Writing Your Resilience: Building Resilience, Embracing Trauma and Healing Through Writing
The Writing Your Resilience Podcast is for anyone who wants to use the writing process to flip the script on the stories they’ve been telling themselves, because when we tell better stories about ourselves, we live better lives.
Every Thursday, host Lisa Cooper Ellison, an author, speaker, trauma-informed writing coach, and trauma survivor diagnosed with complex PTSD, interviews writers of tough, true stories, people who've developed incredible grit, and professionals in the field of psychology and healing who've studied resilience.
Over the past 7 years Lisa has taught writers how to write their resilience. Each time her clients and students have confronted the stories that no longer serve them, they’ve felt a little safer, become a little braver, and revealed more of their true selves. Now, with this podcast, she is creating a space for you to do this work too.
Equal parts instruction, motivation, and helpful guide, Writing Your Resilience is an opportunity for you to join a community of writers and professionals doing the work that helps us cultivate our authenticity and creativity.
More about Lisa Cooper Ellison: https://lisacooperellison.com
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Writing Your Resilience: Building Resilience, Embracing Trauma and Healing Through Writing
Human Design for Writers: How Understanding Your Design Unlocks Resilience, Creativity, and Deeper Healing with with Jessica Eure
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What if the key to unlocking your creativity wasn't about doing more but about finally understanding who you are? In this episode, trauma therapist Jessica Eure and I explore how Human Design is transforming the way we work, create, and heal. From decoding your body graph to learning why you say yes when you mean no, this conversation is a masterclass in radical self-acceptance. Whether you are a trauma survivor trying to reclaim your creative life or a writer searching for more energy and focus, this episode will give you a new map for understanding yourself as well as the practical tools to use it.
Episode Highlights
- 00:00 Why Human Design Isn’t What You Think
- 05:10 The Moment You Start Trusting Yourself Again
- 16:45 Where You’re Still Operating from Conditioning
- 21:52 How Human Design Changes Your Relationships
Resources for this Episode:
- Toward a postmaterialist psychology: Theory, research, and applications
- Neurofeedback
- Get Your Free Human Design Report
- Register for Find and Refine Your Memoir’s Narrative Arc
- Ditch Your Inner Critic Now
Connect with Jessica:
Websites:
Email: jessica@virginianeurofeedback.com
Jessica’s Bio: Jessica Eure is a mental health counselor and educator working at the intersection of nervous system repair and consciousness. She is the co-founder of Virginia Center for Neurofeedback, where she integrates QEEG-guided neurofeedback and trauma-informed psychotherapeutic approaches to support regulation, resilience, and deep healing. Alongside her clinical work, Jessica has spent 25+ years studying reiki, chakra systems, tarot, astrology, contemplative traditions, and more recently, Human Design, weaving these frameworks into her understanding of identity, purpose, and personal transformation.
Sign up for Find and Refine Your Memoir’s Narrative Arc: https://bit.ly/4aK5wQI
Connect with your host, Lisa:
Get Your Free Copy of Ditch Your Inner Critic: https://lisacooperellison.com/subscribe/
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Produced by Espresso Podcast Production
Transcript for Episode 115: Human Design for Writers: How Understanding Your Design Unlocks Resilience, Creativity, and Deeper Healing with Jessica Eure
Lisa Cooper Ellison [0:01] Well, hello everyone. Welcome to the Writing Your Resilience podcast. I am your story alchemist, Lisa Cooper Ellison, and today I am very excited to be with Jessica Eure. She is here to talk with me about Human Design, because the two of us have been nerding out on this for a little while, and it's time to debrief and explore what this means. Because, listeners, I really feel like this is something that can benefit you, and I don't want to just say that — I want to talk about how it's benefiting our lives, so that you get an inside look at what happens. But as always, I like to begin by welcoming my guest Jessica, and giving her a chance to share a little about herself. So welcome, Jessica.
Jessica Eure [0:53] Thank you so much. I'm really happy to be here. I always have fun with you.
Lisa Cooper Ellison [0:56] Same, same, same. And listeners, we are together in Charlottesville, where yesterday was 90 degrees, and we're both looking out our windows going, "Oh my God, how is this the case?" It is not just snowing, but the snow is sticking — I don't even know how that's possible.
Jessica Eure [1:20] Yeah, I can't deal with it.
Lisa Cooper Ellison [1:25] I know. Same for me. I'm like, no — bring back the warm weather. But I know it'll be here soon.
Jessica Eure [1:45] Yeah, it will.
Lisa Cooper Ellison [1:53] So you are a woman who, I would say, juggles many balls, wears many hats — you pick the metaphor. What do you want us to know about you today?
Jessica Eure [1:44] Well, you know, I was thinking about that. I've been a trauma therapist for over 20 years, and I specialize in something called neurofeedback. I help people learn to regulate their nervous system and their brain waves through operant conditioning, or unconscious learning. So, I use highly technical, neuroscience-type interventions to help people feel more like themselves, honestly — and really, a lot of that is about listening to themselves. It's interesting, because neurofeedback actually uses tones, so there is literally a listening component to that process as well. But ultimately, seeing people reclaim their own inner compass after years of navigating trauma responses, or feeling like they're in survival mode, is really gratifying work. And I am always open to new techniques and tools that help me support other people — and myself — in that work, to be more of who we want to be and feel more like we want to feel.
Lisa Cooper Ellison [3:02] I love the work that you do, and it is incredible. Listeners, if you don't know about neurofeedback, we're going to put a couple of links in the show notes so that you can learn more about it, because it can do marvels for the brain — and that's especially true if someone has a traumatic brain injury, ADHD… I'm going to pass the baton to you, because you actually know all the things it's great for.
Jessica Eure [3:27] Well, it's funny — I don't really treat diagnoses or disorders. I treat people, and people are unique. So, really, neurofeedback is a type of precision medicine. When you come to see me, I'm going to look at the unique patterns that are yours, based on the activity in your brain. And again, there are a lot of overlays here with Human Design — looking at a map and then basing what you learn on your unique design. I do that on a nervous-system, energetic level with brain waves.
Lisa Cooper Ellison [4:08] I love that, and that is a great segue to talking about Human Design. I think it's been about a year and a half ago — yeah, about a year and a half ago — I did an interview with Maha Mamish, who is a Human Design consultant. That's her area of expertise, but because that was a while ago, I think it's probably best for us to reground everyone — in case someone is new and missed that episode — as to what Human Design actually is, before we talk about how it has helped us and what the benefits are. So, I'm going to start with my definition of Human Design, you add a little more, and as we do that, we're going to introduce you, listeners, to a little of the vocabulary you'll become familiar with if you decide to learn more about your Human Design.
So, I happen to be a Generator. A Generator is a type within Human Design. Human Design is, as Jessica said, a map or a system that helps you understand who you are, why you're here, and how you can go forward into the world. And it is a system built on other ancient and more modern systems that have existed — so I may forget some of these, Jessica — astrology, the I Ching, the Kabbalah, numerology, the chakra system, quantum physics. All of that comes together to give you this unique understanding of who you are. That's what I've been saying as a definition of Human Design more generally. How do you describe it?
Jessica Eure [5:59] Well, I do think it is a system, or a framework — or, as I mentioned, a map — to really understand deeper patterns that we move through in our lives, and how we uniquely navigate those patterns. For me, I love a system. I love a structure. I love a container. Symbolic systems in particular, when we're working with intangible inner workings or archetypal forces — being able to interact with and, you know, work with those energies or forces within ourselves more consciously, having a framework with language to do that, is really powerful. Just like narrative therapy, developmental parts work, developmental needs meeting strategy, or Internal Family Systems parts work, where we can talk about different aspects of ourselves — they all feel so interwoven to me. It's like Human Design just... I feel like any effective system overlays beautifully with other effective systems, and I see that in Human Design.
Lisa Cooper Ellison [7:22] I 100% agree, and I love how you talk about it in terms of a system and a map, because there is a visual that you will get if you go down the Human Design rabbit hole, and that is your body graph. Your body graph is a physical, visual representation of who you are, and it includes a number of different parts. Because we're keeping this high level today, we're not going to get deep into what those are — but just know that there are different ways you can look at things.
I'm going to create an analogy that will probably resonate with many of my listeners, because so many of you are storytellers, or you're using writing in order to heal yourselves or understand your life. When you do that, the page becomes the map, right? The story is the map for you to understand something. And what I love about Human Design, and the different trainings I've taken in it, is that it is just another way to understand your story. And, like writing, you can write down the first draft of what you think the story is — and then you get to revise it. Revision is where you make deeper meaning. The more you understand about that body graph, or about how Human Design works, the more you understand your story from a systems level — and then you get to make different decisions.
Jessica Eure [8:46] Yes — awareness is power. And, you know, I have a quote — I don't even know that it's a quote, I don't know where I found this along the way: "A picture is worth a thousand words, but a map is worth a thousand pictures." Because a map shows us where we are, and it helps us find our way to where we want to go. And I really feel like Human Design offers us that kind of map, where that new level of awareness equals personal power.
Lisa Cooper Ellison [9:23] I love that. That is a quote I'm going to be pasting on my wall and thinking about for a good long while, because it's such a good one. Because yes — a map helps us not just see where we are, but where we want to go. So, when you think about your experience with Human Design, how is it helping you understand the map of who you are and where you want to go?
Jessica Eure [9:49] It's been really profound. As someone who loves personal work, loves a good self-help book, and has always been open to healing and evolving — trying all different kinds of modalities, bodywork, everything — I'm kind of still blown away at how much actual transformation has happened for me in a real, tangible way by using this system. It really highlighted some patterns in my life that I've struggled to change, even with a lot of awareness. And not just because it offered more awareness, but it actually gave me tangible new techniques to try, or a new way of looking at things — maybe less pathologizing, less clinical. Getting out of that clinical mind and really looking at it as just the way things are flowing, like you would look at how water moves through canals when there are chutes opening or closing. Yeah.
Lisa Cooper Ellison [11:09] I love that. Yeah, I've had a similar experience. And what I can say is that I have a pretty significant trauma history, and I've also done a lot of work and a lot of healing. So, I would say I'm maybe a trauma thriver — I'm going to coin that, right? I am not bound by that old story, and yet there are ways that it has affected me. So what I found for myself is that I've done tons of therapy, I have explored so many different modalities, I know different things about how I work — and when I looked at my Human Design body graph, I was like, "Oh yeah, people have been telling me this stuff for years," around people-pleasing, around what is your yes, all of these different questions that we wrestle with. But there was something about seeing it in black and white — or color — on a piece of paper that gave me new permission, and, like you said, new tools to be able to claim my own power, to claim my own experience. And I think this is really important: to understand that all experiences are exactly what they need to be, and that you are wonderful and perfect and great just as you are. There's a story that happens in the world around how you're supposed to behave, what you're supposed to do, what your life experience is supposed to look like — and when yours doesn't line up, it can feel like there's something wrong with you, or like you're broken. But when I work with this with myself, or with my clients, I really get to see the beauty of each unique individual experience and how they're all needed in our world.
Jessica Eure [13:05] Yes, I love the idea that Atash mentioned in your interview with her — transforming a disorder into order. That just kind of blew my mind. It's so simple, but it's so beautiful. Seeing how it's the same pattern, but now you can navigate it in a healthy way where you can thrive, like you said. And for me, it's really about not saying yes too fast, and really getting in touch with what is an aligned commitment for me, what's sustainable, not overextending — and that has freed up a ton of energy. And I think that's something any creative would want, because if you are just leaking energy in every part of your life, then you don't have a lot left—
Lisa Cooper Ellison [14:04] —for your creativity. Yes. I say that all the time: you have to be able to say no to other things in order to say yes to yourself, because you cannot create from an empty well. And so many of us are living lives where we have empty wells. Life can be tough — there are a lot of pressures outside of our control — and yet there are a number that are inside our control, and the more we can own that and make different choices around those. And I'm going to say, listeners, I know this is an issue for you, because I'm raising my hand and saying it's one for me too. We can overschedule ourselves and, just like you were talking about, say yes because the head tells us, "Well, that's what's expected of me," or "People will be disappointed," or whatever the story we build — or "This is what a successful, productive person does." And then we get ourselves into situations where we don't have the energy, and then we have this deep frustration because we're not doing what we want to do, or we're not living out our passions or our purpose.
Jessica Eure [15:25] Absolutely. And I think what I've seen — and what I think we've seen with some of our other friends in our study group around Human Design — is that as we focus on this and really sit with what's an aligned decision for me, what's a yes, what's a no, what's a not now, multiple of us are making some pretty big changes in our lives.
Lisa Cooper Ellison [15:59] Yeah, absolutely. There's a lot of pivoting going around — people rethinking the careers they have, or where they're living, so many things. And I see this with clients. I was working with a client who had an issue with overscheduling, which is very common, and suddenly she was telling me about all these no's, and how saying no led to this amazing opportunity that she would not have been able to say yes to if she had already been booked. And that was huge.
Jessica Eure [16:38] There is a level of trusting that if you follow what's right — if you follow what—
Jessica Eure [16:44] If you're listening to your inner guidance, then you don't have to future-predict. You can just respond to what you're being given, and trust that the right things will come to you.
Lisa Cooper Ellison [17:00] Yeah. And I'm going to ask you a deep question, and I'll answer it as well. When it comes to that trust piece — so important, so essential with everything — what makes it difficult for you to trust? What is that fear piece for you?
Jessica Eure [17:19] You know, that's an interesting one. I've delved into my design to look at specifically where that's at. And I do have some conditioning — cultural conditioning, family conditioning — around what—
Lisa Cooper Ellison [17:35] —safety is.
Jessica Eure [17:37] And those are a lot of times faulty narratives about how you get safety. Safety is acquiescing to others' needs. Safety is ignoring my own needs. Safety is not being rejected — even if it would be better to be rejected by that person. And really looking at: okay, so I'm not trusting because — what am I scared of? I'm scared of being abandoned by the tribe, ultimately, for me. And so, I have to look at the narratives, the conditioning, the trauma pattern — whatever system you're in, there will be a different word for it — but looking at those beliefs and really examining them and deciding if I agree with them as reality.
Lisa Cooper Ellison [18:30] I love that. And I'll share — I would say ditto to everything you said. A lot of conditioning, a lot of family conditioning. And if you don't know what we mean by conditioning, we're just talking about the stories that people tell you about who you are, and how you take them in. Do you have a different way of talking about it?
Jessica Eure [18:53] I mean, we talk about operant conditioning in science, right? Operant conditioning is just punishment and reward. You get punished if you do the thing the people around you don't want you to do; you get rewarded if you do what they want you to do. And what they want you to do — or not do — isn't necessarily what's right for you.
Lisa Cooper Ellison [19:15] And that conditioning can be unconscious or conscious — I think most of it is unconscious. What I can say for me, there are two pieces I'll add. One: I have a Gate 19, which, if you don't know what that is, that's totally fine. It is this Achilles' heel of sensitivity — very, very sensitive. And the piece that is most difficult for me is that I can be very sensitive to criticism. It can be very hard when people tell me I need to do things differently, or that I have displeased them. So hard. So, what I found is that in the past, I would try to be perfect — try to do everything perfectly, try to be all things to all people, put all the ducks in a row — so that I could feel safe and avoid that experience of pain or anxiety around that sensitivity. What I have learned now is that instead, I go, "Oh yeah, I know that's the way I am." So, when I start feeling bad, or going down my own little boo-hoo rabbit hole of "Oh no, they don't like me, I did a bad job" — whatever the story is, because we all have them — I can go, "Oh, there it is." And then I can take a few deep breaths and give myself an actual physical hug. So, if you're watching on YouTube, you can see what I'm doing — or do something else that soothes you. Because I know that's real. It's not something I'm making up in my head; it's just part of who I am. And that sensitivity serves me in so many ways, but that's one area that can be a challenge.
The other thing is that one of the reasons people really love working with me is that I have this deep mama bear energy — I can make the tribe feel safe, I want to care for the tribe. That is definitely one of my strengths, one of the things people really love. But the thing about that is, all strengths can have a shadow side: I can ignore my own needs in order to take care of the tribe. Knowing that that's a piece of my experience, when I start to feel frustrated — which is an emotion that is very important for me to pay attention to — I can pause and take a deep breath and say, "How am I caring for myself? Am I overgiving to everyone else and undergiving to myself? What do I need to do to make a different decision?"
Jessica Eure [22:02] The other day I was like, "Wait a minute — I've been deep-diving on this Human Design thing since last April, going down every rabbit hole, filling up pages and pages of notes, reading books, all the things." And I was like, "I think I can boil this down to one word — one magic word for myself." And it's: pause. It's just pause. Ask, "Is this mine?" Pause. Ask, "Is this pressure or is this inspiration? Am I feeling an urge to relieve a pressure, or is this actually a yes?" Just pause long enough to let it sit in your body and move through all of these centers and spaces and parts — however you want to say it.
Lisa Cooper Ellison [22:57] Oh, I love that. Yeah, pausing is so important, and we live in a world that's like — snap, snap — "Come on, give us the answer, we've got to do it, we've got to do it." And that does not serve us in so many ways. So, we've talked a little about how this works for us personally, some of the things that have helped us. But when you think about relationships — which is something we've also talked about, and we both have our own little stories there — how has understanding Human Design helped you with your relationships with other people? And I say that because Human Design was originally developed to help parents work with and raise their children in a way that affirmed who those children are, even when how they behave or operate is very different from their parents.
Jessica Eure [23:52] I think for me, it definitely highlighted patterns I was already aware of — but again, it had me looking at them in a different way. Rather than just, "Oh, I always get stressed out when my partner has a big emotion, and I've found ways to work with that," there was some relief in knowing: oh, he has an emotional wave. He has these big feelings he has to ride out, and he knows how to do it. He's cool with it. He can just say, "I'm upset," or "I'm sad" — he can just name it. But because I am open in that way, I'm receptive to emotions. I pick them up, and then my body has always had a hard time knowing whose emotion it was and what I should do with it. And there's a lot of conditioning around taking care of everybody else's emotional state. I've done a lot of work on those things but just looking at it as a flow of energy and seeing that Human Design validated very clearly what I was already aware of — and then said, hey, here are some really basic things you can do. Have your partner just state that they're having an emotion, and then you can be like, "That is theirs. It is not mine. I am not responsible for it. It's coming into me, and that's okay — that's how I operate — but I can just let it go back out." It just gave me permission again, like you said earlier, to be the way that I am. It's not wrong. And it gave me new ways to work with that energy.
Lisa Cooper Ellison [25:38] Yeah, I love that, and it's very similar to my own experience. Because I'm an extreme empath — I can soak in everybody else's feelings. You don't even have to tell me what you're feeling, and I will feel it for you, if I don't watch out. It's just so ingrained. And what I found is that, yeah, my partner also has an emotional wave. If he can just tell me that — just say, "Yep, I'm having an emotion," not even naming it sometimes, just acknowledging it's there — then I have a choice. I can say, okay, number one, I'm going to let you have that. And number two, I'm going to take a break, move around, be somewhere else. Because for my own sensitivity, I can totally let you have your experience, but I need to protect mine. And that is a very easy way for me to navigate that.
And I find that the more I understand about Human Design, the more I can be in interactions with people and go, "Oh, this person is like this, or this person is like that" — fit it into a Human Design framework — and go, "Oh, that's the wonderful piece about that person." And I can radically accept them. And if there's a part that doesn't align with me, or isn't in my best interest, or creates frustration, I don't have to judge that person. I don't have to see them as bad. I can just be like, yeah, it's not in alignment, and I'm going to step back. I can honor all of who they are and the beauty of it, while also honoring my own experience. And that is very different from how I was raised.
Jessica Eure [27:21] Yeah. And for me, it's interesting — my technique is slightly different with my emotional husband. When he tells me he's having an emotion, I say, "Do you need connection or quiet right now?" And the first time I tried it, he just lit up — like, that was the most natural question he'd ever been asked. "Well, I need a little connection for five minutes, and then quiet." He was able to place an order, like at a restaurant. And it was just — my God, this is so easy.
Lisa Cooper Ellison [27:55] Yeah, I love that you just shared that tool. The more tools we have, the easier it is to live our lives — we can navigate so much more clearly and easily. And what I would say is that if you are a trauma survivor who grew up in an environment where conflict was scary, or you developed a habit of conflict avoidance, knowing that you have these simple tools — something like, "I feel like you may be having an experience or a feeling — do you need connection, or do you need quiet? Do you need space?" — can alleviate so much. And that's another thing I just love is that there is so much language and so many tools we can use to help each other with our experiences, and to radically accept who that person is, while also accepting who we are and our own needs. If I would say anything about myself, it's that I do not abandon myself as much now that I have Human Design. Are there still times? Probably — because I'm human, and I'm learning. But it is so much better.
Jessica Eure [31:02] Yes. We did this really cool exercise in our study group where we were meditating on our different centers — they're like chakras, right? And the energy I got from one of my centers was of an ox plowing a field. I've just been working with that so much, because it's basically like — is this the right field? Do I own this field that I'm plowing? Who's going to get the produce that comes out of this field? There's a lot you can do with that. This ox doesn't know what he's doing — he just does whatever I tell him to do. So now I ask: do I actually want to tell him to do this?
Lisa Cooper Ellison [31:39] Yeah, I love that. Listeners, we would invite you to our Human Design study group if we could, because it is so much fun — and the snacks are amazing. We can say that because we provide the snacks. But yeah, there are so many story-driven ways you can work with this. And what I hope you're hearing is that the more you understand who you are, the more you embrace your own sovereignty, the more room you're going to have for your own creativity. So instead of experiencing that conflict of, "Oh my gosh, I really want to have time for my book, but I don't — why is this?" — with all that angst and frustration — you can pause, figure out what's going on, identify whether it's something you can change, and if it is, make different choices.
So, this leads to one of the things we talked about beforehand, which was consciousness. You have some really cool things to say about consciousness and Human Design, and I'm curious — can you tell us what consciousness is from your perspective? I know, big order, very tall order. But tell us what that means to you, and how Human Design is helping you see it in a different way.
Jessica Eure [33:03] You know, consciousness has always been something I've been drawn to. Studying psychology and working in the neuroscience field, I understand that the accepted paradigm in science is that our brain matter — the physical stuff of our brain — generates our consciousness, our awareness of ourselves. And I don't subscribe to that particular paradigm, which is even a little scary to say as a clinician and a science person, because that paradigm is so strong that you become an outsider immediately if you deviate from it. And many people operate within it without even knowing they're in it.
There are other theories about where our consciousness comes from, what it is, and whether it persists after our brain is no longer here. The framework I resonate with most actually came out of the work of William James — it's called the transmission theory of mind. That theory describes our brain more like a receptor and transmitter: like a radio station, it may send a signal out, take in and receive signals, and transmit them. So that's how I see the brain — as a waylay station for our consciousness. And we are able to experience that consciousness through a physical body, through our nervous system.
Lisa Cooper Ellison [34:59] I love that. And one thing I want to add is something that Stacey Simmons talked about in my interview with her around memory — that a lot of what science does is offer a framework based on what we know at a given moment. For instance, she talked about how the body and brain were described as a machine when the Industrial Revolution started, and then that evolved into the computer analogy. Now that we're in the computer age, people talk about the brain in terms of AI and ChatGPT. So, it keeps evolving. But what I love about what you're saying is that there are different models, different ways of understanding — and science cannot explain all the experiences we're having right now, because it simply hasn't caught up to them yet.
Jessica Eure [36:03] And as long as science continues to be reductionist, it won't. For me, the Human Design system — and its orientation toward the body graph as a receptive structure that processes information and energy as it moves through — overlays perfectly with the idea of the brain as a receptor that our consciousness flows through. In both models, our nervous system acts as the interface, filtering that field through all the particular flavor we bring — through our conditioning, through our uniqueness — and expressing it through our thoughts, our feelings, and our body awareness. And so, all the work I enjoy doing with people in my practice really comes down to getting back in touch with what your body is telling you. When we have trauma, we often disconnect from those signals. Getting out of survival mode, finding trust in our internal cues, and reconnecting with ourselves by slowing down and looking inward — that's the work.
Lisa Cooper Ellison [37:36] I love that. And I want to pick up on something you just said — slowing down. So important, and so counter to the way our world works. And I'm curious: in this year that we've been working with and studying Human Design, so much has changed. What do you think your life would look like if you'd had Human Design five or ten years ago? How might things be different?
Jessica Eure [38:10] I've thought about that — like, oh, if only I could go back to my 18-year-old self and say, "Look, you say yes way too fast." Short story: I feel like it would have saved me a lot of suffering. But then again, we all have our lessons and our paths, and who's to say — it came to me at the right time. But the work around healthy boundaries, around effectively listening to my intuition — do you know how many years I've spent really trying to better listen to my intuition, and running into the same snags over and over? I finally feel like this system is what's giving me some really precise, effective strategies to improve that connection.
Lisa Cooper Ellison [39:09] Oh, I love that — because yes, it has made a big difference in my intuition as well, and in understanding what gets in the way of it. And I think about this a lot too. What I would say is, like you, I believe things come to us when it's time and when we're ready to receive them. So, I don't spend a lot of time wishing my life had been different. However, wisdom does come from looking back. And there are a couple of huge aha moments where I go — wow, what would life have been like if I'd understood this sooner?
One is that I spent most of my life trying to prove myself. A long time trying to prove my value, working too hard, because I had it in my mind — and our society definitely conditions us to believe this — that if I just worked hard enough, used the right model, did the right things, I would achieve some outcome that would make me feel more valuable. Inside myself, but also as someone others could see as valuable. And as a result, I was discounting the ways others already saw me as valuable and discounting my own internal value. That's definitely something I'd go back and tell my 18-year-old self.
The other thing is this: if you are between the ages of 38 and 42 and you feel like you're not doing life well — because things keep happening, you keep trying to work through them, and you just keep hitting wall after wall after wall, thinking, "WTF, what is happening to me?" — you are not doing life wrong. I really came to understand that that period was one of deep change and transformation for the better, even though it was also incredibly difficult. That was when I had Lyme disease, when I was really sick and had to leave the workforce. And when I found certain things in my design, I was like, "Oh my God — that's exactly what I was supposed to be doing. I wouldn't have fought that." I would have told myself: yeah, this is the time. This is the work. Yes, it's hard. Yes, it's not what I would choose. But I'm not doing life wrong. There's nothing wrong with me. I'm okay.
So, if you are in that space and you feel like you're doing life wrong because the obstacles just keep coming — hang in there. It will change. And here's what you can do: learn to trust your intuition. Learn to pause and figure out what is truly for your best and highest good, and what is in alignment for you. The more you can do that, the more you're going to come out the other side and go, "Whoa. Holy cow. I love the life I'm living."
Jessica Eure 42:23] Less forcing, more flow.
Lisa Cooper Ellison [42:26] Yes. So much more flow. So much less forcing — and fighting. Those are my two words, at least. Because I was putting my dukes up all the time. Life would come at me and I'd be like, "No, it's not going to be this way" — and then of course I'd try to force a solution on top of it.
Jessica Eure [42:49] Yeah. It's very interesting, because the book Rest Is Resistance came into my world around the same time all of this did, and I was like — oh. This idea of rejecting grind culture, the work around laziness not existing, that whole theme of: why are we grinding ourselves up? When you look at how you uniquely work, you can find that flow — and it might not look like what our society says productive and valuable is supposed to look like. But when you can just be with that authentically, you'll be more productive, happier, and more abundant than ever.
Lisa Cooper Ellison [43:43] Amen to that. And I can definitely say my creative life has transformed. Here's just a simple example: last year I started the year feeling kind of sad about my creative life — about not having enough time, having had a couple of setbacks that were making me question what I did. And I just decided: I'm going to write for the sake of writing, and for the joy of it. That was it. And the more I got clear on that and operated from that space — through Human Design — the more a project came to light. Now I have this draft, and I'm going to say this: it is the best stuff I've ever written, and I am so proud of it. Yes, listeners, it is still a hot mess, and I am still working on it — but I'm like, this is fucking good. And it's great to feel that way.
Jessice Eure [44:41] That is so cool.
Lisa Cooper Ellison [44:45] Well, this has been so much fun, and I have loved having you on — and who knows, you may be back again sometime. Now, listeners, if you are interested in finding out what your Human Design is and you just want to see what your body graph looks like, you can get a free copy by going to my website — the link will be in the show notes. And if you're like, "Okay, now I have this information — what do I do with it as a creative?" you can join my Substack and participate in my Human Design for Writers sessions, where you're going to learn practical skills and discover Human Design over time, so you don't get overloaded with a bunch of vocabulary all at once. You can use this to really empower yourself and to embrace my word of the year — which is sovereignty. But that's a taste of what's coming. For now, if people want to learn more about you, Jessica, see what you're up to, or maybe just have a question — what are the best ways for them to reach you?
Jessica Eure [46:38] They can go to my clinic's website, which is virginiaNeurofeedback.com — all spelled out — or jessicaeure.com. Jessica Eure is my professional mentoring site for people who want to learn EEG and neurofeedback, and the clinic site is about the services I offer to clients. They can also just email me at jessica@virginiaNeurofeedback.com.
Lisa Cooper Ellison [47:08] All of those links will be in the show notes, so it will be very easy for you to access them. And Jessica, it has been such a pleasure to have you on the show. Who knows — you might be back sometime. But for now, thank you so much for being here.
Jessica Eure [47:31] Thank you. It's been really fun.