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The Ancient Wisdom That Can Change Your Life

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The Enneagram is unlike any other personality tool you may have taken. 

It is thousands of years old and uniquely suited to support lifelong, deep development. It has made a massive difference in my life and can impact the way you interact with yourself and others. 

What if you could truly understand your personality type and could unlock a whole new level of deep personal development, heightened communication, and fulfilling interpersonal relationships?

What is Enneagram? 

The Enneagram is a framework to help you understand your unconscious drives, your hard wiring. The Enneagram brings what is unconscious to consciousness. If you’re not aware of your drives or behaviors they’re going to be there anyway. Enneagram number typing brings you to awareness. 

The KEY element of Enneagram is understanding there are nine different perspectives on life and all are equally valid. 

This makes it such a great tool for working with executive teams. It’s easy to show up at work thinking your way is the right way, and your job is to either deal with other people who are doing it wrong and thinking it wrong or convince them of the opposite. 

A lot of conflict stems from different Enneagram numbers viewing situations through a different perspective, without recognizing each perspective is valid. 

There’s value in not only learning about your own type but the types of those you work with, live with, love, or raise.  Not because you want to stereotype them, but because then you can have some understanding of this is what they’re after, and I only have a slice of the reality here through my own number’s viewpoint. 

The goal is not to change you or your number. There is no wrong way to be.

You are Allowed to be your type. 

This framework presents to you your fundamental needs, thoughts, and feelings. The goal is to shine a light on all of this, including the deeper and raw aspects of yourself. 

You don’t need to reject parts of yourself. The more you love the parts of yourself you may not care for, the more you can bring wholeness into your life. 

How much pain is created by rejecting fundamental aspects of who you are? 

You don’t need to do that anymore. You may not like that as an Enneagram type 3 you care what other people think of you, you may wish you don’t, but if you accept that you do, you can start to appreciate it and get curious about what you can do with it. 

Get creative about how this aspect of yourself could be of service to yourself and other people. 

When you reject, repress or deny parts of yourself, you push parts of yourself into your shadow. And when you push your hard wiring into your shadow, meaning not trying to govern it anymore, you don’t even see it anymore. Then that part of you starts operating non-consciously and when it starts to come out in unintentional ways that are not of service to you. 

This is when you want to rip your hair out and ask “Why am I reacting this way? This is not helping the situation at all.” 

You repressed a part of yourself into shadow. Another thing that happens with shadow is that you begin to see it in other people and get upset with them about it without recognizing that you’re looking at a mirror of yourself and your behaviors. 

When you are empowered, embracing who you are, how you are, what your actual needs are, and you’re recognizing you can work with who you are to create what you want, then you are out of Drama

You’re Above the Line, and you have access to your Zone of Genius, not somebody else’s Zone of Genius

You stop trying to show up and look like a one or a seven or a number that you’re not and you’re able to embrace that. 

It’s so helpful to know your Enneagram type– because it helps you recognize even faster whether you are Above or Below the Line. 

The 9 Enneagram Types

  1. The Reformer

  2. The Helper
  3. The Achiever
  4. The Individualist
  5. The Investigator 
  6. The Loyalist
  7. The Enthusiast
  8. The Challenger
  9. The Peacemaker 

This article is related to an interview with Erin Rocchio – Listen here. 

Photography by Kelley Raye // kelleyraye.com

Dr. Caneel Joyce is a CEO Coach and social scientist who helps people break out of the invisible traps and make whole-life changes easily and naturally.

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