awareness of personality

"order and simplification are the first steps..."

order and simplification are the first steps toward the mastery of a subject.​​

Thomas Mann

you’ve already read through a lot of material about the practice of mindfulness, personality, listening, and speaking. reflect for a moment:

• can i remember the things that spoke to me deeply?
• am i focusing on some practices, in daily situations?
• am i keeping a journal or record, where i can go back and notice where i was and what i've already learned?

if you answered “yes,” to all of these questions, you are already motivated, and have probably recognized the difference it makes to your experience of daily life. when this is the case, we simply need to go deeper, taking our skills with us, and building on that which is already in place.

the starting point for improvement is to recognize the need.​​​

Masaaki Imai

on the other hand, if your answers were mostly “no,” it might be time to reassess.

• why did i start doing this? what was the fear or difficulty?
• why and how did i lose momentum and motivation?
• what would be the simplest practice to start with?

choose any practice from the initial programs and stick to it for a few days. it might even be necessary to remind yourself. when practicing, keep attention on what is actually happening in your thoughts, feelings, speech, and actions.

when you have an insight or a breakthrough in containing a difficult state, no matter how small, notice the experience again. remind yourself that it is through the attention to — and learning from — your experience that you are growing. keep your steps of progress small, and don’t overreach. if you don’t know what the steps are, go back to problem-solving and use a model similar to the one used later in this program.

recap of personality integration

in our previous program (integrating personality), we saw that there are at least five points involved in the growth process for each enneagram type. these points give us a wealth of information in terms of what to be mindful of during our maturing process.

type: through knowing the primary type of our personality, we gain access to understanding what the personality values, what it typically focuses on, and which emotions are difficult to manage.

wings: the wings (the two numbers adjacent to our primary type), give us a sense of the behavior, view, and attitudes that may increase the range of our type. integrating our wings enables us to navigate through life more easily. we can understand and feel more perspectives than that of our primary type alone. we can more easily engage the world on its terms, rather than just our own.

integration points: the release point gives us an understanding of what our type looks like when it functions optimally, and the stress point tells us which reactive traits we need to overcome. these integration points represent qualities that are not easy to reach, but that are ultimately necessary for maturing. one of the challenges of integration is to identify the most effective ways to integrate these qualities in a sustainable, incremental manner.

"the missing piece"

in their work on personal growth, Riso and Hudson (from the Enneagram Institute) remind us of the importance of integrating our stress point. they view the qualities of the mature version of the stress point type as the “missing piece” for each type. these qualities are the ones most necessary to integrate in order to mature. as long as we are stuck in early maturity, our reactions will have the qualities of the immature stress point. for example, type eight will lose its confidence and isolate, like the immature five. instead of confronting, it sinks into paranoia and fear. when type eight overcomes this reaction, it takes on the quality of humility (from the mature type five). this quality directly opposes type eight’s egoic expression, and they mature into their deepest expression. knowing what we are working towards, giving ourselves more mindfully to experience, and allowing the learning and maturing to take place are all essential to reaching maturity.

healthy and unhealthy personality

in later programs, we will spend more time looking at the process of maturing, and what this process looks like in each type. for the moment, we can simply understand the traits or characteristics that we may recognize as an indication of our personality’s level of health. when we function healthily, we tend to display the characteristics in the first column. our growth, or maturing, is enabled. we are learning and adapting well. the second column describes the opposite states. here our growth is hindered or prevented by the unhealthy patterns and states.

adapted from Riso & Hudson: Wisdom of the Enneagram

deliberate attention and practice

people often say that motivation doesn’t last. ​well, neither does bathing. that’s why we recommend it daily.​​​​

Zig Ziglar

we can have all the knowledge about change, growth, or self-development, but as long as we’re unable to describe the process and its experiences, based on our own application, it will remain merely knowledge. the big difference between knowing and experience is that knowing only leads to conceptual understanding. experience, on the other hand, leads to embodied understanding. i “know of” with conceptual knowledge, and i “know-feel-sense” with embodiment. i may know that it is better to empathize than to sympathize, but without having tried many times to stop my rescuing action (sympathy), and without having felt-learned the action of empathy (being with emotional experience), the knowledge will not be embodied. in actual circumstance, especially when in a reaction, i will revert to what the body already knows, in other words my reactions.

character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries.​​​​

James Mitchener

as we do the work, we are humbled by the difficulties, and at the same time we discover our courage in mastering those difficulties. this is a far more nuanced process than merely forcing ourselves to change through sheer willpower. the latter is not sustainable, and no maturing happens. mastering our difficulties begins with knowing our difficulties, building relationships with them, and finding ways to work with those relationships creatively and with encouragement. we treat our difficulty with as much respect we would a young child. we know that they are learning, and we’re happy to be part of the process. in the same way that love can be kind and firm in a relationship with another, the same applies to these interior relationships.

four kinds of self-motivation

most of us know what "unmotivated” feels like: we feel safe with the way things are, we are less likely to see or identify possible problems, we tend to want others to take responsibility for what upsets us, we don’t see any need for change, or we give up trying altogether. on the other hand, we may also remember situations in our life where we felt deeply motivated: there is a willingness to change, and clear articulations of the problem and the goal. we are open to experimentation and follow through on our intent.

when we reflect on motivation, it is possible to see four different methods of self-motivation. we are either motivated towards an outcome (something i want), or away from an outcome (something i don’t want), and our agency is either driven through an external force (boss, partner, child, or situation), or an internal need.

the most powerful motivational source is one based on an intrinsic need and working towards a positive outcome. we also want our motivation to be measurable and sustainable. bringing clarity and precision to the process makes it easier to work with an identified problem or behavior we want to change. when sensitivity deepens, our need to stop hurting ourselves or others can be the most powerful motivator. it is meaningful to us, and we have a choice. choosing to work with it increases our competence and growth.

type is motivation and value

in the first program on personality, we learned that type is quality and nature of attention. type also tells us a lot about our own or another’s motivation and values. one way of creating intrinsic motivation is to be reminded of what motivates us and what we value. the beauty of a value is that it is something we want, and so can be the driver for our interior work. working with our values means asking ourselves whether our thoughts, feelings, and actions are in line with what we value. when they are not, we can reflect on what our actions could look like if we were to be authentic to our values.

the only way to do great work, is to love what you do​​​​

Steve Jobs

problem-solving as motivator

once we know what we’d like to work with or change, we can use a simple but clear problem-solving method.

step 1

the first step is to write down what we want — the goal that is important to us. reflect on why you want it, what it actually is you want, and imagine what would be different (speech, thought, action) from how you are now. the more clearly we can describe this outcome, the easier the next steps will be.

step 2

now focus on what it is that keeps you from the desired outcome. what are the beliefs, attitudes, thoughts, speech, or actions that prevent this outcome?

step 3

then, taking into account your personality, decide what the smallest step towards making this change would be. try to choose some incremental steps that span the distance from where you are now, to where you’d like to be. “what will i let go of, and what will i replace it with?”

step 4

once our object is clear, we can look for the situations where it is likely to happen, and try the newly decided-on behavior. we pay deep attention to speech, emotion, thought, and action, making notes in our journal about what we experienced with the new attempt. most often, we may have to repeat the process a few times before finding what really works for us. and this is totally ok. every attempt gives us more insight and capacity.

clarity of goal — engaging an external problem

sometimes the best way to reach our goal is by understanding the process of our problem, and engaging with it in a new way. it is helpful to know not only the “what” of our problem, but also “why” we’re engaging with it. “what makes the outcome important to me? why will i be fulfilled when i reach this goal?”

problems tend to persist when their solution requires responses we are not yet familiar with. in other words, we need to do things differently, either in our thinking, emotion, speech, or action, in order to get different, more desirable outcomes. we adjust ourselves to be better suited to the situation.

happiness comes from what we do.​ fulfillment comes from why we do it.​​​​

Simon Sinek

inquiry into motivation (engaging an interior problem)

at other times, the source of our problem is internal. we feel “i am the problem” rather than experiencing a problem on the outside. one way of recognising this state is by noticing when we display reactive behaviour in the form of overcompensation. the state can also be triggered when we become aware of a blind spot. now it is not only a doing-oriented task that is necessary, but a different way of being, or changing our attitude. we not only want to change something (what?) but have to include changing how we perceive the situation, or changing our attitude towards the situation or person. the easiest way to know how to bring about these adjustments is to ask ourselves why we need the change. “what is it that i need to learn to work (relate) with here? what is it i need to pay attention to? what is the intent i want to convey in the situation or with the person? what would the best attitude or mode of expression be?” when we discern the answers to these questions, we can adjust our actions, speech, or attitude accordingly.

being oriented

1. why am i here? (why is this happening, or repeating?)
2. who do i want to be towards this problem? (how do i approach this problem differently?)
3. what is needed in this situation? (what are the necessary actions, speech or attitudes?)

he who has a why to live can bear almost any how.​​​​

Friedrich Nietzsche

interior work/attention

as has been mentioned, our task is to expand our capacity for attention: to know what is happening in speech, emotion, thought, and action, from moment to moment, and not only when we choose to be present. it is also important to keep a record of our work, to remind ourselves, track our progress, and learn through reflecting on problems and their solutions.

and there is more to our work. you will remember that, in mindfulness practice, there is an emphasis on non-judgment (the quality with which we hold our experience). in learning to self-regulate, we’re not trying to find something that is “wrong.” instead, we are looking for things we have not noticed before, or not attended to before. when i notice that i was unkind, i may also realize that i’ve never noticed this before. it is then not a “wrong,” but rather something i don’t normally attend to.

we may feel fearful of looking into ourselves, especially if it is our habit to find solutions outside ourselves. we may also be scared to own the problem and be vulnerable about it. it may help to know that, if we do look inside, we won’t meet a monster there, but simply a deep hurt. and the more we understand that hurt, the more we can attend to it, learning to relate to it on its terms, rather than ours. any person who has walked that path will tell you that the beauty of it is not becoming free of the hurt, but learning to see its place and beauty. when we do this, we discover the space where we learn deeper meaning, or perspective. the interior is where we create compassion and wisdom. it is also the place where we mature.

so far, we have covered the importance of knowing our personality and its unconscious behaviors (overcompensation, blind spot). we then included the realization that, if we want different outcomes, we need to develop different inputs (problem-solving). this flowed into motivation, helping us to create the momentum needed to effect change. we were reminded that it is a constant process. one that we become better at with practice.

there are many areas in which we can focus our attention to allow maturation. in our next session, we’ll start looking into these.

if we are not actually trying to make a connection with reality — properly, generously, and gently — then every move we might make in our life is wrong.​​​​

Chögyam Trungpa​