You Get to Choose: Respond vs. React

So much of the work of the Enneagram is growing in true power and freedom.  Part of this process includes unlearning old habits that don’t serve us anymore.  And habits are just that—things we’ve practiced, often unconsciously, over time.  It would make sense that after years of habitual patterns, we would need to take inventory and see if they are serving us.  Or…are they trances we feel stuck in—or worse—powerless over?  

The Viktor Frankl quote above really puts skin around the whole dilemma.  Between what life throws us and how we respond is a very important passage.  It’s our moment of choice.  It’s the space we control one of the most vital aspects of our lives: to react or respond.  

When you consider those two words, what comes up for you?

What feels different?

What feels the same?

On a practical level, they both start with “re”—something that comes after.

And yet for me, respond feels more volitional.  React—more automatic—charged, even.

What does this have to do with the Enneagram?  Everything.

When we learn about our Enneatype, we learn specific ways we show up in the world respective of our type.   We begin to understand why we do the things we do.  But enneagram wisdom invites us deeper.  It invites us to consider our conditioned, automatic patterns that we’ve been living out of for a very long time.  It’s the story of our personality, really.  

When we learn the stories we’ve been living out of, often unconsciously, we also learn the way out.   That is what is referred to as the roadmap quality of the enneagram.  We come to understand the why behind how we think, feel, and act—and react.   

The first leg of the journey to freedom is to wake up to what isn’t working and choose something different.  

We are able to choose something different by growing the space between what we experience in life and how we respond.  

How do we do that?

Mindfulness, namely, meditation.  

Mindfulness grants us the sacred space to be more intentional and observant of our automatic patterns so we can slow them down and grow them out.  

This is a big reason I created The Practice, an Enneagram-based self-care subscription program: to resource you with meditations specifically for your Enneatype.  

I’d love for you to join this growing community of seekers who are putting the Enneagram to practice.  

Sign up today!