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Positioning, Influence & Navigating The New Era of Business | Clear Signal
For entrepreneurs, leaders and change agents done with one-size-fits-all advice. When the usual business thinking isn't sufficient for what you're dealing with — it's time to separate signal from noise and figure out what actually matters so you can find the right way forward. Topics include influence, resonance, positioning, identity, decision-making under pressure and the stuff beneath the stuff that business podcasts usually talk about.
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I'm Sunita — Business consultant & positioning alchemist. Cornell optimization engineer, Ross MBA & MSc. 25 years of category innovation work across a number of industries, 2x 6-figure founder, former brand manager for a billion-dollar brand and depth beyond the 3D that conventional business strategy can't touch.
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The point isn't to provide a generic playbook or serve up "3 tips" that will expire tomorrow. It's to elevate conversations and perspectives that will make you think differently about how you're playing the game. Positioning as discussed here means two things: where you stand in the market and where you stand in your own trajectory. Because where you're positioned determines what you can see — and what you can see determines every move you make.
Positioning, Influence & Navigating The New Era of Business | Clear Signal
Pressure, Adrenaline and Time. Let's Talk About The Root Center in Human Design [E35]
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
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🍦Yes...I know this episode is out of order. That will be fixed in time. For now enjoy this long awaited and unexpected mid-season treat!
This ridiculous story is about root center is about time, pressure, and adrenaline. It's the bottom of the body graph. Combined with the head center at the top, you're an Oreo sandwich—pressure from above, pressure from below.
Recorded Christmas 2024. Backwards to go forwards. Brought back from the archives Summer of 2026 because the open root center has its own sense of time.
Email for client inquiry or collaborations (No guest pitches). iamsunitakumar@protonmail.com
[00:00:00] welcome back to Clear Signal. Let me ask you a question. Have you ever showed up at the airport with no luggage in your pajamas? I have. And today we're gonna talk about it and we're also gonna talk about the root center. Let's get into it.
the reason I dropped in that head center episode is it's important, but it's because I wanted to drop in this episode.
This episode is the true definition of backwards to go forwards this episode. Is from Christmas of 2024, so I wanted to get this on the feed before it just wasn't relevant anymore. Top of the body graph is head, bottom of the body. Graph is the root. Root is the root chakra. Root is the root of the earth. We don't need to talk about why this is foundational.
Talking about the centers in Human Design is foundational. By the way, all of the aura types, generator, manifesting, generator, all that, they're all based off of what centers you have defined and undefined . This episode is stories and concepts and all the goodness it was gonna drop [00:01:00] in around Christmas because I was like, I'm gonna time this with this whole pressure around Black Friday, around this whole New Year, new you
you could probably form a data curve from 5:00 AM on January 1st through, ooh, let's say mid Feb clockwork. They bank on that because of people who signed up for the gym on January 1st, actually went be too crowded, root foundational. Backwards to go forward. It's obviously clarifying. And why does this have to do with feminine flow?
Because think about what pressure and time is. Think about what adrenaline is in our society. It's going against our natural flow. I lean flow pisses people off, don't care. My sense of urgency and your sense of urgency are not the same. People don't know how to respond to that. And a lot of what the centers are in Human Design is about where do you give your authority away?
Where do you amplify other people's pressure? [00:02:00] At the expense of yourself, and there's times to amplify pressure, and we talk about that in this episode.
The root center is another insidious center with entrepreneurs, because we often make decisions outta pressure.
We talked about emotional authority. And how you are pressured to make decisions. Based on time. The root center has to do with adrenaline and time,
A lot of the root gates are Capricorn gates. Strategic planning and time planning. So you have all this life force energy of all this mutational power, and then you've got the earth plane that is jutting up against, that has real constraints of pressure and time. Welcome to the definition of project management. And if you're a creative like me and a catalyst like me, I lean heavily on the creative side.
I lean heavily on the innovation side, so I rely on other people [00:03:00] to be the constraint for me. Accountability deadlines. It could be a personal trainer, it could be an accountability coach, it could be client deadlines, it could be, whatever you need to keep you on track.
Here is a center that I have a hundred percent open. The open center has no gates activated. The open center is very misunderstood in my opinion. If you think about the gates in the body graph, the gates on the undefined centers is taking in wisdom. They're your teachers in your lessons and they develop into wisdom as you age. If you have no buttons pressed, are you getting wise? Yes and no, but you're not gonna get wise in the consistent way that you would with other buttons pressed.
It's also hula hoop. It can go right in and go out. I'll give you an example. [00:04:00] Somebody who has a completely open root center could be. Overwhelmed by everybody's sense of pressure and time, they're gonna take it in more. You could amplify it more. You go to an airport, you're freaked out by everybody's sense of urgency or you go the other way.
You have no sense of urgency in time, and it's also gonna depend on where you are in your deconditioning journey. I discovered Human Design about five years ago , and I chose a very non-conventional life. During that time for a reason where I had mostly had control over my time by design, I sacrificed other areas of my life to say I am in control of my time.
So I completely deconditioned my root center. You can imagine as someone who's gone to an Ivy League school, gone to a top tier MBA program, graduated early, was the youngest person or an MBA class, an elite class, worked in Silicon Valley, worked in New York City, in the advertising industry, the cosmetics industry. In the tech industry. Talk about adrenaline. Yeah. And in the western [00:05:00] world, in the corporate world, , we operate on a fake sense of urgency. Half the isms in corporate America are war isms. War room, and, what's the arsenal of, I mean, it's just, it's crazy. We have a greater sense of urgency in the western world. I've lived in a lot of different countries. Backpacked a lot of different places and it frustrates people. 'cause you'll show up in a country and the plane doesn't leave for two hours. People have no sense of time. Right? It's very relative to the country you live in, the place you live. I live in the northeast at the time of this recording, stick up the butt about everything. Time, specifically time. And there's a reason for that.
People are lauded in our society based on productivity. Oh, I didn't. I didn't rest today. I got up at 5:00 AM and I went all day. That is what people think is a pat on the back. I think that is insane.
I always thought that was asinine, but you gotta play the game, whatever game you're in. So I have no wisdom around time naturally. When I say that can go off the rails in ways that I'm not even gonna tell you half the examples, [00:06:00] you would think I was insane.
Some of the stuff I've done because I've been so behind. Because I had no wisdom about that. You would think I had mental problems and I thought that I was just a total failure at life and I couldn't figure out why I was like that. Intelligent woman, very analytical. You can see the way I can whip things on the fly pattern analysis from 15 different topics and do it without even thinking about it. But I couldn't show up on time for a flight. Why? That is where a Human Design to me has been just absolutely a game changer.
What I loved about Human Design is that a lot of the personal development got me nowhere. I'll be honest with you, some of the stuff I learned might help you because I bring in learnings from every thing I've done, maybe that's why I had to learn it to teach you something. That's what a five does. It universalizes stuff from all different walks of life and brings it in, but for me, it was not a fit .
One area I use Human Design for personal development is the centers. My gates and [00:07:00] centers, and I understood where I was prone to influence from others and where I fell down and I can't be a normal human, like normal people. It made so much sense. I gave myself a lot more grace because it just became someone who lacked a skill. It's like being mad at somebody who is just not good at basketball. All right, so pretend that in life you've gotta be a little bit good at basketball to get by. Okay, that person could do the bare minimum to get by. They're never gonna be colby Bryant. So I've gotten better, and if I told you some of the ways that I need to be better, you would think that I was a child . That's fine because we don't know where ways that people struggle, right? Sometimes people have learning disabilities, they're dyslexic, whatever.
I can't draw, but people who can draw amaze me. My drawings look like a child did them, but I can do other things. So when it comes to those areas of life, we are a lot more easygoing.
But when it comes to things like habits. [00:08:00] The person who can't do the thing, there is something wrong with them. They're a lazy person. They can't get it together. They are a failure at life. So I just have to try a little bit harder. Just like someone who maybe has trouble memorizing might to study a little bit more.
I have to try a little bit harder to manage time. Why? Because going back to the centers, I have a completely open center. I have no wisdom there. The opposite of that. Can be someone who takes in everybody's pressure. He or she has no wisdom about time. So she's taking in everybody else's input about time.
I'll give you an example. I was staying with a friend of mine on, , Provincetown. Provincetown is a beach area , Cape Cod , coast of Massachusetts. And it was summertime, so it's a high turnover time, kind of thing where people are coming in and out.
Very high traffic time of year. We were there with our two children and, we were all set to go. Everything was packed up, the kids were packed up, the stuff was in the car, the thing was clean, the car was [00:09:00] packed up and I know as a mom, she was there doing it on her own.
I was helping out, but I don't have kids, so I was probably useless to her. She's gonna be stressed. Moms are stressed. It's part of that. But we were fine and we got out and we literally were in the car by 9:00 AM All we had to do was drive to the base of the road to drop the trash bag off into the dumpster.
And I checked my clock when we did it. It was 8 59. She was freaking out the entire time. I'm like, dude, you're fine. We're not, we're outta the place. Like it's 8 59. And she understands Human Design. She's actually a person who introduced me to Human Design. , She's my manifester friend.
By the way, if that didn't make any sense, watch the video on manifesters on my YouTube channel. , she was like, yeah, she has a completely open root. So that is an example of someone with a completely open root who is completely freaked out by other people's deadlines. I'm an example of someone with a completely open root who doesn't give a fuck about unnecessary deadlines.
Now I care about the guidelines that matter. Clients,? Doctor's, appointments, [00:10:00] flights, although I've had to learn the hard way with that. , what else? Events, weddings, all the stuff. And depending on the life choices I may have to be more focused on that, but it's something I have to work on because I don't have inherent wisdom there. And then obviously there's the New Year's resolution push for the personal development space, the weight loss space, the Tony Robbins space, wherever you'd call that. Probably in the spiritual space as well. And that's unnecessary pressure it's artificial pressure and deadlines placed on you based on random dates. No one's subconscious brain woke up on January 1st and said, I'm gonna be a new person. I wanna completely revolutionize my life. I'm going to break all safety programming and go to the gym and lose 30 pounds and get outta debt and get a new job and break off this marriage. No one subconscious said that because the clock changed to January 1st, a Gregorian calendar that was based. In actually moving men and women away from the natural clock, which is the moon and the stars. That's what [00:11:00] manufactured time is.
A lot of the gates are Capricorn gates, which are ruled by Saturn. And Saturn is father time and it matters. You gotta have deadlines, you gotta get shit done. So why does this relate to the format energies, the format energies run from the sacral center to the root center?
There are three channels there, and the channels have different meanings. And this could be an entire episode, but for what you need to know for today is that. If you think about the mutative process of creation, the creative force comes down from the sacral center, boom, hits the constriction of the earth plane, and then comes back up.
And then we have a mutative process. Like I said, each of those channels are different and people have those gates, one of those gates, very different meanings than you have the little channel. And that's true for any part of the body graph. , but there is a pulse. . And so if you only have one of the gates on the more creative side, which I've already mentioned, you don't have the opposite side of restriction.
You have to build that restriction in through deadlines, accountability , et cetera. [00:12:00] I have worked on and off with personal trainers for a long time, and it's not because. I necessarily wanted to achieve goals with them, although I did 'cause you hire someone to take you to the next level, you're gonna go to the next level.
It's because on my own, I would spend the whole day saying, I'm gonna go to the gym. I'm gonna go to the gym. I'm gonna go to the gym, I'm gonna go to the gym. Then I'd run outta time, or I'd spend the whole day stressing about going to the gym. Because I had an appointment with them, the thing just got done.
After that, when I wanted to not work out with a trainer for whatever reason, I often got them to send me programs so that I knew you're gonna go to the gym, you're gonna do X, Y, and z. And then you're gonna go home. That structure is what I needed to contain the sacral life force energy, that would just be all over the fucking place.
Otherwise, I'd go one day. I wouldn't go one day. I'd go two hours one day. I've talked about the gym before because the gym is a great representation of Saturn. It's not about energy. It's not manifesting a tight ass. You're manifesting a tight ass by doing hip thrusts and doing gradual load and protein [00:13:00] intake.
There's a time for the universe to show up and drop money in your lap, and a hot man and a client and all of the jewels of the universe when there's a time where you just gotta do the work and they're both part of life. Gary V said that a long time ago. Gary's an old school. Pre Alex or Moey, he was like the original Alex or Moey. People from my age probably know him. He was like talking about working all the time. And his, he's changed his tune, right?
Because now his target demographic is people in their forties and fifties reinventing themselves. So of course he's adopted this whole like, be kind to yourself, love yourself. But that wasn't his thing. I remember he said a line that really bothered me once, and he was like, if you need accountability, you can't be an entrepreneur.
You gotta be able to be accountable to yourself. Yes and no is my experience. Everyone's different. That has not been my experience, and it could be because I have a completely open root. So I do not have the ability to manage time. It is not a flaw in my personality. It's a flaw in my design or [00:14:00] a gift in my design because I can show people slow living this could be its own episode about the wounds of the coaching industry and the wounds of the personal development industry and where we get projected on by other people's wounds.
I was talking to this coach, I was mentioning the situation with the personal trainer, and this guy used to be a personal trainer long time ago, like 40 years ago. And I think he took. My input as an invitation to project his own beliefs onto me about training, about who needs to go to a trainer, about whatever. He's like, well, if it was in alignment, I'm like, dude, I've been gonna the gym on and off since I was 15 years old. If it was out of alignment with me, I wouldn't do it. I have a goal and I wanna get there. Let's not make it that deep. If it was not in alignment with me, I wouldn't join the gym. I wouldn't spend the money to make it happen. I wouldn't show up at the, at those sessions when I show up, I [00:15:00] come to work.
That's Human Design applied to real life. The story of me and my friend in the. Provincetown, I gave you the story of that coach. I don't agree with that. I just think I need a structure. It doesn't have to be a personality flaw, it doesn't have to be that working out is out of alignment with me. I have so many tools that help me exist in life, but it's still not gonna get me to the airport on time. I get to get myself to the airport on time. And how do you get yourself to the airport on time? You get yourself to the airport on time through wisdom of what's gonna go wrong. I used to be a international consultant. I would take flights every other week, transatlantic. I backpack the world. I've lived in multiple countries. I used to live in California when I was dating somebody that lived in New York and we'd meet all over the country while we were together. How many flights have I taken in my lifetime? I, I would say it was about 46 years old. What I learned how to not literally run to every flight. I don't know why my hair isn't fully gray at this point because I've stressed myself out way more than I need to, but I had such a [00:16:00] light bulb moment when I learned about the open root it literally answered everything for me, and I was like, oh my God, I'm not broken.
I just need to build wisdom in because I don't have wisdom. I am not a projector, a manifestor, or a reflector. You probably aren't either if you're listening to this. 'cause just math. Collectively, the non sacrals are 30% of the population, so they are the ones that are by far the biggest bang on the drum of Human Design
and they definitely were the early adopters because for a lot of them they're so different. And if you wanna understand the differences, watch my Aura series on my channel. There's a Foundations playlist that they were seen for the first time in their life. I understand because of the open route, I can understand because the other aspects of my chart are somewhat normal. I'm a pure generator, the most normal type. , there are aspects about me that are rare. My undefined throat is rare. Rarest center to have undefined. [00:17:00] I have a defined heart rarest center to have defined. So I understand why I have certain skill sets that other people don't. Why I show up in the world in a certain way that can ruffle feathers. But I would say in terms of managing the world outside of personality, just like tactics for me, the undefined root. Was powerful.
And here's a little caution for you is that people do not distinguish between the undefined and the open center in Pop hd.
Most people don't understand the nuances. So if I had just read a thing on undefined root I'd been like, oh, so I taken everybody's pressure. I'm stressed out all the time about other people's time. No, I'm the opposite. Neither one is good. But I would rather have no pressure around other people's agenda.
And then I selectively add in the things that make sense to me versus being stressed out about everyone else's bullshit. 'cause everybody else has got time management issues. And by that I mean we live in a society of urgency. That whole notion of essentialism that goes [00:18:00] out the window when you are focusing on everybody else.
When you buy those reports. There is something known as my body graph. Is that the name? It's a software that generates reports and anybody you've bought any of these reports from? Back in the day before AI was a thing, like you can buy like $50 reports or any of that that's all from the same software company. Then you can buy that software, put it on your website and configure those reports. They are a fetcher system. They fetch from a database. It cannot distinguish between open and undefined. My reports that I've got undefined route, which is not me. I'm open route. Here's the story. , Here's the thing I'll tell you. When I stopped being late for flights, I'll tell you my rock bottom. My rock bottom was when I showed up to the San Francisco airport in my pajamas with no luggage.
Because I was that late and I ended up, it was just a flight to LA for the weekend. I think it was a conference, so I just got on that flight. It's [00:19:00] maybe like top down bottom, it's two hours, all told, and I, I walked to a TJ Maxx from my hotel to find some kind of random outfit. Wearing cheesy as clothes I was never gonna wear again. TJ Maxx is cheap, but it's not that cheap. So I had to drop a hundred dollars on clothes. That was more than the flight for stuff that was cheap and I would never wear it again. Just because I couldn't get my shit together
and I showed up at the airport in my pajamas, which I don't really care about. That kind of stuff. I mean, yeah, I'm sure that's when you're gonna run into somebody you know, or the person you wanna look good for. That was a nightmare because when I was building my product lines and doing all this stuff, I was scraping, buying fumes. I didn't have any money. So I would stay at super eights and, cheap motels, I'm just there to sleep. But when you go to big cities. Those are not cheap motels. It's not like going to the suburbs and going to a Motel six. Anybody who's been to like, New York City or uh, [00:20:00] LA uh, they're like basically brothels. So they're not in the best part of town. And I'm walking without a sidewalk, like fucking like, what are you doing? Cause you couldn't pack a bag 'cause you couldn't manage that time. That was my, rock bottom moment. You gotta have rock bottom moments in life because they make you better.
And there it is, the much-anticipated root center episode. a episode recorded in the fall of 2024, very close to Black Friday, very close to the episode I recorded about 11.11. It might have been the week after that. If you are here from the future, you're here because in the Season 2 finale, I shared a number of episodes that I slotted in after the fact.
This episode was very foundational, no pun intended, with the root center, and it was personal development-focused, so it really fit Season 1.
There was no other episode for Season 1 that I was like, "This is a yes." I had ones that kind of were there, but it wasn't it, and I waited, and I waited, and I waited, and I was like, [00:21:00] "Perfect." That's a great example of not allowing unnecessary pressure and time for stuff that doesn't matter. If you are new to the podcast- and you're listening to this in order, let me just let you know that I threw this episode into slot 35 it didn't replace anything else, and I announced it in the season two finale. And in the season two finale, I talked a lot about flow because the four pillars of season two were backwards to go forwards. Feminine flow, which is doing business in divine timing and what feels good and what feels right and not over-rushing. Very associated with the root center. Root center is the opposite of that. It's adrenaline and pressure and time, which we need sometimes, but not always, and we overemphasize it in our society. Clarity and foundations. This is foundational for obvious reasons. It's the base center. It's associated with the root chakra in traditional chakras, and it's one of the two pressure centers. [00:22:00] In this episode, I mentioned we're gonna drop in the head center episode next. The flow was too good. I didn't wanna mess with it. This dropped in where it dropped in. The head center episode is elsewhere in the feed, and I'll put that in the show notes. I also wanna update you In this episode, I talked about rock bottom moments and learning. Very recently, actually the day before I'm recording this, had yet another incident where I had to learn my lesson. It taught me that we're always learning, because maybe when it comes to airports and flights, I've learned my lesson, but there was an incident yesterday that involved a boat. No, I'm not making that up, and I didn't learn my lesson. Now if I ever have to be in a boat, I've learned my lesson. We're always learning. We're always growing. We're always getting better. We have to understand our design, and that's what this episode was about. I hope you enjoyed it. I don't know what episode is after this, but I hope you enjoy that episode too
