Realize your full potential
The Enneagram is a powerful tool to unlock the subconscious programming that can hold us back from living our best lives.
Introduction to the Enneagram
In order to realize our full potential, we must start by understanding ourselves completely – our underlying motivations, our fears, our desires, why we get triggered when we do, and how we can overcome whatever might be holding us back from achieving our goals. The Enneagram gives us a framework to better understand ourselves as well as the many people in our lives. It gives us tools to make us more aware of subconscious patterns of thought that prevent us from expressing our true selves and enable us to be who we are capable of being. And it gives us the insights to start to free ourselves from our own egos, which is the only way to realize our full potential.
A personality typing system that can transform your life, your relationships & your business.
The Enneagram is a personality typology that sheds light on our inner worlds. It is a tool to understand our insecurities, motivations, and the driving forces behind our decision-making. It helps us to empathize with others so that we can best connect with them, best serve them, and best work with them. The Enneagram has its origins in different wisdom traditions and has been integrated with modern psychology over the last 50 years.
INTRODUCTION TO THE ENEAGRAM
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So how does the Enneagram work?
Learning about the Enneagram is like learning a language that is very intuitive and easy to grasp once you dive in. We start to understand ourselves through the four basic building blocks of the Enneagram that shape our personalities – Type, Wing, Levels of Consciousness, and Instincts.
The Nine Types
There are nine basic personality Types on the Enneagram (the name “Enneagram” means nine-pointed figure). Every individual is one of the nine Types. The primary Type is the most essential element of our personality. It is our lens on the world through which all of our thoughts and experiences are filtered.
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I’m an extremely detail-oriented visionary driven by a set of principles personal to me that I feel in my gut are true and which others must align with in order for positive change to take place, while I forever feel the guilt of not living up to these principles myself
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I’m all about taking care of others and having heart to hearts so I can feel really close and loved, but I have a hard time giving others space or seeing my own needs.
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I’m smooth and success-driven, endeavoring to show with my life that the sky’s the limit for what can be accomplished, while I’m concerned that others can see through my attractive image.
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I try to be authentic with every fiber of my being but it’s so hard to know who I really am deep down and I’m constantly overwhelmed trying to do justice to my talents, all the while feeling misunderstood by people who move too fast, are too shallow, and act too harshly to understand my full heart.
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I’m exceptionally cerebral, technical, and to myself in my pursuit of knowledge to understand how things work but I have trouble relating to people.
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I live in a zone of constant questioning as I strive to be dependable for those I care about, while wishing I had a cause to dedicate my life to which I could completely trust and the support of others whom I could completely trust, but my dogged spirit of service speaks volumes about me.
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I’m care-free and fun-loving with a moment-to-moment appetite for adventure and zero tolerance for boredom as I run from the problems in life which pursue me relentlessly in spite of my intelligence and joyfulness.
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I’m all about strength and showing who’s in charge to reassure myself that I don’t have a weak bone in my body, but I can’t admit to myself how scared I really am of my buried weakness, and so I show up larger than life in nearly all situations hoping to leverage my power for the people I love.
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I pride myself in being a calm, easy-going, unassuming person who can flow with whatever comes and doesn’t need recognition or attention, but I don’t readily admit to myself my problems or work to resolve conflicts because that’s really difficult and makes me not feel peaceful.
The Wings
In addition to the primary Type, each of us has a secondary Type, called a Wing. The Wing is always adjacent to the primary Type. Therefore, if you are a primary Type 7, you could have either a 6 wing or 8 wing. If you are a type 9, you could have an 8 wing or 1 wing, and so on. There are major differences between people of the same Type with a different Wing.
The Wing is such a powerful driver that it influences what we want and how we show up more than almost any other factor besides the Type itself. This weighs so heavily on our personality that it even frequently determines whether the Type is introverted or extroverted, and the degree of introversion or extroversion.
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1w9 : I’m an introverted deep thinker with a practical action orientation, and my main complaint is that I’m too lazy to enact all I feel called to do because I’d rather not be in conflict or stir things up too much, unless I have to.
1w2 : I’m an extroverted powerhouse of service, constantly on my feet to set my world straight and do what I feel is right, frequently exhausted by not giving myself permission to care for my own needs.
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2w1 : I’m bubbly and caring with a grave side to me that is stringent on principles, sees things in black and white, and constantly expects more from myself than I can give while I give so much.
2w3 : I’m a rosy-cheeked storehouse of sweetness that is all about being with people, everyone’s friend and confidante, while I secretly like to get claps on the things I do for people.
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3w2 : I’m hyper-efficient and dazzle others with my charms as I chase after big dreams and spread myself incredibly thin, rarely thinking to check in with myself about who I really am.
3w4 : I’m cool and collected, full of creative ideas and the capacity to execute on them, but I’m most concerned that you see me as the unique one who has it all together as I try to live a fantasy instead of being me.
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4w3 : I’m a shy, deep thinker who has huge ambition and loves to have an audience I can impact with my gifts while I constantly feel not up to snuff and how life is passing me by because I’m too slow to keep up.
4w5 : I’m a heart person longing to connect with others but often live in my own world, wondering if I’m meant to forever be an outsider as I’m unable to care about the things society cares about or fit the social mold with my extremely withdrawn, sensitive, and philosophical nature.
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5w4 : I’m one of the most withdrawn people, heady and artistic, avant-garde in my vision, with refined taste, and fascinated by the realm of emotions which are foreign to my cerebral self.
5w6 : I am a compulsive problem-solver who loves to live in the world of books but also loves to be there for others with my knowledge, provided I get to be the expert and nothing feels emotional.
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6w5 : I am on my toes trying to support the people in my life but am constantly conflicted about how to know what I’m actually meant to do, and my introverted, heady nature puts me at odds with what I feel the world expects of me.
6w7 : I love thrills and have a big gregarious side to me as I put myself on the line with vigor for all the people I try to trust, but so much of the time, I find myself extremely scattered and unable to find my way in life.
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7w6 : I have a modest presence and care about commitment to people and projects, though that’s one of the things I’m most afraid of and worst at following through on while trying to be a happy-go-lucky do-gooder in the world, and secretly wondering if I’ll ever find a deeper, lasting purpose since I run so fast from one thing to the next.
7w8 : I consume experiences at a rapid rate and bowl over whatever gets in my way, disliking slowness or weakness whenever I sense it, but all I really care about is just to be a happy person and use my tremendous capability to share happiness with others.
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8w7 : I’m the hardest charging go-getter who can take heat like no one else and upset others quickly with my intense energy, hardly able to turn off my own heat, but I care more about respect than I do success, and when I’m truly secure, or at least secure that people turn to me as the boss, I’ll lay down my life for what I believe in.
8w9 : I fight hard and undertake massive endeavors to feel my dominance over my environment, but then I go into hibernation for recharge till the next tussle, and have a very easy-going side to me that I like and which gives me more patience to deal with the details in life.
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9w8 : I’m cool and casual with an intensity that I keep guarded as I continue to be perceived as the shy one in the room, while deep down I hate weakness, am ever so subtly attracted to conflict, and know how to make waves when I need to, though I still walk out of every situation the calm, quiet one.
9w1 : I’m sensitive, kind, and deeply concerned with ethics, constantly thinking about the ideal way to live though I prefer to philosophize about it rather than truly live it because it would require me to give up all of my homey, comfortable habits to step out into the world of conflict and make it better.
The Levels of Consciousness
The Levels of Consciousness is the most important dimension of the Enneagram framework because it makes the framework dynamic and also gives it purpose by showing a path to growth.
Consciousness at its simplest is awareness, and in this context, specific awareness of our inner workings. The more aware, the healthier we are; the less aware, the unhealthier, because that indicates our insecurities are likely in the driver’s seat. The Levels of Consciousness show us why two people of the same Enneagram Type can behave so differently.
The three ways we operate and fluctuate at any given moment determine whether we fulfill our inherent potential – to be our best selves and benefit others tremendously – or deprive ourselves of being who we’re meant to be by indulging our ego fixations for validation from others.
Other aspects of The Enneagram
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The Instincts
Our personalities are made up of a very specific hierarchy of the three instinctual urges.
The three Instincts are Self-Preservation, Sexual, and Social. Self-Preservation is about conserving energy, Sexual about releasing energy, and Social about receiving energy from others.
With knowledge and self-awareness, we can understand ourselves so much more clearly if we concretely see the pull of these Instincts, and instead of letting them drag us around, humbly and intentionally direct them toward the aims of our best self.
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Behavioural Patterns
We know that every Type naturally shows up with certain recognizable behaviors, but interestingly, Types show up with very similar behaviors. This is what can sometimes confuse people and enable misidentification of one Type with another. Yet, the motivations of each type are so unique beneath the surface.
To avoid this confusion, we see three distinct triads of Types form around three distinct behavioral patterns – The Go-Getters, the Dutifuls, and the Withdrawns…
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Predominant Emotions
The Enneagram is divided into three Triads known as the Centers of Intelligence. Each Center has a corresponding Predominant Emotion that is the core emotion a Type experiences when challenged or triggered.
Body Center – Anger (Types 8, 9, 1)
Heart Center – Shame (Types 2, 3, 4)
Head Center – Fear (Type 5, 6, 7)
We look at these Predominant Emotions in terms of what for each of the Types provokes these emotions, and how they experience it. We gain through this knowledge the freedom to act differently, instead of being habitually forced to act on the emotion.
FAQS
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Myers-Briggs (MBTI), as well as many other popular personality typologies, aim to identify behavioral patterns. The Enneagram goes many layers deeper by understanding the fears and motivations behind the behaviors. This is the most powerful piece because if we want to change our behaviors, we must understand the underlying motivations.
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According to the framework of the Enneagram, we have only one primary Type and that Type is fixed. That which uniquely makes us who we are throughout our lives is always preserved at the core. How that expresses itself through our behaviors depends on our Level of Consciousness. It will also depend on aspects like our environment, the people we surround ourselves with, and many other external factors. We have the energies of all nine Types in us, and so we naturally relate to all of them. But the most powerful thing is to understand what really makes us tick, pulling the strings on all the other fears and desires we possess.
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Each Type comes with its own unique set of motivations and insecurities. When we see and understand the subconscious and unconscious parts of ourselves that are mysterious to even us, we gain a powerful lever to make positive change. What we can see is what we have freedom over. What we cannot see has power over us. When we know what's really going on inside, we begin to see there are viable alternatives to the destructive choices we sometimes make. We also begin to see what's going on inside others, which builds empathy and freedom to act in more thoughtful, beneficial ways. It makes us honest, humble, and sincere in our personal progress, as well as more available to deeply and genuinely connect with others, rather than hiding our vulnerabilities or pushing our viewpoints.
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Each Type speaks a different language. Yet deep down, we all want to be understood and expect people to orient around our language. Knowing the Enneagram intimately empowers us to learn the language of ourselves and others. When we feel the insecurities and pains that others are operating with, along with our own insecurities and pains, it's hard to be hard on people! We start to feel more compassion and understanding. With an understanding of the Enneagram, we come to know what each person is really after at heart and the sincerity of the striving. Even the most perverse behaviors become illuminated as something deeper that's innocent gone wrong. It doesn't mean we condone the behavior. But it does mean we can orient in much wiser ways. This is the best recipe for constructive relationship. It all comes down to understanding.
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