Pages

Saturday, April 30, 2011

Zealot

Zealot

Corresponds to Enneagram Style 1, Intimate Subtype

Ten Things about You

1. You are preoccupied with your romantic partner or a select group of others, who you spend your life trying to fix or perfect, and who you might drive away with your endless criticism

2. You come by it naturally. As a child, you often heard from your parents, “If I didn't love you, I wouldn't correct you. I tell you what is wrong because I love you." For you, criticism is an act of love.

3. You feel that no one should violate your right to pleasure, because you’ve earned it.

4. At your worst, you get totally possessive and intolerant, flaming up in righteous rage

5. But most of the time you keep your highly emotionally charged self under strict self-control, with clear rules and standards for correct behavior

6. Jealousy toward your partner is common, but may also be shown toward others who seem to be able to express themselves more freely

7. You have a habit of looking at reality in the light of something better and then railing against how reality doesn’t measure up

8. You criticize yourself first, and then your partner.

9. You do not want to be loved for your charm or beauty, but rather for the good works you do, and your moral fiber. Love is not to be given for charm without effort.

10. You are polarized against your own passion and sensuality, because these things can easily lead to sin, which threatens the moral order.

Friday, April 29, 2011

Yes Man or Woman

"Yes" Man or Woman

Corresponds to Enneagram Style 3,
Self-Preservation Subtype

Ten Things about You:

1. You have enormous drive and energy and can accomplish your goals of financial security and “making it” by your society’s standards

2. Your ability to work hard, perform well, and maintain the right image assures your material success, generally far beyond what you really need

3. You feel reassured when moving up, “making it”

4. Others can be obstacles to this, causing you to feel impatient and angry

5. In early childhood, you were very impoverished, and so now you can never be wealthy enough or famous enough. But even though you look successful on the outside, you will forever be starving to death on the inside

6. To you, money serves as the proof of your lovability, but on the other hand, you fear that people love you only for the money, status and possessions you can give them, and not for who you are deep inside

7. The biggest danger is that you over-identify with your work role. Without your job and your possessions, without all the trappings of success, who are you? Deep inside, who are you, really?

8. At worst, you work yourself to death acquiring possessions and completing the things that you believe will bring security.

9. Like all Enneagram style 3s, you want to be rich and famous, but you don’t want others to know how important that is to you, and so you don’t brag as much as the others about your accomplishments

10. Unlike other Enneagram style 3s, who want to look like the perfect role model for whatever role you play, you don’t just “look good” at it, you actually are good at it

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Warrior

Warrior, aka Strength or Beauty

Corresponds to Enneagram Style 6, Intimate Subtype

Seven Things about You

1. As a fear type, knowing you can influence your partner counteracts your fear. But instead of using raw power moves, which could create adversarial reactions, you use the appealing qualities of strength or beauty.

2. Aesthetic qualities such as creating beauty in your self and in your environment commands allegiance, as does intellectual strength, including fiercely held ideological positions, physical fitness and courage

3. You overcome or avoid fear through discipline in acquiring physical strength (martial arts, body building) or through the strength of your intellect and ideological positions

4. But because fear resides in the mind, and strength is physical, you are more apt to develop your physical strength than fiercely held ideological positions

5. You might actively seek physical challenges in order to conquer your fears about possible dangers in your environment, although your motive is not aggression or competition, but self-defense

6. If you are a woman, you assert control in your life by putting your idealism and perceptiveness into creating beauty in yourself and your environment. Beauty is extremely valuable in gaining protection from powerful men

7. If not beautiful, you know that artistic endeavor is another route to overcoming fear, and a non-verbal way of reaching beyond what you’re able to think and figure out. Your mind spins compulsively, and while engrossed in artistic endeavors, this is a way to defeat your anxiety for long periods

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Vivant, Bon

Vivant, Bon
Corresponds to Enneagram Style 7, Self-Preservation Subtype

Ten Things about You

1. You love an abundant life with your family and close friends

2. Your life emphasis is on planning positive social experiences so that you don’t miss out on anything

3. You emphasize sharing ideas and conversation, planning fun projects and food, thus you’re prone to over-talking, over-stimulation and over-eating.

4. Identifying with likeminded people who share your ideals and dreams helps you feel secure.

5. You see these people as friends who protect you from being trapped or limited in a boring or painful life

6. You reframe any negative issues in your life into something lighter and brighter; the lemonade you make is always much sweeter than anyone else’s

7. You’re spontaneous and a risk-taker, but you’re not a fool about it

8. You love gluttonous pleasures, but you also know there is a price to be paid for excess, which acts as the necessary brakes in your life

9. With a stingy streak to your personality, you prefer good times that don’t cost much, which you reframe as an appreciation for nature or anything that is free

10. Unlike other Enneagram Style 7s, who are highly idealistic, you are more pragmatic and materialistic

Monday, April 25, 2011

Utopian Visionary

Utopian Visionary
Corresponds to Enneagram Style 7, Social Subtype

Seven Things about You

1. You need your friends and your groups to express your social idealism and love of life, and yet, ironically, harnessing yourself to the greater good always involves an individual sacrifice of possibilities

2. For the sake of group ideals or worthy endeavors, and through promoting a better society, you postpone your need for gratification and accept life’s limitations

3. The hardest part of buying into the requirements of the group is dealing with authority; you don’t like being told what to do or to have any limitations put on you

4. You don’t like wasting time in routine tasks. When that’s necessary, you begin to feel like a martyr.

5. At your worst, you overbook with too many social interests and activities, making it difficult to commit to any of them

6. Your desire to achieve a rank in a community—job, family, club or team—provides discipline for you and helps you to be willing to do difficult or unpleasant things you wouldn’t normally do

7. In the business world, you are an entrepreneur with creative vision, but your efforts often fail because you cannot establish or maintain the discipline to make the company stable over time

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Takes Charge

Takes Charge (like a Dictator)
Corresponds to Enneagram Style 8, Intimate Subtype

A Dozen Things about You

1. Of all Enneagram style 8s, you are the most anti-social, rebellious and emotional with big energy that takes over the whole situation

2. You feel like nobody’s going to watch out for you, and so you’d better watch out for yourself; you battle anyone who gets in your way

3. Your passionate energy wants to possess and control and protect your partner and significant others

4. You are highly physical and controlling, although you don’t see it as domination—you’re just taking charge and caring for the special others who depend on you.

5. In business, you are commanding, relentlessly competitive and powerful

6. You test your intimates’ commitment, and when they prove worthy, you surrender control, without fear of being betrayed

7. You want utter reliability, stability, loyalty in a partnership, and if the partner passes the tests, your allegiance is total

8. At your worst, your energy and intensity can lead to a “my way or the highway” approach, although you hate this approach

9. You don’t take care of yourself or nurture the soft side of your self, but project your own nurture needs onto another, and take care of them, thus not realizing that you have unmet nurture needs yourself

10. Your lust for life and drive for power show up in a desire for sexual intensity

11. You pick a fight to ratchet up emotional temperature and lose interest in a dull relationship

12. You pick a fight in order to get at your honest feelings, your values—to discover what you will and will not stand up for

Friday, April 22, 2011

Salesman

Salesman

Corresponds to Enneagram Style 7, Intimate Subtype

Ten Things about You

1. In the sexual arena, you connect with a partner who fascinates you and sparks your energy; you idealize them while they bask in your charm, your ideas, your plans and possibilities

2. You love possibilities and beginnings and are lured by dreams without seeing the inevitable problems. It means that you wear rose-colored glasses and you also expect your partner to wear them

3. Any new, unusual, exotic, intense experience will energize you, and you expect your partner to be just as energized by it

4. But you’re often put off by having to go along with your partner’s idea of excitement. If they criticize you for this double standard, you drop your charm and flash your anger, if only briefly.

5. You idealize your partner by reframing, which allows the idealization to live longer than might be expected, and can lead you to stay in negative relationships longer than most people would expect of you, the escape artist

6. But when you can no longer reframe or idealize your partner, and they no longer fascinate you, you can rationalize your way out of a seemingly committed relationship

7. You focus on the future. You believe that’s where lose ends will come together and you’ll be happy.

8. Because fantasy is more powerful than fact, you can talk your partner into living a future dream while not facing wretched current conditions

9. Without depth life is boring; it’s like living the reader’s digest version of life

10. You are adept at using personal charm to lead people into a new purchase or a new relationship. You could be (or are) the quintessential BS'er, the quintessential Snake Oil Salesman

Survivalist

Survivalist

Corresponds to Enneagram 8,
Self-Preservation Subtype

A Dozen Things about You

1. You are aggressive by nature, which you channel into physical survival and material security.

2. Seeing the world as hostile, and you will “win or go down fighting”

3. You are generous and fiercely protective of friends and family, and you can establish more territory and stockpile more supplies than anyone.

4. You have a tendency toward excess, and it shows up everywhere. You don’t necessarily hoard things, but you want to make sure that what you need is available to you, so you will never be deprived or dependent.

5. You take charge of your creature comforts, which gives you the illusion that you are in control

6. You tend to be profane and vulgar; it’s your vocabulary of rage, and you often feel enraged

7. You use anger to defend yourself against an unacknowledged inner softness.

8. Unable to admit your own inner softness, you project it out onto the small and helpless among us, taking care of their vulnerabilities instead of your own

9. You test people to see if they are for you or against you. If they stand up to you, you know they are strong and can be trusted

10. You prefer confrontation to diplomacy; it’s quicker

11. You see things in black and white, simplifying the world and its issues

12. You are loyal and protective to your friends and will work endlessly to promote justice wherever there is injustice

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Responsibility

Responsibility, or Family Loyalist:

Corresponds to Enneagram 6, Self-Preservation Subtype

Seven Things about You

1. You worry a lot, but you overcome your fears by connecting with people through your considerable personal warmth

2. You disarm others by acting kind and with thoughtfulness and deference, so that people won’t be angry with you or harm you

3. You get people to like you by pleasing, supporting, and aligning with them, and by creating a safety zone that is populated by allies

4. Experiencing a lack of warmth from others is perceived as a threat to you, which can make you risk-averse and determined to stay within well-known boundaries

5. At worst, you give away your power, paradoxically making you vulnerable to the very things you fear

6. You are modest, and if working for a boss, you’ll work hard to make sure the boss knows that you don’t want their job

7. Your home is a sanctuary to which you flee

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Queen of Seduction

Queen of Seduction, or Seductress:

Corresponds to Enneagram Style 2, Intimate Subtype

A Dozen Things about You

1. You love being needed, attuned to others and empathetic

2. You feel you can meet the needs of a special other better than anyone else, thus gaining their approval

3. You seduce by matching to the feeling tones in others and altering to your desired other’s emotional state

4. You seek attention and affection by giving what’s needed and being flattering to the other, thus putting yourself in a place of prominence in their eyes

5. You capture the other by taking on their interests, and making them feel good, to win them

6. At your worst, you paradoxically become possessive and demanding by complaining about your unfulfilled needs

7. You have unconscious hostility toward the person you’re trying to attract, because you’re not clear about the distinction between being sexually desirable and being loved

8. To get the love you need, you will invite more intimacy than is appropriate, and actually encourage men to take advantage of you sexually and even financially.

9. This behavior is rooted in fatherlessness, whether actual or perceived, resulting in you working hard to please men with sex. But sex isn’t necessarily love, and when you give sex to get love, but receive only sex and then abandonment, you get angry

10. And when you’re angry, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Politician

Politician

Corresponds to Enneagram Style 3, Social Subtype

A Dozen Things about You

1. You are driven to win social approval, to know the right people and to achieve power in social institutions, whether government, community or business.

2. Your leadership motives can be genuine, or simply a means of self-aggrandizement

3. In the need for recognition—you must receive public honors, titles, influential connections and appreciation for your achievements—you are highly energetic and fiercely competitive

4. Unless you are somebody in others’ eyes, you are nobody in your own

5. You know how to look good, to take on the correct thoughts and feelings for the group—whether or not you happen to believe what you’re thinking, saying and doing

6. In order to feel loved, you look to others to know how to behave and then become the person you feel they expect you to be

7. You have a hard time believing this, but the best way to gain love is to be yourself

8. You identify totally with your role; you become what you do, not who you are on the inside

9. You find your value by being valued in the eyes of others for what you own, what you do and the amount of power and prestige you have over others

10. You find social equality repugnant; you need to have status, and are totally conscious of where you are on the social ladder

11. Your role, your image, substitutes for self-knowledge
12. To gain love and approval, you were a model child

Monday, April 18, 2011

Observer (aka Critical Commentator)

Observer, aka Critical Commentator:

Corresponds to Enneagram Style 4, Social Subtype

A Dozen Things about You

 
1. Social situations can provoke feelings of deficiency in you, which makes you feel envious of others’ status or membership

2. You seek to establish an acceptable social role, possibly as the emotional truth-teller of the group

3. You were or are the black sheep of your family

4. You feel shame for being a “misfit”

5. But your shame also helps you to feel a connection to others, in that they will notice your defectiveness, and because of that, you will be special in their eyes

6. Your shame also motivates you to create an elegant image, or a unique and special look, and to develop a sense of honor for what you add to the group

7. Everyone has an idealized self-image, but yours is assessed negatively. You know what you should be like, but instead of trying to live up to it, you know you’ll never be able to, and so you don’t even try.

8. Therefore you turn to your inner, imaginative life for comfort. You might fantasize how you will become a celebrity and then scorn everyone who looked down on you.

9. Fearing that people will reject you, you perform a pre-emptive strike and reject them first

10. Because you see yourself as defective, you are extremely sensitive to criticism. Low self-image is your defining quality, and so criticism merely confirms what you’ve felt all along.

11. You may resort to charm to cover your inner suffering, or you might be antisocial and depressed

12. The group rejection that you feel and resent isn’t based on any skill you feel you should cultivate. You might be enormously skillful in your chosen field. You just know that you were made wrong at the factory, and you expect people to reject you for it

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Nurturer

Nurturer
Corresponds to Enneagram Style 2, Self-Preservation Subtype

Nine Things about You


1. You excel in creating warm relationships.

2. You love to be recognized for your warmth, personal charm and social astuteness

3. At the bottom of it all, you believe there isn’t enough love (as defined by food, money, etc) to go around, and since you’ve done so much for others, you deserve to be first, and have the best. Others will understand. After all, they all owe you.

4. In most cases, you will be rewarded for your efforts. But if or when that doesn’t happen, “Hell hath no fury.”

5. Your theme is, “After all I’ve done for you.” (Do you hear the distinct hint of parental manipulation?)

6. You specialize in the currency of guilt. When love is viewed as an investment, and you’re not getting the return you expect, you will make sure that others feel guilty.

7. You need to remember that real love is free and unconditional. Love is not a form of social currency.

8. If you mental health leans toward neurosis, you have perfect recall of who owes you what in the social realm.

9. Of Enneagram Style 2s, you are the more childlike, fearful and ambivalent

Friday, April 15, 2011

Movie Star

Movie StarCorresponds to Enneagram Style 3, Intimate Subtype

A Dozen Things about You

1. You automatically adopt the masculine or feminine image of “star” appeal in your society and era in order to look good and be charismatic

2. Your life depends on winning admiration in business or love relationships, as measured by the amount of attention you get for your efforts

3. You spend a great deal of time, effort and money to fit the cultural norms of sexual attractiveness, rather than your own definition of it

4. If you happen not to look much like some of the norms—say your society looks up to tall people, and you’re short—then you’re in big trouble

5. You gain status by adopting a role with the characteristics that your partner finds appealing, which may result in their uncertainty about your genuine feelings and sexuality, but rather than be real, i.e. rather than risking true intimacy, you keep playing the role … because you’re probably as clueless about your true feelings as your partner is

6. Instead of worrying about your inability to be truly intimate, you worry about your sexual performance

7. If not in a committed relationship, you are frequently promiscuous

8. Eventually, you will be confronted with the fact that it’s all a sham. True intimacy isn’t about performance, but about surrender, and forgetting the self because you are preoccupied with the other—it’s about selflessness

9. But when sexual attractiveness is a means of establishing self-worth, your sexual expression is more a form of self-aggrandizement

10. You see intimacy as a means of engendering envy—your date is more attractive, richer, more important—than someone else’s

11. Preoccupation with looking like the perfect male or female stems from a deep confusion about the masculine and feminine in you. As a woman, you might act ultra-feminine when you’re actually as competitive as any man could ever be. Or you might be a man who’s ashamed of tender feelings. The real self can’t be expressed, because it is thought to be unacceptable, and so the culturally correct model is adopted instead

12. The split between what you’re truly feeling and the role you’re playing causes you to look phony, and indeed to be a phony.



Thursday, April 14, 2011

Lecturer

Lecturer, aka Professor
Corresponds to Enneagram Style 5, Social Subtype

A Dozen things about You

1. You don’t care what people in general think about you, but you are intensely concerned about your position in the elite group with which you are affiliated

2. You can work within an organization, but you need a lot of autonomy, and though moderately social, you value research more than teaching

3. Your social needs are met by exchanging information in the form of teaching, sharing research, or publishing

4. Your group affiliation isn’t to provide support or pleasant companionship, but to establish identity. You want to know if your work and intelligence are respected more than whether people like you. To you, respect is at least as important as love

5. Others find you distant but not hostile, and if they engage you in your interests, rather than small talk, you will have much to share

6. You are hungry for knowledge and mastery of the sacred symbols and language of the group or society (totems).

7. At the same time, an over-emphasis on analysis can get in the way of participation and trap you in the role of observer or learned teacher.

8. Greedy for knowledge, time, energy, you cleave to the representation of things that a group shares, but are one step removed from ordinary involvement.

9. Your knowledge-based role buffers you from direct access, but you are attracted to groups that share special knowledge, such as a field of study or systems, or a shared intellectual pursuit.

10. You are greedy for and affiliate with people or groups who influence culture, events, and seek greater knowledge through the power of one’s mind

11. You align in the mental domain with leaders, movements and systems where knowledge is valued and shared, such as in a university

12. At your worst, you use your knowledge as a substitute for heartfelt human contact, which isolates you from others

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

King

King in his Realm
Corresponds to Enneagram Style 8, Social Subtype

Twelve Things about You

1. You overcome powerless and injustice by being part of a group, usually its leader

2. You are angry and aggressive, but those feelings are tempered by the group’s needs and your alignment to a common agenda; loyalty to friends who share your values and sense of justice takes precedence over personal feelings and needs

3. You test others to see if they can match your energy and be counted on for honest feedback, and if they can, you know you can trust them and they become your friends

4. You are true to the group and influence it according to your own sense of justice, giving your energy unhesitatingly

5. Your affiliations help you to overcome your loner tendency

6. You tend to see life in terms of black and white, and when mentally unhealthy, you see people in the simplest of terms: as friend or foe, good or bad

7. You tend to see life as a battle ground

8. You’re at home in any athletic contest, as you love being with your friends, and against your enemies

9. You think you are taking care of the underdog, but you are also projecting your own softness on others and taking care of that in them

10. You might’ve been the playground bully

11. When you’re healthy, you can admit when you’ve been wrong—which is the same thing as allowing ambiguity, nuance, complexity into your world.

12. When you get in touch with your softer side, you learn to identify with others

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Joins (Seeks to Merge)

Joins, aka "Seeks to Merge"
Corresponds to Enneagram Style 9,
Intimate Subtype


A Dozen Things about You

1. You are tender and sweet, kind, gentle and unassertive

2. Because you cannot find a “you” within yourself, you seek comfort through a special other; you want to merge so completely with the other that you become the other. Of all enneagram types and subtypes, you are most seeking of a soulmate

3. You forget your own agenda by absorbing your special other into yourself—(his or) her point of view,  agenda, feelings.

4. Your union with your partner (or with nature or the divine), makes you feel safe and whole.

5. You feel that you gain belonging, importance and love through merging with a partner, nature or the divine

6. At your worst, if you have lost “you” in the other, you can become quite passive-aggressive, resulting in both not merging and not being present to self.

7. You have trouble with personal boundaries, with where you end and the other begins.

8. You “live through” your partner, friend, child, which presents a real danger that you will never know who you are, and what you want, because you "go along to get along."

9. When not in a relationship, your energy is devoted to finding one. Lacking inner direction, and the hidden belief that you don’t count, you idealize your partner

10. Having thoroughly identified yourself with your partner, you are jealous of any other relationships that he or she might have.

11. Because you allow your partner to make and enforce the unspoken rules of the relationship, you might stay too long in an unhealthy relationship.

12. Then, instead of insisting on what you need from your partner, you simply drift into another person’s life, hoping they will bring you to life instead.

Monday, April 11, 2011

Individualist

Individualist, Creative
Corresponds to Enneagram Style 4, Self-Preservation Subtype

A Dozen Things about You

1. You love taking reckless risks, which make you feel fully alive, authentic and extraordinary

2. To be ordinary feels like death to you. You must be “somebody” by finding meaning in what you do, and everything you do is an attempt to be anything but dull.

3. With your big feelings, your need for drama, you spin ordinary events into something astonishing—you want your life to look like the evening news

4. You believe, at the heart of it all, that you were born defective

5. You can be extremely aggressive in proving to the world that your “defectiveness” entitles you to getting what you deserve—which is an exceptional life

6. You are drawn to the bizarre, even death

7. You tend to be depressed, and you use your depression is a way of anticipating death. You feel that if you rehearse death through feeling dead, you’ll be able to handle it when it actually happens

8. If you’re “stuck” in a small town, a boring job or relationship, you feel you might as well be dead

9. On the high side, because you are totally comfortable with emotional intensity, when a crisis does hit, you’re able to respond in a way that someone with a different personality might not be able to—In a crisis, you have the wherewithal to be a true hero

10. Of all personality types, you feel the widest and deepest range of emotions. That means, when the situation calls for it, you can access depth that nobody dreamed was in you

11. If you are an artist, you can live with the barest survival necessities while you devote yourself to your art, and the harder you struggle, the greater your art

12. People of all personality types are creative in their own way, but yours is the classic artistic temperament, the starving artist who is locked in a life-and-death battle that is being fought mostly in your imagination.

Saturday, April 09, 2011

Home or Castle Defender

Home or Castle Defender
Corresponds to Enneagram Style 5, Self-Preservation Subtype

Twelve Things about You

1. You retreat from the world and feel safest at home, but if you cannot be at home, you also use your own mind as a sanctuary to keep others out, or guard their access


2. You need strong boundaries, and to have control over the boundaries.

3. You love privacy and hoard space and time more than money

4. You assure your survival by preserving your time and energy and needing little, but also by hoarding a storehouse of subsistence items, including knowledge and books

5. Intensely sensitive, you sense what others want from you and feel obligated to respond, thus your energy gets drained by other people’s expectations of you

6. You isolate yourself and are stingy with your time and energy because you are afraid of being overwhelmed by your emotions.

7. When you have control of your emotions, you feel secure, superior and safe.

8. You have strong feelings, but you never show them in public. Instead, you isolate yourself in order to let them emerge into awareness in private

9. It’s only when you’re alone, you believe, that you can trust your feelings not to get you into trouble

10. Of the three Enneagram Style 5 subtypes, you are the least expressive, and particularly when it comes to expressing anger

11. With your thin body, love of solitude and emotional distance, you can have a ghost-like quality, and you prefer to stay at home and haunt your own castle

12. At your worst, you are so withdrawn that you are a lonely hermit

Thursday, April 07, 2011

Guardian

Guardian, Social:
Corresponds to Enneagram Style 6, Social Subtype

Twelve Things about You

1. A fearful type, you are hyper-vigilant to know the rules of your groups. Your overriding concern is to be clear about your role in the group

2. You fear being rejected, and so you believe that if you know the rules, and do your duty, that will bond you to a group of people who share a common cause

3. You align with people you trust thru mutual obligations and sacrifice: United we stand, divided we fall.

4. Because you have a skeptical bent, you find underdog causes appealing. You align with the needy, oppressed, persecuted, and the call to duty to this cause mobilizes you.

5. At your worst, you give away your own authority and power.

6. Your group may be family, church, school or tradition, and you want to make sure you’re getting the authentic tradition, before breaking a rule. You might do it, but you make sure you know the rules before doing so.

7. You might work for the same firm for your entire career, and you might not even like your job, but you’ll stay rather than leave because it’s not right to leave and it’s not safe

8. You over-identify with the group and shun or persecute others who don’t share your group’s ideals; this personality style is highly attracted to religious fundamentalism

9. Because you feel all attention is bad, and you don’t want to be a target for criticism, you prefer not to be a leader

10. If you believe in your cause, a cause that hooks your idealism, you can work tirelessly, selflessly, and forever on it

11. You are simultaneously idealistic and skeptical

12. You have an attention style that looks for danger, conspiracy, inconsistency. If those in authority are doing anything wrong on any level, you will catch them at it

Forges New Trails

Forges New Trails, aka Trailblazers:
Corresponds to Enneagram Style 1, Self-Preservation Subtype

(This is my enneagram type and subtype, warts and all.)

Nine Things about You

1. You are concerned about survival and security, which you channel into material success as a way to be a good person and do the right thing

2. You are the true perfectionist, of all enneagram styles and subtypes

3. You are also the most anxious and worried. As a child, you were put in the position of taking on too much responsibility for the family at an early age

4. You’re sure there is only “one right way” and since that is the case, one wrong decision can seem to threaten your entire survival

5. You worry about marrying the right person, finding the right job, acquiring enough money and provisions, living in the right neighborhood, finding the one true faith, and so on.

6. Once you finally decide you’ve made the right choice, it’s difficult for you to change your mind; you feel morally justified for your (idealized) beliefs and values, and for finding the “one right way.”

7. Because you believe your life depends on getting everything right, you do the things you think you “should” do, rather what you "want" to do (assuming you have enough self-awareness to know what you want)

8. You are anxious on the inside, but on the outside, you are self-controlled and self-confident

9. If you begin to sacrifice your true self too much, you will also begin to resent everything and everyone. When that happens--when you've been working too hard, for too long, and have lost your sense of humor--a warning bell should go off in your head. You are in trouble. For your own good, you need to scale back for a while.

Wednesday, April 06, 2011

Espionage

Espionage (or Secret Agent)

Corresponds to Enneagram Style 5, Intimate Subtype

Twelve Things about You

1. You bond to your partner by sharing secrets and sex

2. Sharing information and secrets, rather than your deepest feelings, replaces true sexual intimacy for you

3. Because even this amount of self-revelation feels frightening, you are extremely careful about who you share it with, and even then, you preserve a certain amount of your own autonomy

4. You feel you have enough emotional juice for only one person, upon whom you focus your attention, time and affection.

5. You fear being overwhelmed by the demands of others, are acutely aware of your emotional poverty, feeling unable to meet the expectations and desires of others

6. You want to be loved, but fear inadequacy of emotional response.

7. If confident, you are a wonderful partner because you focus all your attention on your significant other instead of wasting scarce resources on impulse or adventure

8. You feel that your relationship with your partner is sacred

9. You might treasure your experiences more in your memory than in reality

10. Your encounters with your partner are often intensely physical

11. You will treasure for a lifetime the key disclosures made with your partner

12. Your shared confidences temper the loneliness that comes from isolating yourself from your feelings while maintaining your autonomy and power.

Tuesday, April 05, 2011

Drama Queen

Drama Queen
Corresponds to Enneagram Style 4, Intimate Subtype
Twelve Things about You

1. Envy and longing drive you to compete for a special position, partner or mentor, and especially if it’s someone or something you can’t have

2. Competition is an invigorating energy which you use to overcome feelings of inner deficiency or defectiveness

3. You compete for what’s noteworthy, exquisite and elegant, and you believe that if someone else wins, you lose

4. By establishing your excellence, your own sense of esteem rises and falls in comparison with others

5. Other people’s power is taken as a personal challenge and creates a strong reaction in you as your own value tends to rise and fall in comparison with others

6. You are competitive about your emotional status with your partner—you want not only to be the one he loves most, but his first, last and only love

7. You believe love is by far the most important thing in your life, and that you will be happy only when you find the perfect love

8. Someone loved you unconditionally before they discovered you were defective and then rejected you

9. You compare your state in life with others and suffer by comparison

10. You are prone to jealousy with a mate, but also with everyone you see as your equal

11. On a professional level, you envy people and want to gain respect from your professional peers who know quality when they see it. If you’re a writer, you’re not just a writer, but a writer’s writer.

12. You make every effort to be recognized by the best people, the acknowledged experts, and when you get the coveted prestige you desire, victory is sweet.

Monday, April 04, 2011

Crusader

Crusader
Corresponds to Enneagram Style 1, Social Subtype

Twelve Things about You

1. You might be gregarious, but your emphasis on doing things right can make it hard for you to adapt to new situations, and can generate into resentment or criticism toward others whose actions you might consider incorrect

2. You are inflexible and screen out any evidence contrary to your deeply held position; you not only find what’s wrong with other groups, causes or convictions—you see what’s wrong within your own.

3. You believe in finding and supporting the “one right way.”

4. You would like to reform the world

5. Because you have aligned yourself with the “one right way,” you tend to lose sight of your own personal wants and needs

6. You believe that the rules are correct, and they are different from what you feel, then you are wrong, not the rules. Instead of questioning the rules, you change your own thinking

7. You make decisions based on the morality of your choice, rather than your true desires, thus you spend your life doing what you “should” do, rather than listening to your passions and following your bliss

8. You feel old rules apply to new situations without flexibility or adaptability

9. You speak for moral tradition, but this causes in you a loss of self-awareness. You don’t see any difference between what you think and what tradition teaches.

10. You lose yourself in that equation—and take a self-righteous stance with others. After all, it’s not you who is right, but tradition.

11. Specifically, you repress, or at least significantly moderate your sexual expression, your emotional expression, your energy and exuberance

12. You have high ideals and fight for noble causes and are untiring you efforts to make the world a better place

Sunday, April 03, 2011

Collector

The Collector
Corresponds to Enneagram Style 9, Self-Preservation Subtype

Ten Things about You

1. You are uncommonly sweet and would never offend anyone

2. Instead of being up to the challenge of personal or spiritual growth, and figuring out solutions to your issues, you narcotize yourself with food, drugs or alcohol, TV, reading, collecting things and hobbies

3. Your energy, instead of flowing out, flows in, into comforting routines that ease your anxiety and your deep inner anger (numb you), and substitute for your true needs, even your need for love.

4. Or maybe you’re not a couch potato. Maybe you work very hard, but never at the most important task in life, which becoming fully self-aware and fully self-expressed

5. Focus is difficult for you; you get distracted easily, and then one thing leads to another, and another, and before you know it, you’ve forgotten what you were doing at the start.

6. Because you do not know who you are, you go with the flow and identify a little bit with everyone

7. Because you can see and understand everyone’s point of view (except your own, because you don’t have one), you are an excellent mediator

8. In your growing up years, conflict raged. Not knowing how to handle it, you learned to be inconspicuous and look friendly to both sides. You learned to delete yourself and your opinion. Your agenda is to get along and never rock the boat

9. You might join a group, but you seldom become the leader. You like to arrive late and stay on the margins.

10. When or if you ever do decide to take a stand for yourself, you are unstoppable. Because you are so deeply grounded, with deep, deep wells of untapped energy, you can be the most powerful type of personality of all.



Saturday, April 02, 2011

Benefactor

Benefactor, Community: One Happy Family

Corresponds to Enneagram Style 9 with a Social Subtype

Ten Things about You

1. You blend with the style and agenda of your friends and whatever social groups you belong to.

2. You’re not apt to take a leadership role, but if you do, you make a selfless contribution to the common good

3. Because you can understand all viewpoints, you are an excellent mediator

4. Your participation helps you feel included and loved.

5. Filling up your life with activities and social interaction is good, as long as you don’t get lost in it—as long as you are also self-aware and self-expressed.

6. More often, your involvement in groups serves as a way to prevent yourself from becoming aware of your true desires—of living life on your own terms, and being who you want to be

7. At your worst, you get swallowed up in group activities, and are preoccupied with fitting in

8. Even if you know a better way of doing something, you don’t speak up. You would rather go along to get along. "Don't rock the boat," is your motto.

9. But if you ever do get in touch with your true needs and desires, and if those desires involve leading or bettering the groups to which you belong, you are unstoppable. You have deep wells of unused, untapped energy within you--why not use them?

10. The world needs your invaluable contributions, especially your ability to promote cooperation and peace among diverse groups of people

Friday, April 01, 2011

Ambassador

The Ambassador

Corresponds to Enneagram Style 2 with a Social Subtype

Twelve Things About You:

1. Your ability to empathize with and meet other people’s needs (especially those in position or power) makes you indispensable within an organization or cause.

2. You are ambitious for distinction, and you attain it by attaching to visible social accomplishments, and linking people and groups together. Your stature and image are gained thru your alliances with leaders.

3. Your role as a helper bolsters your feelings of being lovable and worthy. You give to get. In exchange for your loving support, you expect to be esteemed

4. You compensate for a lack of inner self-worth by social climbing

5. You tend to flatter others, believing they need it as much as you do

6. Everyone has an idealized self-image. The bigger yours is, the deeper your inner neediness for love and attention. Any image not rooted in reality inflates.

7. In order to raise your real self-esteem, you need to let go of your idealized image as a people-pleaser and tend to your own needs for a change

8. You never feel like you’ve received real satisfaction, and so you over-express manufactured emotional responses. I.e. you elicit the pumped up response that you feel people expect of you. (And they do—they love your cheerleader qualities)

9. You can have an awful lot of “should” in your life. Because you are so helpful and giving—and that’s because you’re so wonderful, you should help your sister with her kids. Because you are so wonderful, you won’t own your negative feelings, and that is a problem for you

10. Because if you won’t own your negative feelings, and you live your life through others, your self gets harder to find, and you often don’t know who you are.

11. If what you “should” do isn’t real, and if your feelings aren’t real, then who are you? What do you really want out of life?

12. You want recognition even more than affection.
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...