What if the key to unlocking your true potential lies in aligning with who you’re meant to be?
Do you want to stop grinding through life and are you ready to align with your true purpose? Quantum Human Design could be the key that unlocks your next big step.
In this episode, Samantha dives deep with Karen Curry Parker, founder of Quantum Human Design and the Quantum Alignment System, to explore how to unlock your potential, embrace uncertainty, and thrive in the new metrics of success.
Karen shares her journey from a curious child with an imaginary friend to a pioneer in Quantum Human Design. Discover how her unique perspective reshapes traditional systems to empower people to live authentically and courageously.
Alignment isn’t just a buzzword, it’s the key to unlocking abundance, purpose, and joy. This conversation reminds us that when we live authentically, we elevate not only ourselves but everyone around us.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL DISCOVER:
- How an imaginary friend sparked a lifelong mission (00:22)
- What makes Quantum Human Design different? (3:45)
- Discover your purpose beyond what you do (08:19)
- What if success isn’t just a number, but a feeling? (14:38)
- Can we use labels without losing ourselves? (22:33)
- Integrating imagination and structure to scale your business (27:40)
- Why redefining success could be your ultimate game-changer (32:33)
- The self-worth and money connection (35:54)
- How to set prices that honour your value without compromising your vision or well-being (39:52)
- A powerful analogy of the cosmic tapestry and why your unique role is irreplaceable (44:01)
- Getting in touch with Karen (49:56)
RESOURCES
QUOTES
“The goal of traditional human design is to get you back to baseline — to get you back to that place to fulfil that story you were born to fulfil.” – Karen Curry Parker
“You’re here to be the person you were born to be, and to have a really darn good time at it. To enjoy it, to push the edges on it, to experiment with it, to try it, to learn to love it.” – Karen Curry Parker
“The real crux of human design and the path to finding your gifts and expressing them out into the world is really getting back in touch with how does what feels right to me feel in my body, and how does what feels wrong to me feel in my body, and cultivating the fortitude and the courage to follow what feels right.” – Karen Curry Parker
“I talk about it in buckets — there’s this business bucket, and then there’s your relationship bucket, and there’s your finance bucket. And it is not true. Your business is part of your life, and until you understand that it’s not in a separate bucket, things aren’t going to work.” – Samantha Riley
“A lot of people say, ‘Charge what you’re worth,’ and I don’t believe that this is the correct way to say it, because someone may have low self worth — that doesn’t mean that they can’t charge a lot of money. To me, those two can actually be separate. What is that service or offer worth is different to being tied to your self worth.” – Samantha Riley
“We’re all one being. I like to think of it as a tapestry. You doing the work to heal your value as part of your purpose is the most important contribution you can make to the world.” – Karen Curry Parker
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ABOUT KAREN CURRY PARKER
Karen Curry Parker, PhD, is an international Amazon best-selling author of multiple books on personal transformation, spirituality, and Human Design. She is the creator of the Quantum Human Design™ and the Quantum Alignment System™. Speaking, coaching, training, and podcasting on these and other topics for 30+ years, she impacts lives daily worldwide. Her core mission is to help people reconnect with their natural creativity, manifest their desires effectively, and consciously use the frequency of language and narrative to craft a life that best serves themselves and adds more love and joy to the world.
Karen holds a Ph.D. in Integrative Medicine and is working on multiple new books. She is a faculty member at The Shift Network and Omega Institute.
WHERE TO FIND KAREN CURRY PARKER
- Website: https://freehumandesignchart.com/
- Website: https://quantumhumandesign.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/karencurryparkerofficial
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/karencurryparker
CONNECT WITH SAMANTHA RILEY
Facebook: Samantha Riley
Instagram: @thesamriley
LinkedIn: Samantha Riley
Twitter: @thesamriley
TRANSCRIPTION
Samantha Riley 0:03
Welcome to the show, Karen. I’m so excited to be talking to you today about quantum human design and the quantum alignment system, which are your specific modalities. Where I want to start is, what inspired you to do the work that you’re doing?
Karen Curry Parker 0:22
Oh my gosh, okay, that’s a big question. That’s an hour, right there. So, but I’ll, in the name of keeping it simple, I’ll say, I mean, there’s a lot of factors. I personally will say, first of all, I had an imaginary friend when I was four. This is where it gets weird. And I have very clear memories of riding around in the backseat of my mom’s car while she smoked, and my imaginary friend telling me, you are here to teach people about love. And that always stuck with me all throughout my whole growing up and in my young adulthood. So I was always on a quest for, well, what job can I do that is going to teach people about love? So I became a nurse first, and then I became a midwife, and then an applied scientist and a researcher. And I would certainly say the biggest thing is I could tell, and I think all of, I think, you know, coaches and healers, all of us who are sort of in love with that as our work. I think all of us are very intuitive. We’re very empathic. And I think most people that I know that are called to coach or to work with people, part of what calls them is they have an innate knowing of when there’s a dissonance between what somebody says or how somebody behaves and what we sense and feel coming off of them. And that was always very strong in me, and I always wanted to close that gap. That, to me, felt like that was the mission of love, was to close that gap in that dissonance, so that people could put down the masks. They could stop pretending, they could be authentic, and really express the heart of who they are out into the world.
Samantha Riley 2:07
That was such a beautiful way to open this interview, because exactly as you said, I feel that coaches and healers, we all do what we do, because right at the core of everything we do is because of love. And I remember the very first time that became apparent to me where I didn’t realise it before was I was on an interview, and I was back in 2015 and I remember it so distinctly, like it was yesterday. And someone said to me, like, what is one thing that you want, you know, other coaches and business people to know, like, what’s your one word? And I went, love. And I’m like, I was at the time, I was like, where did that come from? I almost felt a little bit, it felt like a bit of embarrassment that I’d said something that was so random to do with business. And the person that was interviewing looked at me too, with a look of, huh, like, we’re talking about leads, we’re talking about, you know, strategies, and we’re talking about systems. And this love came out, but, you know, it was, obviously it was meant to be. I’ve talked about it a lot since then, that it’s not, that’s just, that’s the core of what we do. It all comes back to love, and it’s just our own expression of how we bring it to the world. So human design is a modality that most people that listen to this podcast know and understand, I talk about a lot. What is the difference between traditional human design and quantum human design? Because I guess that’s your version or your unique take on love.
Karen Curry Parker 3:45
I like that. It’s my unique take on love. I’ll take that. So I have a long history with human design. I’ve been teaching and sharing human design for more than 25 years now, and I studied and worked for the founder of the Human Design System, Ra Uru Hu, and was very deeply embedded and entrenched in what I’ll call traditional human design for probably the first 10 years of my experience. But as I share with you, my background is in nursing. I was trained, actually, it’s in nursing, but I lasted six months as a nurse. I didn’t take orders very well. I was trained as a life coach in 1998, you know, really, on the front end of coaching. I have, I’m an energy, an energy medicine practitioner. You know, helping people was the thing that always sparked my passion. And when I did Human Design readings, I knew that I was giving people good information, and it was helping them, but I knew that there was something else beyond the way we were talking about human design. A lot of my people were coming back to me and saying, I love human design. It’s really powerful, but there’s something about it that’s causing me to feel like I’ve gone as far as I can go with human design. Now, I think it’s really important, when we talk about this, to say my clients have always been, I would say, evolutionarily aware clients. So even in the 2000s, you know, my clients are people who had meditated for a long time, who had been getting Abraham Hicks cassettes, you know, way before the movie, The Secret, came out, people who had been on a long spiritual path, and so they’d already done a lot of the work that’s inherent in traditional human design without knowing human design. So they already showed up into the system, kind of at a certain baseline. When I worked for traditional human design in Human Design America with Ra Uru Hu, one of the things that Ra said, and in fact, it’s in one of his very first primary books, he said that the way the system is taught, is taught for what he calls the not self, meaning, it’s taught to help you unlearn all those stories that you took on to try to fit into the world, right? That the goal of traditional human design is to get you back to baseline, to get you back to that place, to fulfil that story you were born to fulfil. But he also always said that one day he would write a version for human design that was for the awakened person. But he passed in 2011 and that statement that he said that someday he would write an awakened version of him, it just stuck in my head. It stuck in my head. You know, it stuck in my head before he died, and I was waiting and hoping, like, when is it going to come? And then, of course, he passed, and I thought, well, then maybe this is what’s falling on me, that it is now my turn to look at, what do I give my clients who really are at baseline? They’re healthy, they’re regulated, they’re intentional, they’re doing pretty good, they’re in touch with their body, their visceral responses, but they want more. They need a bigger story to grow into. And so I actually took all of the vocabulary from traditional human design, I went into a sound lab and I began, actually, I don’t know if you can see on here, there’s a big thick red book down there. That’s Rodale, The Source. I went into the lab with The Source and all the vocabulary from human design for years. I tested all the words. I tested, you know, I tested to see which language is going to hold the highest frequency. So we literally measure the language. We chose a new version, and it’s not, this is the thing. I want to be really clear. This does not in any way eliminate traditional human design, you have to have traditional human design, especially if you’ve gotten disconnected from who you are and how you are. That is, it is a prescription for getting you back in touch with, how does right feel in my life and how does wrong feel in my body, right? But beyond that, people need something more. They need a growth point. They need a point B on the map of their evolutionary journey. And so these words that I use in quantum human design are designed for my clients to intentionally choose a way to craft a bigger story, a bigger version of themselves that allows them to grow into that more expanded, what I call, the quantum version of who they are.
Samantha Riley 8:19
I love this so much. Love it so much. Talking about growing into who you are. And I think that’s what attracts a lot of people to human design, is we know we’re here for something bigger, but we don’t know what it is. And another version of that is, I’ve got these unique gifts that I want to bring together and put out to the world, but I don’t quite know how it fits together.
Karen Curry Parker 8:48
Uh-huh.
Samantha Riley 8:49
Is that something that you see? And I guess the question off the back is, how do people really tap into those unique gifts and qualities when, I think it’s so under the radar for people, because they are gifts, they’re almost invisible. How do we use this, gosh, and I’m even catching myself out saying, how do we use this system? But it’s like, it’s not really something that fits into a box, right? So, you know, how do we lean into that? And I’d love your language around that, because even as it’s coming out of my mouth, I’m like, it’s not quite right, but I know that you know where I’m going with that.
Karen Curry Parker 9:28
Totally, totally. So I actually want to back up the conversation just a little bit, because I do think, when we start talking about purpose and gifts and and that the way we talk about it, particularly in the coaching world, I feel like we still sometimes put it very external to ourselves, like I have this gift, I put it out here, or it’s the thing I get paid for. Or, you know, when we talk about purpose, especially, there’s such a, I think, sometimes destructive conversation about purpose and profit, purpose and work. And when we look at where purpose lives in the human design chart, purpose lives in the heart, and it lives in the heart, which is also where our sense of direction comes from. It’s also where the force that is part of what we attract into our life lives so that, so there’s attraction. The attractor factor is in our heart, right? And when we really start to look at purpose, what we see through the lens of the chart is that your purpose is your existence, right? Being alive is your purpose. Fulfilling the full potential of the human story that you, only you can fulfil on the planet is your purpose, and you can do that anywhere. You know. You can do that at the grocery store. You can do that pumping gas at the gas station, because it’s not really tied to what you do. It’s tied to who you be, and I really, I wish, if everybody could get that one piece, I think it would hopefully stop us from either getting on that hamster wheel of, what am I here to do? What am I here to do? You’re here to be the person you were born to be, and to have a really darn good time at it, to enjoy it, to push the edges on it, to experiment with it, to try it, to learn to love it. And what happens when we live that way? We actually, this is measurable. We can measure this in the lab. We actually enter into a high vibrational state, a high, a state of high frequency energy, right? When you know it, when you meet somebody that’s really, you know, deeply aligned with who they are, they love themselves. They value themselves. They get it right. That’s a compelling, attractive person. That’s an influential person. When we look at this through the lens of physics, vibrational frequencies modulate each other and higher frequencies of energy and train lower frequencies. And by the way, you can’t, it’s, the opposite is not true. It’s physically impossible unless you allow it. So when you’re walking around on the planet, living, in love with yourself, aligned with yourself, knowing your value, knowing your right place, your right space, testing the outer edges of the story that only you can fulfil, you become this force on the planet that becomes, I believe, especially at this time, part of a critical mass of people that can create change simply by going to the grocery store. Because when you walk into the store, or you walk into the parent teacher conference, or you walk into the school or wherever you go, you’re bringing this energy of alignment with you, and it influences people. You know, we know from research, propinquity studies, that when you are happy and you’re aligned and you’re living in your house, the odds of your neighbour being happy go up 60%. Think about that. When they, think about it, that’s like when they’re happy, then that neighbour, then their neighbours get happier, and everybody gets happier, and you are no, your whole purpose might be to be the nexus of happiness in your community by simply being yourself. So that’s kind of the foundation I would lay for the answer to your question. And certainly I would say that we want to make it really complicated. And I watch, I mean, I’m kind of renegade in the human side community, not always well loved in some cases, because I like, I think human design is actually really, really simple. I mean, yeah, there’s a lot of things you can learn, you could sit and study. I mean, I’ve studied charts for 25 years. I’m intrigued by it. I love it. It’s fascinating. But the real crux of human design, and really the path to finding your gifts and expressing them out into the world, is really getting back in touch with how does, what feels right to me feel in my body, and how does what feels wrong to me feel in my body and cultivating the fortitude and the courage to follow what feels right. And that’s very risky for most of us, right? Because we are told, suck it up. You know, put your head down. It’s going to be a grind. It’s going to be hard. You’re probably going to have to give up stuff, right? You’re going to have to have seasons in your life, and if you’re in the grinding season, all the other fun stuff’s not going to happen. You know? It’s like we are taught to martyr ourselves, particularly to our purpose sometimes. And if you really think about martyrdom or sacrifice, those things are not sustainable. That’s not a sustainable way of living, and martyrdom is never a full and vibrant life, right?
Samantha Riley 14:38
Right? Exactly. I find this really intriguing, and my brain went into 50 million places, which is what my brain does. So don’t be offended by that.
Karen Curry Parker 14:49
I have time.
Samantha Riley 14:51
Yeah, I can, I can tell and because I’m loving this conversation already. But what I love is that I often talk about, people think about this, and I talk about it in buckets. There’s this business bucket, and then there’s your relationship bucket, and there’s your finance bucket. And I’m like, it is not true. Your business is part of your life, and until you understand that it’s not in a separate bucket, things aren’t going to work. So that was, that’s the way that I describe what you’re talking about there. But you talked about testing the outer edges. And by testing the outer edges, it’s always like, what you’re saying is that it’s always an experiment. And by you being that person, you never actually know what the, and I’ll put in air quotes, what the thing is, like we search for, this is the answer. This is who I am. This is what we do. But by testing the outer edges that’s always flowing in and out, and I feel like, or what I was getting from what you were saying is that it slightly changes and it moves, and you have to go with what feels right. And I think that that is something that pushes people’s boundaries in a way that makes them feel really uncomfortable, like I don’t feel like I know exactly what I’m doing, or I don’t feel like I can articulate exactly who I work with, and we have to be able to do that in business to an extent, but I don’t believe that that needs to be the sum total of what you do forever, that it does change, because as people, we change. The person that we are tomorrow is not the person that we are today. And I guess where I want to go with this is that there’s a lot of people that I’m feeling coming, or I’m seeing coming to my world right now that are like, we’ve been doing this thing for all of these years, but something doesn’t feel quite right. We don’t feel like we’re quite in alignment. We feel like something’s shifted. Is that something that you’re seeing out in the business world right now?
Karen Curry Parker 16:59
Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And I think really, we actually have research to kind of back a lot of that up as well. I mean, what we are seeing, this is going to be a very, super skim on a very, very deep conversation that you and I can probably have for a week. But what we are seeing, and we’ve been seeing, really, since the 1990s is that the way in which we use our brains is shifting, and that actually happened pre-internet, although we sometimes correlate it to Internet. And part of what’s happened is we’ve really gone from linear, being linear thinkers are left brain dominant to really becoming more right brain dominant. Now personally, I think that this is an outcropping of shifts in consciousness, if you will, that happened with the advent of quantum physics. You know, we sometimes see shifts in the human story show up first in art and science, right? And so quantum physics sort of burst on the scene in the late 1800s and suddenly we started to recognise that what we thought was certain about the world is actually quite uncertain, right? I mean, quantum physics starts with Max Planck and the light part, you know, light and light particles and light waves and uncertainty principles with Heisenberg. I mean, everything about quantum physics is sort of like, it’s all mushy, right? And you start to look at, where did that show up in art? We had modernism and surrealism and all this mutating of perception, and so we are still catching up, I think, to this new way of recognising that we’re not really quite certain anymore. And so we have this new uncertainty thing that we’ve been, that’s been sort of introduced into the human story and I would certainly say that uncertainty with people who have been deeply trained to be certain, and that’s still most of us right? We get grades, we get A plus, we get right. But when that uncertainty starts to become more and more part of reality, our first instinct, oftentimes, is to cling more violently to the certainty, right? And I think that’s a lot of actually, what’s playing out in our political scenes right now, that we have sort of certain conservative orthodoxy kind of at odds with a more, you know, forward moving philosophy. And that’s just a symptom of evolution. It’s really not to a certain degree. I mean, I’m not trying to minimise it, but it’s, some of it’s not as dire as it seems. It’s just this is the final thrust of a shift in consciousness. And there’s a lot of us that are like, Nope, we want to go back to how things used to be, and we need labels. And that’s really to a certain degree, part of what can be dangerous, even with a system like human design or Enneagram, or any of those things like we want it to tell us, this is, this is how I am. This is me, right? I’m this thing. I have this label. I’m this fixed thing. Got that figured out. No problem, right? I know my niche, right? But we are evolving beings, and we are dynamic and we are not static. And any of us who’ve been on the planet for longer than, say, 40 years, you know that eventually you’re gonna outgrow the story and and I would say we’re outgrowing our stories at the same time when the speed at which change is happening on the planet is so wild and fast right now that we’re kind of in this uncertainty crisis, right? And that uncertainty crisis is causing us to have to go back and look at, well, what are we, how are we defining things, including, what is the definition of success? And we have for a long, long time, been deeply trained that we measure success with numbers, right? We look at our KPIs, we look at our profit margin. We look at, you know, we use numbers to value ourselves. How well? What’s your bra size? What’s your pant size? How many years of education have you had? You know, what the, that numerical valuation is a label, and it’s limiting, certain. It gives us certainty, but it’s limiting. And I think, especially since COVID, a lot of us have said, Wait, I don’t feel like the numbers adequately represent this longing that I have for pushing the edges of who I am, for reorganising my priorities so that my life becomes a reflection of what’s important in my heart. And I’m not just saying my family is important and putting their picture on the cadenza in my office. I’m actually living as if my family is important, or my health or my well being, or time spent with my horse, whatever it might be, right, for each individual. And I think that that’s causing a reframe and a redefinition in the business world in particular. Well, what is the definition of success? And I don’t know if you have children. I mean, I have millennial kids, and I have younger kids, and I think these kids are really dialled into this, and I think, to a certainty, are even a little despairing, because I think they are, it’s such a natural part of themselves anymore, many of them, I think, literally, cannot physically make themselves do something that doesn’t support their well being. And we call them lazy, or we, whatever. We say they’re entitled, right? The millennial. But I think really, what’s happening is, intuitively, they’re going, No, I just, I can’t, if it’s not meaningful to me, and if it doesn’t support my well being, which I think is the new metric of success, I can’t do it. I just, I literally can’t do it.
Samantha Riley 22:33
And I think that, yes, that’s very amplified in them, but we all have that feeling like, if it’s you know, if it’s not aligned, then we can’t do it. What I would love to explore with you is, how do we move beyond those labels that you were talking about, but still be known as the leader in what we do, or be known for what we do? Because there is a label that Karen Curry Parker is the, you know, the founder of Quantum Human Design of the Quantum Alignment System. That’s how I know you. That’s a label. So how do we, how do we integrate those labels and still be that person?
Karen Curry Parker 23:17
So I would say you have to make sure your labels are authentic. I mean, that’s the piece that I think we have to start with. And I feel like there’s a lot of, I mean, certainly, even a lot of my clients that have labels that are not really who they are. I mean, if you say my label is the founder of Quantum Human Design and the Quantum Alignment System, that’s that I’m okay with those labels. And I don’t, I don’t feel like I lose myself in those labels, because those are my labels. I literally made that stuff up.
Samantha Riley 23:48
And it’s super awesome, and you should own that, which is what you do.
Karen Curry Parker 23:52
And you know, I don’t think we’re ever gonna see the, I mean, we need, we need a certain amount. We need that, right, labels, right, because otherwise we’re over stimulated, it’s too much. We can’t sort through the information. Yeah, and I do also say that I think one of the first places that we have to start is, I think every single person has to start with clarifying their values and if you are really clear about these are my values, this is what I stand for, this is the song of my heart, as variable as it might be, right? And, you know, I started off as a midwife. That was my first label. I’ve definitely, you know, chucked the labels right and left, especially youth, but when your values are in place and your sense of self worth is in place, and your self love is in place, then you know the label can be there, and certainly you gotta use, you have to use it in the marketplace, because you have to be clear that these are the people I serve, and this is what I do. But I think the value piece, especially in the self love and the self worth piece, that’s not variable, right? That stays consistent, that level of integrity, alignment, and you know, that place where you know your right place, right space, that allows you, first of all, allows you to pivot, you know, because labels might change. We’re in a time, we are in a time of uncertainty, and who knows what we’ll all be doing? I might be a farmer in three years. We’ll see, right? My values aren’t going to change, right? I’m still going to be that person that came here to teach love, because love is a core value in Karen World and, you know, that love piece will take me wherever it needs to go. And I do have to say, and to me, this is probably part of the beauty that human design brings us in the beginning. I do believe that the universe is love, I really do. And the story of the unfolding of what’s next in our personal and our collective stories is rooted in love, and that when we can untangle ourselves from those places where we’ve bought into the lies that were not love, that when we can get untangled from those pieces and really let ourselves trust that, Okay, I’m going to just see what shows up, and I’m going to hold my energy, I’m going to be in alignment with who I am. I’m going to fulfil my story, and then see what shows up, what I’m going to call in that matches my story. You don’t know what you’re going to call in, but it’s going to match your story, and it’s going to be awesome, and it might be a different label, right? Who knows?
Samantha Riley 26:39
Yeah, I love the way that you broke that down and articulated that so clearly. Because if we just took all of that away, essentially, it’s the reason that some people might be feeling like, I haven’t quite landed on it. Maybe I need to do a pivot. Is purely a feeling of I’m not in absolute, authentic alignment with who I am right now. And I think that if we can tap into that feeling of something feels a bit off, and just keep pushing the edges and try and finding that and going on that, on that, let’s call it an experiment, then it’s very easy just to feel when it’s right. And I love that, because it’s okay to have the label when it feels right. Love that so much. I think it was articulated beautifully and in a way that I personally had never been able to articulate that before. So amazing.
So you’re talking about going into this more right brain way of being. How, as business owners that are trying to scale business, as coaches that are trying to scale, how do you bring that right brain and that strategy together? Because I’m a big believer, you still need systems to grow, you still need, you know, there’s still strategy and linear ways that things need to be done to grow a business. How do you and how have you managed to bring those two worlds together yourself?
Karen Curry Parker 28:15
And I think we should be really clear, when we say we’re moving towards a more right brain way of thinking, we’re not eliminating the left brain, right, we’re still going to have one, and we’re still going to need it. Systems have a place, absolutely and, you know, there’s no way I would have built the business that I have to the scale to which I built it without systems. I am a systems fanatic. I run a household. I mean, I raised eight kids. I have system well …
Samantha Riley 28:46
My goodness me. You must have had some systems. It’s amazing.
Karen Curry Parker 28:53
So, and I think it’s not so much as taking away the systems, as much as it is adding to the way in which we interface with the systems. And here’s some things that I would think of, and this is, this is actually why I love entrepreneurs, because I think for a lot of entrepreneurs, this comes naturally. The first thing is, you got to have a dream and an imagination, right? That’s part of the right brain piece. And, when we approach business growth and scaling with dreaming and imagining, it sort of precludes that we’re going to walk into a possibility with a preset limitation. I work, so I’m working with a school here in town, and I went to a meeting last night. They just, they have a bunch of land. They’re looking at developing the land and putting some stuff on the land, and we had an architect come in and do a presentation, and the first thing that comes out of the entire board’s mouth, like everybody was like, Well, that’s nice, but we don’t have the money, right? That’s like, I sat there and I thought, what am I doing here? This is not, I mean, I don’t mean it critically, but I’m like, I’m used to hanging out rooms with entrepreneurs, and it’s like, an entrepreneur, we’ll see how it works out, right? It’s like, it’ll out if we put the intent forward. And so I would certainly say you gotta add imagination. You gotta add dreaming. You have to absolutely, in that right brain space, never say, Oh, that’s impossible. Like, there’s no impossibility in that right brain business creation. And you got to be a visionary. You have to have a vision of what you want and where you’re headed. And then you have to build capacity. But you have to build, this is the thing that’s really interesting. We talk about capacity like I gotta work out and today I gotta be stronger. Really, what you have to do is build capacity to manage disappointment, so that when it doesn’t turn out the way you thought it would in your brain, you can look at that and go, Hmm, what is here for me to learn from? What does this mean? Am I, is this, you know, a good opportunity for me to check in? Do I still have this dream? Is this, imagine, you know, and then really gauge, how do you go back to holding that vision and keep trusting that those pieces will fall in? And there is a certain, I mean, I do think there’s a certain magic in being in business. You know that, that if you hold the vision long enough, this is what I wanted to say to them last night at that table. It’s like, if you hold the vision long enough, that function of just holding the vision and tending to it being a steward for that vision, which is really what, how I see it, right? As entrepreneurs, we’re stewards for a vision that what we tend to on a daily basis. And we, we pray to it, or we journal about it, or we envision it, or we put it in our vision boards, whatever we’re doing right, when we become stewards for this vision, and then we become the people who will fulfil that vision. And that’s that internal alignment piece where you have to check in and say, Where’s myself worth at? Where’s my lovability? Do I, am I really willing to allow myself to be this person that’s running this 3 million, 4 million, 5,000,020 $5 million company, right? And becoming that person practising, becoming that person practising, you know, this, like cosplay, right? Except you’re doing it in your mind, like you dress up and you’re like, I’m a $3 million business owner, you know, disguised for a couple of minutes, right? When you do that piece, then this the pieces that need to click into place kick into place, and the systems happen. You need the systems because they liberate you and your energy and your time enough to be able to be the dreamer as part of your business.
Samantha Riley 32:33
Totally. Love that. I want to go back to the uncertainty piece again, because it’s something that you and I chatted about a little bit before we pressed record. There’s a lot of uncertainty going on in the world, politically, economically, in all sorts of places. Everything that, it’s almost like, everything that we’ve known for such a long time is crumbling, changing, transforming. Where do you feel, or what do you feel, this we need to embrace, I guess, as entrepreneurs, to make sure that moving forward, that we are successful? No, I know that, you know, we all define our own version of success, but we still need to have success in whatever that is for us.
Karen Curry Parker 33:21
We need to eat, we need to, you know, put our kids through school or whatever. Right? So, but and not, not but, but and, I do think that we’re in a very, very pivotal time that is, I think going to end up being a huge opening for entrepreneurs, and I would say, particularly service based entrepreneurs. We start to just, you know, if we start to realise collectively that our definition of success is changing, that the car, the house, the all that stuff isn’t necessarily the driving force for creating anymore, and that, again, that doesn’t mean we put getting paid by the side, you have your business to support you. That’s a non-negotiable, right? Because otherwise you’re not sustainable. But if we start looking at, okay, the new metric of success in an evolving world is well being, then I would say people who are in the business of helping people activate a sense of well being in their lives, and that’s coaches, that’s healers, that’s trainers, that’s any, you know, probably everybody listening to this podcast, that it is actually our time that when we move into a place where the systems aren’t working anymore, let’s look at, I don’t know where, how it is, where you are in Australia, our healthcare system is a mess. It is a mess. And we have limited healthcare to this very reductionist, materialistic perspective of you come in and you get a body part fixed, right? And then you go home, and we’re not really having conversations in the healthcare field or in education or in the economy about, well, what is actually the definition of well being, and we’re not looking at the fact that if we actually treated well being in the healthcare system, that we would actually decrease the crisis in the healthcare system, because we wouldn’t have people who are struggling with some stress or, you know, lack of self worth. I mean, we know lack of self worth can impact your immune system, right? So if we start looking at, how do we add well being into the healthcare model, or how do we add well being into the education system, or how do we add well being into the economic system, and that starts to become this new metric, we’re going to be the ones on the ground, with boots on the ground, doing the work to reframe the definition and the actions we need to take to build a world that’s rooted in well being.
Samantha Riley 35:54
Wow, I could unpack that for weeks. I really could, because it all really comes back to money and like you said, we need, we need money to, you know, put a roof over our head, put the children through school. But I also believe that some of our well being does come from money. So for me, travel is such an important part of my world. And for me to travel, I need money like it just, it happens. Where in, you know, talking about quantum human design, or the quantum alignment system, what do we need to tap into? And I’m not talking about specifics, but what do we really need to make sure that we’re bringing into our world to make sure that we do have the income that we personally want for our own well being?
Karen Curry Parker 36:49
So I mean, first of all, I would say the systems, you gotta have the systems in place. That’s a non-negotiable, because your systems buy you energy and they buy you time, they buy you space, so definitely pro systems. But I also would say, if I was going to build, if I was going to build a new school, which I’m kind of working on, actually, in the back of my mind, I just haven’t got completely started it yet, and I was going to build a school where, let’s say the pillars are going to be teaching people how to live in a world, live in an economy that’s rooted in well being, and be able to do that work that we need to do, because business can be a vehicle for social change, right? Then at the heart of the curriculum of that school would be healing your self worth, because when you value yourself, you’re going to almost naturally take the actions necessary to generate the wealth. Because when you value yourself, then you’re going to say, this is the money I need, right? You’re going to set healthy boundaries, you’re going to take care of yourself. You’re going to live in a very different story than I see people living in our profession, and I do think it’s a weak spot in our profession, because I do think we are big, beautiful, open hearted, generous people who want to help people, and we care deeply. And oftentimes we care so deeply that we forget to care about ourselves. And I think sometimes we go into helping professions from our own pain, right? We’ve a lot of our people in our profession, I would say my profession, are people who have had traumatic experiences, who really have had to fight to learn to love themselves and have great sympathy in conjunction with empathy for their clients, and if they haven’t completed their own inner work around their self worth, then the money piece becomes a problem. And you know, I just, it sounds simple. It’s not simple always to fix self worth. Sometimes it takes a little work, but I find that the relationship, the correlation between self worth and money, is just, it’s just one to one. The more you value yourself, the more the way you work with money, may use money, the way you call in money, the way you operate with money, that those two things are deeply tied to each other. And you know, I would say, if you want to run a test to see like, Okay, where am I at on this? Explore how you feel about the word deserve. If the word deserve triggers you, I want to invite you to maybe go back and explore your sense of value, because you deserve to be supported. In fact, we’re hardwired to be supported and not conferring support upon yourself through your business. It might not be your business at all that’s the problem. It might be this self worth piece.
Samantha Riley 39:52
I love this, and I would love to ask something that goes into that a little bit deeper, that I’ve never been asked anyone before. I’ve never asked anyone before, but I feel like you’re the right person to ask this to. There is a link between self worth and money and what we can bring in. However, my belief, and I understand that that’s unique to me. My belief is that a lot of people say, charge what you’re worth, and I don’t believe that this is the correct way to say it, because someone may have low self worth, that doesn’t mean that they can’t charge a lot of money. To me, those two can actually be separate. It’s like, well, what is that service or offer worth is different to being tied to your self worth. Does that make sense? Where, so I also understand that our self worth is desire, is attached or aligned to what we earn as a whole. What is your take on that charge what you’re worth piece?
Karen Curry Parker 41:00
It is a very tricky statement, because you can charge more than what you feel inside. And I, and I do feel like you can grow into that, and I also find that it’s often a really big stretch, and that sometimes there are other things that come in that’ll cause you to self sabotage it. And there’s a, okay, there’s about 30 things I want to say. So the first thing I felt like, I find that oftentimes, when we are struggling with the idea of charge what you’re worth, what oftentimes is underneath that is a fear that, well, if I do that, then I won’t be able to help people at the level that I want to help, which means I’m going to exclude a lot of people who could really benefit from what I have. I hear that one a lot, and that’s sort of a standalone thing, but I do want to just quickly address it. And the way I want to address it is, because I see people like, well, we’re going to barter, we’re going to do slide and scale. And it never works out. It is important to have a long term goal around service. And that long term goal means you make the money you need to where your financial cup becomes overflowing, and then when you get to that overflow position, then you don’t have to turn people away. And that is, it’s something I think we’re not trained to work towards that a lot, and that is something I really want to encourage any of us that are in business coaching. Train your clients to work towards that part of the goal, because we oftentimes don’t write that into the goal. And that’s a part that actually can help you strengthen boundaries when you start to feel bad or guilty or horrible, like, oh, but all these people over here need help when you’re like, Okay, I’m training towards this goal where that becomes a regular part of the systems in my business, right, where I can regularly, every year, give 250,000 or $500,000 worth of scholarships and whatever. When that becomes part of your long term vision, that’s actually very inspiring for people, and that’s an important piece to pay attention to. The second thing is, absolutely charge more than you’re worth if you’re not charging enough to cover your bills, because you need to, and not just cover the bills, but to cover those things that define your well being. So for you, if you were my client, I would always say, hey, we have to make sure that you’re making enough to make, to let you travel, because that travel is a big part of your well being definition, right? And you may have to stretch, and this is where I would say, stretch. Don’t stop doing the personal work inside too. Because you make that stretch, you’re going to know where the gaps are, and that’s when you got to go get a coach that’s going to help you fill in those gaps so you can stretch to meet that price point. Because if you’re uncomfortable with it, and you can’t get comfortable with it, even though you’re doing it, you won’t close, you won’t sell, you’re, it’ll be very difficult for you to really hit those goals that you’re looking for.
Samantha Riley 44:01
Absolutely. For everything that we’ve talked about today, what is one thing that you really want to leave people with in regards to this topic? And when I say this topic, man, we pushed the edges of a topic today. Let’s talk about alignment. Because I think, I think that’s the, that’s the piece, everyone wants to be aligned. And when we’re aligned, that’s where I feel, that’s where the abundance really opens up. In regards to it, and I’m glad that, I’m glad that we agree on that, it makes it easier. In regards to alignment, what is something that you want people to really know?
Karen Curry Parker 44:52
So I will say, let’s look at a big picture view for a minute. Because I think when we get lost in our own personal story and all the things that happen to us and why we feel the way we feel about ourselves and stuff, it’s very easy to be seduced by the idea that you’re not valuable, or you haven’t been treated as if you’re valuable, which is probably true. But if we start to really look at this through the lens of quantum physics, and we recognise that we’re actually all one entity, right? We’re all one being. We’re all one, I like to think of it as a tapestry, right? You doing the work to heal your value as part of your purpose is the most important contribution you can make to the world. Think about it this way, if we look at it as a tapestry, right? If that, if you’re a tapestry and you have a specific string, that’s your string in this cosmic tapestry, and you’re like, you’ve got a pole in the string, or you’re a red string, and you’re not with the red group anymore. You’re down in the blue group because somebody told you that’s where you should be. But you feel really miserable down there, and you don’t like the blue people, and you really want to go, be back up in the red group where you belong. If you’re not in your right place, it affects the entire tapestry. The whole blanket doesn’t work, right? That’s how important you are. And I think that’s what, we tend to think of, that as a belittling or a small thing, right? I’m a small thread in a giant cosmic tapestry. But the tapestry is what it is because of you. And if we can keep bringing ourselves back to that idea that my place in the tapestry is unique, vital, and irreplaceable, and literally, my place in the tapestry creates the cosmic tapestry, that it is what it is because I’m in it, and we can all keep working towards reframing that so that we are all standing in our right place, in our right space, right place, right space, as you said, it’s abundance. That’s where abundance, your personal definition of abundance, lives. That’s where your support lives, that’s where your direction lives. That’s where your motivation lives. That’s where all those things we try to coach around, that’s where all that lives, and it’s inspiring and it’s transformative, and as I said, it’s infectious. It’s contagious, right? That level of alignment is contagious. And think about this for a minute, if I recognise that I’m a unique and vital and irreplaceable part of a cosmic tapestry. And because I have this one particular thread that’s mine to occupy, and no one else can take that thread, no one else can be that thread, I have a singular space that is mine to occupy in the cosmos, and the cosmos is depending on me on that, I start to realise, we start to realise that there’s no competition. Who are you competing with, right? And so now we start to make a whole different set of decisions around, how do we organise systems in our collective structures? Right? If I’m not in competition with you or anybody else, and I’m just being the fulfilment of myself, that’s gonna take a whole lot of anxiety and scarcity out of the equation, right? Number two, when I’m really occupying that place and I’m realising, okay, I’m a, I’m the sacred thread in this beautiful cosmic tapestry, well, heck, so are you, and so is that person, so is that person and that person. And now all of a sudden, my orientation is not just about myself. My orientation now becomes okay. I’m not in competition with anyone, and these people need to get into their right place. How can I make decisions, personally and collectively, that can facilitate everybody moving into their right place? I think that we made those shifts, and to me, this is the motivation that drives me every day to work on my self worth. We make those shifts, think about how the world would change. There would no longer not be enough. There would no longer be a zero sum game, right? Because what’s the zero sum game? We would be making decisions that would support the sustainability, peace, the abundance, the safety, the feeding of every human on the planet. And so I think, why not work on your self worth? It’s the most important work we need to be doing. And certainly, it’s going to help your business, it’s going to help your relationships, it’s going to help your health, it’s going to help your everything, and it’s going to make the world a better place.
Samantha Riley 49:17
Love it. You know what else I take from that? As I was a very visual person, as you were talking about that tapestry and those little, these little pieces, not only are we needed, but also all of us can get caught up at times of that person’s up there on the pedestal. They’re big. I can’t be that person, but we’re actually all the same, because there’s no tapestry stitches that are bigger than the other. They’re all the same, exactly. Yeah. Love that so much. Karen, this has been such an amazing conversation today. I know that people definitely want to stay connected with you, to learn more about what you do and to be in your world. Where can they go to do that?
Karen Curry Parker 49:56
So if you are interested in seeing your human design chart, or seeing it new through the lens of quantum human design, you can go to our website, freehumandesignchart.com. When you put your birthday, birth time, and birthplace into our little program there, it’ll give you your personal energy blueprint, and you’ll get a free chart. I mean, sorry, a free report that comes with that. So you’ll have the opportunity to really not just look at the strange little chart, but actually to interpret it, so you can start to get a good foothold on who you are, how you are, and that unique and vital place that only you can occupy in the cosmos.
Samantha Riley 50:29
I love that. And of course, all the links will be in the show notes below wherever you’re listening to this episode. Karen, thank you so much for coming onto the show, for really diving into this in such a deep way. It’s been such a pleasure to chat with you.
Karen Curry Parker 50:42
Thank you, Sam, thank you for having me.
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