THE ENNEAGRAM - PERSONALITY TYPING SYSTEM

The Enneagram is a powerful tool for recognising the role of personality in our lives thus enabling us to become aware of our instinctual responses to life. We utilise the Enneagram System as part of our Executive Coaching relationships to open up the possibilities for deep transformational change. Unlike many other personality typing systems, the test to determine your type can be taken online for just $10 at
www.enneagraminstitute.com

The Enneagram system is based on a set of nine distinct personality types. Whilst it is common to see yourself in all nine of the types, one of them will be your dominant basic personality type. The Enneagram is not about putting you into a box, rather it identifies which box you have put yourself into and helps you discover strategies for enhancing your life experience.

Everyone emerges from childhood with one of the nine types dominating their personality, which determines the ways in which we learn to adapt and develop coping strategies. Each of the nine personality types has a specific core belief. The core belief helps shape the developing personality, actively filtering information from the world around to reinforce itself. Data which does not fit into the core belief patterns is unconsciously dismissed, thereby other perspectives are ignored. Each individual is thereby convinced that their experience is the truth.

Type	Core Belief	Core Coping Strategy
1	I’m responsible for making things right	Maintain high standards
2	It is selfish to have my own needs	Sacrifice myself
3	My worth depends on my achievements	Compete to be best; reinvent myself
4	I’m missing something important	Search for the ideal
5	I’m on my own there is no support for me	Be self-sufficient; minimise my needs
6	The world is unsafe and full of threats	Look for something out side of myself to believe in
7	My fulfilment lies out there	Search for new activities and experiences
8	It’s an unjust world, I need to protect myself	Dominate and expand my control
9	My presence is unimportant	Go along with others

Each individual responds to thoughts, actions and events automatically based on their core belief. The emotional response is not fully in the consciousness, and the experience feels like who we are. These patterns feel so real that we come to think of ourselves as these habitual patterns. They are almost like the air we breathe - they feel so natural that it never occurs to us to question them. We don’t suspect that a belief even exists - it is just what is.

We can open the system for ourselves by noticing the personality’s patterns at work and creating some distance between the observer part of ourselves and the part of us that is doing the personality. The very process of observation leads to awareness and to relaxing our attachment to these patterns. As we do so, we notice the quieting and releasing of the personality over time. We lighten up.

Through working with the Enneagram, we begin to recognize that the personality is dynamic, existing along a continuum of health and flexibility. When we are generative, open, responsive, alive, and present, we experience the higher end of our personality’s health and flexibility, and we inherently express what is best within us. When we find ourselves stuck in non-productive, defensive, and rigid reactions, we express the lower end of our personality’s health and flexibility. As we learn to non-judgementally recognize our troublesome patterns and the motivations behind them, the patterns relax. Over time, our natural strengths arise so we feel more at ease and at peace within ourselves.

However, it is important to note that having the direct experience of our healthier nature does not mean that we give up our personality. It is neither possible nor useful. This is the distinction:-

When my personality is in full bloom, it has me. When I have the experience of clarity and presence, I have my personality. When I am more present, I see and can use my personality to support me, but it is no longer the master.

Visit www.enneagraminstitute.com to take the RHETI test and for more in depth information.