Here’s the video clip for type 3 from understandingpersonality.com. One thing I really like about this series is the humor the interviewer brings to it.
3s are performers, and being charming is a big part of their performance.
I like how these folks are up front about what they do.
I can put up a mask so I can seduce you, you know. I know what you expect of me, so I perform that. So then you like me.
Posted in Enneagram, Feeling Center, Type 3
Tagged Enneagram, personality, Psychology, Type 3
Waves breaking (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This is a guest post from Connie Howard, who graciously agreed to share her perspective of being a 4.
Please check out her blog, Sorting it Out, which is full of wonderful writing, straight from the heart.
Thanks for the invitation, Joycelyn.
Being a 4, for me, is lovely, intense, and lonely all rolled into one. We go by a number of names: the Romantic, the Aesthete, the Individualist, the Artist, and the Melancholic. This last one isn’t exactly a name anyone would embrace eagerly, but it has some truth, and that truth, I’m coming to believe, may have something to do with our fast-paced, work-hard, play-hard, bottom-line oriented culture, which 4s don’t always fit into very well.
The name that perhaps resonates most strongly with me is the Aesthete. I experience thundering waves or towering ancient trees or the creamy skin of a newborn as achingly beautiful. And I’m a Romantic, yes, though I am also very, very practical and organized. I like my food saucy and spicy and served with wine in candle-lit rooms, but this does not mean I won’t enjoy plain food by fluorescent lighting too. Nor does being a romantic mean I don’t work hard.
I’m drawn to happy and sad and all things laced with magic. I prefer sad movies to frivolous or sentimental ones, though I love good comedy (which, to be truly good, must in my mind be rooted in the sad material of life.) I love to socialize, but it’s got to have an element of meaningful and substantial, and move beyond small-talk and trivia. I have, since childhood, been known to be a little earnest.
But first things first, the character flaw we are perhaps most well-known for, and the one I’ve been most frequently judged for—envy. First, envy is not at all the same as feeling insecure. This has so often been assumed I can’t stress it enough. It isn’t one tiny bit the same. I have often been envious of you, but never unsure of your loyalty to me.
Equally important, or maybe more important, envy never, ever means I don’t want you to have whatever it is I envy—it means only that I want it for myself also. Who wouldn’t envy and want your charismatic, magnanimous, agreeable personality? Who wouldn’t sometimes envy your beauty, your good health, your strength, your seemingly limitless ability to make others laugh, your energy and freedom to party and escape the darker side? Who wouldn’t sometimes feel daunted by your brilliant light? It’s a compliment, really.
And there’s also this: I don’t really dance with envy all that terribly much more than you do, not from what I can see. It seems to me that I just admit it more readily, so please don’t judge me too harshly. Besides, it’s not any worse, as character flaws and hurdles go, than the one you sometimes stumble on, just different.
I love what a wonderfully intuitive and empathetic fellow human being recently told me: Sometimes, when your pain or failure is juxtaposed with the robust health or success of another, what could possibly be more normal and human and emotionally honest than envy? This I will remember, the next time someone suggests I ought to be above envy. I sometimes do want it all, and you might too sometimes, if you’re honest.
Okay, that’s a relief, to have explained that. The rest matters less. You may think me sensitive and a little flaky, but that’s okay with me. I perceive things you may not consider perceptible, yes. Noise, coming from physical clutter. The space around you as magnetic, or impervious. Tears where there are none, tension or rage beneath a smile. Genuine empathy in your eyes before you say a word.
About you needing me to fit in when I may not—I don’t respond well to these attempted adjustments, no matter how much you’d like me to, so please don’t fall in love with me if you think you’re going to turn me into a sports fan. And please don’t fall in love with me if you’re going to tell me to dress differently either. What I wear reflects exactly what I need and how I feel. It’s just not me, to be in costume in order to please you.
So we’re not necessarily the best office-tower cubicle material as 4s, no, but we’re warm and compassionate and intuitive and empathetic. We’re good care-givers, therapists, healers. And we’re good friends and partners, if you can accept that we can’t and don’t want to be in this world exactly as you are.
As to those intense feelings we sometimes have that might lead you to believe we’re being dramatic—I’m actually usually pretty stoic about my pain. But ironically, whether I’m being stoic or wearing my pain on my sleeve, my pain can be a problem for you.
If I wear it on my sleeve, it is often viewed as attention-seeking, and as a choice to hold on to the Awful Thing of many months ago, to which I say this: You may not be as conscious of it as I am, but you’re still sad too, about your own Awful Thing. I see it in how hard you try to shop and party and work and cheer and pray it into oblivion. I’m just more aware of the currents beneath the surface.
Ironically though, if I’m stoic about my pain, you may conclude I no longer have any, and then expect too much of me, which will irritate me immensely when the facts are shouting otherwise.
I am truly sorry about the dark clouds of failure and shame that occasionally blow in; this is perhaps the darkest part of my shadow. I can see how these would be very difficult for those with front-row seats to witness, and you are a saint for not judging me during those times. For this I love you immensely and will forever be loyal.
Posted in Feeling Center, Type 4
Tagged creativity, Empathy, Enneagram, Envy, personality, Personality Typing, Psychology, Type 4
Mindfulness meditation music for the Feeling center (for everyone).
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.–Jalal al-Din Rumi
Posted in Feeling Center, Mindfulness, Type 2, Type 3, Type 4
Tagged Enneagram, Feeling Center, Mindfulness, Rumi
In which I finally (sort of) get to the point—or at least a point.
Werner Erhard
During my two years of participation in est, I took all of the seminars, some more than once, and many workshops. I also took the later incarnation of the training called the Forum. For 12 months, I was team leader of trainer support for the Berkeley/Oakland Area Center, which meant I enrolled trainer support supervisors for all trainings and workshops and made sure they enrolled teams. Sometimes I ran trainer support for a training or workshop myself. For six months, I was team leader for seminar logistics (although I had never assisted on a logistics team). As team leader, I enrolled logistics supervisors for all the 10-week seminars, made sure they enrolled teams, and visited each seminar at least once to make sure everything was running smoothly. I also assisted for several months in the office of the San Francisco Area Center.
I thought about going through the guest seminar leader program, but decided against it. While I was still considering it, I was encouraged to spiff up my presentation. Although I had plenty of nicely tailored business suits, I didn’t have a particular style. As an 8, I’ve always been more interested comfort than style. But I was willing to look into it—and it was the 80s—so I followed the suggestion of a couple of my peers and hired a wardrobe consultant. Her name was Rivka, and she wanted me to get my colors done. [There was a book called Color Me Beautiful that was popular at the time. It helped you decide whether you were a spring, summer, winter, or autumn and then gave you a suitable palette of colors for your wardrobe.] I refused to do that, though, which disappointed Rivka. But she said she thought I was an “autumn,” and we went shopping from there: new make-up; new shoes; new clothes—all in colors I would never have thought of for myself. Turned out I am an autumn. In terms of physical presentation, I was transformed.
It’s hard to escape making a connection between the 3’s preoccupation with having a successful image and the est preoccupation with personal presentation. In Personality Types, Riso and Hudson say:
The United States is fast becoming a dysfunctional “Three” culture: driven, narcissistic, image-oriented, emphasizing style over substance, symbols over reality.
I never felt that est emphasized style over substance or symbols over reality, though. As far as being driven, Werner said:
Your power is a function of velocity, that is to say, your power is a function of the rate at which you translate intention into reality. Most of us disempower ourselves by finding a way to slow, impede, or make more complex than necessary the process of translating intention into reality.
It’s part of my nature as an 8 to be driven, so those words were fuel for me. That’s one of the few quotes I typed up (pre-personal computer) and still have.
3s are called the Motivator, the Achiever, the Succeeder, the Performer, and the Status-Seeker. I could see applying all those names to Werner. He is a very persuasive guy, and many aspects of type 3 fit him. But having said all that, I’m not fully convinced he is a 3.
Here’s how Riso and Hudson describe the healthy version of the 8w7 subtype in The Wisdom of the Enneagram:
Having a quick mind combined with a vision for practical possibilities, people of this subtype are often charismatic and able to attract the support of others to join them in their vision. They are action-oriented, and want to have an impact on their world. They are also good at challenging others to stretch their abilities and to surpass their own expectations so that their lives can be better in some practical way. This is the most independent subtype, often entrepreneurial and interested in creating projects that will ensure their independence.
Based on my experience of him, that description fits Werner perfectly.
I stopped participating in est after two years because I realized that it was too easy for me. The assisting program, especially, was the perfect place for me to excel at what I was already good at doing. I didn’t have to stretch myself at all. My partner, on the other hand, had a much harder time with assisting, but he ultimately got more out of it than I did. After learning about the Enneagram, I understood that est was Doing-oriented, just like I am, with an emphasis on getting the job done, whatever the job was.
In life you wind up with one of two things – the results or the reason why you don’t have the results. Results don’t have to be explained. They just are.
When we were assisting, we put our personal feelings on the back burner. Feelings were allowed and dealt with in the training, of course, which was a very emotional experience for some people. But although I recall very little specific detail from my own training, I do remember Werner standing on the stage with a box of tissue, pulling them out one-by-one, waving them to the side, and then letting each one flutter to the floor. “Here’s a feeling. Here’s a feeling. Here’s another feeling.” The point was that feelings are fleeting. They come; they go. Don’t get attached to them. I may have interpreted that to mean they could be easily dismissed.
When I decided to get certified as an Enneagram instructor, I chose the training offered by Kathy Hurley and Ted Donson because they seemed to include more of the Feeling Center in their work. That’s the Center I access least effectively, and I realized I needed to stretch myself.
Of course, I went through—and saw—the est training through my own particular filter. The process of the training was not a pleasant experience for me. But the doing involved in assisting was my metier. When I decided to stop participating, my point of view of est—and of assisting—was still colored by the filter through which I viewed the world. I wonder what my experience would have been if I’d been aware of the Enneagram while I was actively involved in est. I’m pretty sure there was a lot more I could have gotten out of it if I hadn’t been so darned good at that particular piece of it.
There are a lot of similarities between est and the Enneagram. Werner talked about the filters through which we look at the world and which distort reality. The Enneagram describes the particularities of those filters. Werner was all about authenticity and authentic self-expression. The Enneagram is a tool to help us move beyond the compulsion of type to experience our true nature, or essence. In the training you get, beyond any doubt, that you are a machine. With the Enneagram you get that you function on autopilot almost 100% of the time.
These concepts are not unique to either est or the Enneagram, of course. They’re just different approaches to what seem to be universal truths. est focused on making commitments, showing up, and producing a result (doing). The Enneagram is a more intellectual, systematized approach.
What I’m left with from est—what has stayed with me all this time—is this:
You and I want our lives to matter. We want our lives to make a real difference—to be of genuine consequence in the world. We know that there is no satisfaction in merely going through the motions, even if those motions make us successful or even if we have arranged to make those motions pleasant. We want to know we have had some impact on the world. In fact, you and I want to contribute to the quality of life. We want to make the world work.
Posted in Doing Center, Feeling Center, Mistyping, Type 3, Type 8
Tagged 8w7, Enneagram, erhard seminar training, est, Kathy Hurley, personality, Personality type, Ted Donson, Type 3, Werner Erhard
Breathe (Photo credit: PhotoLab XL)
Unless we have the capacity to be still and listen, we can’t tune in to our own inner guidance, in which case we’re more or less doomed to remain stuck in the vicious cycle of our thoughts, feelings, and actions. Acting out the same compulsions. Repeating the same stories about ourselves over and over again.
Meditating is a great way to learn to be still and to develop self-observation skills.
Meditation expands the space between each thing you notice and each action you take.
– Ram Dass
There are many different ways to meditate. The best way to begin is by finding a method that isn’t overly difficult. Expecting to be able to sit or kneel in meditation and immediately clear your mind is unrealistic—and it isn’t even the point of meditation. You can’t stop the stream of thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations that come and go. But you can learn to observe how they arise and fall away. You can stop getting hooked by them. Or, as Jon Kabat-Zinn puts it, “You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.”
Meditation Sticker (Photo credit: Sanne Schijn)
One approach to finding a way to meditate that works for you is to look to the Center of Intelligence that is your Home center: Doing, Thinking, or Feeling.
Doing center types may find one of these active practices more appealing:
Thinking center types may prefer some type of insight meditation:
Feeling center types may appreciate a practice that includes an emotional aspect:
This is just meant to suggest a starting point. In addition to helping develop self-observation skills, meditation has many health benefits, so no matter how you go about it, meditating is a good habit to cultivate.
Here are two meditation practices anyone can do:
You can do either of these practices no matter where you are. They can help you stay grounded, centered, and present instead of carried away by whatever is going on in the moment.
And here is a tongue-in-cheek piece from the October 1999 issue of Enneagram Monthly on tips to improve each type’s meditation. The author is anonymous.
It’s best to approach meditation lightly, rather than with dogged determination.
Posted in Centers of Intelligence, Doing Center, Feeling Center, Thinking Center
Tagged Enneagram, Jon Kabat-Zinn, life, Meditation, personality, Ram Dass, self observation
American biologist and author Robert Sapolsky. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Since writing my post on The Limits of Anxiety last week, I had an opportunity to watch the 2008 National Geographic documentary Stress: Portrait of a Killer (on my computer, thanks to Open Culture). The program features Stanford biologist Robert Sapolsky, author of Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers.
Sure, just about everyone knows that being in a continually heightened state of anxiety can lead to physical stress symptoms, some of which can be quite severe. But this is another case when knowing something—as in having good information that we believe to be accurate—and being able to do something about it is much easier said than done.
Knowing (Thinking center) is only the first step. The next step is accepting on an emotional level that what we know matters to us personally (Feeling center). The third step is taking action (Doing center).
Although the three Thinking types may be more prone to experiencing anxiety because of the nature of their personalities or temperament, anyone can be afflicted with chronic or prolonged anxiety. Given the problems we face on a personal, local, and even global level, maybe the surprise is that everyone isn’t totally paralyzed by anxiety. So kudos if you’re not!
However, anxiety and stress are insidious, and I think we all live with unrelieved stress to one degree or another. Chalk some of that up to the fact that—unlike zebras—we can imagine things that don’t yet exist. We can—and do—anticipate the future, envisioning many different potential scenarios and outcomes. Those are great abilities to have in terms of being creative or in brainstorming or in planning ahead. But they also make us vulnerable to conjuring up negative possibilities and then convincing ourselves those things are likely to happen.
Anxiety can become a way of life that ultimately makes it more difficult for us to think clearly or react appropriately to the circumstances or events in our lives. So we need to be able to recognize when we get on the anxiety roller coaster and find a way to interrupt the ride. Actually a ride on a real roller coaster might be the perfect interruption.
In the meantime, please watch the video.
You might also like How to Avoid Stress.
Last time, I summarized the Doing center in order to arrive at the best choice of road songs for Types 8, 1, and 9. Now I’ll tackle the Feeling Center, which is definitely not my go-to Center of Intelligence. Decades ago, when I was introduced to the MBTI, I tested as an ENTP/J (Extraverted, INtuitive, Thinking, Perceiving/Judging). The alternative to Thinking was Feeling, so no surprise I tested as a Thinking type. But Thinking/Feeling measures the decision-making function, and at the time, I was absolutely confounded that anyone could or would make decisions based on feelings. How was that even possible? (I should add that as a child, I accused my mother of being overly emotional.) After years of attempting to open up to the possibility, I sort of get it now—at least theoretically.
These comments on two aspects of emotional intelligence are excerpted from Daniel Goleman’s book “Emotional Intelligence,” but they come from psychologist Howard Gardner:
Interpersonal intelligence is the ability to understand other people: what motivates them, how they work, how to work cooperatively with them. Intrapersonal intelligence…is a correlative ability, turned inward. It is a capacity to form an accurate, veridical model of oneself and to be able to use that model to operate effectively in life.
The Feeling center—also referred to as the Heart, Emotional, or Relational center—consists of Types 2, 4, and 3. This center is concerned with emotion/feeling, relationship, sexuality, self-gratification, and empathy. Continue reading
Posted in Enneagram, Feeling Center, Road Songs, Type 2, Type 3, Type 4
Tagged Enneagram, Feeling Center, Type 2, Type 3, Type 4
Visualization is the second step in the creative process. All the steps are equally important and it’s best to take time with each of them, but slowing down may be even more important at Step 2 than at the other steps. So make sure you give this stage ample time.
At first, the brain lavishes the scarce resource of attention on a single problem. But, once the brain is sufficiently focused, the cortex needs to relax in order to seek out the more remote association in the right hemisphere, which will provide the insight.
Jonah Lehrer, Imagine–How Creativity Works
Think of Step 1 as the large opening at the top of a funnel into which you throw everything imaginable and then some. Step 2 is the narrow tube that slows down the flow of ideas. Slowing down helps you weed out the shoulds so you can get to the juicy stuff. Try your ideas on to see if they fit you. Are your goals personally meaningful to you and consistent with your values? Visualization utilizes soft—as opposed to hard—thinking. Continue reading
Maybe you know someone who tends to:
Or someone else who’s more likely to:
Or another person who:
Some people are quick to act or speak without thinking or taking other people’s feelings into consideration. Doing comes naturally to them. Some people feel things deeply themselves and are able to sense how others feel. Feeling comes naturally to them. And some people seem to spend the majority of time in their heads rather than in the so-called real world. Thinking comes naturally to them.
In Enneagram lingo, Doing, Feeling, and Thinking refer to different kinds of intelligence—different ways of absorbing, processing, and reacting to stimuli from our internal and external worlds. The idea of three different kinds of intelligence appeared to be supported by neuroscientist Paul MacLean’s theory that each of these types of intelligence is associated with a different part of our brain. Continue reading
Posted in Centers of Intelligence, Doing Center, Enneagram, Feeling Center, Thinking Center
Tagged Centers of Intelligence, Enneagram
Nine Paths 