Hi there,
Michael here with a special release of the Pastor Talk podcast.
Pastor Clint and I agreed after our conversation last night going in-depth in the nine types
of the Enneagram that the content of the nine types in focus lecture should probably be available to everyone.
So we’ve taken the audio of that lecture and we’ve cut it down just a little bit so that
if you listen to this episode,
you’ll hear in detail descriptions of all nine types of the Enneagram.
If you would like to see that lecture in video format,
you’ll find the link in the show notes.
If you’d like the handout or the PowerPoint that was used in that presentation,
you will also find that in the show notes.
And all of these materials,
as always, are linked on the website,
fpcspiritlake.org/enneagram.
If you were either there at the dinner last night or you’ve watched the video of this content,
feel free to just skip this episode and join us on Thursday when we release the
next episode of the Pastor Talk podcast where we explore the special groupings of the Enneagram.
But until then, hope that you find this content helpful and that you start to find some sense
of who you are and where you are in the Enneagram typology.
See you soon.
Welcome to the second part of our Lenten study as we go through the Enneagram together.
Before we jump right into the numbers,
and we’re going to be spending all of our time
together this evening going through the nine numbers of the Enneagram.
So we’ve been teasing for a while to get here,
and now we’re ready to just jump right in.
But before we get to that,
I want to just quick look at the handout with you.
We’ve given you space to name the numbers.
You’re going to find that there’s actually many names that have been given to the numbers
over time.
If there’s one number,
or sorry, one name that jumps out to you per number,
we’ve given you space to put that in.
Then on the back side,
you’ll see as we go through each number,
there’s a regular pattern
of things we’re going to talk through for each number,
different aspects you might say
that we’re going to talk about.
We’ve given you some spots here that give you some space to jot down notes if there’s
things that jump out at you.
And we obviously hope that you will find that useful as we go together today.
Anything else to add, Clint?
No.
Alright, well then let’s just jump right into it.
We’re going to start at the very top right of the Enneagram with number one.
By the way, there’s not really any right way to go through it.
Different books go through the numbers with different starting point,
but we’re just going
to start with one.
One is called by some the idealist,
by others the perfectionist,
by others the achiever,
by others the reformer.
Some descriptions of this number is these people value usefulness,
practicality.
For them, it’s very important that they’re competent,
that they’re professional.
Sometimes they come across as being rigid.
Sometimes their self-control and their drivenness leads them to be a little bit stuck in a lane.
If you don’t know one very well,
you might even call them conceited.
They might, because of their perfectionistic attitude,
appear to be judgmental,
appear to be conceited, but we’ll work that out as we go.
Other senses of what that might mean.
The basic desire of the one is to be perfect,
to be right,
and to do good.
The worldview of the one is all about striving to make something beautiful,
make it perfect, bring it back to the wholeness of what it should be.
Their personal creed about themselves is you are good if you do what is right.
You are good if you do what is right.
Once again,
right is a key word in that because right is the sense of you reaching the point
where you should in your own personal development and ability.
The unconscious message that a one lives with is the idea that it’s not okay to make mistakes,
which makes sense because mistakes are going off the path of rightness in a worldview in
which you live seeking to live up to a high standard of perfection,
not reaching that standard is the thing that’s not okay.
Finally,
the fundamental experience of the one is that you’re being constantly evaluated or judged.
This is both internally and externally.
A one lives with a constant conversation within their mind,
“Oh, you did not do that right.
You did not reach the level that you should have.”
In fact, someone’s described that internal conversation as a mental courtroom,
that they live in the midst of a constant barrage of cross-examination within their own mind.
But then you can also anticipate for one,
it’s not just an internal conversation.
It’s not just about I’m evaluating myself.
It’s also an extremely high touch point when other people evaluate them.
When an external person says,
“You failed to do this correctly,” it cuts directly against
a one’s desire to be competent,
to reach that level of perfection.
So what do ones act like?
How do you know if you know ones or may be a one?
Ones get things done.
They are efficient,
they’re proficient,
they get things done well.
Ones tend to have a kind of drivenness.
You give a one a list and they’re going to do everything they can to cross everything
off of it.
They’re very conscientious.
They tend to be a little impatient with mistakes,
mostly their own,
sometimes others,
depending on the rest of their personality.
But right as Michael mentioned,
a mistake is leaving one’s fundamental purpose to do things right,
to make things right.
They are extremely sensitive to criticism.
A one will internalize criticism because it rings their unconscious message bell.
You’re not good enough.
You didn’t do it right.
And so if you give a one almost any kind of somewhat negative feedback,
that hurts them.
They don’t do well with that.
Ones do their best to control their environment and their outcome.
Ones tend to not like surprises.
Give a one a schedule.
They want to run by the schedule.
They don’t want you throwing a wrench in,
“Oh, I forgot to tell you we’re stopping by here,” or,
“Oh, I forgot this was going to happen.”
Many ones are kind of compulsively neat.
They’re organized.
Again, that makes sense.
They’re efficient.
Ones can struggle with flexibility.
They hate the thought of being wrong or failing to do something well or on time.
And a one can tend to believe that they do things better than other people.
Although the thing is they often do.
That’s partly their experience.
They trust themselves more than they trust other people because they know how hard they
will work to get things right.
But they can be a little closed-minded.
When it comes to conflict,
one of the places we learn a lot about ourselves is in conflict,
the mechanism with which ones address conflict tends to be resentment.
Remember that they often internalize anger.
Ones do have anger,
but they rarely lash out.
Some ones will blow up,
but a most typical one will internalize it.
And that means if you get on a one’s bad side,
prepare to hang out there for a while.
They’re going to remember that five years ago you were supposed to get that thing done on time,
and you did not,
and it made them look bad.
And a one has a hard time forgetting some of those things.
So strengths of a one.
They often know what is best.
And they do it really well.
Weakness.
They are compulsively driven by an impossible standard.
They’re on this permanent treadmill of chasing something that they really can’t get,
which is perfection.
The core mission of the one,
to do what is right,
to be good,
to improve things,
to be perfect, and therefore their core motivation is to manage that fear that they aren’t good enough.
And that’s essentially a survey of the type one Enneagram personality.
Let’s move on.
We will go to the two.
The Enneagram two is sometimes called the helper,
the altruist, the giver, the lover, the caretaker,
the enabler.
These are people that are empathetic.
They’re caring.
They mean well.
They can be a little intrusive.
They can be a little self-important.
And if they go wrong directions,
they can be a little bit manipulative.
The basic desire of the two is to feel loved.
More than anything, twos want the sense that people care about them,
that people love them.
And so their personal creed,
you are good or okay if others love you.
They see themselves reflected in the attitudes of others toward them.
The unconscious message,
sometimes called the childhood message of a two.
It’s not okay to have your own needs.
Twos are often enablers.
They’re those sort of codependent,
they’ll give themselves up for others because they
never learn to address their own things.
And the fundamental experience of a two is really trying to earn other people’s love,
to keep other people happy,
to always ensure that they’re in other people’s good graces
or that they make others happy.
So some
basic understanding of what it’s like to be a two or if you possibly even know a two.
So twos are of all of the Enneagram types,
those who feel most empathetically what other people are feeling.
So at its extreme,
twos are capable of feeling exactly what you’re feeling to the extent
that they don’t know at all what they’re feeling.
So it’s a kind of emotional mirroring.
So they have, because of that, an amazing ability to make other people comfortable.
If you come into the home of a two,
they have intuited what’s going to make you comfortable,
what you like to drink,
what kind of music you want to listen to,
what kind of conversation to have.
And the two, because of their abilities,
constantly seeking to entice others to be in relationship
with them.
In fact,
to a farther extent,
it can be even a form of seduction.
And that is a reality for twos because they define themselves by their relationships.
And so because of their ability to connect with others,
they therefore try to entice
others to join relationships with them.
They value other people’s appreciation very highly, that makes sense,
but they also have
a tendency to keep score.
And what we mean by score is twos are often called the helper type.
They know what you’re feeling and they want to be able to reach out and help.
And so they continually help and help and help.
And each time they help,
they put a mental checkbox on their list that says, “I helped.
I helped.
I helped.” And then when they get stressed and they have a moment when they need help and nobody shows
up to help, they think, “You all owe me.
And none of you helped.”
One of the core fears of the two is that they’re afraid that these people that they’ve been
striving to build relationships with will leave them when they no longer need the twos helping.
You get what I’m saying there?
That at the end of my helping,
these people won’t need me anymore.
They identify themselves naturally with others.
So, when a two introduces themselves,
it’s very common for them to say,
“Hi.
I’m Bill.
I’m Danny’s dad.” Or “I’m Martha’s husband.” Right?
They define themselves even by the relationships that they’re in.
In the business and professional world,
twos can sometimes be tempted to essentially identify
the people in the room that they need to befriend.
And then they help them until they can get into the group.
If that makes sense.
One of the responses that twos have to conflict is repression,
especially personal repression.
So they try to spin it positively.
They try to see the bright side.
But they also have,
in that sense, a martyr complex.
So when there’s conflict in relationship,
a two is going to be tempted to essentially
throw back and say,
“Hey, look at all of the helping that I’ve done.
I shouldn’t be in the position of being the bad guy.”
Okay, let’s see.
So the strength of the two is they’re compassionate,
they treasure relationships,
but the resulting in opposite weakness,
they can at their worst manipulate others for selfish purposes.
The core mission of the two is to meet others’ needs,
and the motivation in that is to make
themselves indispensable so that others will love them.
Any grand number three?
Quinn’s waiting very patiently.
All right, so the three is called the achiever,
the motivator, the performer,
the communicator, the status seeker, the best.
Sub descriptions of that are two,
sorry, a three can be admirable,
goal-oriented,
self-improving,
image-conscious,
expedient,
deceptive,
and opportunistic.
And we’ll come back to some of these words here as we go through descriptions.
But the three’s basic desire is to feel worthwhile,
accepted,
and desirable.
And their personal belief, their creed is,
“You are good or okay as long as you are successful,
and other people think well of you.”
The unconscious message that lives underneath that is,
“It’s not okay to have your own feelings
and your own identity.”
And the fundamental experience of the three is that they must project an image of confidence
and success so that other people will recognize and love them.
So what do threes look like in practice?
They’re optimistic,
they’re confident, they’re resilient.
They often have big dreams,
big ideas,
but they sometimes lack a sense of personal identity.
The dream isn’t connected to who they think they are,
it’s to what they think will be impressive.
So they’re restless,
they’re always kind of striving toward future advancement.
They do feelings as opposed to having feelings.
In other words,
because they’re moved by the idea of impressing others,
they will need permission from others to express feelings.
So if they’re feeling something and they’re not sure that the other person is okay with it,
you won’t know it.
They will keep that to themselves.
If you’re sad,
they’ll be sad with you.
But it has more to do with you than them,
if that makes some sense.
There are especially tempted threes,
maybe among all the types,
are tempted to be workaholics
because they’re driven by this idea of getting to the next thing,
being the next thing,
impressing the next person.
They love the idea of efficiency.
They try to impress everyone,
but they’re especially attentive to people who are most impressive.
So if a three walks into the room and I’m there and you’re there and you run a company
and I pastor a little church in Iowa,
the three will say,
“Hey, Clint,” and beeline
to the other person because they offer,
unless maybe that person was a pastor looking for a job,
but they will gravitate to who they feel could help them move forward the fastest.
They are always tempted to choose success over substance.
Threes, I told you the ones hate mistakes.
Threes hate failure because they don’t know what to do with it.
Ones hate failure because they don’t measure up.
A three,
it fills that hole that they’re looking for inside of them with the negative experience.
Threes’ failure is their kryptonite.
In conflict, threes have, I think, kind of an interesting reality.
It causes a lot of confusion for them.
And if you can follow the logic here,
in conflict, if you confront a three with a mistake,
a three has both failed and not impressed you,
which is the double whammy for a three.
And so they have to,
at one point, admit they’re failing to try to get you back on their side,
which is an almost impossible thing for them to do.
So conflict is really confusing for a three.
It’s a mess for them.
It’s not easy for them to navigate.
There’s strength,
high goals that they often succeed in achieving tons of successful threes.
Like there are presidents who are threes.
Threes are very driven,
conscious people.
Weakness is that they will sometimes substitute success for who they are.
A three may not know who they are apart from the thing that they’re chasing.
Their core mission is to do great things and impress other people.
And their core motivation is to be secure,
and to be loved,
and to gain an identity through that success and that achievement.
We move to the four.
The individualist, the romantic,
the melancholy,
the artist, the tragic victim,
the special one.
So fours are expressive,
dramatic.
They can be a little self-absorbed.
They can be temperamental.
Think actors, actresses,
performers.
They often embody a four personality.
Their basic desire is to find themselves by creating an identity.
Out of their inner experiences,
four tends to live inside of themselves.
Their creed,
you are okay if you’re true to yourself.
The message they struggle with,
it’s not okay to be too functional or happy.
Fours, among all the types,
are most in touch with their own sadness.
In fact,
they often take comfort there.
They often consider that home base.
And their fundamental experience,
I’m not like others,
and there’s something wrong with me.
Fours,
they carry with them this idea that they’re broken.
And they come to terms with it, essentially.
Yeah, so that fundamental experience is a key touchstone for understanding the four.
And we may come back to that to look at how some of these work.
So Victor Hugo,
the author of “Lemise,” is said to have said that
“Melancholy is the happiness of being sad.”
“Melancholy is the happiness of being sad.”
And that’s one of the core experiences of being a four,
is that sense of life isn’t complete if you’re not a little sad
at each and every point along the term.
They try to compensate for what they’ve always experienced
as being something unique or different about themselves.
Their temptation is to think that from birth,
there’s been something slightly broken that they need to fix.
And because of that,
they have a very complex and self-obsession with their own identity.
They ask the philosophical questions of themselves regularly.
Who am I?
What’s my purpose?
The stereotype is they’re out in nature.
They’re hanging,
they’re swinging by the tree,
reading some romantic philosopher trying to figure out the meaning of their life.
They’re very heady, sort of complex explorers of their own identity.
They are very particularly tempted to struggle with dissatisfaction,
with themselves,
with what they have, with their lives.
Their lives are never enough,
which contributes, once again, to this idea that there’s something broken about them.
The fours are incredibly in touch with their individual feelings.
So maybe to help nuance this out,
right?
We told you that the twos are overly connected
with other people’s emotions outside of themselves,
right?
That they’re emotionally mirroring.
We’ve said that the threes are acting on your emotions.
They censor emotions and they respond to it,
but they’re not having your emotions, right?
And the fours were saying,
they don’t care about your emotions.
They’re all up in their emotions.
In fact,
their emotions for a four who’s unaware can equal their identity.
What they feel is who they are.
There’s no separation between them.
Does that make sense?
Okay.
Because of their deep connection in their own imaginative life,
they have rich imaginations,
they have fantasy lives that they often go back to.
Fours can be prone to eccentricities
and they can also be especially tempted by self-destructive behaviors.
One author talks about fours and says,
when you see a four who sticks out in a crowd like a peacock,
the outfit that they wore that looks like they just randomly selected
from whatever drawer that they could with mismatch socks and whatever,
that that’s a carefully chosen outfit to demonstrate their uniqueness.
Michael, just to jump in there,
also think about how many tragic stories there are among actors, actresses, authors,
artists,
that they’re prone to go to negative places.
Right.
Okay, so because of their philosophical quest to find who they are,
fours tend to be pretty good at finding phonies,
liars, people who are making it up,
people who are putting out a front.
Fours are generally pretty good at ferreting those people out
because they can tell that there’s not been any real work done
in exploring the other person’s inner self.
When a four comes into conflict,
they tend to, like they do in the rest of their life, internalize that conflict.
They embrace the negative.
They essentially say, “Yep, it’s all true.
I’m trash.”
And they prefer to just self-inflict that damage
because it ties into that internal narrative that I’m broken.
There’s something wrong with me.
And conflict drives them to just drive that conversation even deeper.
All right, so we move on to strengths.
The strength of the four is that they are creative.
They’re in touch with their emotions.
But the weakness is that they often live into their own darkness.
Core mission of the four is to discover a wholly authentic self that feels incomplete.
Their self feels incomplete.
They’re seeking to find a whole self.
And then the motivation for that is to make myself complete
by being different from others.
We move on to the five.
The five is called the investigator,
the thinker,
the observer,
the innovator, the specialist,
the radical,
the expert.
You might describe a five as being cerebral,
as being perceptive,
as being innovative,
as being secretive,
and as being isolated.
The basic desire of the five is to be capable and competent.
The creed is you’re good or okay if you have mastered something.
The unconscious message that a five lives with is
it’s not okay to be comfortable in the world.
And their fundamental experience is I must withdraw,
contemplate,
and understand in order to be as good as others.
All right, I think it will make sense.
Fives are our head people.
A lot of their life goes on in thinking,
in understanding.
They look to knowledge to provide them with what
other types might look to relationships to provide.
The five wants to know things,
wants to understand things.
And knowing things represents for a five the key to survival.
It needs to be collected,
even protected.
They’re not so interested in sharing knowledge as having it.
It may be even keeping it to themselves
because that distinguishes them from other people.
If they know more than others,
that’s a sense of self-satisfaction,
of self-worth for them.
Fives tend not to need a lot of stuff.
In fact,
stuff takes mental energy that fives often don’t want to give it.
So fives may collect things,
they may have things,
but they may not.
They may be pretty minimal.
Books,
a few important items to them.
They don’t need generally a lot of stuff.
They prefer to observe life from a distance,
rather than jumping in and participating in it.
If a group of people are doing something,
the five is probably less interested in doing the something
than understanding why the other people want to do it.
That’s the train that they live on in their mind.
They’re observant,
not necessarily intelligent.
It’s not as if all fives are geniuses,
but it’s how they process.
It’s what they do.
It’s how they think.
They are naturally good at being neutral,
and they naturally respond instead of react.
Fives tend to think through things.
They don’t fly off the handle a lot, typically.
Though that’s not impossible.
They suppress emotions by rationalizing life.
And fives love to be an expert in some obscure thing.
So one of the memes, the internet memes,
in an Enneagram thing is,
if you find yourself at 3.15 a.m.
watching YouTube videos on Ugandan throat singing,
think five.
(Laughter) They like obscure stuff.
Why?
Because not everybody else doesn’t know that.
So a five can often impress you with very random knowledge.
In conflict,
their response is isolation.
They withdraw.
They retreat into the mind.
They cut off the feelings.
And if the conflict is uncomfortable enough for them,
they’ll sever the relationship.
They don’t necessarily need the person.
And if that means withdrawing from the relationship,
then they will do that if necessary.
So their strength,
they love learning.
They love understanding.
They are voracious learners.
They love to explore.
They’re creative.
Their weakness is that they sometimes value knowing things over people.
And they have a difficult time trusting others.
Their core mission is to become comfortable
through observation and contemplation.
And their motivation is to gain independence and separation
by reducing their own needs
and becoming self-actualized or self-important.
On to the sixes.
The loyalist, the guardian, the stalwart, the rock.
Sixes are loyal.
They are committed.
They are connected.
They’re engaged.
They can be a bit reserved and cautious.
They’re generally responsible.
The basic desire of a six is to find security and support.
Their personal creed,
you are good if you do what is expected or required of you.
This becomes important to sixes.
The unconscious message,
it’s not okay to trust.
And the fundamental experience is I need people and structure to help me navigate life.
Sixes distrust themselves and their ability to navigate life
so they surround themselves with people,
with systems, with belief structures that guide them and give them walls and protection in the middle of that.
So just to start off with sixes,
Enneagram people talk about sixes as being one of the most common types.
In fact, they talk about how they expect that over 60% of people are sixes
and yet they go to conferences and no one claims being a six.
So the idea of being a sex is that you often struggle with self-doubt
and you look outside yourself for guidance.
And so you have an immediate draw towards the idea of authority and structure and society.
But don’t make the mistake of thinking that that means that sixes are all toe-the-line,
sort of fall-and-step kind of people.
They have two different relationships with the institution,
with society.
They’re either for it or they’re extremely against it.
So they can be for the structure in the system and they are,
essentially they live, their identity is the thing,
right?
The school that they went to is who they are.
The other side is they are so against the society or the institution
that their entire identity lives in the being against,
right?
So they have differing ways of relating to it.
They are 100% loyal to friends who are in their circle.
You can count on a six.
If you are in their friend group,
you are stuck with them.
They will be your friend and they will be loyal to you for life.
Because of that,
sometimes it takes a while to warm up in that relationship.
They don’t just let anybody in.
It takes some time to warm up to a six.
But once you’re in,
once they trust you,
you’ll be there for good.
The six lives their life out of a basic,
pessimistic or fear-filled mentality.
The idea is the world is not a safe place to live.
And so they’re always imagining worst-case scenarios, right?
What’s the thing that’s going to go wrong and how am I going to respond to it?
That’s the basic instinct of a six.
Because of that, they’re typically not comfortable with taking risks.
And they tend to like to know what the outcome is going to be after they take an action.
Sixes don’t like gray.
They want black and white.
Even if they know that that’s not the way that life works.
And a six can come across,
at least when you first meet them, as being humble.
But that, what appears to be humility,
is actually a product of deep self-doubt,
of anxiety, that they’re not going to be good in the world.
And so their humility is a way of presenting an image that isn’t true.
They project.
They attribute to others the things that they fear in themselves.
So they can accuse others.
They can sometimes come across when they’re in a bad place as being a little bit of a jerk.
They can come across as being an idiot or incompetent.
That can be them responding in a situation where there is conflict,
which is a thing that they’re already worried about.
When that conflict happens,
they can respond in some pretty vindictive ways,
some pretty active ways.
The strength of a six is that they’re reliable and they’re trustworthy.
In fact, one author goes so far as to say,
they’re the glue that holds society together.
Without sixes, we wouldn’t have the structures of support and trust that we absolutely need.
But the weakness of a six is that they’re driven by fear and anxiety.
Their core mission is to seek assurance and insurance that they are valuable,
and also, and therefore, that they’re lovable.
And their core motivation is to protect themselves from anxiety
by being surrounded with people,
by beliefs,
and by systems.
One of the names of the six which may not have made sense at the beginning was zealot.
And you might not think of someone who lives in the system as being zealot,
right?
But they can be loyal to an idea,
and that is the makings of a zealot,
right?
So you see how there’s more than just being structured people.
They’re loyal.
That’s the core of a six.
Okay, number seven.
They’re called the enthusiast,
the dreamer,
the generalist, the energizer.
You might describe them as being busy.
You might see them and they might appear to be spontaneous,
active,
that you might call them fun.
They’re willing to try everything.
They might even exhaust you because of their inexhaustible energy.
They’re happy.
They’re likable.
Their basic desire is to be happy.
Their desire is to be satisfied and fulfilled.
Their creed is that you are good if you get what you need.
And the unconscious message with which they live is
it’s not okay to depend on anyone or anything.
And their fundamental experience of the world is,
what are we doing next?
Sevens generally do not like to be alone.
They’re busy people.
They’re active people.
They’re people people.
They avoid quiet moments.
They’re almost, in many cases, afraid of silence.
They keep busy to protect themselves from reflection.
They’re often well-rounded.
Lots of different projects,
hobbies,
interests.
They start things way better than they finish things.
If you go into a sevens basement,
you may see a record of all the various hobbies
that have been started through the years.
Very few of the projects maybe have been finished.
Sometimes they have difficulty enjoying the thing they’re doing
because a seven is driven to stay busy.
So they’re constantly thinking about the next thing.
They may be in the middle of something,
but they’re already thinking,
what do I do when this is done?
What are we doing tomorrow?
What are we doing this weekend?
They’re always looking to fill the calendar.
They’re impulsive.
Stop by a sevens house and say, let’s go.
They’re in.
They’re jumping in the car.
What are we doing?
Don’t know.
Let’s go.
Sevens are in.
They generally don’t like routine.
They love new things.
They hate capital letters.
They hate boredom.
Death for a seven is being bored.
Lots of friends, which they sometimes wear out
so they’ll bounce from group to group or one to one,
depending on who’s up for them.
They have a kind of effortless energy, which is contagious.
Groups are wonderful and they have sevens.
Really are the life of the party in lots of ways.
Their conflict method is escape.
They’re pulling the ripcord.
They’re bailing.
They’ll give you an explanation that generally lets them off the hook.
They’ll try to tell you it’s not their fault.
Then they’re out.
They’re on to the next thing.
They’ll exit the situation as quickly as possible.
Their strengths and weaknesses.
Sevens are fun.
They’re spontaneous.
They’re great.
The weaknesses,
they can be shallow and it’s not that they’re not capable at depth.
It’s that they don’t spend much time there.
They avoid that.
So shallow is not a value judgment,
but a practice.
They’re generally unreflective.
They carry some inner pain and they’re afraid to get close to it.
Core mission,
try everything, enjoy life.
Core motivation,
stay busy enough to avoid being unhappy.
That inner pain that is often characteristic inside a seven.
We move on to the Enneagram eight.
Challenger,
protector,
leader,
hero.
Eights are strong-willed.
They’re stubborn.
They tend to be blunt.
They are tough both in sense of their exterior appearance,
but also they,
eights among the Enneagram types tend to tolerate pain of all types.
They’re independent.
They have a tendency to take charge.
They have a tendency to be critical.
Their basic desire is to set their own course.
Eights want to be in control.
The creed of an eight is you are good if you are strong.
The lost message or the unconscious message,
it’s not okay to show weakness.
It is not okay to be vulnerable.
And the fundamental experience is life is testing you.
Do not let your guard down.
Be strong.
So some descriptions of eight.
Because of their challenging orientation to the world,
they like to argue.
So when you’re at the dinner party and the eight’s the one who stands up and says,
“I just watched the newest whatever movie.
It was the stupidest movie I’ve ever seen.”
They’re just going to lay it out there and for you to essentially see if you’ll argue back.
They use arguing to test boundaries.
Is this a boundary that exists or can I blow through it?
Because if you hesitate,
that wall’s coming down.
Eights can be seen as being intense.
Their challenging orientation to the world may be too much,
especially if you’re not ready to take a hit.
Because they’re going to call you out if you haven’t thought it through.
They’re not overly concerned with being liked.
And they’re completely willing to step on toes.
If there’s a goal and a thing that needs done,
you won’t have toes when it’s done.
So you better respond.
They are good at identifying when authority has gone wrong
and they’ll push back against it.
It’s not just a yes,
sir, yes, man.
They’re going to be quick to challenge and to ask.
They’re going to be independent and tough.
Eights, because of that, hate bullies.
And they’ll go right after a bully.
But the danger in that is if they get turned the wrong way,
they become the bully.
That inner desire to challenge can turn into
a way of hurting others instead of protecting them.
One of the life models of the eight is get on board or get out of the way.
And when it comes to a moment of conflict,
which maybe internally is a lot of an eight’s moments,
a response to that is denial.
Is to say, no,
you’re an idiot.
That was a bad idea.
And the temptation might be to just completely dismiss it.
Or it may also just be to fight back and to level the person
because they won’t be able to defend themselves.
The strength of an eight,
that they’re strong and that they earn the trust of others
and that they are often the key ones to step up and to protect those in need.
The weakness is they can depersonalize others.
And in the process of getting stuff done,
they can create collateral damage.
And the core mission of an eight is to be strong and to endure.
And the core motivation is to avoid weakness and avoid failure.
All right, moving on to nine.
Nine is called the peacemaker,
the mediator,
or the nobody’s special.
That’s in quotes.
They are special.
Descriptors of nine is that they are easy going.
You might see them as a procrastinator,
though sometimes in sneaky ways.
They’re friendly.
They’re reserved.
They’re honest.
They can be described as being tired and also as being passive.
Now, I’m seeing some interesting looks.
Nines are a little hard to pin down,
so bear with us.
On the basic desire of a nine is stability.
They desire stability, especially internal stability, a kind of internal peace.
Their personal creed is you are good if those around you are good.
So they connect that inner stability with those outside of themselves.
Then the
unconscious message is it is not okay to assert yourself.
The fundamental experience of life is I must keep peace at all costs.
So we move to the description of nine.
Enneagram people will often say that nines are the hardest type to categorize
because in the words of one of the books,
nines seem like everybody but themselves.
The nine wants to fundamentally kind of be at peace,
but it’s less about the idea that you’re at peace
and more about the idea that if you’re at peace,
if I keep you good,
you won’t bother me.
You won’t ask anything for me.
You don’t need anything for me.
So the nines love stability,
but because it affords them the chance to withdraw a little bit.
So they have difficulty saying no and disappointing people,
but they often find themselves doing things they don’t want to do for that very reason.
The nine says, “Yeah, I’ll help,” but they don’t want to,
but they can’t tell you no.
They avoid strong feelings,
especially negative ones.
Nines tend to swallow their anger.
They generally have some stuff they’re unhappy about,
but you often won’t know.
And in fact,
you might be surprised at how much anger is in a person
that you would never expect carries any of it.
They go along to get along.
Though their pushback in those moments is sometimes passive aggressiveness.
The nine won’t fight you openly.
Generally, that’s not their thing,
but they’ll build walls around you if they can.
They don’t mind irritating you.
They just don’t want to put a lot of energy into it.
They struggle maybe with apathy.
They can be a little lethargic.
Sometimes they struggle to be motivated.
They are very competent,
but they are generally not driven.
They prefer to be in the background.
They do have a natural ability to see things from other people’s point of view.
Nines are very engaging.
People are drawn to them because they’re good listeners,
because they’re good at identifying with people,
connecting with people.
But this sets up a kind of difficult loop for the nine
because people are drawn to them and the nine gets exhausted with people.
And so these needy people keep coming to the nines
wanting to dump their stuff on the nine who just wants them to go away.
People often gravitate toward them,
which nines don’t love.
They’re honest.
Nines rarely have hidden motives.
They operate from a pretty honest place.
And their conflict mode,
not surprisingly,
is avoidance.
They will go numb and basically try not to face it.
Perhaps with busy work.
And this is one trait that nines have that’s a little tricky.
Nines are terrible procrastinators,
but sometimes they’re busy procrastinators.
So one of the key tests for a nine,
if you have one important thing to do
and 25 non-important things to do,
and you do all 25 not important things
to keep you from having to do the important thing,
a nine will say, “Yes.
Yes, of course.
I’m glad I have stuff to keep me busy before I have to tackle that thing
that I don’t want to do.”
So it’s not that they’re lazy in a classic sense of not doing anything.
It has to do with their sort of difficulty getting themselves motivated
to do some of the stuff they have to do.
So strength and weakness of a nine, they’re stable.
They’re gentle.
They really are peacemakers.
Oftentimes in a family,
this was their role.
When other people were in conflict,
the nine would call everybody,
“Hey, let’s…” They’ll go talk to one.
They’ll go talk to the other.
They’ll work it out.
The weakness is they can struggle to engage their own life.
Their core mission is to maintain balance and keep peace.
And their core motivation is really to stay out of the way,
be in the background and avoid problems, people,
and drama.
One of the Enneagram books said there are very few prominent nines.
There are successful nines.
There are talented nines.
But nines don’t seek the limelight.
Abraham Lincoln is sometimes thought of as a nine.
But nines don’t look to put themselves out in front of people
though they can do great things.
Yet nines are often…
I should have mentioned this.
Nines often,
among all the types,
report kind of being tired.
Like, “Oh, it’s another day.
I’ve got a lot to do.”
So what we would like for you to come out of this with
is maybe a sense that one or two of these types are beginning to feel a little familiar.
Like maybe they’ve spoken to you.
Maybe you’ve said,
“Oh, yeah, for better and worse,
that makes sense to me.”
And if so, we would encourage you to pay attention to them on your circle here.
If you have a couple of numbers,
if you think maybe you’re strong in a couple of numbers,
draw a line between them, connect them.
You may find that if you identify with, say, a three,
you also have strong identification with either the two or four.
It is not uncommon.
In fact, it is almost always the case that if you live in a number,
you are comfortable in one of the numbers beside it.
We’ll talk more about that down the road.
But that is very common,
and don’t be surprised by that.
It may also be the case that you find that you think you’re one number,
but if you draw a line across the circle,
you connect with another number.
And there may be a reason for that,
too, that we’ll discuss in future sessions.