An Intro to Human Design | Unpacking the Profiles | 4/6 The Opportunist/Role Model
Artist: Juliette Clovis
Those with a 4/6 profile are a mix of 4th line Opportunist and the 6th line Role Model traits and energies. To date, around 19% of my clients have had a 4/6 profile.
Before we get into what it means to be a 4/6, a little bit about the profiles and what they mean for our Human Design: if the incarnation cross is what we're here to do during this lifetime, the profile gives us invaluable insight into how we're meant to do it. Our profile shapes the way we walk through the world and provides SO MUCH MORE MEANINGFUL INFORMATION than our type alone does. It's how all these elements combine (our open and closed centers, our type & strategy, our authority, our gates and channels, our profile and our incarnation cross) that gives us the most accurate picture of not just the blueprint for our energy, but the impact we're meant to have and the lessons we're meant to learn during this lifetime.
Artist: Juliette Clovis
FUN FACTS
Famous 4/6s: Julie Andrews, the Dalai Lama, Vanessa Redgrave, Brad Pitt, both Prince Charles & Camilla Parker Bowles, Bill Gates, Bob Dylan, Drew Barrymore, Julie Christie, Condoleezza Rice
4/6s are most romantically compatible with: fellow 4/6s & 1/3s
4/6s also get along really well with: 1/4s, 2/4s, 4/1s and 6/2s
The 4/6 Opportunist/Role Model
One of the challenges a 4/6 faces is navigating the daily battle between following your head and following your heart. A quick check of how your Mind and Heart Centers are defined (or not) will give you some insight into how this head v. heart tug-o-war will play out. In fact, this struggle between what you think you want and what you actually want might end up being a fairly significant life theme for you. For Projectors, these moments of internal crisis might come via invitations. For Generators, Manifesting Generators, Manifestors, and Reflectors, new opportunities or ideas can trigger this push and pull. Or, for those with a closed Heart/Will Center, commitments and promises might set off this battle. Just know: part of the reason you're here, as a 4/6, is to learn how to balance wisdom and desire. The head is meant to educate the heart so that the head and the heart can walk through life hand in hand, on the same page. This balance is accomplished through turning experience into wisdom via the three-part life cycle which is unique to the 6th line.
If you remember back to the piece I shared on the 6th line, everyone with a 6th line in their profile tends to live their life in three distinct stages:
Stage 1 happens from birth to roughly age 30 (around the Saturn Return). During this time, there are strong 3rd line vibes of discovery-based learning and bonds made and broken.
Stage 2 roughly begins after the Saturn Return is over and lasts until the Chiron Return, approximately ages 30-50. During this time, there’s the opportunity to retreat and heal, and to reflect in order to gain a bit of perspective around all that happened during the first 30-ish years.
Stage 3 begins after the Chiron Return and lasts as long as we do. During this point in time, the 6th line has turned experience into wisdom via their reflection and is now ready to reengage with life armed with lessons learned via lived experience.
Here’s how this three-stage process looks for the 4/6:
The 6th line’s goal during stage 1 is to gather and collect experiences via trial and error. During this time, the 4th line craves stability and a solid foundation, so typically the things the 6th line is willing to try is in pursuit of this stability. This stage is all about lessons learned, so not every attempt at stability will be successful…but that’s just part of the discovery process.🤷♀️
The 6th line’s goal during stage 2 is to provide time for reflection and healing, and allow for the perspective that comes with distance. This is when the 4th line finally gets the stability it craves, as career, friends and family start to be called in.
The 6th line’s goal during stage 3 is completing the final step where experience through reflection becomes wisdom, and that wisdom can now be applied in a far more frequently successful way. Over the course of your life, as you gain more experience and hold space to reflect on that experience to acquire valuable perspective, 4/6s are able to get the head and the heart on the same page far more easily and more often.👍
As a 4/6, you value QUALITY of relationships over QUANTITY, and increasingly so as you progress through the stages. During stages 2 and 3, there’s usually a push and pull between the 4th line’s desire to connect and network, and the 6th line’s love of withdrawing to reflect. Many times, 4/6s can experience “people fatigue.”😫You LOVE being with others, but you also tend to need downtime after to recover. The 6th line provides you with the ability to form very deeply emotionally intimate and mutually beneficial relationships with others, but it takes A TON of energy to engage at that level. You are also not designed to influence strangers. For you to live your design, trust needs to be established before you start sharing your 6th line wisdom and guidance. Don’t get me wrong: 4/6s usually give a lovely first impression, but you tend to really shine upon better acquaintance. In short, to know you is to love you and ultimately, to trust you.
Artist: Juliette Clovis
😱Two big fears common for 4/6s are the fear of rejection and the fear of failure.😱This fear of rejection is fueled in part by the 4th line. For 4/6s, the body remembers all the trail and error that characterized the first 30 years of life, and so the 4th line really needs to learn how to trust that wisdom gleaned from lived experience brought by the 6th line. This fear of rejection can look several ways: it could be a “I’m going to cut you off and reject you before you can cut me off and reject me” kind of vibe, or it might present as a skittishness, a tendency to withdraw, or a habit of backing out of projects or commitments last minute. Over time, as a 4/6 grows into the profile, the goal is to learn to trust the reflections and lessons learned through the 6th line’s trial and error days, knowing you had the experience in👏order👏to👏learn👏from👏it👏 so as to not to make the same mistakes or to repeat the same destructive patterns later. Anyone with a dominant 4th line is here to guide and lead and have an impact…and that can’t happen if you can’t trust yourself enough to commit to opportunities and callings that are meant for you. To riff on RuPaul’s famous catch-phrase: “If you don’t trust yourself, how in the hell you gonna trust somebody else? And how in the hell is somebody else supposed to trust you?”
The 4th line of this profile provides warmth and graciousness to your personality. 🤗A big part of the 4th line’s journey is for you to find your people: the people who value your leadership and insight and generally love to listen to what you have to say. Remember: a huge theme in Human Design is right place, right time, right people. Not everyone you meet is necessarily gonna be your people.
A point of friction for a 4/6 can be trying convert the nonbeliever, so to speak. 4/6s are here to have an impact on those willing and desiring to be guided and you can waste a ton of energy if you insist on trying to win over EVERYONE, especially folks who are just not on the same page as you, or are unwilling to see things from a perspective other than their own. This can be super disappointing, because at your core, as a 4/6, you want everyone you care about to succeed and thrive, and it can be disheartening to watch someone ignore your advice and then face what you perceive to be the consequences. So the goal here is to learn how to discern who is the right audience for you to guide, and when it’s appropriate to provide that guidance.
To be clear: just because you have advice to give, doesn’t mean it’s always right or appropriate to weigh in. 4/6s are best understood when you 1) provide advice that’s based on your specific 6th line lived experience and 2) share it with people who already value, trust and respect you. Using your strategy and authority, as well as keeping in mind your incarnation cross, can give you intuitive insight into when to weigh in and guide, and when to step aside.
