Welcome to the Unfolding podcast. I am Erica Voell. I am a Decision Mentor and an Inner Trust Guide, and I work with women mainly those in midlife trust their inner guidance, understand their unique strengths, and stop saying yes to what drain them. Using Human Design coaching and reiki, we clear the noise so that their no feels powerful and their yes feels true. You know how sometimes you'll have a conversation with a friend and things keep. Popping up in your world that remind you of that conversation. I'm not talking about the weird ads that suddenly appear in Facebook or your Instagram feed. I'm talking about someone else mentioning the same thing to you that was not part of the original conversation. Or you see an article headline or you're listening to your favorite podcast and a guest starts talking about the same thing. I know you've had these experiences. Well, I've had that same experience with the last few podcast episodes I've recorded. I recorded them. I published them and then out of nowhere, something completely related comes up in a conversation with someone. Someone who doesn't even listen to the podcast, most likely. So I'm taking it as a sign that I'm not done talking about this subject because it keeps coming up several times in several different places. It's happened after the last few episodes about self-help books and strategies and advice, and with the expectations and the disappointments. And maybe it's 'cause I need to learn it more than you need to hear it. Isn't that the case for most things? I was at a gathering recently and the conversation turned to spending money on ourselves and it hit me again, this is all connected, the wrong strategy, the expectations and worthiness. Someone said she had no problem spending money to send her kid to summer camp, but has a really hard time spending that kind of money on herself. Spending $600 on herself feels unheard of, but she's willing to spend that for summer camp. Not for a retreat for herself, or even a weekend getaway, or even a a hundred dollars massage. I get it. I do the same thing. If I do spend that money, then there's that sense of guilt. That money could have gone to buy new shoes for my kid who seems to outgrow them every few months or groceries or something more practical. When you fly, how often are you told to put on your own oxygen mask before you help everyone else? It's every time you fly, but how often in everyday life do you actually put on your own oxygen mask first? Most of the time as women, we don't, because we're taught. Especially as women in our society to be self-sacrificing, even if it means being over committed, we need to be the helper, or we need to be the volunteer for the school trip, or we need to contribute baked goods to a group meeting to be the good one or the reliable one. And deep down resentment really starts to build. And our kids, and sometimes our partners then begin to expect us to drop everything for their needs. And yeah, I know when kids are tiny, they don't know any better. But I'm talking about the teens and the tweens and the adults, that then creates this expectation that they need to be the ones catered to and that their needs come before your own. And we wonder why we feel so exhausted and sometimes invisible. I talk to a lot of moms who are just like, I just feel like I'm doing everything for my kids. And we start to believe that our own needs come last or worse, that our own needs don't matter at all. Glennon Doyle says, "Every time you're given a choice between disappointing someone else and disappointing yourself. Your duty is to disappoint someone else." But how often do we actually do that? I would bet it's less than 10% of the time. So many of us live in this fear. This quiet fear of disappointing others. We're afraid of disappointing our kids or our partners, or our bosses or our coworkers because we may not see ourselves as good enough or being worthy or deserving of that time or that money for ourselves, and we don't wanna spend the money. And even worse, we don't want to bother people. We don't want to take up their time. And here's what I wanna say, that story, it did not start with you. It was taught to us and crazily enough. It even shows up in our human design chart for some of us proving our worth shows up in the ego or the will center. That's the little triangle off center in your chart. And if yours is white or open, that means worthiness has been a life-long journey and it is a life lesson. You have nothing to prove and you are worthy just for existing. That belief that you're worthy just for existing is not something that we were taught as kids. I do think that things are getting better for the younger generations, but for those who are in Generation X and the older millennials, it was not taught to us. It was not taught to me, and this shows up in my chart too. It explains so much about my entire life from about age six. That need to prove that I need to feel like I need to earn my worth, that my worth was tied to how productive I was, how good my grades were in school, how kind I was, and that gift that I made for a friend. I believed that the more I did for others, the more worthy that made me of their love and their friendship. And as I have dug into this, I have learned that this isn't just me. This is not a story that I, the only person that inherited many, many, many, many others did. I taught a recent class on the human design centers, and I asked everyone to raise their hand if they felt that they needed to prove their worth. Every person that raised their hand, I knew exactly who they were. They all had an undefined ego center or will center. People with defined egos were shocked. They had no idea that their friends, their colleagues, or even family were walking around with this heavy story of that I am not enough and I need to prove my worth. This didn't surprise me. This has been the story of my life. And I've learned that others who also have this undefined, that this has also been a struggle for their entire life, and that's why human design has been such a life changing tool for me and for my clients. It's about finally having a language for your lived experience and knowing that there is nothing wrong with you. It's a language that says you are worthy even when you're not producing, even when you say no, and that rest is valuable. And then take this worthiness, but then also pair it with the cosmic energy that we're in. In human design. There are transits a lot like astrology. It's the placement of each planet and the sun and the moon within the system. In human design, think of it as a large circle divided into 64 sections or gates, and that's comes from the Chinese I-Ching. And right now at the end of September into early October, the sun is in gate 18. And 18 is all about wholeness, about seeing where we cut ourselves into pieces. The parts we like, and the parts that we hide because we think they are unworthy. Every gate has a positive side or healthy side, and a negative or unhealthy side. Sometimes you'll hear it called the wisdom and the shadow. And human design coach Christie Inge wrote in her latest newsletter about Gate 18, and it just gave me chills. On the positive end of the gate 18 spectrum, she wrote, human design Gate 18 is the energy for seeing the wholeness in all things. Gate 18 understands that the only thing that needs to be fixed is the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and others. "It easily sees the stories of brokenness that are playing out in the collective and helps others to transform those stories into wholeness. "And on the negative end of the spectrum, gate 18 is the energy for beating yourself up with negative self-talk or being hyper-focused on the flaws and the mistakes of others. "It drives complaining, gossiping, worrying, and needing to be right. This, of course, only perpetuates stories of brokenness." Wow. Like I said earlier, when I read that it gave me chills because I've been there and I actually have gate 18 in my chart, so it feels very real for me. But let's be honest, we may know we're worthy in one area of our life, but there's another part of us that doesn't feel worthy, like thinking we're not worthy of a promotion or of spending money on ourselves or of someone else's time, whatever it may be. It's a story we have attached to ourselves and it makes us feel like we either need to be right in an argument or we're hyper-focused on how others are not doing it right, which, when we dig in a little deeper, is really a statement about ourselves. And these worthiness stories can grow and grow and grow under the surface until one day it pops up at the most random time. For me, it often happened during performance reviews at work, I would underrate myself, even if part of me thought, "I did this really well, but I didn't do a plus work. I only did B plus work." And it's not always about money either. It shows up in the stories we carry about not feeling seen. Not feeling like our work deserves to be shared or feeling like we don't want to ask for help because we don't wanna bother anyone. It's not trusting ourselves to be worthy of taking up space. I was on a call recently with someone and I knew I had struck a nerve when I asked if she felt stuck because she didn't feel like her work was worth being out in the world. She paused and shared some things with me, and as we kept talking. I noticed it really came back to worth, but she wasn't willing to say that. Who was she to take up space with her work when there are so many others doing something similar? But she can only do it with her unique voice. And, and that's what this episode is really about, that quiet voice that says, who am I to want this? Who am I to do this? And my answer is for me and to you, You are. You are worthy of this. And that's all that matters. That's enough. So as we wrap up today, I wanna leave you with this. Where are you feeling unworthy? Is there a part of your life that you feel unworthy? Is there something that doesn't feel quite right? Is there something that you're telling yourself that you can't do or somewhere you can't go because you don't feel like you are worthy? Maybe because you feel like you aren't worth the money, not because it's impossible, but because you don't think you deserve it. I truly get having financial constraints. I'm right there with you. But are you spending money on your kid or on your partner? And could you set aside some for yourself to do what you truly desire, something you really want to do, something that may help you make that next step. This is something I'm working on with myself also. So until next time, thank you for joining me. If you wanna learn more about your human design, I invite you to hop on a call with me so we can talk about where worthiness shows up in your human design chart and what it says about your worthiness story, and we'll take a look together. If you love this conversation, tap the plus sign to follow the show. And if you're feeling generous, leave me a quick review so more people can find Unfolding. And of course, if there is someone you care about who needs to hear this, please send it their way. Be well and I'll talk to you soon.