Not Self Of the Mind in Human Design - Should'ing Yourself in Business The HD Your Biz® Show - Human Design for Business with Jamie Palmer

Shoulding yourself and the not self of the mind in business.
The not-self of the mind in human design is centered in logic and sense making. While this can be useful in business, it can also lead you to 'should'ing" yourself with all those things that you are supposed to be doing. Learn more about the centers in human design, their not self themes or "should" themes in business. How to recognize with more speed when you are shoulding yourself in business. 
 
Have you ever thought to yourself, “Oh I should do that.” Or “ I should do this”. Over the last couple of weeks I have been hearing it more and more, with clients, colleagues and in social media. The reality is I’m guilty of “should’ing myself” from time to time as well. The more I pay attention the more I hear it in different iterations as well, “this makes sense” or my personal favorite. “on paper this looks great.”
When I take a step back to think about what “should’ing actually is especially through the lens of human design it is the not-self.
 
The should’ing shows up in our
Marketing & keeping up with the latest trends like tik tok or reels Sales & selling systems & tools Need to try the new thing, tool, or thing aka Glittery Object Syndrome Offers & business model trends What our idea of “success” is Working hours Pricing Time frame to respond If we examine our “should’ing” through the lens of human design this is the not self of the mind. The not-self of the mind is the spokesperson or mental monologue of the mind when we are out of alignment within one of our centers or with our strategy and authority.  In the human design body graph there are several places where we can be in the not self or low expression
 
With our type – projector – bitterness & resentment, manifestor – anger & shame, manifesting generator – frustration & anger, generator – frustration, reflector disappointment.
 
And with the 9 centers – head, ajna, throat, identity, heart, sacral, spleen, solar plexus and root.
 
For this discussion on should’ing and the not self of the mind in business, we are going to stick with the not-self of the centers. There are three ways centers show up in the bodygraph – defined – colored in, undefined – white with only gates, open – no gates. Within each center there is a polarity and a dichotomy. The high expression and the low expression, particualy with the undefined centers (the white ones). The undefined centers are the places where we take on conditioning and end up in the not self. Of which, the mind, is the not-self spokesperson of these centers or the voice of the “should”. The conditioning comes from friends, family, coaches, those around us, society, culture norms, social media and more. When we are in the “not self” we are out of alignment with our strategy and authority. The not-self of the mind is a tricky thing because it wants to logic us. It’s sole purpose is to keep us alive. The mind, through the lens of human design, is here to be in service of others. It is not here to be used as a decision making tool for us to operate on ourselves. That is what our strategy and authority is for.
 
The mind, is rational, reasonable, sense-making and logical. It yearns to do the thing or things that make the most sense based on what we have seen, read about or experienced. The mind operates from a place of fear and pressure. It is primitive in this sense even though it is very powerful (and convincing). For many of us we live in the place of “if this makes sense then it must be correct for me.” I know I have operated in this way in the past even when my gut was screaming for me to go in a different direction. The challenge with this is that our gut, intuition or inner knowing will often nudge us to do x and our mind ‘logics” us out of those decisions.
 
When we leverage human design as tool we rely on our authority for our decision making process rath