Alignment is the Prerequisite to Abundance: Why Your Hard Work Isn't Working
You've been doing everything right.
The planning. The strategy sessions. The late nights. The consistency. You're checking all the boxes that every business coach and productivity guru tells you to check.
So why does it still feel off?
Why are you hitting goals but not feeling fulfilled? Why are you working harder than ever, but the results feel hollow? Why does success feel like it's always just out of reach, or when it arrives, it doesn't quite fit?
What Most People Get Wrong About Success
Most entrepreneurs believe that abundance comes from hard work, from having the perfect strategy, from grinding and hustling and showing up consistently every single day.
And look, I'm not saying those things don't matter at all. Action matters and strategy matters.
What I've seen over and over in my own life and with the women I work with is that when you take action from a misaligned place, you either don't get the results you want, or you get results that don't actually feel good.
You build something that drains you, hit a goal, and wonder why you're not happy. Then find yourself burnt out, trying to figure out why you're forcing something that was never meant to be forced.
Then there's the other way.
When you align first, when you clear out the limiting beliefs and the negative energy, and you get clear on who you are, how you're designed to operate, and what actually lights you up, the actions you take land differently.
You find yourself in flow, and opportunities show up that you could never have planned for. Things click into place in ways that feel almost too easy, and you start second-guessing whether it's really for you.
Spoiler: It absolutely is.
That's what alignment does for you, and it's not some magical concept but rather metaphysics, science, focus, and identity work all put together.
What Alignment Actually Means
Alignment is more than a buzzword that gets thrown around in coaching circles.
Alignment means you're operating in a way that matches your design. This includes your Human Design, but also your values, your energy, your capacity, and your actual desires.
You're focused on what you actually want instead of what you think you should do, or what you think you should want, or what looks good on paper.
When you're in true alignment with your identity, or you make the shift to a new identity if that's what's required, everything else kind of just falls into place naturally.
You have more than what looks good on paper, and you have what is really for you.
Alignment means that you've stopped borrowing other people's strategies and you've started trusting your own. It means that you're not forcing yourself into containers that weren't built for you, and it means your nervous system is regulated enough to receive what you're calling in.
The Real Issue: Capacity
Here's what most people don't talk about when they discuss manifestation and abundance.
Money, opportunities, clients, and success (whatever form abundance takes for you) require capacity. Your capacity to receive those things, your capacity to hold those things, and your capacity to believe it's actually for you.
I learned this lesson the hard way when I was 25 years old.
I was working as a plan administrator for a major financial institution, doing backend paperwork and getting paid nowhere near what I was worth. Then, like magic, this consulting opportunity appeared where I would be training other people, and supporting them in a backend system that I had worked in daily.
I was the subject matter expert coming in to clean up all the mistakes that happened during their conversion, and to help other people work in their new system.
The pay was triple what I was making in my regular job. They paid for my travel, they paid for my housing expenses, and I got a per diem for food. I was getting so much money beyond my salary, and it was a W-2 position, which meant they took care of the taxes (which was a bonus for me at the time since, I didn't know how to handle that as an independent contractor).
I knew this was for me, and it was exactly everything I had been asking for: travel, money, and freedom. I was young and living my best life. I paid for my family to come out and see me, and I paid for my boyfriend at the time (my now husband) to travel out and visit me.
I felt abundant, and I felt wealthy.
But I had this thought early on while working those long 10-hour days, four days a week: "I don't want to work this hard, and I don't want to have to work."
About six months later, the contract ended. They brought some people back and kept people on, but I didn't get renewed for another contract.
Even back then, before I knew anything about Human Design or had any kind of spiritual awakening, I knew that it was me who caused myself to lose that contract. It was my mindset, and it was the fact that I wasn't ready to hold onto it.
I was looking for holes and problems, and as much as I enjoyed the money, I felt like an imposter there, especially around some of the older people who had been doing this work for years.
I kept thinking: who am I to be traveling and being paid to travel and having all this extra money when I had credit card debt, student loans, and had been living paycheck-to-paycheck up to this point?
It didn't feel like it was really mine, and it ended up going away.
I tell you that story to explain exactly what I mean when I say that with abundance, you have to have the capacity to receive it and the capacity to hold it.
At the time, I had the capacity to receive (it came to me, and I thought it was a scam at first), but I didn't have the capacity to hold it.
And that is what happens to so many of us when it comes to manifestation, alignment, and abundance. We can receive, but we can't hold, or whatever your particular issue is.
What Happens When You're Out of Alignment
When you're out of alignment, your capacity shrinks, and you go into survival mode.
You're gripping and grasping at things while you're trying to hold onto something that's not yours, and when you hold too tight, it slips away from you. You're hustling from this fear mindset where you think you have to do more and more and more, or else you're not going to get the thing you want.
Instead of moving from a place of trust where you can take your time and make choices that really work for you (choices that you've reflected on in whatever way you need to, whatever your design tells you to), you're operating in panic mode.
Abundance can't land on a closed fist. It's trying to come to you, but there's a door in front of it that's locked, or you let it in, but you promptly sweep it away, thinking you don't deserve it or it's not really for you.
The Gap Between Should and Design
I want you to think about this for a second.
Where in your life are you pushing harder than you need to instead of pausing so that you can realign?
Where are you forcing something that keeps resisting you?
Where have you been operating from "I should" instead of "I'm designed to"?
That gap between how you've been operating and how you actually are designed to operate is where misalignment lives, and closing that gap is the fastest path to abundance and everything you've been working for.
Now, you might be saying: "Matalya, I can't just stop and wait for alignment when I have bills to pay and responsibilities and goals with deadlines."
I hear you, and I'm not asking you to stop taking any action.
What I'm asking you to do instead is check the energy behind your actions.
Are you moving from trust or are you moving from fear?
Are you moving from desire or are you moving from obligation?
Are you creating from overflow or from depletion?
Are you building something that aligns with who you really are or who you think you need to be in order to be successful?
What Aligned Action Actually Looks Like
The most aligned action might actually be rest.
Your most aligned action might be to pause, or it might be to say no when you've been saying yes to the wrong things this whole time, and that's why you're feeling out of alignment and why it's feeling hard and why you're being depleted so quickly.
It might be slowing down long enough so that you can hear your own wisdom instead of having it drowned out by the noise of the external, by busyness, and by other people's opinions.
Or maybe the most aligned action for you is to speed up when you've been going at this slow and steady pace that you've been told wins the race, but really you desire to move quickly, to jump, and to pivot, and you've been holding yourself back.
Alignment for you might mean freedom, opening up, being more spacious, and allowing for the shift that needs to happen.
Or the most aligned action could be bold and scary. Bigger than anything you've ever done before in your life.
That thought that's been repeating in your head over and over that feels really good to think about, and that you know you really want to do, but logic has told you not to do it. You've got that full body, yes, but you just haven't been brave enough and haven't trusted in yourself enough to go ahead and move forward with that bold, beautiful decision.
You know the difference, and you've always known the difference between regulated and dysregulated, between alignment and misalignment.
I'm telling you nothing you've never heard before, and nothing that you've never felt truly in your core before.
You know what I'm telling you is truth.
The question is whether or not you're willing to trust it and whether you're willing to trust yourself.
Try This: How to Start Aligning Today
Here's what I want to leave you with.
Abundance is not something you chase but something that you align with.
It's something you become a match for, and you become a match for it by coming home to yourself and by operating in a way that honors your design, your energy, and your truth.
The constant work and strategy, and hustle will always tell you that you're not doing enough. That there's always a better way to do it. That there's always a faster way to do it. That there's always a cleaner way to do it. And that there's always something else that you could be doing.
Someone is going to tell you that you need to push harder, while other people are going to tell you that you need to rest or that rest is for later.
Those are all concepts, and you need to focus on you. Trust in yourself, and trust that you know what is best for you. Knowing that your alignment will tell you the true story.
It's going to tell you something different than what you've heard out in the world. It tells you that who you are is enough, that your way works, and that you don't have to earn your enoughness through exhaustion.
Alignment tells you that you are worthy of wealth, and that alignment is the prerequisite to your abundance.
Before you make the next move you're going to make in your life or in your business, before you make that next decision, I want you to ask yourself: am I aligned?
And if not, what would it take to get there?
That's your work, and everything else flows from there.
What's Next?
If this resonates with you and you're ready to close that gap between where you are and where you're designed to be, here's how I can help:
Take the free quiz: Discover exactly what's blocking your prosperity, the first step to releasing your block, and get your next aligned step to get to prosperity faster.
Book a Discovery Call: Let's talk about how your Human Design can help you build a business that works with your energy instead of against it.
About the Author:
Matalya Onuoha is a Human Design Strategist and Clarity-to-Prosperity Guide for Women & Teams. She helps women transform confusion into clarity and purpose into prosperity using Human Design, NLP, and somatic techniques. Host of the Worthy of Wealth podcast.
