Keep your friends close, and your Projectors closer

Being a Projector is fun. I don’t know the experience of being anything else, but what I do know is I love being a Projector.

Projector-Projector dynamics can be tricky. They can also be beautiful. All my life I’ve found myself to be a Projector magnet. And through that experience I’ve found myself unearthing patterns about my own beliefs that, at times, have led me to keeping even my closest fellow Projectors at a distance. Resisting their guidance, jumping on my high-horse, and seeing myself as the all-knowing one.

But as I’ve gone deeper into my own experiment, I’ve come to not only deeply appreciate fellow Projectors, but see them as necessary for my own growth.

*warning — I am going to say Projector wayyyy too many times in this article

The High Horse & The Competition Trap

When I first learned about Human Design, and when I was really experimenting and figuring this whole Projector invitation thing out (btw I have an entire podcast called You’re Invited), I remember feeling like I had to put my head down and look less at the others in my field. It felt like I was in competition with the other Projectors around me. Not because anyone told me I was, but because I felt inferior to others who had a special way of seeing what I wanted to be special to me.

In the beginning, I couldn’t look at anyone else’s content in the field, because I felt like I had to be the most all-knowing Projector.

This is common in Projector-hood. We can get on our high horse about what we know and see. And it’s true, as a Projector, you have a unique way of seeing. So when someone else in your orbit also has a unique way of seeing something adjacent to… or right inside of your field, it’s natural to feel intimidated and have the impulse to create distance.

But what I’ve learned over time is that it actually serves us best to keep others, and especially our fellow Projectors close. Closer than what might feel comfortable at first. To honor and revel in the way another Projector sees the very same thing we’re so good at seeing, in their own unique way.

Just because someone sees something differently than you do doesn’t make your way of seeing wrong.

The Projector Super-Brain is Real

I grew up in a tight-knit friend group in a little bubble of a town. I made fast friends in elementary school, and I still have this group today. Later when I got into Human Design, we ran everyone’s charts. Everyone but one of the girls was a Projector.

Myself (a self-projector) and two of the mental Projectors were all into education and early childhood development, and we used to sit and go IN on it. At one point, a casual conversation turned into a full brainstorm. We literally drew it out on a white board, how we would completely recreate the school system from the top down. We built an entire plan, presenting to absolutely no one but ourselves. We got lost in time. When we came up for air hours later we were cracking up. What had we just done? Should we literally email the US board of ed now?

It’s such a silly but perfect example of what happens when you don’t see yourself as being in competition with the Projectors in your field. When you braid with other Projectors, a Superbrain is born. Suddenly, a completely revolutionary way of understanding an old system or a completely new one being innovated comes to life.

When you stop competing, you naturally start building.

The Core Would

I still have a ton of Projectors in my life. Old and new. And we’re always talking about what lives beneath the surface of our patterns, about what happened to us, and how it shaped us as adults. One of the most common threads across every Projector in my life is a core wound around not being seen and not being invited. That to this day shows up as a fear of not being recognized or included.

This is why it’s so important for Projectors to be in each other’s orbits and lift one another up. There is nothing like being in the presence of a Projector who truly sees and understands you. Sometimes a Projector you just met can see you with more clarity than the people who know you best.

It can be exhausting being the one Projector in a group of other types. It might sound ridiculous, and I’m not saying to exile any friends who aren’t Projectors. But there’s a lot of pressure when you’re the only Projector in the room, all the time. If you’re a Projector and you don’t have many Projectors in your life, I’d suggest linking up with them. Nothing quite measures up to the feeling of another Projector seeing you.

No matter how good you are at seeing, you still need someone to see you.

The Gift of Seeing

On that note, Projectors have x-ray vision. When we’re looking at something, we’re incapable of just seeing the surface. We can see the entire energetic map of what’s in front of us with little effort. Whether through a system, through intuition, through a mix of both, or simply through the lens of what we understand best.

A Projector can look at you and read you to absolute filth. And when delivered correctly, can make you feel so seen, so recognized, so affirmed in who you are and how you’re already showing up in the world.

When I need a boost — like when I reallyyyy need to feel seen — I go to the Projectors in my life. It can be a lot, letting yourself be that deeply seen and known by another. But it’s so necessary, especially as a Projector, to let yourself be seen. And doing it in the safety of another Projector’s eyes can be a powerful first step toward putting yourself out there more openly with the rest of the world.

Asking others to use their gift helps you see your own.

Our Blind Spot

Our blind spot is ourselves. We can be so outwardly focused, so attuned to what’s around us, that the lines blur between us and the other. It’s so easy for us to meld with someone else and see into them that we forget to see ourselves.

We often need a reminder from another Projector to draw the lines again, put up our boundaries, come back inside ourselves, and remember who we are. I find myself needing that reminder often. And sometimes there’s no better person than another aware Projectors to hold you accountable to that, because our blind spot is forgetting that we, too, exist. Walking around with these magical eyes and forgetting we also have a body that needs to be nourished, recognized, remembered.

You can’t pour from eyes that never turn inward.

The Gift of A Good Question

Here’s the thing about the idea that “Projectors are here to ask good questions” — it’s not your job to come up with the best question. It’s your job to put yourself in front of people, experiences, and opportunities that align with your genuine interests. Because you’re naturally curious, the right questions come without you trying.

Haven’t you notice that happening for you? When someone genuinely curious is asking a question that lights you up? That’s what happened recently with my father-in-law (a fellow Projector) He kept asking and asking… and it gave me so much clarity — not just about why I believe in homeschooling, but about what happened to me as a child inside the public school system: being missed, falling through the cracks, having my intuition and inner authority conditioned out of me by an education built entirely on external validation, with no room for an idea that didn’t come from a book.

Having a fellow Projector really present with me, really asking, cracked me open. And the more I went in, the deeper he got with me. The way a Projector can help me get into the nitty-gritty of what I'm most passionate about — turning an everyday conversation into the most insightful brainstorming session — is its own kind of magic.

You don't need the best question. You just need the realest curiosity.

As a Projector, you have the gift of seeing. The gift of recognizing. The gift of inviting others into their own depth, their own curiosity, their own exploration.

When you let yourself link up with other Projectors who align with your values, interests, and passions, there’s a depth you can access inside the Super Brain of Projector-hood that you cannot access alone.

If you’re a Projector who has been holding adjacent people at a distance because you think you’re in competition with them, I’d challenge you to see it differently. You don’t have all the answers. You are not the all-knowing one. But you do know something special. And in the presence of another Projector who knows how to look inside of you and ask you the right questions, they can draw a depth out of you that you couldn’t reach by yourself.

You were never meant to be the only one with the best view.