Enneagram — A Zodiac of Personality To Help You Find Yourself
Kenan Kolday
General Manager | Director Plant Operations | Interim Management | Turnaround | Start-up | I help people and companies improve ??
Knowing yourself is the hardest thing in life. There is a tool that will help your journey.
Human personality is so complex. We can neither understand our personality nor the others and fail to live a happy, engaged, and joyful life with peace and abundance. However, there is a modern system in psychology that will help you discover yourself and understand others. It is called the Enneagram of personality.
Let me help you clear the dark clouds of doubt from your mind because this system really works.
I have been using it since 2008 to discover my personality traits,?unleash?my untapped potential,?understand?others, improve my?leadership?in the corporate realm and life, and accelerate my spiritual?journey.
It helped me better map my personality and understand the conditioning behind it which in turn helped me?heal my past wounds?and become a?better?person.
Moreover, understanding my personality structures better resulted in understanding others better and bringing more?empathy, compassion, and tolerance?to my relationship with everyone.
Also, I was able to better assign the right tasks to the right people with the right?talents?and best utilize the?skills, abilities, and gifts?of my team as a leader.
Furthermore, the vast knowledge of the genuine?human potential?and the?tools?to put this potential into action accelerated my spiritual growth which was recognized by many people around me.
Here is below some evidence from real life to show its use around the world.
-The movie series Lost characters were typed using the enneagram by a professional who is an expert in the Enneagram of personality.
-CIA and FBI use it to model the personality of the criminals and terrorists.
-It is being used by many organizations including Fortune 500 companies to build healthy and productive teams.
I guess these are enough to attract your attention to Enneagram.
Enneagram is a great tool that describes the personality in 9 different types with thousands of variations. path to finding your true self and purpose in life. The nine enneagram types are:
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
The Enneagram of personality consists of nine different types of personality with thousands of variations. It captures the complexity of human personality in a simple model that is easy to understand, remember, and apply in your life.
1. The Reformer — They are principled, purposeful, self-controlled, and tend to be perfectionists.
2. The Helper — They are generous, demonstrative, people-pleasing, and possess a strong sense of guilt.
3. The Achiever — They are driven, workaholic, successful, and image-conscious.
4. The Individualist — They are creative, sensitive, self-aware, and temperamentally withdrawn.
5. The Investigator — They are cerebral, perceptive, innovative, and tend to be skeptical.
6. The Loyalist — They are engaging, responsive, responsible, and anxious.
7. The Enthusiast — They are spontaneous, fun-loving, optimistic, and scattered.
8. The Challenger — They are self-confident, decisive, willful, and confrontational.
9. The Peacemaker — They are easygoing, receptive, reassuring, and complacent.
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There are a few assumptions you need to know about personality types.
- All 9 personality types are found in everyone, but only one of them is dominant.
- This personality type influences the person all her life.
- No one type is worse or better than another. They are all different manifestations of God and have different contributions to the Whole.
- The numbering of personality types makes no sense for prioritizing them.
- The descriptions of personality types are general and are the same for men and women.
- Each word and sentence of the dominant personality type may not be enough to describe the person exactly because each type is a psychological classification.
You will find that you have traits from all nine types depending on the situation. Our roles trigger different personality masks inside us and we tend to behave differently when we are in different roles. Being a father, a son, an employee, an employer, a friend, a public speaker, a student, etc are all different roles in our lives. Think about them as different dresses you wear on your body. You behave differently as you wear different dresses and so does your behavior change in each role. For example, you may be a peacemaker at home but a challenger at work.
These personality types are not static. They are dynamic which makes Enneagram unique. There are 6 factors to look at to best use the Enneagram. Finding your personality type is not enough — it is just the beginning.
- Finding your?personality type?kick-starts your journey
- The nine personality types are divided into three categories — the gut, head, and heart. Enneagram has its roots in Gurdjieff`s 4th Way approach and these three?centers?of the body represent the 3 dimensions of a human. Understanding which center is dominant helps you focus on the right tools for self-realization
- Then you need to understand the?wing?that influences your type the most
- Each type moves to another one in times of stress and happiness. This is called?integration and disintegration?in the Enneagram
- Each nine type consists of nine layers of?ego development. The Enneagram is unique by integrating ego levels into the personality, making the system much more dynamic and realistic
- There are three instincts according to the Enneagram and they drive our personality too, adding more complexity to it.?Self-preservation, sexual, and social instincts are the three instincts.
The Enneagram is also unique in linking the model to?object relations?in psychology. Object relation is the result of the interaction between you and others, especially your mother and father, starting from your birth. It starts with your parents, then your siblings, relatives, friends, teachers, environment, culture, and media — everything that is not you but has an impact on you when you interact with it. Enneagram describes whether each type acts with?rejection, frustration, or withdrawal.
Hornevians, a branch of object relations, says that we are born with a?true self?and as we interact with the world, we start to develop a?false self. The Enneagram model also uses this idea and states that each type has a different way of developing its false self to?meet the needs?of the true self. There are three styles:?assertive, withdrawn, and earning.
Besides the Hornevian triad, there is also the Harmonics triad which helps describe how we?cope with challenges and manage conflict. There are 3 styles —?positive outlook, competency, and reactive.
The Enneagram took me 6 months to learn and then I got training in the US. I could best understand it after observing its great benefits at work and in life within the next 5 years after the training. It is a complex model but works perfectly. It is the Zodiac of personality — a map that draws you on a path in the vastness of the infinite sky made up of an endless number of stars. A map prevents you from getting lost and helps find your way.
In summary, the Enneagram of personality can be used in many different areas of your life such as:
- To understand your personality better
- To find your strengths and weaknesses
- To understand other people better
- To build healthy and productive relationships
- To find your ideal career
- To unleash your untapped potential
- To accelerate your spiritual journey
If you are new to the enneagram of personality, I recommend that you start with these three resources:
1. The Essential Enneagram by David Daniels and Virginia Price
2. The Road Back to You by Ian Morgan Cron and Suzanne Stabile
3. The Wisdom of the Enneagram by Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson — This book is a great resource if you want to learn more about the Enneagram of personality and how to use it in your life.
If you are already familiar with the Enneagram of personality, I recommend that you check out these resources:
1. The Enneagram in Love and Work by Helen Palmer
2. The Enneagram Journey by Suzanne Stabile
3. The Enneagram of Passions and Virtues by Sandra Maitri
I hope this article has helped you understand the Enneagram of personality and how it can be used in your life.
With love,
Kenan
Take a look at my?published books?and?watch my esoteric videos?to support my life purpose of "helping people reach their essence and full potential for a better world".