Welcome to the
Liberated Writer Course!

You’ve reached the material for week 1.

Zoom link for lives calls (4/29 & 5/2 @ 3pm Central):
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87284102835?pwd=aVY4M2wxdEp1RDRCV3VUWXRkcmdlZz09

Welcome to the first week of the Liberated Writer course!

Start this week by watching the video below. Then proceed to reading the text, watching the additional video, and answering the reflection questions.

The main goal of this week is to understand the fundamentals of the Enneagram and determine your Enneagram type if you haven’t already. By completing this section prior to the call on Thursday, you’ll be able to ask me any questions you have on the content. If you’re not sure of your type yet, I can help guide you then as well.

What is the Enneagram?

The Enneagram is a personality framework that is unlike any other because of what it measures. People often ask me how it corresponds to MBTI types, and the answer is: it doesn’t. It’s not measuring the same thing at all. It’s also not measuring the same thing as DISC, Big 5, CliftonStrengths, Colors, or any other test (some of which are developed solely as marketing lead magnets).

The Enneagram sorts people into nine distinct types, sometimes called “styles” or “lenses.” The criteria for sorting is simple: a person’s core fear and core desire.

Fear and desire are the basis of the thing we call “motivation.” The word “motivation” is derived from the same root as the word “move.” Motivation moves us. What we fear and desire most determines where we put our attention and subsequently what we do, think, and feel.

You might see how this is incredibly useful to know as a writer, particularly if you write fiction. How do you get your characters from one place to the next? What is the right motivation to move them where you want them to go?

This doesn’t only apply to physically moving a character from one setting to the next. When we talk about motivation, we’re also talking about moving someone emotionally and intellectually.

In Enneagram-speak, the results of motivation are often referred to as “cognitive, emotional, and behavioral” patterns or “schema.”

The Enneagram describes how we are motivated in three ways: thinking, feeling, and doing.

As you learn more, you’ll notice that the number 3 comes up a lot in the Enneagram. I can’t give you a rational explanation for this, but it’s fun to note. There are nine types (3x3), and each of the nine types has nine levels of development (3x3). Those nine levels break down into three categories (healthy, average, unhealthy). There are three “centers” to the Enneagram. There are all sorts of fun triad grouping, as well.

There are a lot of 3s.

What I like about the number 3 is that it is not binary. Binary thinking is, in fact, what gets most of us into the kind of trouble that it takes therapy, a near-death experience, or a night in jail to get out of.

In other words, when we begin to think there are only two ways a thing can be, it’s a useful signal that our vision is tunneling (i.e. our lens on the world is narrowing) and that it’s time to take a deep breath.

Buddhism teaches about the Middle Way. It’s a complex topic, but if I were to disrespectfully sum it up, it means staying away from the extremes and remembering that the wisest option tends to lie somewhere in between. This is one of the most liberating approaches we can take when we start to believe there are only two options, the oversimplified, “You’re either with us or against us!” kind of bullshit that is the opposite of wisdom.

So as you move through this course, I invite you to bring the energy of three with you, as it will help you grow, explore, and learn.

Where your fear and desire go, so does your attention.

My favorite description of what the Enneagram actually is comes from a teeny-tiny book that packs a punch, called The Essential Enneagram by David Daniels, MD, and Virginia Price, PhD:

The Enneagram is a powerful and dynamic personality system that describes nine distinct and fundamentally different patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting.

Of note here is the word “patterns.” Certain patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving are more commonly seen in certain types BUT not everyone within a particular type will have all identical patterns. AND there is crossover in these patterns between the types, meaning when you observe a particular pattern of behavior in someone, you cannot with certainty guess their type. That would require you to look inside their mind to see what thoughts and emotions are driving the action. It would also require that you observe those patterns for an extended period of time to find a pattern among the patterns to ensure you’re not observing a one-off expression.

Perhaps you’re starting to understand why it can be a lengthy process before settling on our type.

Price and Daniels go on to explain:

Each of the nine patterns is based on an explicit perceptual filter and associated driving emotional energy.

The concept of note in this is the idea of a perceptual filter.

What is that, and why would we have it?

Consider this: there is a massive amount of information coming at you all the time. This information includes visual (sight), auditory (hearing), olfactory (smell), tactile (touch), gustatory (taste), and the often overlooked vestibular (movement) and proprioceptive (body awareness) information.

Now imagine you’re speaking with another human being. For auditory information alone, you’re processing their tone, volume, pacing, and pitch.

Most of us do this without even “thinking” about it; that is, unless there’s ambiguity or conflicting information between those auditory inputs, we follow along easily (obviously there is some variance in this depending on your auditory processing capacity).

How we can function in the sea of inputs from a single interpersonal interaction is because our brains are incredibly adept at filtering out irrelevant information from all of our senses.

But what data is relevant and what is irrelevant? That will depend largely on your core fear and core desire.

Two people of different Enneagram types, when presented with all the same heaps of sensory information in a situation, will filter out different bits of data. Consequently, they will pay attention to different bits of data.

In effect, those two people, who could be standing side by side and receiving virtually identical information from a source, will have a totally different experience of the interaction based on what their brains are sorting as relevant and irrelevant.

For instance, let’s say Person 1 fears nothing more than being worthless and valueless (the fear of the Enneagram Type 3-Achiever) while Person 2 fears nothing more than being separated and cut off from their wholeness of the group and the universe (the fear of the Enneagram Type 9-Peacemaker).

These two people are sitting next to each other at a company meeting. The boss stands up, his chest out, and announces that bonuses will now be awarded each month based on sales numbers, and those sales numbers will be posted publicly.

Ignore the fact that this sounds like a cutthroat if not sadistic boss, and consider what information each of our two people is absorbing. That is, what do they find relevant to avoiding their core fear?

Person 1 (Type 3 - Achiever) is probably thinking (either consciously or subconsciously) something like this: I have to be at the top of the list each week. I can’t let these people show me up. Any week I don’t win is a failure on my part. I finally have an opportunity to be recognized as the best salesperson in this office.

Or, if they’re a little less self-assured, they might be thinking, Oh no. I’m going to have to step up my game so I don’t fail at this. I can’t entertain the possibility of being last for even one week. I’ll do whatever it takes to be at the top.

In both of the situations, you see a focus of attention on win vs. lose, which is also success vs. failure, and more subtly, valuable vs. valueless, which points directly back to the core fear and desire of the type.

Meanwhile, Person 2 (Type 9-Peacemaker) will be focusing their attention on different information from the boss’s announcement. They might be thinking (consciously or subconsciously), This is going to tear our office apart. Why does everything have to be a competition? We work so much better when we work together. Now I have to find a way to keep from losing, so I don’t get fired, but not do so well that I step on other people’s toes. Especially on Person 1. They wouldn’t like that, and I can tell being first means a lot to them.

Because Peacemakers are afraid of conflict, their mind is sorting out anything that doesn’t relate to that (the status of the leaderboard, for instance) and assigning relevancy to anything that could lead toward a clash. This 9 is clearly torn between their need to maintain peace and their desire to keep their job, a very human dilemma. What will they choose if they can only pick one? That depends on a great deal of things, and it sounds like an interesting scene to write.

Key Idea: Our attention follows our fear.

If you’ve ever encountered a snake while you were out hiking, and you’re not one of those weirdos who’s really into snakes and is like, “COOL!” and wants to pick it up, then you know that the snake gets your attention for as long as it is within striking distance. And maybe longer. (“Is it following us? What if there’s another one around? Do you think it has a nest and there are a bunch of baby snakes we need to watch out for?” And now every sound in the bushes is obviously another snake.)

Beneath all the razzle dazzle of being a mostly functioning adult, our core fear is drawing our attention like the snake on the trail.

That is, until we start to notice that it’s doing that.

Once we bring awareness our fear patterns and learn about that particular “snake” (maybe it’s not venomous and hangs out in predictable spots, so we only need to be on the lookout when we’re in that territory), then it stops taking up all of our attention, which we can direct toward building a wonderful life for ourselves.

This is how you use the Enneagram. You begin by identifying your fear, learning about your desire, and seeing how the patterns of attention arising from those may not be getting you to the place you dream of being.

And then you notice, notice, notice. For the rest of your life.

How does this apply to writing?

The trick about the Enneagram is that it applies to all decisions we make. This includes the many decisions in our writing life.

Here are some of the many creative decisions you’ll have to make:

• What decisions will my protagonist make?

• What genre of book do I want to write?

• Should I write stand-alones or series?

• What tropes should I include?

• What themes should I write to?

• How many words will I aim to write?

And here are some of the many business decisions you’ll have to make:

• Who do I market to?

• How do I structure my business?

• What platforms will I publish on?

• Do I try to find an agent or publish independently?

• How many books will I put on my production calendar this year?

• How many hours will I work each week?

• How many days per week will I work?

• Who will I collaborate with?

Your core motivation, along with where you are in your development of the type, has likely been guiding your decisions without you realizing it. Sometimes those subconscious decisions made by our motivation limit us and are in response to outsized fear. In learning to notice these decision points (that often don’t even feel like decisions because we make them so quickly), we can better assess where our fear is outsized and keeping us from what we truly want, or if we’re following the truest form of our core desire.

By understanding why we make the kinds of decisions we make, and by reclaiming control over those decisions, we build the writing life we meant to build, and one that will leave us feeling satisfied and fulfilled along the winding road.

How was the Enneagram developed?

Why we learn all 9 types

I’ve observed an impulse in myself and others, at least initially, to hyperfocus on our dominant type when we first learn it. That’s totally normal as well as helpful to the learning process. Once we get a taste of being seen in the intimate way that the Enneagram is known for, it’s normal to want more. That desire for greater understanding of ourselves is what leads to learning, which leads to a deeper connection to self, which leads to healthy growth.

However, there is a limit to how much we can learn about ourselves when we only learn about our specific type, often described as a lens through which we view the world. It’s trying to learn about the aspects of the water we’ve been swimming in our whole life merely by swimming more. The thought process might metaphorically look like this:

I’m in water? I’m in water! Holy shit! Wait, what is water? What are the properties of it? How does it work? Why did I never notice it before? What is all this stuff floating in it? What else lives here?

None of this, however, helps us understand the alternatives to the water we swim in. And without contemplating the alternatives, we’ll miss out on a wealth of questions about our own habitat that we don’t even know to ask. We won’t know that there exist places that aren’t wet, so we won’t know to ask about that aspect of the water.

What happens in our brain when we learn about the lenses through which other people view the world is that we are able to see our own defaults more clearly. There are a set of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that are so fundamental to our own operating system that we cannot see them and assume everyone else has the same basic operating system. They don’t. This is what causes so much frustration with trying to understand why other people aren’t doing what you would do in a situation. Their basic operating procedures are different from yours.

A major turning point of this work is when you truly see for the first time how fundamentally different someone of a different type is from you. In seeing that they are a particular way that is not necessarily better or worse than other ways, you are then able to see that you are a certain way that is not necessarily better or worse than other ways. When this happens, it becomes much more obvious that our thoughts and beliefs are just patterns we’ve picked up throughout our life, our emotions are not the only possible legitimate way we could feel about a situation, and our actions that make so much sense to us are not the only way to proceed to achieve our aims.

In short, a new world of fresh options opens up to us that we are eager to try.

This is why we want to learn about all 9 types. Learning about yourself is certainly useful, but learning about how 8/9th of the population are living within totally different attentional patterns from you and are therefore experiencing fundamentally different realities can really be a WTF moment. And also an opportunity for a windfall of revelations.

Not to mention it’ll make writing characters of different types much, much easier.

If you’ve ever wondered, Why won’t she just do the responsible thing? or Why won’t he just lighten up? then it’s time to learn about the other eight Enneagram types. That’s where the answers lie.

She won’t do the “responsible” thing because her attentional patterns draw her toward the thing that will put her in the power position, and those two things are not always the same.

Your partner won’t “lighten up” because his attentional patterns lead him to worry about y’all ending up in a tough spot where you split up and he’s left alone and without support.

So, if you know about your type, that’s a start. But you haven’t even begun to unwrap the gifts of the Enneagram until you’ve learned about all nine types.

What are the types?

I’ve delayed describing each of the nine types thus far because 1) If you signed up to an Enneagram-focused class, you likely already know a little about the numbers and common names of the types, and 2) so much of our immediate focus can flow toward “Which type am I?” and can skip right on past “How do I use this tool for growth?”

So before I describe the nine types for you, I want to show you how we use our type for growth. (Then I promise I’ll give you the DL on the types.)

It’s human nature to want to self-identify. It helps us find other people who are mostly the same as we are in ways we value so that we don’t feel like aberrations.

The impulse to self-identify is why people love taking quizzes, even the ones that float around Facebook like, “Which member of Full House would you be?” and are definitely designed to steal as much personal information as we’ll give them (and we’ll give them a lot to gain reassurance that we’re not Stephanie Tanner).

There’s nothing wrong or shameful with the urge to know what your Enneagram type is as soon as possible. But if you never do anything with that knowledge, presumably because you never learn how to use the tool, then what’s the point? File it away with the other comfy self-identifiers that you probably don’t use much, like MBTI, your sun sign, and your Hogwarts house. However, if that’s what you were looking for, I doubt you’d have paid money for this course.

There’s one thing I ask that you never do, though, and that’s guess someone’s Enneagram type, slap it on them as a label, and then use it to dismiss them. “You’re such a loud-mouthed [type].” Nuh-uh. Let’s not do that. That’s how so many people I’ve worked with ended up staying far away from the Enneagram for years prior to meeting with me. Their first experience with it was someone weaponizing it against them. Please, please don’t do that, however tempting it may be at times.

Now that you know the Enneagram’s history, development, and basic functioning, it’s time to talk about each of the types. You may already know (or believe you know) your Enneagram type. Or maybe you’re still unclear on it. Not a problem. As you go through this course, you’ll most assuredly gain understanding in that matter as you learn more about each of the nine types:

You see that every type has a descriptor associated with it that helps us remember the nature of that type. I use the descriptors from the RHETI (Riso & Hudson) model because I think they’re the most positive and accurate. For instance, the Achiever, known for efficiency and getting the most out of every opportunity that comes along, is sometimes called the Performer in other models. When you learn more about Type 3s, this title makes a lot more sense, but on face value, you might associate the 3 with being artsy and confuse it with the Type 4, the Individualist (sometimes called the Romantic) who is usually stereotyped as being the “tortured artist.” Totally different energy.

That’s why I like the RHETI descriptors, and you can get comfortable with them because they’re what I use in my book, Reclaim Your Author Career, and what I’ll be using in this course.

Below are the core fears of the types.

And here are the core desires:

You’ll notice that the fear and desire are two sides of the same coin. For instance, a Four wants to feel significant and fears lacking significance. Similarly, the Eight wants to feel powerful and be in control, and they fear being powerless and controlled by others.

The core motivations are a great place to start, and it’s important to remember that our type is not determined by our behaviors but rather our motivations. That being said, there are clusters of patterns that tend to form around each type that result from those core motivations, and reading more about those can help us visualize each type more fully. Here are brief descriptions of each (pulled from Reclaim Your Author Career):

It can also help to get a sense of the types by attaching them to well-known celebrities and characters of that type. Sometimes seeing a few personalities grouped together can help us draw a line of commonality between them. So here are some celebrities and fictional characters of each type (keep in mind these are best guesses):

1-The Reformer: Nelson Mandela, Atticus Finch, Hermione Granger, Jerry Seinfeld, Michelle Obama, Thanos, Osama bin Laden

2-The Helper: Bishop Desmond Tutu, Samwise Gamgee, Molly Weasley, Dolly Parton

3-The Achiever: Oprah Winfrey, Taylor Swift, Sansa Stark, Draco Malfoy, Don Draper, OJ Simpson

4-The Individualist: Edgar Allan Poe, Anne Rice, Jay Gatsby, Luna Lovegood, Chris Fleming, Moira Rose, Holden Caulfield

5-The Investigator: Albert Einstein, Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie, Severus Snape, James Joyce, Hannibal Lecter

6-The Loyalist: J.R.R. Tolkien, Jon Snow, Neville Longbottom, Mulan, Dwight Schrute, Alex Jones, Wormtongue

7-The Enthusiast: Galileo, Indiana Jones, Fred & George Weasley, Amelia Earhart, Joe Biden, Timothy Leary, Paris Hilton, Peter Pan

8-The Challenger: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Jr., Sirius Black, Serena Williams, Amy Pohler, Ernest Hemingway, Saddam Hussein

9-The Peacemaker: Abraham Lincoln, Queen Elizabeth II, Harry Potter, Barack Obama, Audrey Hepburn, George Lucas, Norman Bates

As you can see, there’s a wide variety for each type, but there’s also a thread of commonality between them. Prior to learning about the Enneagram, you might not have paired Galileo and Paris Hilton together for any reason, but once you learn about the underlying motivations of the Seven, they both fit the bill.

Our type in writing and marketing

You’re probably wondering how this applies to your writing and marketing, and that’s a great question, since this is the Liberated Writer course.

Our core fear decides where our attention goes. Our attention determines what options and opportunities we are able to see available in our writing and marketing. Our perceived available options determine our outlook on the industry. Our outlook on the industry determines whether we remain motivated to continue writing or whether we lose our motivation and spend our time in other places instead.

That can be distilled down to this:

Fear ➞ Attention ➞ Options/Opportunities ➞ Outlook ➞ Continued motivation to write

That means that if our fear gets too big or goes unexamined, our attention narrows, we see fewer options and opportunities, our outlook becomes pessimistic or cynical, and we lose motivation to write our stories.

Essentially this:

Fear ➞ attentional blinders ➞ few/no opportunities/options ➞ negative outlook ➞ writing struggles

We can adjust the whole flow by simply examining the core fear, learning about how it’s impacting our attention, and slowly lessening our fear’s grip on us through curiosity and by running small experiments.

Here are some examples of how fear can demotivate each type:

Ones: Fear of being bad (criticism) ➞ over criticizing your writing as you’re writing it. Exhausting.

Twos: Fear of being unloved ➞ feeling unloveable any time you’re not helping others (including writing time)

Threes: Fear of lacking value ➞ believing the market is too crowded for you to ever get the attention you want

Fours: Fear of being insignificant ➞ everything you write feels unoriginal and uninspired

Fives: Fear of being incompetent ➞ feeling like you don’t know enough yet to write the book (and may never)

Sixes: Fear of being without guidance ➞ doubting and second-guessing every writing decision

Sevens: Fear of deprivation ➞ not committing to a project long enough to enjoy the results

Eights: Fear of being controlled ➞ too much on your plate because you won’t let others help you

Nines: Fear of being separated ➞ telling yourself your writing doesn’t matter that much anyway

You may recognize that writing struggle of your type but not fully understand how you got from that fear to that outcome. That’s okay! You’re free to either think about it, breaking down the process step by step, or you can just ask me and I can explain. I think there’s some value to trying to decode it yourself, though.

And don’t worry, because over the next five weeks, you’re going to learn so much more about yourself that when you look back on this process at the end, it will likely make perfect sense. In the meantime, we get to explore that fear together, shrink it, loosen its hold on you, and almost like magic, you will feel your motivation to write rise. It can be wonderfully freeing to trust the process.

Section 1: Main takeaways

1. Everyone has a dominant type

2. Your type is defined by your core fear and core desire (collectively: core motivation)

3. Predictable patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting arise from your core fear (and desire)

4. Learning about the other 8 types is a great way to better understand your own type.

5. To increase our visible options, improve our outlook, and increase our motivation, we must address our core fear.

You may already feel confident in what your dominant type is, in which case, you’re free to skip over this section. 

For those who are less than 80% sure what their type is or have no idea at all, this section is designed to help you discover that about yourself. 

There are three general approaches to finding your type.:

1. Take an assessment and assume the top score is your type. 

2. Read about the types and reflect on which one sounds the most like you.

3. Somewhere in between where you use an assessment to help you narrow it down, then learn more about the ones that feel like you. 

Different Enneagram coaches will favor different approaches, but I prefer to favor a particular approach for each individual. Ultimately, you will know which approach sounds better to you. 

Some things to consider in proceeding:

Am I feeling impatient about settling on a type? If so, something like the iEQ9 assessment might be appropriate, as it claims a 95% accuracy on the type and subtype. 

Am I willing to get it wrong for a while if it means discovering even more interesting things about myself? If so, reading about each of the nine types, ruling out the obvious ones, and exploring what’s left through the various resources available in books and online might be a wonderful quest. 

Do I struggle to know myself? If so, many of the assessments might cause more confusion than clarity in their conflicting results. You may want to work with a coach like me who can ask you differentiating questions or guide you on the best path for you. 

So, yeah, there are a lot of variables when feeling this out. And it’s 100% okay to mistype yourself. There is no shame at all in doing so. Very smart and reflective people do it all the time, and I firmly believe that when that happens, it’s because there’s something about the type we thought we were that we need to work through. 

The point of all of this isn’t to reach a finish line. There is no finish line in growth of this type, so you might as well get used to it and learn to appreciate and savor the slight discomfort that’s necessary for it, otherwise you’ll never get to the rewards. 

If you’re feeling stressed about finding your type, I invite you to take a moment as you read this to…

Pause...

close your eyes…

take a deep breath that fills your belly and your chest…

exhale completely…

repeat that two more times…

remind yourself that there is no grade or deadline on this discovery process…

then invite your curiosity to discover whatever it can from wherever you are in your journey.

There is always something valuable to be learned along this process, even as we take slight diversions. 

If you would like to take an assessment to get you started, read through the options below and pick which one sounds best for you:

Free: Eclectic Energies

https://www.eclecticenergies.com/enneagram/test

You get what you pay for. This one is an interesting place to get started eliminating your bottom few scores, but that’s about all I would use it for. 

$15: WEPSS 

https://www.wepss.com/

This is through the Enneagram Spectrum of Personality Styles. You’ll receive descriptions of your top three scores, and it gives you metrics of resourceful and non-resourceful strategies for each type. If you take this one, there is a 90% chance your type is one of the top 3. You can also email me your results, since I’m trained in analyzing these, and I will give you a few reflections as to what I’m seeing there to guide you. 

$60: iEQ9 Standard report

https://www.integrative9.com/enneagram/test/individual/

This is through the Integrative Enneagram. It’s a much more in-depth and responsive assessment that claims a 95% accuracy on type and subtype, and it comes with a 22-page report. If you do take this one and would like help sorting through the results, email me and I’ll let you know how to transfer your report to me book an hour for us to chat. 

If you ever take one of these tests and the top score doesn’t sound a thing like you, there are two possibilities of what’s going on:

1. It’s not your type, and maybe these self-assessments don’t work well with how your brain works

2. It’s definitely your type, and the description is triggering to you

Before you dismiss the result off-hand, especially if we’re dealing with the iEQ9, email me. The iEQ9 does have a whole system for assessing mistyping, and they like for practitioners to email them with any incorrect tests to improve their testing process. 

Warning: You can over test yourself. It’s common for people to come to me saying, “I took three different tests and got three different results.” In that case, are the tests actually helping? I’d argue no. I’d argue that the tests are creating confusion rather than clarity and you don’t need to be taking any more of them. If you don’t get a result that makes sense for you after your first assessment, another assessment is unlikely to provide clarity (unless you’re doing from the Eclectic Energies test to the iEQ9, in which case, you might get some clarity).

If you’re getting different results on each test, then probably the way your thinking is constructed is not compatible with the kind of self-assessment questions being asked. This is more common than people think, and it does NOT mean your brain is broken. It just means that some testing methods don’t work with certain modes of thinking. Either way, for the love of all things holy, stop taking assessments and just email me with your questions, and I’ll guide you along the path. That’s what all my hours of trainings and certifications are for. 

One final tip: If you’re going between two types, unsure which one is more you, here are some approaches to take:

1. Which one was more “you” in your early 20s? This is a time when you’re presumably on your own outside of your family of origin but also have the least self-awareness you’ll ever have. The patterns of the type are incredibly pronounced as a result. 

2. Was there ever a time when you had to choose between the two desires? Which did you pick? For example, if you’re not sure if you’re a One or a Three, think of a time when you had to choose between doing what you thought was right or meeting the expectations of others. Were you more the type of student who had to work on the project until it was “perfect” by your standards, or did you figure out the bare minimum you had to do to get the top score?

3. Reflect on the major decisions you’ve made over the course of your life. What was your process to making those decisions? Which type does that seem to embody more?

If you still have questions about your type as you finish this section, I encourage you to mention it in the reflection form under the “What question(s) do you still have for me about this week’s content” section. 

In the meantime, go ahead and proceed with the reflection questions with whichever type you feel best suits you at this point in time. Remember, you’re not getting graded. The process of reflection itself might show you if you’re on the right track with the type or if there are some fundamental mismatches between you and the type you’ve chosen to go with. All of that is useful information! It tells you something, and it also gives me hints as to what might be happening and what your type is, so don’t hesitate to be “wrong” this week. It may not feel like it, but it’s still a step in the right direction. 

Boxing in vs. Escaping the box

Generally, the nuance we’re discussing in this course is not appealing to the Enneagram dabblers because those people want simple answers. Paradoxically, those same folks also don’t appreciate feeling like their life is being oversimplified.

So if you’ve heard me talk about how the Enneagram can be as simple or complex of a tool as you want to make it, this is what I mean. It can capture our complexities and tell us so much about ourselves that we’ve never seen in the light of day, but only if we’re willing to lean into the complexity and nuance, only if we’re willing to put in the work to fight the urge to oversimplify ourselves.

The Enneagram does not box you in; it liberates you from the box you’ve put yourself in.

Studying the Enneagram is taking stock of all the parts of you, and we like to leave no stone unturned. In the next four weeks, we’ll continue this process of mindfulness and discovery to build the resilience we need to continue writing stories for the decades to come.

Section 2: Main Takeways:

1. Typing can take some time

2. The assessments aren’t effective for some people

3. Mistyping can be an important part in your growth process—no such thing as wasted time

4. The Enneagram does not box you in; it liberates you from the box you’ve put yourself in

Week 1 Reflection questions:

(Pro-tip: draft your responses on a text document to avoid accidentally refreshing this page and losing your work.)