How to tell if you're actually following your authority (human design)

Q: “How do I tell the difference between when I’m actually following my authority, and when I’m just convincing myself I am because it’s what I want?”

(Just to clarify, this is a human design question! I have a FREE archive of human design information on my website: www.hannawilliams.com/humandesign )

A: You can tell the difference once you learn to distinguish within yourself what’s information you’re receiving from your body—your felt sense of how you’re interacting with reality—and what’s mental. If you’re doing any convincing, you’re already in the mental sphere.

For example, if you take a body signal and start flipping it over in your mind, like a rock, trying to figure out if it’s really true, inspecting the signal like an analyst—that’s mental.

Following your authority isn’t about convincing yourself of what you want. It’s about developing a relationship with your body’s signals, experimenting with them, and testing their truth.

When it comes to testing your authority in the laboratory of your own experience, here’s what I’ve noticed. And maybe I’m just speaking as a Splenic person here—but the only time I can tell for sure that I wasn’t listening to my authority is when shit hits the fan. And in my life, that can truly be the SHIT hitting the fan.

Case in point: I’m just coming out of what I'm calling “The Ahi Tuna Incident.” My boyfriend cooked up some Ahi Tuna the other week and my spleen didn’t whisper—it yelled at me not to eat the tuna.

The moment I laid eyes on it, I thought, “That’s going to make me sick.”

But I hate wasting food, so I ignored the signal.

And, of course, I ended up violently ill for nearly two weeks.

As much as I hated the experience, it also felt compassionate in a way. Because now I’m more finely tuned to the spleen’s whisper. If you understand Human Design mechanics, you know the spleen typically whispers once and then doesn’t speak again.

So when I say it “yelled,” what I really mean is that I was a dumbass ignoring a very loud whisper.

So, back to signals in the body. This principle of listening to signals applies even if you’re self-projected or a mental projector. Those authorities aren’t based in body mechanics in the same way others are, but they’re still feeling-based rather than rational. It’s not intellectual.

For a self-projected projector, you feel truth in your voice when you speak. Does this decision FEEL like ME?

For a mental projector, you feel it when you’re in the correct environment, with a trusted person to help you process aloud. But you alone have to test out which environments and people help you to feel like you're in the right place to verbally process.

In either case, you can feel the correctness of a decision—it’s not logical.

But here’s the catch: you have to figure out for yourself what’s feeling-based versus mental.

I can say all of this to you until the cows come home, but you’ve got to experience it.

If you want insight into what might be convincing you that you’re following your authority when you’re really not, look at your open/undefined centers.

Almost everyone has at least one. It’s technically possible to have complete definition, but it’s very rare.

Say you have an open Root and an open Solar Plexus.

Your body tells you to do something, but those centers convince you to yield to the pressure of other people’s emotional states. You people-please, convincing yourself: “If I make this decision, I’ll please everyone and the pressure will go away.”

That’s not-self running your life.

Or maybe you have an undefined Head, Ajna, and Throat.

Your body gives you a signal, but your mind convinces you otherwise. The questions filling your head—questions that have nothing to do with you—become burdens you think you must solve. Then your undefined Throat jumps in, answering questions you were never meant to respond to, just to get attention.

That can steer your entire career choice if you’re not adequately aligned with your authority!

In short: the real difference between following your authority and convincing yourself of things lies in trusting your body’s signals over your mind’s stories, and learning to spot when open centers are pulling you off track. Bringing awareness to your openness is the first step.

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