EP43: Sitting With Waiting to Respond (My First Experience with Human Design)
This week, I’m sitting with the concept of waiting to respond — a strategy from Human Design that has challenged and changed me in unexpected ways.
I share the story of how I went from skeptical outsider to reluctant-but-curious explorer after a reading with a trusted friend cracked something wide open in me. This idea — that I’m not meant to initiate, but to respond — brought up a lot of resistance at first. But the more I sat with it, the more it began to feel like a much-needed invitation: to stop pushing, to stop striving, and to begin co-creating with something larger than myself.
This isn’t a how-to episode. It’s a reflection on the discomfort of waiting, the courage it takes to pause, and the possibility that opens when we stop trying to control the timing of our lives. I also share how this strategy is shaping my own regenerative path — not just in work, but in life.
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Full Transcript
Alisa: This week I am sitting with the concept of waiting to respond. Specifically waiting to respond as a kind of decision making framework or strategy for navigating my work. So the concept of waiting to respond came from my human design reading and I'm saying it like that because I was very resistant to human design for a long time.
If you've never heard of human design you obviously don't spend enough time in wellness spaces but it was it was created in 1987 by a white guy who was having this mystical experience in Ibiza and it combines things like astrology, the I Ching, the chakra system and apparently quantum physics, I'm not quite sure how, to create this kind of framework for self-understanding and decision making. So it's based on your birth time, your birth and your birthplace um and I first heard about this through several people that I did my coaching training with who had come across it in the course of their exploration and been really quite profoundly changed by it and it had sort of heavily influenced how they understood themselves, how they approached their coaching work, you know how they were building a business and my sort of feeling was like I'm very happy for you. That's great for you. But like, this is just too, I don't know, suedo science for me. And also, I'm just, I'm one of those annoying people that when something is really popular, and people are really kind of evangelistic about it, I will deliberately steer clear. I've done that with like, a number of amazing books that I have then come back to read years later when they're no longer popular and kind of wished that I had just. got on board and read them at the beginning but that's basically where I was with human design uh let's say happy for people who felt really connected to it but pretty skeptical about whether it would be something that um I would I would want to uh integrate into my life or into my work um and and I should also kind of say generally that's also how I feel about astrology like I fully respect that people feel very connected to it and I have in fact a former client who was a scientist by background who came to astrology and the way he spoke about astrology I found very convincing and very powerful but it still just kind of felt like something that wasn't quite for me.
Anyway by chance one of these friends that I did my training with was looking for some coaching and we agreed to do an exchange so I did some wild coaching for her and then she asked what she could do in return and I said well why don't you do my human design reading I've never done it before you know I I trust you and your authenticity and if anyone is gonna sort of bring me into this world it's you so she did my human design reading for me and I can only explain this experience as she kind of shared with me the things that she'd seen in my reading, which is not, just to be clear, this is not like, I don't know, a tarot reading. It's like the reading is kind of set. So you put in that information and it will give you certain, without going into too much details, but like basically certain parameters. Those are fixed. They're not kind of there for interpretation. So it gives you those parameters. And then she was explaining those parameters. to me and then kind of giving me the opportunity to reflect on what felt helpful or what felt true so this is not a sort of like intuitive reading.
But the things that she shared with me, I just, it felt like somebody who, I don't know, has known you your whole life and somehow always been able to see through all of your bullshit. And just kind of just knows you like at your kind of naked, true essence. I don't know if maybe you have somebody like that in your life who it's like they just seem to be able to look like straight. into your soul and it doesn't matter what you do or what you say to them or how you try and disguise it they just know you for who you are. That is what it felt like to me when my friend did my human design reading for me it was it was almost overwhelming in how true it felt to me and one of the concepts in there I'm not going to go into all the details because I I really don't understand it enough myself and I'm still doing a lot of reading and I'm going to do kind of more work with people who are um you know much more um expert in this area than I am but one of the concepts that came up that really really struck with me was that my strategy so in the reading everybody has a strategy my strategy is to wait to respond and part of the reason that I knew that that was true for me is how much resistance I felt. think I've shared this on the podcast before but one way that I know that there is some truth in something or that I need to investigate something further or sit with something for longer is when I feel like really intense resistance to something because generally if something is just not for me I can let it go if I'm if if you know if it just doesn't resonate or it's just works for someone else, not for me, it just kind of passes me by.
But when I feel that like kind of physical grating kind of resistance then I know that it's something that I really need to pay attention to and that's exactly how I felt when I heard this strategy wait to respond and what I understand it to mean is that to do with my type and and all of this kind of other stuff so I'm sorry if you're into human design I'm a manifesting generator I have an emotional authority and I have a sacral response. I think that's the same as the emotional authority and it essentially means as a manifesting generator like you're an extremely creative person, you have the ability to make things happen but you're also kind of meant to, you're meant to start things and let them go, you're meant to pivot, you're not meant to be certain about things you kind of move quite instinctually um all of that I was like yeah I know all of that about myself like that is you know that's part of my history as an entrepreneur is like I'm just I'm good at bringing ideas to life I'm kind of inspired by everything but part of the problem with that is that I do tend to run after every single creative spark or idea or possibility that crosses my path. and maybe that worked for me in my 20s and 30s but now as I enter my 40s I find that exhausting and I'm really in a place where I want to be um to borrow a phrase from my teacher Martha Beck I want to be co-creating with the universe and I know that sounds kind of really lofty but what that just means to me is like I don't always want to be the decision maker. I don't always want to be the driver. I did that for a long time and that isn't where my energy is anymore. I want to feel like there is a kind of energetic force that I'm creating with that is giving me the signal that I am heading in the right direction. And so when I heard this concept, wait to respond, that felt like what I was hearing was you that it's time to change my approach. It's time to wait and be much more discerning in where I apply my energy.
But this doesn't come naturally to us manifesting generators. We kind of want to, we want to pursue everything. And there's a real shift here for me that I think may apply to a lot of people regardless of your human design actually but particularly if you are for want of a better term a kind of a go-getter if you're someone who you know has an idea and goes after it has a goal and pursues it you know someone who is naturally ambitious someone who you know has that ability to just make things happen someone who is generally perceived of as being like successful and upwardly mobile and all of these kind of things that like actually let's be honest can feel really really good when you're in that kind of momentum but can also leave us feeling a bit lonely and drained and somehow that we carry such a weight of responsibility. I think that is perhaps The most profound part of this for me, of being somebody who brings ideas to life and who has the capacity to pursue an awful lot of ideas, is that there's a real weight of responsibility in that, of like, am I making the right decision? And, you know, will this work if I just give it enough, if I just pour everything into it, if I just push it through? It's a real kind of pushing. energy. It's being an instigator rather than a receiver.
And then when I heard this strategy of wait to respond, I really did take the time to sit with that concept and journal on it and meditate on it. And what I kept hearing was this concept of being a lightning rod, that my job is not anymore. to pursue, to instigate, to create, to push for, to make happen. It is to wait to respond, or actually I've sort of changed the language a little bit around that in terms of how I understand it, of wait to receive. So wait to receive, like a lightning rod waiting to receive that electricity. And it's not easy to do. I think it's particularly not easy for someone who is wired in the way that I am, someone who's like naturally very creative, who can move very very quickly on things, but I don't think that it's easy actually for any of us because I think we have been conditioned to think that it is our job to make things happen, it's our job to solve problems, to create solutions, to find answers. We, I don't think, certainly I want to say we, I'm talking in kind of in Western culture, we're not taught to prepare ourselves to receive and for me that means a kind of daily practice of preparing to receive, a daily practice of choosing not to pursue the next idea, not to get inspired, not to solve problems. And bearing in mind, I was an entrepreneur. I've spent 15 years solving problems and coming up with new ideas. It feels like it's in my bloodstream at this point.
But waiting to respond, I know, is the right strategy for me at this time in my life. And it feels like such a regenerative strategy because it's about co-creation. It's not centering myself, it's not centering my experience, my desires, it's recognising that I am in community with the people around me, with nature around me, with everybody else's ideas and with what needs to happen, what is being asked of me. And I don't think that many people, let's put this in the context of career change or even thinking of starting a business. Most people, if they're being honest, don't approach that process with the question of what is being asked of me. What can I receive or how can I receive? We very, very rarely let ourselves wait. And waiting, quite frankly, is probably the most courageous act that we can do when it comes to the course of our life, the course of our career, the course of our business. Waiting is terrifying because it involves such faith that the signals will come, that the calling will come in its own time and in its own way. And it requires us to sit back, to sit with discomfort. and to focus on making ourselves ready rather than rushing forward.
So I wonder for you, my parting invitation this week, what would it be like to simply wait for a while? Can you let yourself just wait? Wait, if you possibly can, without expectation. So just for a while, you're not going to reach, you're not going to strive, you're not going to solve, you're not even going to create. You're just going to wait and see what happens next. Because it's only in that kind of space that we allow any kind of co-creation to happen. when we're reaching striving solving creating There's such a busyness to that, there's such a noisiness to it, that there's very little space to hear, to see, to receive what else might be out there, what the clues might be, the signals, the signs, the invitations. So can you wait? Can you make space for those intangible magical things and can you focus on preparing to receive.
I'd like to leave you with a suggestion for some further listening which is episode seven of the podcast where I worked with Shweta and I think the title of the podcast is Pause is a Career Power Move and really our coaching in that session was about me helping Shweta to follow her powerful instinct. that what she needed to do was pause. But at the time that I spoke to her, she was in a very emotionally challenging place. And she was really struggling with this idea of pause. She was really scared about what it was going to mean for her career to have this lengthening gap in her CV. And she felt like every day that passed this gap became more pronounced, became more of a problem. But she knew, and you can hear in the episode, she knew that what she needed to do was just be still and receive. And that's really the first part of Shweta's story, because I've spoken to her again in recent months, and she did allow herself to pause and she did allow herself to be guided and to receive. And she is in an incredible place now doing work that she feels deeply, deeply connected to, and she didn't reach for it, she didn't strive for it, it came to her and she was ready to receive it. And it's been incredible to hear her story and her spiritual approach to finding her regenerative work. And I'm hoping to welcome Shweta back to the podcast in the coming weeks so that you can hear. that second part of her story and take inspiration from her as I have done. Thank you for listening today.
I hope you've enjoyed this new style of podcast today, a little more reflective, sitting in discomfort, sitting with questioning, sitting with this strategy of waiting to respond. I look forward to spending time with you again next week.
