There’s an Enneagram trend that’s growing these days and I couldn’t be happier about it.  It’s moving beyond a buzzy personality test and all those cute memes on Instagram, to a powerful tool for application and true transformation.  

We’re beginning to understand the dynamism of the Enneagram as we put it into practice.  Talk is cheap, but it’s a crucial first step in the process.  We can sit around at coffee shops and dinner tables exploring the behavior patterns of our types for days.  Sure, consuming clever, if not stereotypical content on social media is fun—and can even be helpful for a time. In some ways, they support us as we identify our dominant type.  Yet we absolutely must not stay there.  

So what does it mean to work with our type?  How do we go from the surface of personality to the integration and wholeness this beautiful tool is capable of?  

I believe it requires the desire to fully understand and explore our deeper character structure, dissecting the core elements of our type.  Those core elements include the passion, or emotional pattern that keeps us stuck in type, the virtue, or our type’s unique invitation beyond the passion into our true self, our mental fixation, defense mechanism, somatic profile, as well as the lines, arrows, and wings of our type.   

If that all sounds overwhelming, congratulations…it IS!!!

Yet the basic proposition of the Enneagram is to understand the motivation behind the ways in which we think, feel, and act in our unique type.   It’s all about identifying and understanding the specific box of personality we’re in so that we can get out, finding freedom as we open up to greater openness and receptivity.  

Don’t be bogged down by the intricate web of complexity of your specific type.  The place to  start is simple: self-observation.  

Sounds pretty basic, right?  

However, it might feel very foreign as we commit to a non-judgmental study of ourselves and our experiences.  

My favorite way to learn self-observation?  Together—in community! As we learn to hone the muscle of self-awareness and others-awareness, we become better observers and participants in relationships and enjoy a more balanced, integrated experience.   

I’d love for you to join my upcoming Enneagram mastermind group, the last week of August.  We’ll connect over a long and delicious lunch, exploring the inner workings of our type and sharing a bit of our stories in a safe space with likeminded people.   Registration opens in just a few days, so email me to get on the waiting list—there are just a few spots left!

I can’t wait to go deeper with you…