How can Human Design enhance your travel experiences?
Welcome to another blog and episode of the Travel and Work with Human Design podcast.
And of course I talk about Human Design a lot, and I do want to take you on my journey, how I see the world, how I use Human Design, but that travel component, you might think, where does that come from?
Well, I love travel!
I’ve been traveling to foreign countries since I was 18 and I’ve been to
41 countries so far. I’ve been on a world trip in 2010 and 2011 and I actually have another world trip coming up. And for me travel is part of my identity. The quest to see new places is something that lights up my day and the whole travel planning process is one of my biggest hobbies actually.
But also to revisit places that I’ve been before, to meet up with friends from all over the world, to see my university friends from my time that I spent at NAU in Arizona. There’s so many reasons why I love travel.
In this blog we delve into how Human Design principles can revolutionize your approach to travel, offering insights and strategies tailored to your unique design. I share my own experience how I use the my sacral inner authority in my travel planning process.
If you don’t know what your inner authority is, create here your free Human Design chart by filling in your birthday, birth time & birth place. Your inner Authority, or personal decision making tool and will be listed under your chart!
Whether you’re a seasoned globetrotter or planning your first trip, this blogpost and podcast episode provides invaluable guidance to planning your next journey with ease and joy. Focus mode on and embark on a transformative travel experience through the lens of Human Design!
Key Take Aways
- Understanding how you can use your types strategy to help you approach travel planning in a practical way. I give you an example for a Generator in this blog.
- Why it is essential to calm your money mindset and nervous center before you dive into the process of travel planning.
- How you can observe your Root center and feel if your Root pulse is on or not. Are you in a state of “not doing” or “doing”?
Discover how tools like Trello not only keep your travel information organized but also serve as triggers and re-triggers for generators, allowing you to pace your trip planning in alignment with your energy levels.
Learn to honor your own inner authority while giving others in your travel party also the opportunity to listen to their bodies, in your travel planning decision-making process.
What role does Human Design play in travel planning?
I actually do use Human Design in my travel planning process. When we look at how you can practically apply Human Design in your day to day life, this is how I am using Human Design in my travel planning process.
As you can imagine, if you travel a lot, there’s a lot of work that has to be done to actually make those trips happen. And I really am a planner. So there are a lot of people who might wing a trip, but for me, that is not good for my nervous system. Also since I do have a home base in the Netherlands and I also have cats at home, I do need to arrange something for me to be able to travel.
The start of a trip planning process starts with setting the basics and these basics often are the flights because the flights will give me the dates. Once I have the dates, then I can arrange the cat sitters and start planning the details within those foundations of my trip.
So I have a world trip coming up and. I already made this decision. I already booked a segment of my trip a couple months ago, but I didn’t have the space and energy to basically do the rest of my trip planning process. When you are super busy, when there’s lots going on, you have a very full agenda, like I had for the last couple of months, then there’s not really much space to be creative and travel planning is something that costs some energy. It’s not something that comes out of nowhere. You do need to do a lot of work for it. You need to do the research. You need to kind of dive into the details of what you want to do and how you can best find the travel deals, et cetera, or at least that’s what I do.
But hey, I am a 5/ 1 Sacral generator. So I love that researching part.
Why is a calm nervous system crucial for travel planning?
In order to be able to plan a trip the first thing that you need is time. And most of all, energy. So if you are feeling overwhelmed or stressed of already having too many tasks on your plate, then you will never enjoy this process the way that I’m enjoying this process right now, planning a trip.
Because you need a little bit more white space in your agenda. So when you have a calm nervous system, when you’re not stressed, when you actually have the imagination capacity and the creativity to look at travel as a fun puzzle that you need to solve, then that is the first ingredient of planning a trip.
So when you are not feeling energized, take care of yourself first, have self care, sleep more. Have more rest and I can guarantee you, once you’ve reached a calmer state in your life and in your agenda, then suddenly the thought of planning a trip can be very fun instead of just another task on your list.
So, for me, that is the first ingredient.
Use your Generator Strategy "Wait to respond" in your Travel prepping fase
The second ingredient, like I mentioned, I’m a generator. I need to be triggered. So there’s action, reaction, action, reaction. So I need a trigger. And it’s so funny because I knew that I wanted to plan this trip, and I was triggered a couple of months ago because I booked one segment of it. But I didn’t have the metal capacity at that time to finish that.
So I waited and I waited and I waited until I got triggered again. It’s so important to have a trigger. You feel this spark of energy, then create, drop everything, create some time to work on your travel plan because this is the moment to act.
You’ve waited long enough and now it’s time to do something.
Make use of your Root Pulse when you are moving from "brainstorming to booking" in a travel planning process.
And that kind of brings me to my third point that I want to make here. And that is a root pulse. So I have a defined root center. And the root center is the little square in your Human Design chart, that’s on the bottom.
If you don’t have your Human Design chart, I will link the link in the show notes. But on my website, you can get a Human Design chart for free. You only need your birth time, your birthplace, and your birthday. And then you can generate the chart.
So I have my root defined. As they say, it’s colored in.
I have a definition there. The channel of concentration. So my root is defined, but it doesn’t mean that it’s always on. We kind of call that our root pulse. So, the root is considered the center of adrenaline and it’s a pressure center.
It’s the pressure to do. And it’s really interesting because when you think of the pressure to do, you immediately think of adrenaline. But it’s not that that root pulse is always on. And that’s because actually when you look at hexagrams of the I Ching, most of the foundation of the gates that are in the root centers actually the place of rest and joy.
So it’s actually also the center of calmness. So when you have calmness in your body and then you get triggered and suddenly the root pulse goes on and. There you go. Adrenaline pumps and you spurt into action. There’s energy to do. So, that root pulse is something that can go on and off. And once that root pulse is on, when you have a defined root center, then there you go, you have the energy available, the adrenaline is pumping through your body, and this is the time for action.
If you have your root center undefined, this process may be a little bit different because it depends on who you are surrounding yourself with, if you feel that pressure or not, and you actually amplify that pressure to do or the pressure to not do.
How can Trello streamline your travel planning process.
The other thing that I do in my process and how I use Human Design is that I like to keep things organized. So I am quite structured when I’m travel planning. I used to do everything in Excel. I’ve added next to Excel another tool and that’s Trello. So I create a Trello board for my trip planning.
And the reason why I do that is because you need to gather a lot of information about routes and driving times and flight options and car rentals and all these different facets of a trip.
Sometimes you also need to have conversations about this travel information with others, especially if you’re traveling together with somebody else.
And I found that Trello is a very handy tool to have all the information in one place about a trip. It’s also a great way to communicate with somebody else so you can make decisions together in a more aligned way. So when the information is all there, then you can each have your own inner authority and follow your own inner authority when you’re making your travel decisions.
Because In essence, when you look at travel planning, it’s gathering information, and then once you have the information, you have to make a lot of decisions about what you are going to do, what you’re going to do with this information, what choices do you make, what options you have. And there, your inner authority is something really, really valuable.
My Trello Board consists of a few tabs, and I will walk you through it. So my Trello Board starts with a very nice picture of the destination that I’m going to in the background, because Hey, I’m a generator. I need something to respond to. Right. So for me, that starts the anticipation and the fun, the pre fun before this trip is literally see where I’m going.
And I create a list with my route and I do that by creating a card for every day. So, if I go on a Monday and I fly, then I will start on a Monday. I use the date and which day of the week it is, and the destination that I’m going to, and then everything about that day. So, my accommodation.
The activities, restaurants, reservations, they’re all logged into this Trello cart, if you will. And so everything is kept together in that sense. So I have a list with the route consisting of a cart for every day.
My next list is a message list for my travel buddy. So here I address decisions that need to be made or information that she needs to know or, anything that we need to make a decision on together. So this is a way that she can, See, Hey, this is something that I need to have a look at.
And then I have another list for messages for me. So whenever she has replied, she can move that card into my list. So then I get notified whenever she is ready and I can. Look at what she has commented on the things that I wanted to share with her.
Then I have another list to kind of imagine what kind of experiences you want a wishlist.
This is a fun way to start a trip. It’s not just about food, but it’s more about, I want to experience a sunset or I want to experience at least one hot tub or spa activity in my trip.
So that’s the wishlist for that. And then I have another list in my Trello board, which is a wishlist for the destinations. So here I start with my travel trip planning. And that is by plugging in a card, a Trello card for every destination that I want to visit. These are often national parks and state parks, really cool, natural environments that I want to visit in a specific destination, but also cultural activities or museums.
Anything that in that brainstorming phase, when you’re preparing for a trip, that is something that I create in that wishlist. And again, this gives me something to respond to because action reaction as a generator, action reaction. It’s not often that you plan your entire trip in one day or one hour, if you will.
So, It really helps to go back to this place and have something to resonate with, because every time you see that destination and you get excited by it and start researching about it and then bit by bit, you’re building your trip. So for me, that Trello board is such a handy tool.
Why is honoring the personal inner authority essential in decision making
And when we have all the information and I do want to stress this, especially when you’re traveling with more people in your travel party honor each other’s inner authorities!
So I have a Sacral authority. The red square with a 2 in the above picture of the hierarchy of the 9 centers of the Human Design that reveals how your personal decision making tool operates. About 34,67% of the world population has a Sacral inner Authority according to the theory and statistics of Jovian Archive, the official source of the Human Design system.
And that means that I can make quick decisions based on yes, no questions. And I usually like to do that by somebody else asking me a question, a Sacral question, if you will.
But I also have a way that I can double check. And kind of feel what’s happening in my body because I’ve been quite in tune with my sacral response and I feel if I want to do something or not, I actually hear it in my ears.
But for every generator with a Sacral authority that’s different .
And an inner authority is our decision making tool of our body. It’s basically our body’s way of saying, yes, I have energy available for this. So for me. listening to my sacral and I actually can hear my sacral response. I’m quite in tune with my sacral response. So for me, that is what I listened too.
Making decisions together with your travel buddy.
But you might have somebody in your travel group that has an emotional authority. That is the triangle on the right with a 1 in the above picture. About 46,97% of the worlds population has an Emotional Inner Authority.
And when you’re dealing with somebody with an emotional authority, it is always good to give them time to make decisions. Even though my root pulse is on and fired up, it’s always good to honor everybody’s inner authorities in your travel party.
So let them come to a decision for themselves, even though that might take a little bit longer for them to make a decision. And you can balance that. Some decisions you need to make quickly. I mean, if you spend a lot of time researching flights we all know that tomorrow the prices will be different again.
So, for me, if you look at efficiency of your time, If you find it, book it, because the chances are that if you wait longer and longer and longer, the price will only go up. Yeah, so of course, there’s decisions and there’s decisions.
So, have a look at who is in your travel party. How do you travel together and do you know how they make decisions based on what their body tells them?
And again, if you don’t know their charts, you can look them up here or even better let them look them up on at the free resources section, because it’s so useful to know your Human Design chart when you’re traveling together, but that will definitely be a different topic for a different episode.
Don't want to read but listen to this podcast episode?
What strategies can Generators employ for stress free travel?
I want to leave you with this idea that travel is so fun and you can use Human Design in your travel planning process. , if I sum up what my tips are. In a nutshell, it is wait until you have the right trigger. Check with yourself if you have a calm nervous system.
You’re going to spend a lot of money on this trip and the whole money mindset aspect, again, a whole different episode, but it still has a lot to do with a calm nervous system. So whenever you feel anxious or not sure if you want to spend this money on this trip, wait, because waiting is a way for us generators to find the right triggers.
But once you have that trigger, feel if you have a root pulse that is on, and if you have an undefined root center, check in with yourself. If you feel that pressure, if you feel that this is a good time, do you have the energy to start moving into action.
Then work out the details. So think about what do you desire?
Where do you want to go? What kind of experience do you want to have? What kind of sites do you want to visit?
Think about your Future Self!
And then also visualize your travel day. There’s a lot of choices to be made in this whole process. And sometimes the cheapest ticket is not always the best ticket, because if you have to get up at five in the morning to catch your morning flight, that seems a very good idea right now because you want to save money, but when you are getting up at five o’clock for your flight. You might think, why did I make this choice to save a couple bucks?
So try to visualize how your future self will kind of experience this trip . So if you visualize your day and how your day will look like, If you need to travel because travel can be very exhausting, especially on days with long flights and layovers.
So thinking about our future self is really helpful in the travel planning process.
It’s really important that you gather all the details so you can have something to respond to, but also to make decisions based on the information that you have. use Excel, use a Trello board use a list that works for you!
And then, when you are in the decision making mode, honor your inner authority, but also think about the inner authorities of the people that you’re traveling with.
Quick links
- Read more information about the Hexagon of Freedom
- Plan your matching call in my agenda.
Do you want a stress free travel life?
I am super excited for trip planning again.
Travel can bring us so many wonderful experiences, it’s also a growing process.
Because you always get something out of a trip that you will not get if you’re in your normal routine. But yeah, for me, my life is all about having no stress and that includes having no travel stress. So, by listening to my energy, listening to my body, now when I’m planning this trip, but also thinking about my future self.
That really helps me in creating a stress free life for myself. If you want to learn to practically apply Human Design in your travel life then perhaps the Hexagon of Freedom is something of interest to you. In my signature group coaching program we look at life through the lens of Human Design. How can you practically use and apply it in your day to day life and in your work. Take a peek at the information page if you are curious to learn more about the online course, 1:1 coaching sessions and group zoom sessions of this transformative program.
I wish you a very happy rest of your day and thank you for spending some time with me.
