HOW TO CHOOSE WITH ERIN CLAIRE JONES
If astrology and tarot feel too “woo woo” for you, may I suggest Human Design? A system that helps you understand your unique energy and how you’re naturally designed to navigate the world from work to love, and everything in between. When I discovered it in 2019, so much of my work life suddenly made sense, and my appreciation for this system (a blend of astrology, I Ching, Kabbalah, the chakra system, and quantum physics) has only grown since I started working for myself. Some of you may remember the first newsletter I did on human design with Maike Gabriele, and we covered a lot of the basics in that conversation.
My energy type (there are five total) is Generator, and according to my guest today, Human Design expert and founder of Human Design Blueprint, Erin Claire Jones, Generators are known for “making things happen.” We have boundless energy for the things we are passionate about. So, our responsibility is to seek out and immerse ourselves in those passions. My strategy—essentially the roadmap for how I best interact with the world— is “wait to respond,” one of seven strategies. So when I’m aligned with what excites me, I attract the people and opportunities, but not all are right for me. So my decision-making process is all about trusting my gut instincts. Either I’m lit up and energized by someone or something, or I’m not.
This shows up so clearly in my day-to-day life as a content creator. I rarely pitch content ideas to brands, it just doesn't feel right to me. I focus on making the content that I enjoy whether that's in my newsletter or Instagram and speaking about the topics I’m most passionate about. That approach naturally helps me attract the collaborators who are interested in me and are aligned with what I do. I don't have to sell myself, they already get it the vision. Of course, sometimes it doesn’t always feel right to just wait for something to land in my inbox, so when I want to be proactive in my own way—I meet with people for lunch or even over a zoom to share what I’m working on and excited about, rather than making a pitch deck (which I barely know how to do).
From there, I still have to decide whether the opportunities that land at my door are the right fit. I turn down offers that don’t feel aligned or simply don’t excite me. There’s a real sense of ease in my body when I know I’ve made a decision that feels aligned—I don’t question it. And yes, I’ve gone against my gut, many, many times. Almost every time, I’ve regretted it. The project usually felt more complicated or rushed, I didn’t have the creative freedom I wanted, or the client was difficult (seriously, it happens every single time), and I can feel that misalignment in my body. So, the goal for me is always to stay connected to my gut and, most importantly, trust it.
You can also feel this kind of alignment in your life with a little help from Human Design Expert and founder of the Human Design Blueprint, Erin Claire Jones, in her debut book, How Do You Choose? It’s an essential guide for figuring out how to apply human design to your own decision-making and manifesting, and it will also help you understand how to best work with the coworkers, friends, family, and lovers around you.
You have been a leading voice in human design for 10 years. I would love for you to take us back to your childhood. What were you like as a kid?
Erin: I was just silly and loved people. I think that my parents always thought I would be a therapist when I was growing up because I became a bit of a peacemaker in our family. I wanted to make sure everyone was okay. It doesn't always come from the best place. But I do think that I just always loved asking questions. I was so interested in who people were and how they operated, and moved through the world. I remember driving to high school with my sister one day, and she was like, Do you ever get tired of asking questions? And I was like, no, I just want to know how people work. I felt like I saw a lot of people, but I didn't really feel seen in return.
So, how did you learn about human design, and what inspired you to actually pursue it as a career?
Erin: I discovered human design in 2015. I was living in New York City, and I went to a friend's party on the Lower East Side. I sat next to a stranger who asked me about my human design chart. I never heard of human design. He proceeded to give me the most insightful, accurate reading. I felt like somebody put my inner world into language and gave me words for it, where I was like, how could this stranger ever know this much about me? And it felt very confronting because I was living opposite to every part of my chart.
He actually ended that conversation by saying, Erin, I think you're meant to do this. I think you're meant to teach and share human design. Will you study with me? My human design is so much about being invited, feeling recognized, and feeling seen. So my journey into human design began with this pretty wild invitation. I was so blown away by the system and continue to be, but I don't know if I would've considered studying it or making it a career. That invitation really unlocked something in him, in me, and he became my first teacher. That was how the journey began.
So you’re a projector? That's the one thing that I know about projectors: they need to be invited. I'm very curious about human design, but I haven’t studied all the other profiles. I was always really into astrology and tarot. Very similar to you, I always wanted to know about people and what made them tick. So I've always been drawn to these kinds of modalities to understand ourselves and others. But instantly, I could recognize how useful it is in the way that we look at and move about the world. I haven't even learned so much about how it applies to relationships and friendships. I always think of it as a work thing, but that's why I love your book, How Do You Choose? tackles all those different areas.
Erin: Whether it's with kids, partners, colleagues, or family members, I think it's so easy to experience friction because we want somebody to be different than what they are. We expect them to be similar to us. I think human design is such an amazing tool for recognizing exactly how different somebody is and how we can best support them. My biggest dream for this book is that people not only read the chapters about themselves, but also the chapters about their partners, friends, dads, sisters, and whoever, and it gives them a little bit more compassion for how different someone else is. So I think that human design can serve so many purposes, and one of those things is for sure helping us find more flow in our careers. Another one is around really deepening our connections by appreciating very specifically how different we each are.
How did you decide to write a book, and why was now the time?
Erin: I always felt like I would write a book. People have been asking me for a long time, but I also didn't want to write a book until it was clear what book was needed. And what felt like it was missing was an exploration of how human design could be practically used in the world. It feels like there's a lot of, this is what a generator is, and this is what this is, and that's really helpful, and it can only take you so far. Knowing how to use the system in your career, in your relationships, and decision-making is how we actually experience transformation in our lives.
So, the goal of the book was to explore how the system is actually used. Not how can I teach you every intricacy of the chart, but how can I teach you how to actually use this in ways that you will experience transformation and experience change, especially if you're feeling stuck. My goal with the book was also to be able to reach people who have never heard of human design.
It’s meant to help human design cross the chasm in many ways to the mainstream in a way that it hasn't been able to. We'll see if it can do it. The last piece that I'll share is that I couldn't write it until now because so much of the book is stories. It's telling the story of human design through people's actual experiences of how they integrated it into their career and their relationships. I couldn't have written it before now. I had to sit with 4,000 people in sessions. I had to teach human design. I had to really watch and experience human design, not through textbooks, but through people's lives, and see what was most useful. That's definitely my favorite part of the book, that it's just told through people's real experiences. People's lives are so interesting.
I really like that you speak about its practicality because I think that's really important to me as well. There are many different layers and definitions of what it means to be a spiritual person, but for me, I really need it to be practical and grounded. It needs to be about staying in the real world and not trying to escape from it. So I also really appreciate that approach to all these other modalities, including human design. I wonder if you feel like this is true…there's something about human design that people are maybe less skeptical about than they would be with astrology. Why is that?
Erin: I know I’ve worked with so many companies, and I've worked with people who are skeptical, but I think I've experienced less skepticism than I imagined. Two things come up. One is that human design is so practical. Really, the way that it's communicated, even though it feels esoteric, is very much like this is how you make decisions. This is how you're meant to structure your day-to-day. These are challenges that you could face. Often, these are strengths that you can draw on. So I feel like it can be spoken about in a language that's so down-to-earth, and it really is relatable even to skeptics. But I would also say that it's so specific. My experience in sharing with people who are really skeptical is that they reach a point where they're like, I don't want to believe what you're saying because this is totally woo-woo, and yet everything you're saying resonates so much that I need to know everything about everyone in my life.
Also, I will say the way that I present human design, and I lay this out in the introduction for the book, is just very much what matters most to me is not whether it's true, but whether it's useful. Let this spark an interesting conversation about who you are and how you choose. Often we move through life on autopilot and don't take the time to step back to think, how do I create opportunities? How do I make decisions? How does my energy move day to day, month to month? And so I think that it's really powerful to just step back and talk about it.
The title of your book is such a powerful question. How Do You Choose? what does choice mean to you, especially in the context of self-discovery and personal alignment?
Erin: Oh my gosh. We are all making decisions every single day, from who to connect with, to what job to take, to where to live, to who to partner with, to how to spend our Saturday. I think that we can get really in our heads around the decisions, and we can question ourselves, and then it can just lead to a lot of wasted time and energy, and saying yes to things that we don't actually have the energy for.
So I think human design has so much value in so many areas, but one of those areas is around decision-making. So the vision of the book is how can you use human design to help you make the best, most empowered decisions in every part of your life. I guess I've really come to believe that when we choose in the way that feels right, things in our lives really tend to flow. We say yes to the right relationships, the right opportunities. We can surrender to the experience because we know we're in the right place. When we say yes, out of obligation, out of desire to please, because we think we should, which happens to all of us, that experience is often a lot harder because that doubt persists. And then we have to eventually extricate ourselves from the experience because it was never the right one to begin with. And we often know, we just don't trust it.
For me personally, and I think a lot of other people, there can be a paralysis around making a decision and thinking that there's a right and a wrong choice, whether that's career or love. How does human design reframe what a right choice means?
Erin: I think that a right choice is not like this choice will lead to the most successful thing. It's honestly more around, is this a choice that you actually have the energy for? Is this a choice that, on a deep level, is the right path forward? And the thing is, we're going to make decisions that aren't right all the time, and we'll have to return to them. But I guess it's when we are choosing from a place of us knowing within that it's right, versus a place of I think that I should do this. I think this might lead me to this place from a more mental, logical, rational place. It's more connected to a deeper knowing within us. Can I just use you as an example? You're somebody who's got a very active mind, so I can imagine it's very easy to try to choose from that place because you can explore all the possibilities, but according to your design, and this is not true for all of us, you are somebody who's meant to be a gut decision maker. It's a feeling, a visceral feeling in your belly that either pulls you toward or pushes you away. It comes in the moment.
While I am meant to sleep on things and feel into things, you're meant to really trust your first instinct and what your first instinct is telling you for you specifically is whether you actually have the energy for something because you're somebody who has boundless energy when you're lit up. So it's really around what do I actually feel available for? And the timing could be like, I'm not available for it, and then I am the next week. But for you, it's like instantaneous gut, yes, is how you access what you're meant to do. It's inevitable that you will then get into your mind soon after to then question and decide, but it's almost trusting that first instinct. So I'm curious, in your own life, one, do you feel connected to your gut? Does it feel like it guides your decisions? And what do you notice in the decisions that you say yes to that come from your gut versus the ones that you ignore your gut?
Every day, I have to make decisions, and I can get decision fatigue, but I just know there are times when an email lands in my inbox, and I'm already lit up as soon as I see the subject. When I read it, I'm like, without a doubt in my mind. Yes, I know I want to work on that. Then there are other ones where I'm like… yeah, it's a cool opportunity. I don't really know if I want to take this on right now. And I sit on things, and I've gotten to a point where I'm like, if I have to sit on something, it's because it's just not right. It's not for me to pursue this. Of course, sometimes in the moment you're like, okay, well I can't think about this right now, but I'll come back to it. But if it's something I don't even want to circle back to it. I don't want to get to that point where I have to make the decision. I'm like, it's not the right decision.
Erin: Again, it's hard to trust it, but I think that we can feel indecisive when we actually know really clearly, we're just not trusting it. I was talking to somebody last week who has a similar authority gut in the moment, and he basically was like, yeah, I have 105 unread text messages, all these friends that want things from me. And then when we talked about it, he was like, yeah, there are some that I'm immediately lit up by and respond, and those are really easy, and there's a lot that I'm just avoiding dealing with, but he already knows. So it is really trusting that first instinct and knowing that when you start to rationalize it, maybe I should or maybe it would lead to this thing you've disconnected from your gut for people to get an example of the difference.
When I say yes immediately, I often wake up the next day and feel differently. So, again, it just allows us to enter into things that we feel like are the right thing for us at that moment in time. I really do believe that we're able to surrender more fully to the experience because we know it's right. I know that when I enter into a thing too quickly, then I am full of doubt and questioning throughout that experience. So I think that I'm not even able to be in it as much because I didn't really choose correctly from the first place in the first place.
That's so interesting. How many different ways are there for people to choose?
Erin: Seven. If you look up your chart on humandesignblueprint.com, you'll see your authority.
Emotional people, like me, who are meant to sleep on things and feel into things.
Sacral, like you, needs something to show up in your world. Then you'll get a gut feeling, and that first instinct is the best instinct.
Splenic people are all about trusting your intuition in the moment. It's not the gut feeling. It's more like a quiet knowing, a whisper, this intuitive feeling, it arrives out of nowhere, disappears just as quickly, and it's super quiet. So it requires some quiet and alone time to access it.
Self-projected authorities need to talk things out and just see how it feels to say things aloud. Often their voice will become more animated, and they're like, there it is.
Ego authorities are all about choosing based on what they desire, what they want, and what they feel like they must have. When I hear these people say, I need this, I have to have this, I must do this. So their ego speaking, and that's just what they want.
Mental authorities are all about talking things out as well, but often in multiple spaces with multiple people, and it's seeing what threads of truth stay over time.
None or way to lunar cycle, and they're meant to give themselves a full month before they choose.
Which is not always feasible, but what I always remind them is really doing their best to choose from a very unhurried, unpressured place because they need space and time to disentangle what's not theirs from what is.
So I'm the fastest decision maker. I just got to go right off the cuff. So does that also apply to how I would choose someone romantically?
Erin: Yeah. Again, your gut can change. You might be like, yes. Then, of course, two weeks later, you're no longer, or you might need more to respond to. But I think that, yeah, it's the first instinct. If you're on an app and you see somebody and you feel like an immediate pull, preach out. If you're at a coffee shop and you see someone across the room, and you're just like, I feel this undeniable pull, go talk to them. It is this kind of gut and sync that's pretty inexplicable, which means that somebody you might be drawn to might not really fit what you had in mind in terms of demeanor or age or job but trusting what feels right over what you think you should do. I do often see that people with your kind of authority can feel really indecisive when they don't really know how to access their gut because their decision-making is super simple. One of the most powerful ways to access your gut feeling is to ask you very specific questions. If I'm to ask you, what do you want to do about this? You might be like, I don't know, but if I'm to ask you, do you want to take on this partnership? You'd be like, no, or yes, or do you want to date this person, or do you want to launch this now?
This actually just made me think about how often we just advise other people (and obviously, there's a certain level of projection that's always present in advice). But the way that I'm going to advise you is not necessarily going to work with your energy type.
Erin: That's right. It is so wild. I have so many coaches in my certification program because I feel like so many coaches are like, I need to understand how to tailor my support to each person. I was on a podcast recently where somebody had this similar authority to you, and she was like, I have been encouraging all my clients to trust their gut and in the moment because that worked for me. She was like, it now makes sense why some clients had a really hard time integrating that, because they just didn't know so quickly. I think it is so powerful. We need to be reminded that everybody is so different. I also sit with so many clients that have taken coaching programs or business programs or whatever, based on what has worked for somebody else, and they feel really disappointed when that same strategy doesn't work for them, and they're like, oh, I'm incompetent. It's like, no, you're just wired differently. I think human design is the most powerful tool I've found in the context of business work, parenting, and relationships, to help us have a very specific language and framework to really understand how uniquely we're wired.
On social media, I'll speak a lot about manifesting, and I get a lot of questions about the best way to manifest. The number one thing I always tell people is to find out your human design because it's such an important aspect of how we put energy out in the world to get the things we want. For me, manifesting feels really easy because I just know that when I'm doing what I'm meant to be doing and I'm in this space where I feel like I'm in alignment, then the things that I want quite easily come to me.
Erin: Exactly.
But that might not be the case for other people, and there are so many different ways to manifest. So I'm always like, you need to learn your human design so you can get a feel for what is right for you. How does a projector best manifest if you need to be invited?
Erin: As projectors, we're here to be invited in, but people cannot invite you unless they see you. So our job is not to pitch individuals, but more to make ourselves visible and show ourselves really authentically, and see who resonates with us and comes to us. So it makes me think about doing the influencer campaign for my book. First, I'm just going to reach out to large followings of friends of mine. And instead, what I did is I actually just went through all my followers who had significant followings and reached out to them. So these are people who have already opted into human design, have already chosen to follow me, and are already interested. And I was like, do you want a thing that you are already interested in? They're like a hundred percent yes. So it felt way more natural for me to do it that way. And I'm finding the sharing, as a result, is obviously so fun because people are like, I want this.
But the point is that we have to let people know that we exist in a way that feels really authentic. I think the other piece that comes up is that, as much as we're here to be recognized and seen as a projector, it's so much easier for others to recognize us when we recognize ourselves as projectors. If we still feel like our worth is really all about how hard we work and how much we do, it's hard for others to really see our value. So the more that we can disentangle our worth from how hard we're working, how much we're doing, and we see how much we bring to the table around our perspective and how we see the easier we make it for others to see it too.
Obviously, we've been talking about how you make decisions and cultivating that inner guidance. What helped you deepen that trust in yourself over time?
Erin: I am always learning. I think human design is such an amazing reminder for me. It just keeps bringing me back to myself. I think what helped deepen my trust was just life experience, where I would just choose something in the moment based on what I thought I should want or what I thought might happen. And it was often kind of a lot of adrenaline and a lot of nervous energy. Then I would wake up the next day and be like, I don't want to do that. Then I would have to extricate myself out of it, and it just felt really complicated. So, looking back at the experience that I've rushed into, filled with a lot of nervousness and intensity, and ultimately a lot of regret.
And the ones that I've been slow with, even though it's been annoying, are the ones that are filled with a lot of peace, surrender, and clarity. So I think what is helping me trust myself over time is just looking at what happens when I trust it and when I don't. Honestly, more than what happens with the decision itself, which is meaningful in its own thing, but also more around how it affects how I could engage in the experience? What did it actually feel like? So I think that is one piece. I also think that human design has been such a cool tool for me in helping me trust others.
I tell this story in the book, my partner is like you, he's a sacred authority. It's been really annoying at times. There are moments where I really want a gut response from him, and he's got nothing for me. I tell a story of us looking for an Airbnb, and I showed him a thousand places that were so beautiful, and he was just like, no, no, no. I was like, like this is perfect, look at this one, look at the windows here. Then one day we were in a cab to a friend's house and I pulled up this Airbnb that had no reviews, and I showed it to him and he is like, a hundred percent yes, book it right now. I was like, what are you talking about? Then I booked it, and it was the most magical place ever. So I think it's also allowed me to trust his knowing more because, as annoying as it is, he's so often right. So I think that it's just through experimenting and practicing with these things that I learn to trust it for myself and for others, too.
How does one differentiate between fear and intuition when making a big choice?
Erin: I feel like fear often comes with a reason, as in, if I do this, this might happen. And again, everyone’s yes is going to be different. For you, yes, just feels so expansive. It feels so energized. It feels like you can't help but move towards the thing, whereas a yes for me feels so calm and settled and just like it's already become part of me, like, why would I even deny it? But I feel like getting to know our yes, and I talk a lot in the book about how people describe the yes, who actually have that. I think that's really important. We also have really specific fears about our design. I don't know whether any of these resonate with you, but the fears that are most relevant in your design are, one, a fear of not finding your purpose or something worth fighting for, a fear that past baggage will catch up with you, that you'll kind of repeat mistakes, and fear of taking too much responsibility. It kind of disempowers them to name them. Those fears are there, and they're never meant to guide me. I'm curious, do any of those resonate with you?
Yeah, all of those resonate. Not living out my purpose was a big fear that was coming up when I was wanting to leave my old job and it's funny how like you have no real blueprint for your future. I had been in corporate for so long, and I was going to work for myself, but there's just this knowing that I'm meant to be doing more than what I'm doing right now. I can't explain it, but this feeling was eating away at me. Even since being on my own and working for myself, there's still this desire that I am meant to have a purpose-filled life. I want to make an impact, and how can I do that? It's very, very important to me. I love talking about fulfilling your purpose, and I don't think everybody's job is their purpose, but I know that for me, my job is very much connected to my purpose.
Erin: I think it's so useful to know what those fears are because they're going to be present, and yet they aren't meant to guide us. There's wisdom on the other side of each fear for you. Yeah, there's a fear of not finding your purpose but the wisdom of your design is you're here to know what's worth the fight because there is a fighting energy in a really positive way. I want to stand for things I care about, I want to be really strong in that way. I need to feel fueled. Yet I've got to really use my intuition and trust my gut to be like, what are the things that are worth the fight?
Then the fear of past baggage catching up with you and repeating past mistakes. Your wisdom is understanding those mistakes, so you and others don't have to repeat them. I think that it's also been really powerful for me to remember with my own fears, on the other side of them are such gifts as long as we don't get consumed by the fears. So to your original question, I think really understanding your yes helps you differentiate between the two. Also, understanding your specific fears helps you recognize them as they arise and move through them, and not get stuck in them.
Yeah, I definitely feel like the repeating past mistakes is such a prevalent thing for me and an ongoing theme in my newsletter when I write personal essays about my life because it's so important for me to learn the lessons and find the ways to integrate them, because I think we can have awareness around a pattern or something that's keeping us stuck, but being able to integrate those lessons and then being able to make decisions from that place are two very different things that I've really struggled with over the last decade or so. There's always this feeling in me of knowing that, because I know better, I need to do better.
If a reader could walk away with just one new belief or practice from, How Do You Choose, what would you want it to be?
Erin: I think it would just be clarity around how they're wired to do things in a way that feels like it gives them permission. I just feel like it would be one permission slip. I was just doing a live with somebody before this, and like you, she is meant to let things come to her and just kind of see what sparks her gut. I'm like, follow that. She was like, I just keep trying to force it. I could just keep chasing, and I lose all my energy and there's something so relieving about knowing it's meant to come to me. So I don’t know what it'll be for each person because there are a bajillion permission slips in this book. But I think that it hopefully gives you the permission to approach one area of your life that's been feeling challenging in a way that just feels better.
I always think about corporate settings, and I'm sure you've come across this because you've worked with many companies, it feels like there's only one way to work, and not everybody likes to work the same. So I feel like it really gives people permission to lean into, what is actually going to help me be most productive instead of forcing something that's actually draining my energy or is not allowing me to flourish in the way that I should be.
Erin: Exactly. We just often make ourselves wrong for the things that make us us. Maybe you're a generator who's like, I got to handle everything because I’m so capable. And you kind of put your own passions to the side when you prioritize, that gives you more energy to do everything else. Or perhaps you're a manifesting generator who interprets your need for many things as being scattered or flaky when it's just a sign of your need for variety. Or maybe you're the projector who perceives your need for rest as lazy when it's the thing that gives you the most energy, and the most, we just so often make ourselves wrong for the things that we actually need. And human design is such a permission slip there.
What's something you're still learning to choose for yourself?
Erin: So much of my design is around needing rest, space, and time alone. I feel like I've just had such full seasons back to back with the book, business, and two young kids. So I think that I'm just still choosing and learning with my design, how to find time for myself even amidst the crazy.
Last question, what's bringing you joy right now?
Oh my God, my kids. I've got a seven-month-old and a two-and-a-half year old. I followed up the week of crazy book launch with a solo week with my kids. My husband was traveling, and it was my first time alone with the two of them. I have to say, it was so much fun, especially following all the book stuff. I probably wouldn't feel that way if it were all the time, but I would say that they just really, they're both at phases where it feels really fun.