motivations

1st color motivation | fear (communalist or separatist)

So, yeah, I get it, at first blush this one (and a few others) can sound negative but it is really about being motivated from a place of understanding. It is a dive into the unknown, to unravel the mysteries.

You are correctly motivated when you are investigating and getting to the bottom of things, to know if it’s a good, safe, secure, reliable choice for you. You gather information to feel confident + informed about moving forward. You want to know that you can count on something, if it serves you, works for you, makes your life better. And you like to uncover the mysteries of life. You gain clarity through deeply understanding something, shining the light in the dark on multiple angles to see the truth of what is there.

This motivation can show leadership or just confidence about whoever or whatever the thing is they are into/researching at the moment. You want to move through the doubt… but also know that the doubt serves you. It is motivating you to find out more. 

Your transferred motivation is Need. Need is feeling like you just have to do what needs to be done. It is not detail oriented but feels more urgent or forced. When you are just pushing through to get it done, or focusing on what’s right in front of you, and you are not exploring the details to really understand it, you are on the wrong track. 

With an Open Root or an Open Crown (the pressure centers) you may feel this more potently. Especially with the Root where we often feel like we just want to finish something to be out from under the pressure. This is not correct for you. You want to keep bringing yourself back to gathering all the information and having the facts before moving forward. 

This might mean stepping with courage into spaces that feel scary because there are unknowns. Do your research. Learn new things. Get all the info you need to feel good moving forward.

Trajectory // Direction:

Communalist : You started out focusing on independence, discerning what feels right and safe on your own through the details. Doing things for yourself and then integrating that with your community. Community is important to your feelings of safety and security.

Separatist: You are separaing from the community in a way. It doesn't necessarily mean you won’t be a resource but you are focused more on Self and the details around creating confidence + security for yourself. You don’t feel that community is intrinsically tied to your security + survival.

2nd color motivation | hope (theist or anti-theist)

I love this motivation. It’s about Trust and being oriented toward possibility and optimism. This is really about an intangible knowing. When operating correctly you turn it over to your higher mind, to Source, etc.. You trust that when you know you need to take action that you don’t need to back that knowing up with logic. Trusting in your intuition means you are tuned in to your correct motivation. It is a relaxed energy, a surrender into the magic of the indescribable and the intuitive feelings you just can’t explain. You have faith that everything will work out as it should. You find comfort in stillness rather than trying to control or fix it (which is your Transferred Motivation of Guilt). You surrender to Divine ‘Kairos’ time.

Guilt is not hopeful, it does not trust. It wants to fix it, control it, force it, figure it out with the mind. When you are in this transferred/incorrect motivation you are not trusting in your cognitive, intuitive gifts. You are trying to bypass your higher wisdom to attempt to control. 

The Third Eye + Crown Toolboxes are great ones for getting in touch with our higher guidance and connection to something bigger than ourselves, as well as stewarding that relationship.

Trajectory // Direction:

Theist: you start out as a non-believer and you are learning to and moving toward believing in something intangible, external.

Anti-Theist: you begin as a believer in some way and you are headed toward rejecting some “organized” belief system with a focus more on your own intuition + higher guidance, internal.

3rd color motivation | desire (leader or follower)

Desire is really about leading and taking charge, about having goals. You are here to be a leader and your correct motivation is coming from a desire to lead, to light the way, to affect change in big ways or small, to lead us somewhere new. What skills do you need to acquire along the way in order to lead? Leaders are not afraid to shake things up or make mistakes. This is how we learn and grow. Experience is key to leadership.

Your Transferred motivation is Innocence which feels like not wanting to lead, just wanting to be. When you are in your Transferred motivation of Innocence you are not focused on leading, you are somehow rejecting the responsibility you feel to lead, and your attention is more focused inward rather than outward. You’re kind of just floating around with no real agenda.  

Keep bringing it back to fostering change outside of yourself. You are here to be a leader and to inspire. This is authentically who you are here to be. Contemplate the ways in which you might tap into this in aligned ways whether through grassroots organizing, sharing resources, being vocal about what you believe in, sharing your experiences, etc…

Trajectory // Direction:

Leader: Your trajectory is growing toward this place of leadership. You start out more following what feels right for you, you are focused on your own direction and as you move through life your natural inclination will be to focus more externally… on the others, using your experience to motivate, inspire + lead.

Follower: You are moving toward a place that is more about doing what you want rather than what you feel the community needs. When you follow your own direction you will still end up leading just from a place of what feels right for you.

4th color motivation | need (master or novice)

Need is about quality over quantity and focusing on what feels good to you + what instinctively feels right + necessary. Need knows what they want to focus on to fulfill their purpose and they are also meant to be motivated by connections, intimacy and giving people what they need physically, mentally and emotionally, not getting buried in research and information overload.

We are not here to get caught up in the details or learn all the things but just what we need to authentically connect with others and follow our own experiential wisdom + instincts to offer tangible resourcing and support.

Fear is our transferred motivation. It get obsessive over details, black and white thinking, cause and effect, worrying what if… It doesn’t mean you can’t ever desire to get to the bottom of things, it means the intention behind it should alway be connection + what feels right/good to you. When you find yourself caught up in over-thinking the details, what is “correct”, or needing to prove something you are on the wrong track. Keep bringing it back to connection, to supporting those around you, offering your services, etc…

Trajectory // Direction:

Master: you are here to Master something over time, to have a lot of confidence around something you share.

Novice : This mean you have already mastered something and you are moving toward something new. You expand and grow through looking at things almost as a child would, with wonder + curiosity. You take it all in, as a student of life.

5th color motivation | guilt (conditioner or conditioned)

This is a motivation to fix it. You want to make the world a better place. You can see when something is not working and you are motivated to make things work better. We can all co-create through visualization and raising our energy AND for you this is really going to be about taking action steps. You don’t want to sit around waiting for whatever it is to sort itself out. Trust that you innately know what works or not. Be sure to focus this motivation on things, systems, etc.. not people. ;) Think a bit of Virgo energy - finding practical solutions, editing, correcting, remedies, etc…

Your transferred motivation is hope. The incorrect motivation is when you are waiting for someone else to fix it or you are waiting for it to fix itself, turning it over to the Universe + not taking any action. It is an energy of giving your power away.

For you it is not about trust, but about doing and what you can do about it. 

Trajectory // Direction:

Conditioner: Moving towards conditioner over the course of this life. Here using your belief system to condition others, to show people this is the way we need to be doing things. You are essentially deconditioning them to condition them in another way, to help them find practical solutions.

Conditioned: Moving towards conditioned over the course of this life. You’re the one being affected by the changes. The experiences over your life show you what is important + who is impacting you.

6th color motivation | innocence (observer or observed)

Innocence is about really focusing within. The Rumi quote; “Yesterday I was clever so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself”, is really perfect for this Motivation. Being the role model is how you have your greatest impact. It’s not that you can’t change the world but you are not meant to do it through leading or pushing your agenda (or even necessarily having one), you are meant to be motivated by being an example of the change you wish to see, by following your joy and what naturally feels right to you, what you want to do just because you want to do it, without expectation or concern over the outcome. You are here to let the world change you. Your biggest motivation should be to act from a place of true authenticity and to take the wide angle view.

When you are in your Transferred motivation of Desire you are operating from the place of trying to lead, trying to win, trying to force change through your actions, getting caught up in the drama, asserting yourself, rather than focused within on just being in your embodied wisdom + following your own childlike curiosity + wonder.

Keep bringing it back to you.

Trajectory // Direction:

Observer: You are here to observe, to watch, to learn and to accumulate the ideas and resources that resonate and then to experientially embody those ideals rather than trying to push them on others in any way. It’s about doing it for you, taking a more active role.

Observed: You are here to eventually move into the place where you are living your truth. You started out doing the research and now you are being it. You’re not pushing it on anyone through you will share it when invited. You allow life to move through you rather than trying to figure it out.

keys to awareness

Another area where the language of Human Design can get confusing is with Sense. I refer to our Cognitions as senses because they are. In the Keynotes of Genetic Matrix your “key to awareness” is referred to as Sense. This is associated with the number in the green triangle for the Motivation arrow. The above bodygraph has Sense 3. Just keeping you on your toes over here.

The Sense keys are as follows.

1 SECURITY - your intelligence is rooted in themes of safety + security

2 UNCERTAINTY - you find important information where there is uncertainty, filtering through and finding wisdom in info others may ignore.

3 ACTION - knowing all the steps to take + what information will be helpful for others (teachers, guides, advisors energy)

4 MEDITATION - watching the mind like a movie, observing

5 JUDGEMENT - you’re here to be a bit judgey, it’s healthy for your mind to be discerning + have a judgmental quality to your thinking

6 ACCEPTANCE - accepting things for what/how they exist rather than trying to change them.