What do we do when a challenge comes our way? Do we run and hide? Do we grit our teeth and plow through it? Do we find a solution that works for everyone, or do we look to bend things in our favor? We run into so many problems in life due to the way we respond to challenges. But if we look to our Design, specifically Human Design Gateway 10, we can find an easier way.

Last week, we explored Hexagram 11, which was all about finding harmony. Now, the sun moves into Human Design Gateway 10, and this is a Gateway with a broad scope in our lives. It’s the Gateway that I choose to call “Behavior.”  

What do we do in life? Are we having fun with life? Are we constantly burdened with problems we can’t handle? Are we overwhelmed all the time or are we in love with our life to such an extent that it doesn’t matter what happens to us? The 10th Gateway indicates a lot to us about our journey through life and how we play within it. The whole spectrum of experience is open here.

In the traditional Chinese I-Ching, Hexagram 10 is called „Treading on the Tail of a Tiger.“ Imagine you’re going for a walk in the woods on a beautiful clear day. All the sudden, you realize you’ve put your foot on something. You look down and see that it’s got orange and black stripes. You trace the stripes along and realize it’s connected to a tiger. It’s an illustration of the fact that out of the blue, you can be faced with a potential challenge. And the question becomes: What are you going to do about it? Are you going to manage with this? Are you going to follow through? You’re in potentially mortal danger, or at least you have a major challenge to deal with. Are you going to pretend like nothing happened, or run for your life?

The essence of this Gateway is in empowering your appreciation for life. All of it, even the challenges. It’s about meeting life as it comes to you. Embracing it. If there were no challenges in life, if there were nothing that came out of the blue, no twists and turns, life would be incredibly dull. The real question is whether or not we are balanced and clear enough in ourselves to interact with whatever life presents with us at any moment in time.

Let’s see what we find as we explore this Human Design Gateway line by line:

First Line: Investigating

The first line is called “Investigating: finding your place in any situation, and blending in.” We’re not separate from life. Life is you. Whatever you’re experiencing is something that is happening within you. Yes, it looks like everything’s happening on the outside, but you’re the one that’s having the experience.

Steady progress in life requires your sensibility to everything you encounter along the way. Life progresses. Things change. Challenges come up at different times in life, but everything you encounter along the way can be played out. There is always a way through. And you just have to look back at some of the challenges you’ve had to face in the past and you’ll see that no matter how monumental it seemed at the time, one way or another it all worked out.

Life is an adventure. It doesn’t stop. We have no idea what happens when the curtain comes down. So, in the meantime, let’s engage. Let’s go out of this life having tried it all, having pushed all the envelopes, having met all the challenges. And this first line is all about looking deeply into life, looking deeply into all these experiences.

Second Line: Finding Sanctuary:

The second line always has a natural approach to life, but they tend to get overwhelmed when there is input from other people that they don’t really understand. Outer disputes can easily become inner disputes unless you sidestep other people’s discord altogether. That’s why this line is called, “Finding Sanctuary: Contentment comes from not confronting impossible dramas.”

The key for the second line when there’s a challenge is to find that peacefulness, find that calm inside. This doesn’t mean to hide from life, it simply means to answer the question: Do I confront life, or do I live life? Is life an ongoing challenge or is life just a play? For the second line, when they’re in a natural space, it’s a play. What at first appears to be a challenge can just be something that plays out in a very simple way.

You tend to be actively engaged in avoiding anyone who might complicate your life. You recognize that certain people bring a lot of problems with them that always need solving. And your response might be that you’d simply rather not have this constant interruption in your life. You might be able to fix their problems for them, but it distracts from your inner contentment. And that’s the essence of the second line: maintaining your natural internal peacefulness.

Third Line: Surrendering

The third line is always the pioneering line. It’s into experimenting. It wants to get out there, get involved, push the envelope. I call the line “Surrendering: Through trust in yourself you align with personally worthy causes.” In this case, surrendering does not mean giving up. It means that when a challenge arises, you don’t pretend it isn’t happening, you surrender to the fact that you’re in it, you’re on the spot, there’s a potential challenge here.

And the challenge is this: Can you align with personally appropriate causes or are you running your life for somebody else’s cause? Care is needed to be sure that you are honoring your own reality and not someone else’s.

You tend to seek attention and approval from others, disregarding your own genuine ideals. It’s very easy for third lines to become overwhelmed and to latch on to someone else’s “solution” or way of doing things. And as the pioneer, the third line goes through making all kinds of potential mistakes in life. But the fastest way to learn anything is to do it and find out that that way doesn’t work so well, and never make the same mistake again.

Fourth Line: Exploring

The fourth line is very influential, very open to the possibility of giving guidance to others by drawing people together and getting them all on the same page. Here, the line is called “Exploring: looking for personal benefits and transformation in any interaction.”

So, let’s go back to that image of treading on a tiger’s tail. the fourth line says, “Ok, tiger, I got your attention. Maybe we could do something together. Maybe there’s something in this challenge for both of us here. Maybe it’s just my lucky day that I’ve come across this potential issue in life.”

You are ready for when opportunity knocks and appreciate what an opportunity means to you. Because whatever challenges life puts before us, there is always an opportunity there.

By mentally adjusting your behaviors, you tailor any opening to a potential advantage. You can manipulate almost any situation by adjusting your behavior and attitude. All of us have felt at one point or another that life is just too much. Like we can’t cope anymore. But no, it’s not that life has suddenly forgotten about you, you simply haven’t made the adjustments necessary to meet the situation. A few adjustments in behaviors, a few adjustments in attitude, and all the sudden the game’s on again.

Fifth Line: Re-Visioning

The fifth line is called, “Re-visioning: An enjoyment in confronting, often defying the commonplace.” The fifth line is always in the position of being a leader or a guide to others. It can see the potentials, it can see the possibilities, but it always lives in a projection field of what other people might expect of it.

The fifth line has the potential of following the party line. You can show others the rule book, or you can re-vision the whole thing. So, in that journey through the woods after you’ve stepped on the tiger’s tail, you pick the tail up and remonstrate with the tiger: “You’re gonna cause somebody a problem sticking your tail out there. They’re gonna trip over it. They might hurt themselves and you might end up with a bandage on your tail.”

Basically, the fifth line calls it as it sees it. It doesn’t recognize that there is an insurmountable problem here. You take what looks like a potential disaster, and turn the whole situation around, and even take enjoyment in confronting and defying the commonplace. You enjoy challenging tradition and find there are many ways to do so—lovingly or not. And the big question hanging over the fifth line is: Can you find a way to confront these challenges in a loving way, in a way that does not invite reprisal?

Sixth Line: Bringing Alignment

The sixth line gives the overview of the potential for the whole Hexagram. Here, the sixth line is called “Bringing Alignment: a personal example that is impossible for others to ignore.”

You’ll know, if you’ve got the 10 with the sixth line in your Design, that everybody’s quietly watching you out of the corner of their eye. They know that you’ve just got it down, you’re the example here. You don’t remonstrate with the tiger, you just gently pick the tigers tail up and make friends with the tiger. You make friends with the challenge.

The flip side of this is that you can very easily find yourself overwhelmed by everybody else’s concerns. You always get drawn into other people’s issues because you can see there’s a better way of doing things. So, the key is to continue to honor yourself and your own journey while you interact with others, while you bring about successful steps in dealing with potentially challenging situations.

The bottom line here is freedom, having the freedom to be yourself, to be true to yourself, true to your journey. True to interacting with all the challenges that life might put in your way. That is the whole point here.

So, as the Sun goes through this 10th Human Design Gateway, we’re given the opportunity to really examine how we behave in the face of challenges. And to remember that at the bottom of this Hexagram is Joy. Life is a joy. So, as we enter into the Yule season, let’s all remember this: bring the joy, be in the Joy.

So, there we are, that’s the 10th Human Design Gateway. We’ll check in again soon. In the meantime, if you’d like to learn more about Human Design and discover how your own Design informs and shapes your life, get your Free Human Design Report today.