107. How Long Do I Need to Wait to Make Decisions If I'm an Emotional Authority?

Unjaded: Human Design for Intentional Entrepreneurs

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How Long Do I Need to Wait to Make Decisions If I'm an Emotional Authority?

Are you struggling to make clear, confident decisions in your business? In this episode, Vickie addresses a listener question about emotional authority in Human Design — particularly, how it impacts the time it takes to make decisions. Discover what it means to have an emotional authority, why “waiting out your wave” can lead to better choices, and how to tune into your unique process for more aligned outcomes. By the end, you’ll understand how to honor your emotional rhythm and make decisions that truly feel right.

Before we get started… I love hearing from you! 💙 Is this episode inspiring you? Did you get an insane take away? Know someone who would also love it? Take a screenshot and tag @vickie.dickson on your IG story and I’ll shout you out!

In this episode, you will hear:

• The fundamentals of emotional authority in Human Design and why it’s essential for those with this trait to slow down and “wait out the wave” before making major decisions
• Real-life examples from Vickie’s personal experience as an emotional authority, including how she navigates decision-making for both business and personal choices
• Practical strategies for recognizing and working with your emotional wave so you can avoid rushing into decisions that might not serve you in the long term
• How to identify whether you are emotionally defined and what that means for your energy patterns, interactions, and emotional needs
• The impact of generational influences on emotional processing and decision-making, especially if you’re Gen X or older
• Tips for handling relationships where one partner is emotionally defined and the other isn’t, and how this dynamic affects daily life and emotional exchanges
• Why honoring your own pace in decision-making can lead to greater clarity, more confidence, and ultimately, decisions that align with your true self

Honoring your emotional authority isn’t about following rigid rules but finding the rhythm that works best for you. By learning to embrace the ebb and flow of your feelings, you can make clearer, more powerful decisions that serve you and your business. Curious to go deeper? Download your Human Design chart and explore how your energy is uniquely configured!

Links Mentioned in the Episode:

• Download your Human Design Chart for free → https://vickiedickson.com/free-hd-chart
• Submit your question to be answered on a future episode → https://www.speakpipe.com/vickiedickson
• Book a Personal Human Design reading → https://vickiedickson.com/personal-reading

Let’s Connect!

• Send Vickie a DM on Instagram with your Human Design questions → https://www.instagram.com/vickie.dickson/
• Check out Vickie's website and current offerings → http://www.vickiedickson.com

Remember! 🔔 Follow the Unjaded podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and leave a review!

Life is gonna kick you around. Stay Unjaded! ✌️

💙 Vickie

Episode Transcript

Welcome to Unjaded! I am so glad to be chatting with you here today. I've got something super exciting to be talking with you about. It is actually a listener question that I'm answering. And this question is all about an emotional authority in human design. How long do I have to wait to make decisions? This is a great question. And I gotta tell you, this is something that I have been really boots on the ground, learning and leaning into in my own human design for at least the last three years. And yes, it has taken me that long.

And I continue to learn lessons around this decision making with an emotional authority. So here's the thing. If you don't have your human design chart, you can pause this episode and you can go to my website, it's www.vickiedickson.com to run your human design chart there for free. You're going to want to know if you are emotionally defined or not. And you're probably the opposite of what you think you are. I know that my experience within my human design was that I am an emotional authority. And I always say I'm light on the emotional.

Why is that? Well, for two reasons. One, I'm Gen X and every generation has its challenges. Every generation hopefully does a little better than the generation before. Jury's still out on that one right now. But Gen X, as a rule, we didn't have a lot of space for our emotions, right? We were the latchkey kids. We were the ones who were, you know, if you want something to cry about, if you want to cry, I'll give you something to cry about. You know, all of, all of the things. There just wasn't room for emotional health back then.

And that's okay because that's how we came in and that's why we came in and that's what we get to work with in this lifetime. So that's one of the reasons that I'm not super, super connected to my emotional system. It means that I get to work through that, right? It means that I get to give myself the gift of understanding and starting to play in that. The other reason for me that I say light on emotional is that my emotional system and my root center in my human design, I'm a split definition. So if you're new to human design, that means that the energy in my design works in two separate ways. So I have my root and my emotional system kind of off on its own doing the rest of the thing and then all of the rest of my definition or who I'm here to be is in another place, connected to each other. So I have two different energy systems at work, and my emotional system is subconscious. So I have an emotional wave that I'm not aware of, which is a trip.

It is taking me, you know, a long time to really allow myself to be connected to this emotional decision making in my design. And you may have the same experience no matter what generation you're from, but especially if you're Gen X or older, it's just not a thing that we had space for our emotions. Right. And especially if you also have a subconscious piece of your emotional design. So how to tell if you're emotionally defined? Let's go back to the basics for a second. If your large triangle on the bottom right hand side of your chart is colored in, that means you're emotionally defined. So you are automatically and emotional authority. And what that means, why this listener is asking about decision making is that there's no truth in the now.

As emotional authorities, it takes us a long time to get clear on things, so we shouldn't really make decisions in the moment, no matter what else is defined in our charts. So for me, I have my spleen, the triangle on the opposite side colored in. And then I have my sacral, the red circle near the bottom, colored in. And then my emotional authority. So I have three authorities kind of operating at once. But the emotional authority is always going to win because it's the slowest. So you may have more than one authority in your design as well, but the emotional is always going to win. So my spleen speaks lightning fast.

It's the intuition, it's the intuitive drive to stay safe in the moment. It's the intuitive drive to survive. Basically our oldest awareness, and it's so fast, it's lightning fast. And I have that in my body. And then I have my sacral. And my sacral is like, because it's like a motor and I can ask my sacral yes or no questions and it will answer and it will be all hyped up and ready to go. And then I have to wait and wait and wait for my emotional system to catch up. Sorry, Alvin.

Sorry. So how long do I have to wait with an emotional authority? Well, that is the million dollar question, my friend. Every decision is going to be different. And I would like to bust a myth in the human design space that says that you are going to have to wait out a wave for your decision. You know, I, the, the training that I went through for human design, taught by someone who's open emotionally taught that if ever in your wave it's a no, the whole thing has to be a no. Now, my lived experience tells me that's absolutely not true. Because if I lived by that advice, I would never do anything. Because there's always going to be a no at some point in my way.

Right when I'm low, I don't want to do anything. Everything's a no when I'm low. When I'm high, everything's a yes. So for me, it's really about just allowing myself to feel the feels. I think this is the work for us as emotional authorities. We have to allow ourselves to get present with our emotions and not just in a way that says, well, I'm low today, so everybody has to deal with it, or I'm low today, so I have to expect that, or I have to accept that about myself. I mean, in a way that allows you to really go in and say, I'm going to allow myself to feel whatever comes up right now. I'm going to be with this and feel whatever is here for me.

And that is not always comfortable. Right now, my husband and I, we get into this space. We've been married for 32 years, and we get into this space. He's open emotionally, and I'm defined. We get into this space sometimes where I kind of put this cocoon around me, this protective cocoon around me, and I don't even necessarily know why I'm doing it or what it's about. And that's my work. I get to go in and explore that. And he's over here being open emotionally, amplifying my emotions, because that's what will happen if you're open emotionally or undefined emotionally.

If your center is white, you will amplify things back into the field. He feels it bigger than I do. He feels my emotions before I feel my emotions. When we are in auric space, and what that means is that we, when we are within like a couple of arm's lengths of each other, he is going to feel my emotions. I am going to set the tone for the house. It's just the two of us here. I'm going to set the tone for the house. Sorry, Alvin.

There's something that I was going to say about that. It will come back. It will come back. It will come back. It will come back. So right now, just this morning, I had to say to him, because there's a little bit of angst in our home, and I know it's me. I know it's not him. I.

I understand now that it's me. Whereas before human design, I wouldn't have known that it was me. And I just looked at him and I said, I don't know. I don't know what's happening right now. And I hugged him and he's like, you don't know? What do you mean you don't know? Because for him, that's like so weird, right? Because he would just. Would always know what he's feeling. And I'm like, yeah, I. I don't know what it is.

I don't know. But I'm just giving myself the time to be with it. He's like, okay. And as long as he knows, then it's okay, right? But it's when we don't give ourselves the space and we try to, like, push through it and make ourselves appear happy. I'm putting that in air quotes. Making ourselves appear happy or, you know, sinking into it or something like that, where there's a lot more angst around, it takes a lot more time to go through it. So what does this have to do with decision making? So as an emotional authority, you're going to take time making your decisions because you have this ebb and flow in emotions. And I'm going to walk you through my most recent significant purchase so that you can see that this may take longer than a wave because depending on what channels and gates.

So the lines in between or the circles that are colored in, in numbers in your. In your emotional solar plexus, depending on what's defined there for you, you may have a wave that just kind of, you know, you kind of are on an even keel all the time. And once in a while you have this big blowout and then you're good. You might have a wave that kind of ratchets up, up. Your needs aren't being met and then all of a sudden you explode and it's rage. Or you may have one like mine that's based on expectations and you really have to. Or you really get to explore not being attached to the outcome of things because your expectations are always so high and then they crash down. So you can have different types of waves going on.

So to be able to say to somebody, we'll just wait out your wave. And we're not always aware of our waves, right? Because we're comfortable with our emotions. So decisions. Recently I made the decision to purchase a new iPhone. I have had my iPhone since 2019, so it's pretty old in the phone world. And I use it Every single day for my work. And the camera's acting up and the sound is acting up, and it's just become a big deal. It has probably taken me six or seven months to decide which phone I want and when I'm going to buy it.

And that's not an exaggeration. So I will go to the Apple website, I will go to Best Buy, I will go to wherever. And I thought I had decided finally that I was going to get a 15 Pro Max. And I mean, I go between the Pro, the Pro Max and the regular. Like, it's ridiculous. All of the stuff that it takes for me to make this decision. I finally decided the 15 Pro Max was what I was going to do. And then my friend messages me and says, don't buy your phone yet.

There's a 16 coming out. And the audio quality and the video quality on it. You'll be able to do podcasts on it and everything. And I'm like, oh, Jesus, now we have to wait again. And I did have to wait again. I probably had to wait another four or five weeks to process that through my emotional system again. I opened up the tabs on my laptop and I looked at the phones again and I looked at the plans again and I went through all of the things again. And it was just this, what.

What I could feel like is a painful process if I didn't now understand that this is just how I am meant to work, as an emotional authority. And if you are emotionally defined, you gotta give yourself a pass for taking a long time with your decisions. You have to give yourself some grace around the fact that when you make quick decisions, they're probably not the best decisions for you. Instead, when you can feel really super spacious in your decision, it's just you're unattached to it anymore. And then you make better decisions. So for me, how did I know it was the right moment to buy a phone after six or seven months? How did I know? After all of this research and all of this pros and cons and this plan or that plan and all of the things, how did I finally know? I knew because I was no longer attached. And that's something in spiritual spaces that we kind of throw around. Like it's.

I don't know what. And we maybe don't understand really what it means or what it would feel like in our body. So I'm going to explain what it feels like for me. What it feels like for me is like a calm in between the storm or in the middle of the Storm. So before I make my decision, if it's a big decision, before I make my decision, I have all this noise around it. I have all of this like clutter and it's, it's hard for me to get a hold of the thought and I'm processing, processing, processing, processing. And then there comes a moment. And this is not a long period of time.

This is like a few moments sometimes where it's just like, ah, everything is quiet. And I know whether it's a yes or a no, and I can't explain to you how that feels other than what I've just said. You are going to feel it differently in your body than I feel it in mine. For me, it's quiet. For you, it could be a voice, it could be something you see, it could be confirmation from the outside there's something that you are going to know. That's my decision. That's my decision. And I just know it because I feel it in my body.

So this is something that I think as emotional authorities, we are exploring over a long period of time throughout our lives. I mean, our creativity is tied up in our emotional solar plexus. Our decision making is tied up in our emotional solar plexus. Emotional eating lives in the emotional solar plexus. Shopping addictions, all kinds of things live in the emotional solar plexus. And we get to do the work of actually allowing ourselves space in our lives to not have clarity. We get to let it be okay, to not be clear 100% of the time. In a world that values clarity and quick decision making, it can be really uncomfortable to say, can you give me a few days to decide on that? Can you give me a little bit of time for that? Right now I've got two proposals in my inbox.

They've been there probably for. I've got three proposals in my inbox actually. One of them has been there for two months and a couple of them have been there for three or four weeks. And I have just let people know it's percolating and what their knee jerk reaction is because they're not human design practitioners. Their knee jerk reaction is to fix this for me, to help me make my decision. They want to get on a call with me and I'm like, it's not that I just need to sit with it, I just need to give myself space around it. And I will know when I know and I won't know before I know. And that's the way it is with your emotional authority too.

So I hope that I have answered that question, but I kind of haven't, have I? How long do you have to wait? With an emotional authority, the answer is always that depends. You get to decide. It's going to depend on the size of the decision that you're making, the amount of money you're spending. It's you just have to or you just get to. Your opportunity is to process it, understand and get really in tune with how you're feeling about it. And it does get easier over time to allow yourself the space, but it doesn't necessarily get faster over time. It's just that you understand the process better and you're able to work with it a lot easier. If you have a follow up question for that, I'm going to put my Speak pipe in the show notes for you. And that is an app where you can just click the button and send me a voice memo and ask me your question and you may even hear yourself on a future episode of Unjaded. Thanks for being here.