Behind the Scenes: The Best of Our Meaning Making Systems Series
At Holisticism, we’re obsessed with helping you build an intuitive, magical business (and life!).
So here’s where things get Interception-y — we’re going to share the podcast episodes about and content about intuitive business that did the best.
Parce que? Because I think it will be INFINITELY interesting to all my intuitive content creators out there to see what content flopped and what content fucking crushed.
Also: I’m a nosey witch and I love seeing BTS of other people’s content. Understanding what goes viral (and what gets shot down faster than a slutty bride joke at a Fundy wedding) and examining why can help you create content that performs well, too.
We just finished up our podcast series on Meaning-Making Systems and, holy witch’s tit, these episodes got serious airtime.
First, I’ll explain a bit about what a meaning making system is, and why we wanted to dive into this concept for a few episodes on the podcast. After, we’ll look at our superlatives list and I’ll give you a breakdown of why I think certain pieces did well.
What are meaning-making systems?
Short answer: Pretty much anything that helps you understand the world. As humans, we’re constantly trying to navigate this weird, rule-less dominion. Shockingly, we don’t get a user’s manual handed to us after we shoot out of the birth canal so we spend much of our lives searching for meaning, safety, and purpose.
It can be pretty fun, NGL!
In our search for meaning, we apply different lenses to the way we see the world to help us understand it. These lenses help us make sense of what we experience. They take something that’s meaningless and imbue it with meaning.
Examples of meaning-making systems
Pretty much anything that helps you make sense of the world is a meaning-making system. Religions and political associations are good examples of meaning-making systems we see often; philosophies, mental models, and frameworks are also meaning-making systems we use regularly.
Spirituality is chock-full of meaning-making systems, which we went into in our podcast series.
Why meaning-making systems?
Meaning-making systems aren’t inherently negative or biased. But when we’re unaware of the systems that we use to understand and see the world, we can get lost in the “truth” of our beliefs... although those beliefs may not be absolutely true.
What does that mean? Welp, if we’re not careful, even the most intelligent people can accidentally go full cult status without recognizing it until we suddenly come to as a gentle, glassy-eyed “guru” is shaving our head with a rusty Bic in the middle of the Wyoming backcountry.
Let’s prevent a head-shaving catastrophe, shall we, by gently examining our own beliefs and the meaning-making systems that we often subscribe to in the spiritual space: Astrology, Enneagram, and Human Design.
Astrology
Astrology ascribes meaning to the placement of the sun, the moon, and the planets in the sky. Using the zodiac signs, astrology helps people understand unique facets of their lives — we can interpret everything from your sense of style to the way you relate to spirituality in your astrological natal chart.
If you don’t know about astrology... welcome to the world, baby. But most of us (and I’m assuming that those of you who’ve tripped through the internet to land on this website) are pretty aware of our natal charts, the twelve houses of astrology, and, of course, Mercury Retrograde.
In our episode with Madi Murphy of Cosmic Rx, we talk about astrology as a meaning-making system, spiritual sex, the advice we’d give to our 20-year-old selves, and how to use astrology and your natal chart to add value and freedom to your life... not more rigidity and meaningless rules 😅
Enneagram
The Enneagram is a system of personality typing that describes patterns in how people interpret the world and manage their emotions. There are nine different types, and you can find your Enneagram type by taking a personality test.
This meaning-making system has been around for quite a while — but it’s had less traction in the wellness and spirituality space than Astrology.
We interviewed Enneagram expert Michelle K. Anderson about the origins of the Enneagram, and why we call it “Christian Astrology” (seriously, Christians go hard for the Enneagram, it’s a wickedly interesting aspect of this system!)
Human Design
Human Design is a sort of cosmic Myers-Briggs tool that organizes peoples into five different high-level “Types.” From there, each person has a birth chart — similar to a natal chart in astrology — that reveals more about things like their authentic personality; what their strategies for success in relationships, work, and life look like; it can even show what your general life’s purpose or soul mission is.
We spoke to Erin Claire Jones about her take on Human Design as a Projector, and to the wonderful Dayluna team about their experience with Human Design as a meaning-making system for their company.
BTS: How’d this series do?
Here’s a little inside baseball for you — the numbers on podcast episodes don’t solidify until roughly 45 days after an episode is published.
If you’ve got a podcast, or you’re thinking of making one, remember that when you’re reporting numbers for advertisers and sponsors.
Technically, we’re just two weeks out from our last episode of this meaning-making systems series, so this information is subject to change. But, here’s what we’re working with as of today:
Most downloaded episode
You’re Not Broken, But Your System Might be — Magical Systems for Very Intuitive People
TBH, I’m always surprised (and flattered) when people like our solo episodes. Because we land such wonderful, interesting guests, I suppose I feel boring and dumb in comparison.
But we work very hard to write episodes that will be valuable and useful for our listeners, and this and a few other solo sessions zoomed past all of our other episodes in our meaning-making systems series.
I heard a lot of feedback on this episode, and here are my takeaways as to why it did oh-so-well:
Wallis and I shared our personal experiences as high-performing (ew) women with ADHD. “High-performing” isn’t the right terminology, but both of us are highly functional and productive people who struggle with ADHD. I know many listeners resonated with our stories, particularly our stories about procrastination, anxiety, and depression that come with ADHD.
We gave some very actionable takeaways in this episode that listeners could immediately use in their lives. And because the episode taught them something they could implement for better structure in their lives immediately, they shared this epi on social for their friends.
People love Notion, and want to learn more about it. As a Notion devotee, I love that more people want to learn about this incredible tool! We consistently get questions on how to use Notion as a magical, intuitive person, which is why we created our Notion for Magical Baddies class series. You can learn more about it here.
[0:01:00] Wallis and Michelle discuss their personal journeys with ADHD.
[0:05:00] The best and the worst meaning-making systems and how they can help serve or fatigue us.
[0:07:00] How Wallis felt the Enneagram helped her with understanding herself when she’s dysregulated.
[0:08:00] Which meaning-making systems work best for Michelle and why.
[0:09:00] How creating accountability and using systems like Notion can help us create the right systems that work for highly intuitive and creative people.
[0:16:00] Michelle and Wallis discuss their discovery and love of the meditation and breathwork platform, Open.
[0:26:00] How we can maximize our brain capacity for thinking and not depend on it for storage?
Most downloaded guest episode
How to be Your Own Authority and Live in True Authenticity with Dayluna Human Design
Even though it was our last episode in this series, our conversation with Shayna and Dana at Dayluna was one of our audience’s favorites of the summer.
One of our listeners left this five-star review on the podcast:
“This ep. was incredibly needed and I’m so grateful to have been ushered back into the HD space in a much more inclusive + new paradigm way. during the height of the panny, I went down a HD rabbit hole and thought I was going to quit my job and do HD readings for the rest of my days. Not too long after (you’d think I’d be a man-gen), I began to feel very restricted by the “rules” and closed the book. That said, the magical ladies at Dayluna reignited my interest in this system and how it can be applied practically and doesn’t have to be so limiting ✨ so, thank you.”
In this episode:
0:02:00] Reframing Human Design for liberation free of old-school HD dogma
[0:06:00] How to tell when you’re out of alignment with your Human Design type and authority
[0:10:00] Becoming your own authority and understanding who you are at a core level [0:16:00] Dana’s corporate experience and what discovering HD did for her career
[0:20:00] Moving past conditioning and how staying small steals from others
[0:32:00] How to understand your purpose on the physical vs. spiritual planes
[0:38:30] The two schools of thought in Human Design and how they differ
[0:59:00] What scares people from fulfilling their purpose
[1:00:00] Fear of responsibility — being afraid of your highest and most powerful self
Most shared guest episode
Is The Enneagram System Just Christian Astrology?
With a headline like that, we knew that we might get some pushback about our Enneagram episode. But blessedly, the internet gods and our listeners smiled down upon us, and gave us the benefit of the doubt with this winking headline.
As this episode racked up the shares and DM mentions, we learned that a lot of our listeners who’d grown up religious were nervous to get into astrology as young adults because of the negative connotation with witchcraft.
Astrology and witchcraft aren’t necessarily related — and witchcraft isn’t necessarily anti-Christian! — but it’s easy to see how the two could be conflated in a setting where old guys in dresses guzzle blood wine aka old grape juice.
We also saw that this episode captivated listeners from start to finish. Even though it clocked in at a whopping 64 minutes, the average listener made it all the way through to the 60 minute mark.
We can guess why this number is high. Maybe it’s because:
The information was useful, valuable, and had a high number of insights per minute, or
Listeners were interested by the novelty of the Enneagram, or
We’re hilarious, and people enjoy hanging out with us
OK, probably not the last one 🙃 But a great episode!
In the comments ...
“I have been LOVING this series on meaning-making systems and it’s got me thinking a lot about the relationship between meaning-making systems and other aspects of identity.
Overall, when we look at meaning-making systems like these, I think it’s important to remember that while they can tell us a lot about ourselves, we are also so much more than what these systems can explain. Not to mention the cultural frameworks we live in. Like how does our inner world as defined by these systems interact with our disability, race, sexuality, gender identity, or class status? ... “ — Sarah Dittmore
“Loved this episode! I started listening to Dayluna Podcast and loving it as well. After listening to the episode I decided to learn more and dive deep into my own authority. Perfect timing as I am in the beginning phase of starting a new project. I really enjoyed the Meaning-Making Systems series. After listening to this series I think I just might have ADHD. Implementing some of the systems that Michelle talked about on the podcast and shared within Holisticism/ North Node has been EXTREMELY helpful.“ — Christine GHill