The 4/1 Profile in Human Design - The Opportunist Investigator

The HD Your Biz® Show - Human Design for Business with Jamie Palmer

On today's episode of the HD Your Biz Podcast - Human Design for Business I continue the deep dive into the 12 profiles series in human design. On this episode I dive into the unique personality profile of four ones, who are both resilient and true to their values despite external pressures to conform. They offer guidance to help people with this profile stay true to themselves and their observations, maintain their value in their network, and trust themselves to pick up the pieces if they feel broken.

These are people who are strong and steadfast individuals, how these traits arise early in life and continue into adulthood, and how to strike a balance between knowledge acquisition and influence. I offer some tips on how to handle societal pressure that may lead to conformity rather than a balance of traits. These individuals to a "train on a track," focused on their goals and able to assess situations quickly.

If you want to dive deeper into human design I invite you to explore the HD Wild Program.

Preorder the Human Design for Business Book

******* Podcast Transcription Below *****************

The four one profile, the opportunist investigator, or as I like to say, the mayor researcher, you are the oak that Astands tall. After the hurricane passes through stable, steadfast, and observing. You are wise beyond your years. And you see it all, but yet you don't need to say it. You read between the lines of the words you observe, you study, you influence because you meet the other where they are. You own your unique fixedness. You weather it all and come out stronger. You are the leader, the head of house, the one people come to for support. Relentless in your ability to be consistent. You stand tall, you support others in getting their wings stable, strong, reliable. Okay, so let's dive into the four one. I think the most important thing to understand is that the form one profile is less than 2% of the population. It is known as having a juxtaposition fate. So what that means is the form one doesn't have a personal destiny and it doesn't have a destiny that involves other people. It has a fixed destiny. So these are people who are, for lack of a better word, rigid.

They are part personal part involving other people. They're part relationship based. But the reality is Wally's lines are in harmony. The foreign one are in harmony. These people can either be incredibly unstable or incredibly rigid. The four ones not this or that. It's not truly self-absorbed and it's not really transpersonal. The upper trigram, it's kind of straddled between the two and it's deeply fixed. I like to think of this sort of as the oak tree that stands tall for hundreds of years, weathering the season. That's kind of the way of the four one profile. It's funny because my dad is a four one and there's a giant oak tree in the back of my yard. And when I wrote this, it's literally what I thought of. So the four is here to build a network and the one is here to acquire knowledge. So when we put the four one together, the four researches with the intent to share that information with their network, full stop. That's it. These are people who may be pressured into changing by others, but the reality is here to not waiver. And sometimes as a four one, you'll often witness them and they'll just agree with people to their

Face. Then behind the scenes or in their own lives, they just go about doing their own thing. They're kind of steadfast in their being. So the four goes with the flow publicly, and then it just goes on doing its own thing. And this profile really provides the world with a foundation that human resources and marketing can be developed upon. And because of the fact that they have a fixed fate, the world is what it is. There's no real rose colored glasses for a 4 0 1. And these are people that they can sniff out, literally sniff out who is strong and who is weak. They can smell weakness. And these are people that they, they're very accepting of the fact that like, Hey, look there. There's nothing I can do about this, right? There's something wrong here. There's nothing I can do about it. Why don't I just accept it?

So this happens because the four observes the other and the one studies the material and then they kind of just build this network of people. And because they're really fixed, they're just like, okay, well whatever, let's just move on. There's nothing I can do about it. And the reality is the gift of these people is that you can really benefit from the strength of their fixedness. These people are keenly aware of their own strengths and weaknesses and that awareness builds the foundation of their purpose and their security strategy. And subsequently, they can spot opportunity. No one else. They literally smell weakness. And when they are looking for ways, they can obviously use this to take advantage of other people. But in an ideal world, they use that to help others get on the path to their own opportunities. And the four one, it's a very strong profile.

And the reality is they recognize that other people can be influenced and they often use their influence and their fixedness to influence other people. And these are people who they can bend a little bit, but they really aren't often really willing to give up. And they explore and they discover and they interact with the world with the intent to share that knowledge in order to gain influence. And there's always this little bit of undercurrent of insecurity ever present with this profile, which often bubbles up internally. It's not usually shared with the outside world, but the reality is they have a really strong network. They, they're sort of like the oak tree that survives the hurricane. Like I said, there's probably a 300 year old or 250 year old oak tree in my backyard. And this is literally what I think of when I think of the four one.

It's weathered hundreds of people around it. It's weathered countless storms and seasons and all that sort of stuff. And that's a great way to think about the four one. So it's important to understand that in relationships, this is a double theme of foundation. And these are often single mi minded, pointy, but bendable people, they're incredibly hard to break. And if a four one does break, it's really hard for them to put their lives together. This is one of the only profiles where if they do break, it's a really challenging thing for them to pick up the pieces of their life. These are people, they're friendly, they're curious, they're very persuasive, and they learn from everything and everyone. And so they're taking in both the relational world, the four, five and six, the relational world, and they're taking in the material world one, two, and three.

So they're street smart and they never miss a beat. They're in awe of everything going on around them and they can quickly act at assess any situation. I always think of this as when I was a teenager, I could never get away with anything because my dad always knew, was well aware of any of the things he'd already thought about the 17 things that I might be doing to get myself in trouble. But these people are the backbone of their network. They can't be pushed around, but they can be dependent on. And the four one picks up on everything, but they're very grounded. They're a safe haven for people in their world, and they're often really this person who people go to when they need support in how to get back on track. It's important to understand though that the four one is a train on a track.

You can't change the train's direction. The train can just can't take a left hand turn or a right hand turn. It's stuck on the track. And that's how these people are designed by design here to operate. And so they build this solid foundation of expertise from an area that fascinates their mind and they use the knowledge that they have to influence others. So researching and becoming an expert in a topic and then transforms them from the four month theme of insecurity into an authority and a true expert, they're unwavering in their expertise and knowledge and once they establish that foundation, they can leverage the network and they can just move forward in that field that they've chosen. I think it's important to understand that the challenges here are many because these are, think of this as the outlier of all the profiles. The four one is the only profile, and I think it's probably worth noting.

There's only, I think three or four hours every year that this profile shows up. So the four one, it can be broken. And when they are broken, it's incredibly hard for them to pick up the pieces of their lives. And they often become broken because they've betrayed themselves. Somebody just, I think of it, they just graded on them so long that they broke. I think of it like Humpty Dumpty. These people break and they shatter into a million pieces. And that's very different than all of the other 11 profiles in human design. And this is because it allowed someone to influence them and they influenced them so much that they broke. And this often comes from the pressure to conform. And they're not meant to conform, they they're here to influence. So from this appears to be the outside world as a breaking point. But for the four one, it often happens when they pleased other people so much and then they break, they gave away too much of themselves, and then they fall and they fall hard.

They fall hard. There's a four one in of my programs that has struggled with this and they've struggled to pick back up the pieces and they have to start over. They essentially start over and they have to learn to not betray themselves because that betrayal is what broke them in the first place. They're not here to please other people. They have to remain true to themselves. So because they are fixed fate, because they're like the oak tree, because they're steadfast, these are people who often get a lot of labels, they take a lot of projections and they take a lot of judgment from the outside world because they are so rigid. They're also incredibly rare, and they're unflexible, they're unwilling to negotiate. They're often kind of difficult, but that's simply the way of the four one. And so as a result, these are people who may struggle to work in collaboration with others.

They may even be seen as backstabbing, but the four one doesn't like to rock the boat. So they'll often just shake their head yes to something not in agreement and then go on and do their own thing. But the four one, a healthy four one doesn't know how to be anybody but themselves. They can, and that can bring up a lot for other people. And while the four one is here to be steadfast and provide GU guidance to others, their steadfast presence can trigger others by simply existing, which can then lead them to feel pressure to conform, to change who they are. And that's really not something that they're here to do. They're really just here to own who they are. And so they have to remain true to who they are regardless of what might come up. And they can change their mind. The four one will change their mind if they have good facts and they have good stats, and somebody can make a good argument.

So somebody might make that argument, then they're going to go research. But the reality is, over time, they only become more and more of who they are. They only become more and more steadfast. They only become stronger in their beliefs and their definitiveness grows, their strength grows, their influence goes. But I will say the four, one wound of the child kind of runs deep and it's often carried into adulthood. These are kids who are labeled difficult or stubborn. They don't go with the flow. So they know what they want. They know what they believe, and they're, they're not convincible. They're not bribe able. And so this resilience is challenging for parents. And so this often leads parents to push and push and push them or teachers to push and push and push 'em until them they break. And then that gives away their sense of self.

So these are children often pressured to do things they don't like to do, and it's like, why can't you just go with the flow? And that often ripples into their adulthood. I've also noticed that they're kind of like the ringleader of sorts or they're keenly aware and observant of other people and they know with great specificity what they can and they cannot get away with. And they have this sort of street smartness about them. And so they kind of test the boundaries of things. And this testing often leads parents and teachers and societies imposing their will on the four one, and then they pressure them to conform to quote what's expected of them.

And I would say the biggest challenge with this profile is the fact that because they're pressured, they often kind of lean into that one side rather than having this healthy balance between the four and the one. So what happens is they often just knowledge acquisition, knowledge acquisition, knowledge acquisition, and then they never really fully step into that four and have sort of that wonderful four one balance that's ideal for them. So it's all about striking the balance between gathering knowledge on something that you love while simultaneously using that knowledge to influence other people. And many four ones settle for doing work that they don't love, but the four one and its highest expression is here to do work that they love. They have to seek knowledge in areas that light them up so they can take that knowledge, that street smart and use it to influence other people.

And I think it's also important to note that four one s, I love my four one s, but they're also, they can be incredibly conditioning people, so that's something to be mindful of if you have a four one in their lives. But the four ones here to straddle the personal and the relationship world. They're here to live in both worlds. They're here to show a strength and resilience. They're here to weather the storms of life. These are the people who you can go to and ask for help in a crisis. They're very good at that. They bend and they waiver a little bit, but they don't really break. It's really hard to get a four one to break. So ideally, they're true to themselves and their values, and therefore they influence other people with the unique lens that they see the world. Some questions to ask a four one profile.

Am I remaining true to myself? What am I an expert in? Have I been honoring my need to network? Am I using my observations and awareness and service of others? Am I compromising myself in order to fit in? Did I enter into this relationship with my strategy and authority? Are the people in my life accepting me as I am or pressuring me to change? Am I influencing in a way that feels authentic to me? What are my core values? What do I stand for? Where am I naturally influential? Am I honoring my worth? Am I being valued? Am my network? How can I use my steadfastness to influence? Where do I smell weakness? Am I, are the people in my life seeing me for me and accepting me for me? And if I feel broken, how can I be sure to learn to develop trust with myself in order to pick up the pieces of my life? That is the four one Mayor researcher. Thanks so much for tuning in. We'll talk to y'all soon.