When the incessant demands of social media algorithms clash with our innate desire to align with our Human Design, where do we turn? That's the question at the heart of our latest episode. I open up about some recent realizations on the pressure to constantly churn out posts, despite my Sacral Authority wooing me towards longer forms of content creation.
Together, we navigate this digital labyrinth, seeking a balance between the expectations of social media and our true creative desires.
Click here to stay updated and join our email community of 7,000+
Order my book, A Modern Guide to Human Design
Find me at www.puregenerators.com
Instagram: @puregenerators
Twitter: @puregenerators
When the incessant demands of social media algorithms clash with our innate desire to align with our Human Design, where do we turn? That's the question at the heart of our latest episode. I open up about some recent realizations on the pressure to constantly churn out posts, despite my Sacral Authority wooing me towards longer forms of content creation.
Together, we navigate this digital labyrinth, seeking a balance between the expectations of social media and our true creative desires.
Click here to stay updated and join our email community of 7,000+
Order my book, A Modern Guide to Human Design
Find me at www.puregenerators.com
Instagram: @puregenerators
Twitter: @puregenerators
On this episode of New Paradigm Human. We're talking about making social media work for your human design. Hi everyone, I've been thinking about something over the past few days, especially inspired by the online business owners and the three-month work life that I've been working with. If this topic is of interest to you when you're listening to this, that information will come around again, probably in a different format, so make sure you're on my email list link below. But this is also a topic that I have been feeling a lot of things about in my own life and I think it may just be something that we're going through collectively a little bit right now. So I wanted to talk about it, and that is the, the shoulds and pressures from social media algorithms on how we should be interacting with those or how we feel we should, and we all know that human design is about letting go of those shoulds and allowing ourselves to live in alignment with our design and actually honor what our inner authority is telling us is correct for us in that moment. But I definitely saw a lot of generator and MG business owners and I absolutely fall into this category feeling like, well, I'm comfortable following my inner authority in all these different areas of my life and especially in my business. But what about social media? I mean, these algorithms say that we should post five times a week and three times a day on some of them, and the algorithms are constantly changing and I definitely am going through a period where I'm just not feeling moved at all by my inner authority to share much on social media.
Speaker 1:I've been feeling that for a long time, for whatever reason. Right now, it's just not that interesting to me. It's not a place where I am going for information or learning. It's more something that is serving as entertainment, and that's fine, and a lot of what we create is ultimately entertainment. But for me, whenever I think about doing things that I used to do and really enjoy like oh, I'll turn this into an Instagram post or a real or a TikTok I just feel that it's like ugh, contraction in the pit of my stomach as someone with a sacral authority, and so I just haven't been doing it. Do I have things I could be posting there? Yeah, a lot of things. I've done, like three launches this year and like two of them I barely posted on social media. I made blog posts lately, I've made podcasts. I've made a lot of different things and yet that, no, it's just there in the pit of my stomach and my sacral.
Speaker 1:And at first it was very frustrating and very confusing because I was like why would I suddenly feel this way? Like I don't have any kind of vendetta against social media, I was finding TikTok really fun and interesting for a while and getting kind of excited to start posting on there more. But I just noticed that the energy wasn't there. It wasn't feeling satisfied. The whole thing was feeling frustrating.
Speaker 1:I was putting a lot of effort into taking videos and then when it came time to actually sit down and edit and post them, there was just no motivation, nothing there, no energy for it and so many thoughts of should? It's like well, you should just post that, you already created it, you should just give it a try, you should just make that really quickly. But I just couldn't do it and I knew if I pushed myself I'd get really drained and, honestly, probably the results just wouldn't be good, because if my energy isn't in it it doesn't tend to yield very good results. So I just haven't been doing it and when I go through periods like this, a lot of fears can pop up, like how are you going to grow your audience? How are you going to sell things? You're really missing out on a lot of opportunities. But instead of focusing on that, I shifted my thinking to well, where does your energy want to go right now? It's always good to do a check in on that. I mean, sometimes we get like burnt out or depressed and it's important to see like is it just that I have energy for doing nothing, or is it I have energy for doing something else? And for me in this case, the answer was I have energy for things that go deeper.
Speaker 1:For me right now, the trend of social media being about very quick videos or tweets or things like that. It just wasn't going along with what I've been enjoying lately, which I've been reading really long books, listening to long podcasts, subscribing to people's sub staff newsletters and devouring those. I mean, last year I wrote a book that comes out in the fall. That was very long, and so it's like well, obviously that is what is of interest to me, and so why wouldn't I allow myself to put my energy there, as opposed to creating very short things? Because that's just not of interest to me at the moment.
Speaker 1:I definitely felt like weird about this for a second and I felt like, well, how am I going to survive in this current landscape or these other things? This short video, all these different things are becoming so popular and I'm becoming outdated. Am I losing touch? But the more I sat with it, I was like, no, there's absolutely a place for this longer form material. I am obviously proving that myself by wanting to consume that, and so why wouldn't I go with that? And I actually feel this way about Discord too. This is where I've been hosting all of the three month or one month programs I've been doing this year, and it's so fun to just be able to go deeper with the community, go a little bit deeper with people in a space that's just ours, and this is something completely new for my business that I've never really done. It's just been nice to have this spaciousness of like weeks or a month or months to integrate these topics that we're talking about, and it gives me so much to respond to, and I'm sourcing all of my ideas from these groups of people, these groups of generators and MGs that have joined, and it has been so wonderful. So, yeah, it got me thinking.
Speaker 1:How do we still live in our design, when we're being told by the outside world that in order to survive or thrive or make money it's basically capitalism talking to us we have to be using our energy in these certain ways. So I guess the last few months have been for me, as a one three profile, a little bit of an experiment on whether I could continue to thrive financially without honoring the demands of the algorithm. And the answer is that I guess financially I'm having the best gear ever in my business. That has to do with a lot of different things and obviously I was posting all the time on social media and growing my audience there for years and it was wonderful. I love social media as a tool. I think it's incredible.
Speaker 1:So it's not like I've never participated in social media, but I will say I've never really paid attention to the demands of the algorithm that I felt exceeded what was natural for my creative process and my energy. So it's the way that I like to tell people to go about it is start with like the raw energy output, like what feels natural to you, and then then you can take advice about algorithms and things and kind of tweak it and help you make what you've done and what you've created as successful as possible. For instance, maybe you're only going to do two posts a week, but you look up like what are the best times to post, and that can really matter. Or you figure out an SEO strategy if you're on YouTube, whatever it is, and so that's the information about the algorithms that I think is really helpful, but I've never really let it direct my creation and my creative schedule, because as a generator, it's just never going to come off very well, it's going to be a waste of my energy, it's not going to uplift others and there's really going to be no point to it. Ultimately, an important thing to remember is that these social media platforms are dependent on us as people who create all of their content for mostly free. Some platforms obviously have creator funds and maybe you get a little bit of money back, but definitely you're not getting back the amount of effort you're putting into creating that material for the most part, and so, of course, they're always going to be pushing us to create more, more, more. They're also providing a service to us, obviously, but I thought it was really interesting that I had been feeling this way and then Instagram released threads all of a sudden one day.
Speaker 1:It was so funny I'm usually like right on top of all that stuff, but I have been not plugged in at all and other people were telling me about it. I was like, wow, I can't believe I didn't know about this. So I hopped on and it was just really interesting to see everybody really feeling refreshed by a social media platform that, basically, was super dialed down, much more visually simple, not tons of sounds and video and all of these things in your face mostly text a little bit more intimate, a little bit more casual, undone. A lot of people were feeling like it was the way social media used to be, where you just hop on and share your thoughts, and it was just a nice way to converse with people. I guess I have a hard time believing that a company like Meadow will exist without ads forever on this new platform that they've created, because obviously that's how they make their billions of dollars. We'll have to see. Maybe they'll just keep all of that with Instagram and Facebook, but it really just confirmed something that I had already been feeling, which is that people are beginning to tire of these algorithms and these systems and the pressure to behave a certain way on these platforms just to keep your business afloat or to keep your content being seen by other people, especially if it's your livelihood or tied to how you're making your money, like maybe collectively, we've reached a little bit of a limit in how much stimuli we can receive online every day, and it feels like a lot of people are seeking for something to balance that out a little bit.
Speaker 1:For me, it's not, and for most people that I see, it's not about not being online or having something against spending a decent amount of your time online, because I love the internet, it's like one of my favorite things in the whole world. But maybe approaching it a little bit differently, and I guess the conclusion to all of this is that I really do feel that we can fully exist and thrive in these systems without going against our design. There's always a way to make it work in a way that feels good for you. For the last thing that I launched in my business, which is the one month mental de-conditioning program, instead of doing a lot of social media posting leading up to releasing it which is something I usually do to get feedback from people as I'm creating it or to gauge interest and see if it's something that is what I want to put out at that moment, like if it's the right moment for it. I decided to just record a couple of podcasts because that felt energizing to me at that time, put a link to the waitlist in the podcast and I was able to get the amount of people that I would have hoped to have gotten on a waitlist Honestly, maybe exceeded it just by doing that, and I was honestly surprised. I thought, well, people are much less likely to click on a waitlist if they're in a podcast app because they're not looking at their phone while they listen to the podcast maybe less likely to do it than in an email or an Instagram story. But that did not end up being true at all, and so that was a really nice thing for me to see. Like, no, you really can make some pivots that actually align with where your energy wants to go. I just feel like the reality of all the possibilities we have to achieve something is so much more expansive than maybe what we're fed. Any kind of guru or even algorithm or a company that has their own agenda because that's their business. Instagram will always tell you Instagram is the best place to grow. Twitter will always tell you Twitter is the best place to grow. Someone selling an Instagram course will tell you that's the best thing. Someone selling a Twitter course will tell you that's the best thing. But there's truly so many possibilities.
Speaker 1:One of my favorite places to look in the human design chart for how you might best interact with social media and or grow a business on social media is profile. We covered this in the first month of the recent glow up and, like I said, I will be sharing this information again in some form. But when I was thinking about my profile, I was like well, obviously, all of this super short form stuff isn't 100% interesting for me at the moment, because I'm a first line profile. I like to go really deep in things. I like to be prepared. I'm not going to be the type that is going to just switch on TikTok or Reels, record a quick video of me sharing something off the cuff, because that's just not who I am. I'm always going to want to have that solid foundation and preparation. So I always say that first lines do really well when we start with a piece of long form material, something that is a little bit more in depth a long video for YouTube, a long blog post, a podcast, a how to guide, whatever it is that we've written down. Then we can take that and maybe share it in smaller pieces, things that fit the different algorithms, and that's fine. But we always typically want to start with that deeper way of engaging with a topic, and I've even noticed this about myself. I actually really love interacting with groups, like we are on my current discords, but I would never want to host a group where we didn't have some material as the foundation. I always love to have come with something that I've created that everyone can immerse themselves in and then we can talk about it. I don't want to just talk to people for the sake of talking, because for me, there's no foundation there.
Speaker 1:If you're a second line, a lot of second lines really struggle with social media because they have these hermit tendencies. There are times where they don't want to be seen and honestly, I think that's fine. These algorithms will tell you that you always need to be consistent, whatever that means. I mean I love talking about the concept of consistency and how consistency just means that you do something at a certain cadence, which it does not mean every day. It could be once a week, it could be once a month, it could be once a year, but second lines need that time away and that's okay. That's an important part of your process.
Speaker 1:You have another profile line, either for five or six, that will take you back out in to interact with people, either with your solutions, if you're a fifth line, sharing whatever it is that you've been working on or thinking about or just diving into with your connections and community and your circle, as a fourth line, or sharing your perspective as a sixth line, and it's okay to take that time to hermit. It's like you just won't be successful if you don't give yourself that time and you can always just let people see. You don't have to frame anything, you don't have to package yourself and put it up in a neat little box. You can just show yourself in that moment, just let people watch a little bit, and that's a very low stakes way to share yourself, even when you're feeling a little bit like you're in hermit mode. Just let people see what you're doing.
Speaker 1:If you've got a third line, like I do, you're probably going to switch things up a lot. You're going to be interested in sharing in one way for a while. Switch to something else, try new platform. Try all of them, eventually whittle it down. That's absolutely the process I've gone through. But also, you don't have to have everything figured out. It's okay to just let people see the experiments you're doing. That's a little bit what I'm doing by recording this podcast. We can feel like we shouldn't let people see something that we're doing before it's all finished and polished and we figured it all out.
Speaker 1:But generally, as a third line, you learn a lot as you go. You sometimes learn through teaching. You have to try it in order to figure it out. With a lot of this, you may just have to jump in and give it a go and then you'll be like, okay, I figured it out. I really don't want to do that. But at first you'll feel like you have the energy for it and that's okay. It's okay to quit, it's okay to move on to something else. When you find what seems to work best for you, then it's okay to leave that behind when you want to try something new. There are no rules.
Speaker 1:If you're a fourth line, you just don't have to be pushing yourself to have some kind of large following on social media. It's absolutely not necessary for your energy, and not only that, but it can actually take away from how your energy is most powerful. If you're meant to connect with people and you have millions of people who are vying for your attention, or you're feeling the pressure to serve millions of people, that honestly just delutes the power of dedicating yourself to a limited circle of reciprocal relationships. For you to make the money that you need and to be successful, you don't need to be a third line tons of people. You don't need endless growth. You just need people who are on the same page as you, who are interested in what you're doing, for you to nurture those actual connections in just this like friendly way.
Speaker 1:If you're a fifth line, social media can be natural for you because you do well with a larger audience, but it does not mean that your larger audience has to come through social media. Podcasts provide large audience, youtube provides large audience, pinterest can having a newsletter. These are all things that are a bit different from something that has an algorithm and allows you to focus on sharing your message as opposed to like a lot of interaction, because, fifth lines, it's more about coming standing up on your soapbox, putting it out there and then letting the people deal with how they're receiving that message. You need interaction to the level that you can understand the solutions that maybe are needed into in the world and allow your inner authority to guide you to which ones you want to share, because you're here to solve problems, and so you need to know what the problems are. But you can let your other profile line help you with that.
Speaker 1:If you're like a five one, you'll probably figure a lot of it out through your own research, which can also involve people. But it can, it doesn't have to. If you're a second line, you're going to have a natural gift that you're here to help people with, and so you don't have to look too far outside of yourself. Just see what are the solutions you can offer naturally. And if you're a third line, a lot of the solutions that you have to offer will come from your own experimentations.
Speaker 1:And then, finally, if you're a sixth line the sixth line is another profile energy that often likes to take its time survey the horizon, figure out what your perspective is before you share. You're not down there in the mess, or if you are, it's not for very long, it's just to get a taste of something. And then you recede and think okay, what's my perspective on this. How can I integrate what I want to say, what I'm seeing, into my life and show that to people? So, again, I also don't feel that six lines are the type that need to be constantly making noise on social media in order to be successful. You're here to be a little bit perfect. It's okay to take time to polish something. You could put out one amazing, long, perfect video a month. You could put out one really polished post every week, and I really do feel that when something is in alignment with your energy, it has a way of working. So that was just looking at profile. There are so many different parts of your chart that you could look at to figure out how to do best exist on social media, especially if you have a business.
Speaker 1:But I guess the conclusion of everything I wanted to share today is don't let these outside structures or algorithms bully you into doing something that goes against your energy. There's absolutely a way to be successful in alignment with what you want to do, and sometimes it just requires taking a second to step back and use your mind in the way it's meant to be used, which is to notice what has been really energizing to me lately. What has lit me up, what do I actually feel is just like very natural expression for me right now, and allow yourself to double down on that there are no limits, there are no rules. Ultimately, it's okay to be with where your energy wants to flow in that moment, and if we believe and are open to the possibility that there is a way to do it in a way that feels good for you, then you'll start to really see those opportunities.
Speaker 1:So thank you everyone for listening to my thoughts on social media this week. I think it's a very interesting time and I'm so curious to see how all of this shakes out over the next few years, because social media has just been this beast that has been growing exponentially for the past couple of decades and, while it is a fundamental way that humans have interacted, are interacting and will interact in the future, I do feel that in the next decade or so, it'll go through some interesting evolutions, just because there's a lot of it right now and I think people aren't sure where to put their energy. So I think we'll see a lot of changes in how we're approaching this moving forward. Anyway, as always, thank you for listening and I'll talk to you soon.