about the tool you already have that is trying to teach you how to be in alignment every single day. That tool is your emotions.

In Human Design, there are four different emotion pairs that tell us if we’re in or out of alignment. The first is satisfaction and frustration. The second is anger and peace. The third is success and bitterness. And the fourth is surprise and disappointment. We all have these emotions, but it’s likely that one of those pairs shows up for you more often than the others. You’ll know this if you find yourself saying, “Oh man, I am so frustrated,” or “Wow, that experience was so satisfying.” Others of you might find you’re saying, “I’m so angry” — and it just happens to be a pattern — or “Oh my gosh, I’m so peaceful right now.” There’s no judgment around this. I just want you to be curious about which of those emotion pairs feels most familiar to you.

If you get your free Human Design body graph, you’ll know exactly which ones those are. If you’d rather not, here are some ways you can begin to figure it out. I want you to pause right now, and as I say these, think about whether one fits for you: frustration and satisfaction, anger and peace, bitterness and success, disappointment and surprise.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [8:09] If you still don’t know the answer and you’re not interested in getting your body graph, grab your journal and look back over your previous entries. See which one of those words shows up the most. If you find yourself saying “I’m frustrated” all the time, or “this keeps making me angry,” or “I feel so bitter about this” — that’s your answer.

It’s really important that you know which of these emotions show up for you, because we all have a signature uncomfortable feeling that tells us we are out of alignment. We often dismiss these emotions because they’re uncomfortable, and we’ve been socialized and conditioned to think of them as bad. We’re not supposed to be angry — especially women. We’re not supposed to be frustrated or bitter. But here’s the reality: these emotions are telling you, “Hey, something is not right. You need to do something else.” If you can listen to them and allow them to be a powerful tool at your disposal — without getting wrapped up in judgment — you can use that to stay aligned. That is going to help you have more energy for all of your life.

So just notice when you start to say, “I’m frustrated right now,” or “I’m angry,” and simply ask: what is this emotion saying? What is it trying to tell me? What is off track? I know that sounds easy to say and difficult to do — and that is because so many of us have been told that certain emotions are bad and at others are good.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [10:00] So, we try to always feel the ones we’ve been told are good, and we try to push away the ones in the “bad” category. Sometimes we do this by talking ourselves out of that emotion. Here’s how it can sound: “Why am I angry? I shouldn’t be angry about that. There’s no reason to be angry. I need to get rid of my anger. How can I get rid of my anger?” Listeners, let me know in the YouTube comments if that happens to you, because that is conditioning — that is socialization in action. And some of us do this at such a subtle level that we don’t even realize we’re doing it.

What can happen is that some of us have feelings we go to by default. I’ll use my own life as an example. My signature emotion is frustration. But I’m going to tell you about two different ways I push uncomfortable emotions away.

The first is anger. Anger is hard for me — it really is, and it always has been. In my family of origin, anger turned into violence. Anger was scary, and people did destructive, damaging things when they were angry. So, I never wanted to be angry. An unconscious fear I sometimes have to wrestle with is: if I am angry, I will do something destructive. That’s not true — I’m actually very good at anger. It’s just uncomfortable for me. Because of that very powerful conditioning, what I’ve done my whole life is go to guilt instead. I’m angry about something, and then I feel guilty, and then I’m asking myself, “Why am I doing this wrong?” and starting to feel like something is my fault. I know this pattern, so I know how to get out of it, but it’s ingrained. That is an unconscious way I push my anger away — I go to guilt.

Another thing I do, with my signature emotion of frustration, is go from frustration to people-pleasing. I’ll think, “Oh, that sounds like a terrible idea — if I do this, I’m going to feel so frustrated.” But then the voices of others come into my head: “Yeah, but you should do this to be nice,” or “You need to do favors for people,” or “That would help someone out.” And I start talking myself out of it by going into what I call “nice mode” — which I know is people-pleasing mode. And what is that going to get me in the end? Frustration.

What I want you to know is this: if you are experiencing your signature uncomfortable emotion, you are not doing life wrong. That’s really important. When we talk ourselves out of these emotions, what we’re basically saying is, “You’re doing life wrong, and you need to do it differently.” But what’s actually happening when you have those emotions is that you are in touch with your internal barometer. In Human Design, we call those your “not-self” emotions — your uncomfortable emotion. Basically, it means you are not honoring yourself. When I am frustrated, it’s usually because I’ve made decisions that haven’t honored myself, or I haven’t set a boundary that protects me from something that, while not necessarily wrong, is just not okay for me.

Once you’ve checked in with that, it’s time to do something about it. But I want to share a little story about what that looked like for me before I give you some more concrete tips.

As I just said, I can easily go from frustration to people-pleasing. A few months back, a friend wanted me to meet someone. She had told this person all about me, said really nice things, and that person wanted to meet me and share a potential opportunity. I knew it was a no for me — I clearly didn’t have the bandwidth. But I thought, well, maybe one day it would be a fit. And because my friend had said so many nice things about me, I felt I needed to be nice, say yes, and schedule the meeting so I didn’t disappoint her or the person trying to share this opportunity. So, I scheduled it during a very busy time in my life, around non-negotiable commitments to my clients.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [15:00] So when did I fit it in? In the middle of my writing time.

What feeling do you think I had as I was driving to this meeting I didn’t really want to go to? Frustration. And it was funny, because the person I met was really incredible, doing something really important, and I was genuinely glad I’d met them and seen the project they were working on. I had gratitude for that. But driving home, I was tapping into that frustration — an hour to get there, an hour of meeting, an hour back, which crunched my work time. Not only did it infringe on my writing time that day, but I’d probably have to make things up the next day, which meant even less writing time. And of course, that made me more frustrated.

So, I was stewing in my little frustration pot for maybe 15 or 20 miles, and all of a sudden it hit me: “Oh my God, I’m frustrated.” And I started laughing, because I thought, there it is. I’ve got my frustration. I am out of alignment. And then I began to ask myself: why am I out of alignment? Was this something in my control, or out of my control? Clearly, in this case, it was in my control. I had gone to my default people-pleasing “be nice” mode and totally frustrated myself — which is not the energy I want to bring to meetings with other people.

So, I am learning now to pay closer attention to when I’m frustrated, and when that frustration-to-people-pleasing pattern kicks in. When I feel that frustration, I simply ask myself: what’s out of alignment?

Lisa Cooper Ellison [17:08] What can I do to address it? And then I try to address it right away, even if what I need to do feels scary or uncomfortable. What I’ve found is that when I surrender to the process — when I recognize, yes, I am frustrated and out of alignment in this specific way, and then I do something about it, even if that means saying no or unscheduling something I’ve already committed to — my life goes better, and I bring a different energy to everything.

I’ve also started asking myself this question when I’m not sure whether to do something, and I’m not feeling frustration but just lack clarity. If I find myself pros-and-conning it in my mind, or hearing myself say, “Oh, I should do that for so-and-so,” I’ll pause and ask: will I feel frustrated if I do this? As I ask it, I imagine the busiest day I could have — how I’d try to shoehorn this in, what I’d have to give up. And if I’m going to give up my self-care time, which includes my writing and meditation time, I have to say no, no matter how uncomfortable that is. Because I already know I’m going to be frustrated — and saying no honors both myself and everyone else.

As I’m doing this, I’m also paying close attention to my positive emotional signature, which is satisfaction. I’m trying to increase the satisfaction in my life — paying attention to the things that bring me satisfaction, the experiences that feel satisfying, and looking at how I can do more of that, so I can feel happier, more creative, and better about my life overall. And I’m going to tell you, it is really working.

One thing I will say: as someone who is highly enthusiastic and loves to learn and try new things, what I’ve had to learn to tease out is the difference between satisfaction and excitement. It’s very easy for me to get excited about something and think, “Oh, I could do this thing, I could learn this thing — that’s exciting, I should do it.” But when I pause and let that excitement settle down, I’ll realize it was just a lot of energy. And when I ask myself, “Will I be frustrated because my time is already under too many pressures on it?”

Lisa Cooper Ellison [20:00] I’ll notice that the excitement isn’t necessarily serving me. Excitement feels very up: if you’re watching on YouTube, my shoulders go up, my eyebrows go up, I feel almost like I’m jumping. And it’s not that excitement is bad — I love excitement, I love to feel it. It’s just not an energy or emotion I should make decisions from.

What I want to do instead is pay close attention to what satisfaction feels like for me. I’ve talked to a lot of clients and friends about this, and for me, satisfaction is a sigh,

Lisa Cooper Ellison [20:40] — is a relaxation. There’s nothing jumpy about it. That’s my experience. If you know that satisfaction and frustration are your signature emotions, I want you to tell me in the YouTube comments: have you ever confused satisfaction for excitement? I would love to know how that experience has gone for you.

My deepest wish is that you can learn how to use your emotions as a divining rod that helps you experience a happier, more confident, and more creative life. The more you can embrace these emotions for what they are — just signals and tools that can help you be in alignment — and the more you can use them for those little-a moments of alignment, the greater your overall alignment is going to be. The more you’re going to be able to do with your life, and the more you’re going to be able to answer “yes” to the question: am I on track?

Thank you so much for listening. I hope you got exactly what you needed from today’s episode. If you’d like to take this a little further, press pause. Go get your free Human Design report and your journal, and then respond to these prompts: how do I feel about my not-self emotion — the emotion I have when I am not honoring myself — and when does it show up in my life? And how is it trying to teach me something? I would love to know what that is for you and how it works. You can make my day by going to YouTube right now and sharing that emotional pair with me. You can also share what you’ve learned about it, or any insights you have after listening to this episode. I would love to hear from you and to know how this content is speaking to you.

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Until next time, remember that your story matters. As you write and connect with the truest, most authentic version of yourself, you become not just the writer, but the person you’re meant to be. And that, my friends, is the real freedom writing can offer you.