Just My Type #4: Find Inspiration Based on Your Human Design
Just My Type explores the ways our personality, fears and motivations impact our writing and, using personality types, provides suggestions for tailoring your writing practice to who you are as a unique, creative human.
Human Design is a system that shows you how you can live in better alignment with who you are. Based on a combination of ancient and modern philosophies and systems like Western astrology, chakras, Kabbalah, quantum physics and the I Ching, Human Design uses the date, time and place you were born to create your body graph or chart (you can get your chart for free here). Each chart, based on the human body, consists of nine body centers, as well as sixty-four gates and thirty-six channels connecting them, that represent different types of energy and how they show up for you in your life.
While the centers work together to represent you as a whole, each center has its own purpose and knowing your own centers can help you learn more about how to show up in your own life. For writers and other creatives, one of the most important centers of influence is the Crown. The Crown center is at the very top of your chart and is the center of inspiration, questions, and ideas. The Crown is also considered a pressure center. The pressure we feel from the crown is a pressure to ask and answer questions and find meaning. It’s the center that makes us want to make sense of the world around us.
A body center can be either defined/closed or undefined/open; defined centers represent a consistent and sustained energy that resists influence from the outside world, while undefined centers are more open to outside influence and conditioning. In your chart, you can tell whether a center is defined if it shows up in color; undefined centers are represented by the color white. As a writer, knowing whether your Crown is defined or undefined can help you better understand where your best ideas come from and how to seek out inspiration in a way that works best for you.
Undefined Crown
With an undefined Crown, you draw inspiration from the world around you. You feel inspired by anything and everything from books, films, TV shows and podcasts to museums, galleries, and anywhere stimulating and full of people or art.
When you’re looking for inspiration for your writing, try to get out in the world and soak up some of the energy and art around you. Go browse a bookstore or gallery, see a movie, or go sit in a coffee shop and people watch. To gather inspiration from home, try watching a new movie or show, flip through a magazine, read a collection of short stories, or browse Pinterest and create a mood board.
Unfortunately, since you tend to get inspiration externally and soak up the energy of others, it can be difficult to tell whether you are truly inspired by an idea or topic or whether you are simply inspired by someone else’s energy or passion. It can also be easy for you to get overwhelmed with ideas and struggle to decide which to pursue, because you feel excited about all of them. When you’re feeling creatively overwhelmed, it’s important to take quiet time for yourself to let your mind and ideas settle. Take some time to begin writing down the different ideas you have so you don’t forget them, and then allow yourself to mull them over and start to let those ideas grow or fizzle out naturally.
Defined Crown
If you have a defined Crown, you have a consistent internal source of inspiration. You’re constantly thinking and questioning everything. You’re likely a daydreamer, and it’s easy for you to get lost in your thoughts because your inspiration tends to come primarily from within you rather than from the world around you. You tend to find inspiration best through quiet time and reflection, and might find the external world to be a distraction at times, rather than an inspiration.
When you’re looking for inspiration for your writing, think about what you feel most curious about. What questions do you find yourself asking? What subjects do you most enjoy researching and investigating? What do you daydream about? All of these things might make good topics for your writing. You may also want to try doing some reflection and journaling in order to determine what themes often come up for you in your life and your thoughts. Regardless of the type of writing you do, whether nonfiction or fiction, journaling and reflecting on your own life can help you figure out where you find meaning in life and how you can make sure your writing includes themes and subjects that are important to you as a person.
Where those with a defined Crown can struggle most is in translating big, abstract ideas into more concrete, specific works, especially if you don’t have an active connection of channels to your throat center (the center of communication). This is another area in which journaling can help. Try doing some freewriting about your ideas, keep questioning them and see where they take you.
