By Kerry Pieri

Images by Kenny Germe

The most basic question one can ask is “who am I?”  But it’s one that we tend to outsource more than we should, out of exhaustion, or confusion, or desperation. If we’re able to get a handle on it, it is also the ultimate springboard to answer the other important questions, like what is my purpose and where is the best career trajectory for me? “We can't pretend that the business that we work in or the business that we have is a separate entity from us,” human design expert Maike Gabriela says. But, as she explains, “Your purpose is not your Instagram bio, it’s not your job, it’s who you’ve come here to be.”   

Human Design can hold the key to many of our unanswered questions, not as a prediction, but as a guide to help us recognize how we actually see the world, react to the world, respond, learn, and interact with each other. And finding and living in our purpose is such a huge aspect of that. “The thing that I've noticed is that the more I expand my business, the more I'm personally asked to expand. I feel like that is a universal experience.” Gabriela explains. “We cannot pretend that the business or what we work at isn’t utilizing so much of our energy. It's so much of our passion hopefully. It's such a big aspect of our life. They're constantly working together or they can be working against each other.” 

So how does looking into our charts [get yours here] help us map that more efficiently? “Human design allows us to really remove resistance and find flow, and it will make your life so much more joyful, and it will help you love and accept yourself more. It just brings so much ease into life,” Gabriela says. Below, the former model and current human design coach and instructor breaks down where to look in your chart for the key to discovering your life’s purpose. 

We can’t talk about human design and purpose without getting into yours. How did you get into human design and then decide to make it your career?

I really think that I was magically supported for that to open up to me. I was going through an incredible rock bottom. I had a newborn baby, I had an autoimmune disease. I had a sustainable underwear brand that wasn't working, and I was just praying to all and everything to please make me understand why I thought I was doing everything right, working so many hours, and putting so much effort and energy into making things work, and nothing was working. I could not understand why my soul desired something so strongly, and I was just hitting my head against the wall.

And then one of those dark winter, depressing nights where I was in between feedings with my daughter, just so exhausted and desperate and clueless and lost, I heard something about being a projector in human design on a podcast, and I was like, "I have no idea what this is, but this is who I am and everything in my life makes sense." 

Now, thinking back, it sounds a bit woo, but I really feel like I received instant miraculous healing in that moment because all my internal dialogue shifted. I thought something must be wrong with me. God doesn't love me, the universe doesn't love me. I am faulty. I am messed up.

And then, when I understood that it had nothing to do with me, but that actually because I was working against who I am authentically, against my energetic authenticity and who I am as a person, and that the universe could not support me because I wasn't in my purpose. I wasn't expressing the gift that I'm meant to express in this lifetime with the world. And that was revelatory to me, and that's nearly seven years ago now. And back then, everything was so ugly in human design. It was like Windows 95 design. I thought, "How can it be that this incredible, important information is locked behind this ugly aesthetic?" 

How did you take that aha moment into practice?

I used to work as a model, a creative director and art director, fashion creative thing. I’m also a Libra rising. So I was like, the only thing I know I can contribute to the human design space is that I can make it easier to understand and more beautiful because people need to have access to this. And a lot of people think that beautiful things can be seen as superficial, but I think that there's such a depth to it. I think that all of us that resonate with a certain aesthetic, it's signalized that we have a higher frequency of sensitivity to things, and we operate on a different energetic level than people that don't have that aesthetic sensibility.

So I think that it just helped me also find my people, my tribe in human design, we call them my fractals, and my life just changed dramatically. It was incredible. I could not understand how suddenly everything was so aligned, and everything magically worked out, and I was getting booked out. I was booked out a month in advance for two years. And I was like, "That's how living in a flow feels." And that life that opened up to me is like a million times better than what I thought I had to be in order to get what I thought I wanted.

Just going a little bit further with it, why, in particular, do you think being a Projector aligned with this path and not what you had been doing?

I think it's quite interesting because I have the transformational human design certification, where I am supporting hundreds of beautiful souls to learn how to read a human design body graph and become human design readers themselves. And since I was a kid, I always saw people so deeply. And that is because projectors have this penetrative focused aura that we always see to the core of the people. And I use it all the time, but because it wasn't focused and I didn't get recognition and I was so lost and I was doing things that were against my energetic authenticity, it was never received. Maybe not never, like in romantic relationships, it was great to flirt. That was incredible. For work, it was a disaster because I'm like, "You should be doing this." And people are like, "Ugh, you're so annoying. Shut up."

And so the thing about projectors is that we see things so clearly, but we need to have a system. And so for me, the human design system was that piece that helped me communicate what I'm able to see in a very clear and tangible way. 

Human design information resonates on such a deep level. We have something called cellular activation, which is one of the things that I'm most fascinated with. It is the mutation that happens when you get an oral activation. So the human design language carries a certain frequency. With its words, it's meant to awaken your dormant DNA, so that you start your deconditioning process. And I've seen lives transform, really, miraculous healing, all immune disease is gone. People regaining their confidence, feeling good in their body, like weight issues, abundance, purpose, focus, better relationship with family, with children. It's incredible to watch people go through the process. It's the most beautiful thing ever.

It sounds like it's not only about hearing what we truly are, but also a lot of letting go of what we're not.

We're so focused on "You need this morning routine, you need to train. You need 30 grams of protein for your breakfast now." It's piling on top, on top, on top. I'm not somebody who's meant to hustle all the time. So I think it's more about letting go of what we're not, instead of hiding behind things that we do to be perfect and earn that thing of "Now, I'm worthy of success," or, "Now, I'm worthy of love." I am really not a fan of needing to heal. I feel like healing is something that has kept a lot of people very small. "No, I can't find the love of my life until I'm healed. No, I can't find my purpose until I'm healed." Well, then, just pack your bags and go back to bed because that won't happen.

But for me, the most miraculous thing, and I was sick to the point that I couldn't comb my own hair with my autoimmune disease, I couldn't cut my food. I was really going through it. And the thing that I've really learned in my life is that the biggest lesson that we have is living life. There's no workshop, there's no shadow integration. There's no subconscious reprogramming that will substitute living life, because life will teach you. Life will trigger you. Life will put obstacles in your way.

And only when we live life, when we get challenged to the point that we are able to overcome our personal limitations will we be able to live a more bountiful, loving, fearless life. 

Amazing. What are the key elements to look for in your human design chart when you want to particularly focus on career and purpose?

I think this is really interesting because I have so many clients who are like, "What is my job?" And I'm like, "Well, we can't figure that out in human design. This is not how it works. You're so much more than your job title or the sentence you put in your Instagram bio." People want very concrete things like, "Am I good at this job?" You'll have people that have the same designs, but their epigenetics, their environment is completely different. And so we will all tap into our unique gifts in a completely different way.

So I always go to the basics. The thing that you always have to go back to is, are you living an energetic authenticity? That is your main purpose, that is your job, and you apply that to everything.

So as a projector, I'm here to guide. So no matter where I go, no matter what I do, no matter who I talk to, I will try to bring in that perspective that I have, and I will try to just use that penetrative aura. And it doesn't matter, the job will come, the purpose will come, it will open itself up to me.

Where else in their human design charts can people look?

I think the ego is an interesting energy center to take into account when we're looking at business, because it has a lot to do with the material world. Understanding the energy center of the ego—the ego is willpower, the ego is ambition, the ego is competition. It's money, and it's a lot of self-worth. And so what we can see when we have, for example, an open ego, which is 70% of the population, everywhere where we have an open energy center in our design, it's a karmic life lesson. Meaning if you have an open energy center of the ego, you are meant to have obstacles around making money—sustaining money, saving money, investing money, all of the money things.

What will happen, you might get money, but then it just falls through the opening because you don't know how to hold it, because it's open and it will just run through. And so you can either let life teach you, or you can just really understand, "Okay, in this lifetime, I'm going to have to learn how to manage money. I'm going to have to look at my bank account. I'm going to figure out a way to get myself out of debt if I'm in debt.” So you can study it, you can get a course, whatever it is, you've got to look at it because that's your lesson.

And how does the ego show up in daily life?

The way that this shows up in ambition and in work is that if you have an open ego, your work has to be more than just money. What you do with your life has to be more than just a monetary compensation. And so you will also have the capacity to understand how success looks like for a lot of different people. And it's actually in your lifelong purpose to discover what actual success looks like for you personally.  You'll understand what somebody like one of those finance bros think their version is the way to live a successful life. And you'll also understand why somebody who's moved to Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, whatever, and is living a bohemian life, and why that is success to them.

And so it's within you to figure that out, because when we're open, we get influenced by society. We get influenced by the dominance of the energy that surrounds us. So the reason we have such unstable and such exaggerated ways of living, where somebody is super wealthy and super ostentatious and super bling bling, and the other person is rejecting all of that saying, "People with money are evil and blah, blah, blah," it's because there's no actual balance. Nobody's living balanced energy. So that is because when you're open, you're taking in and you're amplifying. And it is way harder to figure out, "What is my personal path to success?" versus, "How am I getting influenced by what I think success has to look like?"

If you have a defined ego, willpower is an important thing because we live in this over productive society where you’ve got to hustle, you’ve got to do... And your value is attached to that. 

So what are the main practical takeaways from knowing your ego?

It's really important to understand that in order for you to be successful as an open ego, the arrow needs to be pulled back. And the moment that the arrow gets pulled back, that's when, on a Monday morning, you take a bath or you take a hot girl walk or whatever, and you take a breath. And that is a moment where you will get access to that one genius idea that will allow your arrow to get to its destination. And that is the only way that you will be able to compete with the 30% of the people that do have a defined ego. Because people who have a defined ego, they're always on. They are going for what their heart is desiring. They have consistent willpower. It's a very small energy center, but it's a very strong one. So it's drive, it's energy. And these are people that have a very intuitive kind of way of understanding money. Money is not a lesson to them. They might have more, have less, but it's never something that is going to disrupt their life unless there's a very strong generational trauma. But what happens is that because this dominant energy is kind of ruling you because you're open, you might get confused, and you're like, "Oh, I’ve got to keep up with these people.” And then you're just running behind them completely out of breath, trying to catch up, but you will never catch up because it's not authentic to who you are.

And so when you take that break and you have access to that genius idea, you can actually just really overcome them. So that is an important one. If you have an open ego, you're not here to compete, you're not here to compare. And it doesn't mean you can't have money. Dolly Parton has an open ego, and she's doing pretty well.

She's doing great.

So there is no limitation. There's only ways of understanding our lessons so that they can help us access our full potential. 

I love that. What else specifically should people look at in their charts as it relates to career and purpose? Is it mainly energy types?

I think what could be interesting, actually, instead of going into the energy types, is talking about how your profile is meant to show up in work. We have profiles 1 to 6, and then we have the conscious and the unconscious. But I'm just going to go through 1 to 6, and then everybody can map out how they have a mix of both. So the goal is to find balance between the internal side, the way you feel about yourself and how you show up in the world, and how people project on you and want you to show up and what they need from you. That is the balance within the profile.

1:  

So if you have a 1 in your profile, in business, you're meant to be doing a lot of research. You're the Investigator, you're the person who knows all the facts. You want to know all of the things before you start. You only feel comfortable once you really have wrapped up this bunch of receipts. Literally, “I have the receipts. I know all of the things, I've done all of the studies.” I get very triggered by the 1, but I need it for my business. And so I swear, every time there's something unclear, the 1s are like, "Let's investigate." Okay, you can do that, and I love it. And even if you are on social media and you're sharing on social media, people will want to have facts. People will want to have scientific proof, if you're talking about health issues or whatever. If you pull out the data, that's what people want to hear from you.

2: 

If you have a 2 in your profile, then you actually just have a natural talent for things. People that have a 2 are the ones that I've envied all my school life. Those are the people that show up an hour early before the exam, and they just ace it. And I've been studying for three weeks. And so I'm like, "Why is the world so unfair?" So the 2 lines, they're really great at doing the things that they're naturally good at doing. They often don't see what talent they have. And so other people are like, "Whoa, you can do that?" And they'll be like, "Yeah, you can't?" And everybody's like, "No." And they're like, "Well, that's interesting. This is so easy for me." So the 2s are very good at being creative. Maybe they play a ton of different instruments just like that. They're really great at learning languages. They're just born with a voice. They're just born with a talent for drawing. Those are the 2s. And so the way that they show up is just by doing the thing that they love doing, having time alone for themselves so they can playfully engage in what they're good at, and we are just astonished. You know these TikToks that go viral with somebody just drawing something perfectly, and you don't even know why you're so obsessed with watching that, and it has millions of views? Those are the 2s. We're just like, "Whoa, that's so cool. No idea how somebody's able to do that."

3:

The  3s are the most unglamorous of all profiles, but we really need them. So the reason I always say the 3s are very unglamorous, is because the 3 is here to roll up the sleeves and get their hands dirty. The 3 is going to live life experiences. The 3 is going to get dirty. The 3 is going to try. The way that I run my business is that, literally, I throw spaghetti at the wall, whatever sticks, that's what we're going with. And it creates friction with the 1s because the 1s will be researching this one app or researching this one strategy or whatever for a month, and then they'll present it to me, and then I'll try it out for a week. And I'm like, "No, sorry." 

So the beautiful thing about this is that once we understand each other, we no longer see it as something that's personal against us, and we can just accept that we have different processes of moving through life. And so the 3rd line will just learn through life experience, and you'll see that. You will see it in the way that they move through life, and the way that they make decisions, and the way that they share their life. 3 lines have lived 300 million lives we try something out, it doesn’t work, we try something else, it doesn't work. Whatever!

The interesting thing for me for the 3rd line is because it can get that kind of discouraging, you try a million things and nothing is the thing that you hope was going to be the thing. So the thing about the 3rd line is that you can trust when something isn't working. You can be in your corporate America, 9:00 to 5:00, but if you know that that is no longer the path you need to go, it doesn't matter how many people around you are like, "But you have healthcare and you get paid.”  You know when it's done, it's done.

And it's the same with romantic relationships. Women, generally, I feel like we stay for forever, and we leave our partners and they're like, "Oh, why did that happen?" And you're like, "Well, I've been telling you for six months." So the 3rd line already knows way before anybody else knows. And once you trust yourself of letting go, it will be so much easier to transmute everything. And so failure is something that comes very easy to a 3rd line. Once you stop telling yourself that this failure is because there's something wrong with you, and that it's actually your natural process of learning, you won't attach a story of what it means about you when you fail. You're like, "Oh, next, move on." You have an easier way of going through it.

4:

The 4th line is really great at building strong personal relationships, but it doesn't mean that the 4th line is great for everybody. The 4th line is going to be really good if you put them in a position where they have to interact with people, but they have a very strong internal compass. If they don't like somebody, they're going to be mean.

And so what I think is so fascinating about the 4th line and something that helps them a lot to move through life is that they have this process of externalization. You usually can see a 4th line miles away because they're the one at the dinner table just streamlining a thought of consciousness. And everybody's just watching and listening. And it's not a conversation, it's an externalization. They don't care about what you have to say, and they're just informing and they're just sharing, and they're just telling the story of whatever happened in their day or whatever they're thinking, whatever they're going through. And so that helps them a lot to show up on social media. That helps them a lot to speak, to find their community. They're very community-oriented, and that's what they're good at. They're really good at meeting people. And so this is quite important because what will happen is that a lot of us are on our computers and working all day from home, and you're doing all of the workshops and all of the whatever. 

And so what happens with the 4th line is that they have to go out into the world and socialize with people. They have to go and grab a coffee with their friends because then they will meet somebody that will introduce them to somebody that will bring them business. Business in a 4th line will always come through somebody you know, and you can always know if somebody is coming through recommendation, or through a friend. That's always a good sign. The 4th opportunity comes through other people.

5. 

The fifth line are incredibly great for emergency situations—whenever there's an emergency, whenever there's drama, whenever there's fires to be put out. If you're an entrepreneur that's constantly on all the time, that's where the fifth line is going to excel. So people will rely on you whenever there's something important happening. You're the one who is cool-headed, you're the one who knows how to deal with shit, you're the one who pulls the stuff out of the gutter. You're really the person who's putting water on the fires. The fifth line thrive in an emergency, and they want to be seen like that. What can happen is that they often feel that after the fire is put out, they're meaningless. But for example, for me, I'm a three five and my fifth line is great because you'll come to me when you're in an emergency in your life, and then we'll have a reading and then I'll be able to utilize that fifth line to help you figure out whatever's happening.

Because usually, there needs to be a certain pain point for us to spend money on something that we hope will help us. I think it's different if we have a product versus if it's a spiritual thing or an energetic thing or something that is more to our personal life, like therapy.

I feel like every 5 line entrepreneur, every person who owns a business, every person who is in a business, doesn't matter if you're employed or not, you are going to feel when it's your time to shine. It's like, "The fifth line has arrived," like Superman.

So that is the energy of the fifth line. It's really somebody who remains cool when everything's drowning and who's like, "Come on, guys. Let's do it. We can do it. Bring out the buckets, get the water out of the ship." They have a very strong energy of uplifting other people and having a positive point of view and bringing the crew up.

6: 

The sixth line I think is really interesting because the sixth line has these three life phases. So the sixth line goes through different life cycles. From zero to 30, the sixth line operates like a three. So the first 30 years of experience as a sixth line, you are in that trenches. You are treading through the mud, you are falling on your ass and you're getting up and you're falling on your ass and getting up. What's interesting is that in those first 30 years of life, you really need to explore life. If you're too fearful and you are trying to avoid making mistakes and you're trying to avoid hardship, it will take longer for you to get on the roof, what we call in human design. So the first 30 years are really intense, and then you have the second life cycle, which is from 30 to 50 where you're there to take everything that you've done in the first 30 years and create something tangible with it. So a great example from the spiritual niche is Lacey Phillips from To Be Magnetic. So you can see that the first 30 years of her life, she was just struggling and trying to figure it out and being a waitress and being a chef person and doing all of the things. Then when she turned 30, she used all of this information. She used all of her suffering, all of her pain, and all of experience and created something tangible like To Be Magnetic. So I think that this is just interesting to watch because a lot of the clients that I get that have a sixth line and meet them when their Saturn return starts, which is when they feel like, "Shit, I got to get my shit together. I can't continue to just run headless through the world." Then when they're 50, they have this new revival. They've had their children or they've had whatever, there's this thing that happens when they turn 50. I always say, if you have a sixth line, you're going to travel the world. You just had a book published about the intensity of your life, and then you travel the world, talking about your life.

A really great example for me is Pamela Anderson, who I think has such a beautiful life transition to watch. So the first 30 years, if you watch the documentary on Netflix, she's like, "I have no idea how I ended up at the Playboy Mansion. I don't know what happened here." But I believe it. I literally feel like she was just like, "Whatever," trying things out and it got her there. Then when she turned 30, she got pregnant and had this whole love and separation with her then husband. Then she retracted from the limelight and everything got a little bit quiet. With 50, she starred in the Broadway show, her sons have made the Netflix documentary, part of this new makeup brand, Sonsie. So she has this whole new clean girl era now. I don't know how that happened. It's so cool. 

Is there anything else you want people to know about human design?

I truly believe that we are in an era where we have all of the information at our fingertips. You can learn anything from YouTube and TikTok. You can learn things you didn't even know you needed to learn. But there's one thing that we are just grasping to understand, and that is our energetic authenticity. So if you want to remove stagnation from our life, if you've tried everything and things aren't working out, there's somewhere you're not showing up authentically. To me, human design is that roadmap that helps you understand who you've come to be, the karma you've come to correct, how to connect with your gifts and your purpose on a level that is not tangible. It is not a strategy. It is not a one, two, three thing. 

Follow Maike Gabriela on Instagram.