[00:01] Welcome to The Focus B Show, where Katie Stoddart, high performance coach, interviews experts around the world in performance and mindfulness. Now, here's your host. Katie.
[00:32] Welcome to a brand new episode of the Focus B show. I'm very excited to be here with you today to discuss one of my absolute favorite topics, the enneagram. Now, unlike my Briggs or Disk or any other personality type indicators, the enneagram is based on our core motivation, desire, fears, and also how we manage our emotions. I have found it is the most accurate personality type indicator there is and have used it tremendously in a lot of my work. It's wonderful. So let's dive in. Let's go through the nine different type of personalities. Number one is the reformer. They are driven by a strong sense of integrity, and they fear chaos and things essentially not being right. They have very strict rules and are structured and disciplined. They're the Hermiones from Harry Potter of this world, and they tend to be perfectionists. These are number ones. Number two are the giver and the person that take cares of everyone. They put other people's needs above their own. They're extremely generous and friendly, and yes, they suffer a bit from not receiving as much from others, given how much they give. Tends to be nurses or people in that type of occupation. But they can do any job, really. It's just that their main motivation is to take care of other people. Number three are achievers performers. And these people are driven by a strong sense of success and being admired by others. They tend to be very hardworking, quite competitive, place a bit of importance on their appearance. They like things to look nice and feel nice. And they also have this issue where their own confidence comes from their achievements. So when they feel that they haven't achieved as much as they'd like, this is when their self confidence plummets. They suffer a lot from this hyperachiever syndrome. Number fours are the individualists. These people are highly creative. They enjoy drama. They take things very personally. All the artists that you can think of, the painters, such as Van Gogh, are fours. Very interesting character. Again, I could go really deeply into each of these, but this would be a very long episode if I did. Number five is the investigator. Highly analytical, also quite structured. They love to dive into the details of things, and they are the most intellectual of the nine types. They are driven by a strong sense of understanding, and these are the people who will get lost in analysis, paralysis by diving in once more to all these details. Number six are the loyalists. Their core motivation is security and certainty. They like to feel that things around them are certain, which is why they struggle to make decisions. They're also extremely loyal friends, and they are the hardest enneagram type to identify because they really have a lot of all the different personalities. One of the easiest way to find who is in the Agra six is to look at what drives their decision and if they are hesitating because they want to feel sure. Number seven is the enthusiast. Number sevens are the Peter Pans of this world. They are highly enthusiastic, friendly people who tend to have a lot of friends and hobbies and activities and they struggle with being focused. They touch on a bit of everything, jacks of all trades. So that's their main weakest point. Number eight is the challenger. They have very strong values and they like order. They tend to be in leadership positions. Their weakness is they are very direct. So if you put an eight and a four together, the four takes things personally and the eight is extremely direct. You can imagine that there could be some conflict there, which is why the inegham is so interesting, because once more it helps you to understand how we communicate together and how we can maybe change this to optimize our communication. And number nine, because there are nine personalities, is the mediator or peacemaker. These people really dislike conflict and are driven by peace in their communications of relationships. They tend to be quite creative and artistic with a very calm temperament, more on the introverted side of things. So if we look in terms of introverted, extroverted sevens would be very extroverted and friendly and fours would be also extroverted type artists, whereas nine would be more on the introverted type artists. Very different temperaments. So this is a very brief overview of one to nine. Now, it gets a lot more complex than this because in each enneagram type there are three subtypes, which is Sexual, Social and Conservative. Now, Sexual are people who really enjoy one on one interactions, social who really like being in a group, and Conservative that pay a lot of attention to how they manage their money and their time and all the different sort of aspects that you can measure and take care of. Now, if you are a certain type but your subtype is Sexual, Social, Conservative, this will also impact on your personality. And then there's also wings to each personality. So when we were looking at one, two, three, all the weights online, a one could be a one wing two or one wing nine. So if we look at one who's a reformer, who likes a lot of structure and this discipline, if they're one wing two, this means they'll have some of the aspects of the two. They'll be quite caring and generous. If they're one wing nine, they will have some of the aspects of the nine a calmer temperament, quite artistic, quite floaty, and we all have, of course, bits and pieces of all personalities. But there will be one that drives us more and that really is our fundamental personality. And what's interesting is the more that we work on our weaknesses, the more we look what's the weakness of our personality type? And we improve it, the harder it is actually to identify our personality type from the outside, because we'll no longer have the obvious weakness signs, so we'll be a lot more balanced on all types of personalities. This is why it is so extremely interesting to know your own eniaghan personality type, because this can help you tremendously with your own personal growth, with how you manage your emotions, what you struggle with. And I can guarantee that when you look through each of these more in depth, and there'll be a link in the show notes both to attest and to the details of these types, you will see when you look more in depth, how accurate it is. You'll be surprised to feel this is exactly what it's like in your world and in your own mind. And then it will help you to put together different pieces so that you can work on your anger. For example, if you're an eight or your control. Control issues tend to be very high in eight, and ones can work on your focus. If you're a seven, you can work on being more assertive. If you're a nine could work on having more boundaries if you're two, and not always giving, but also taking care of yourself, you can work on your hyperachiever syndrome and not basing everything on success, and maybe working a bit less hours if you're three. And if you're four, you could look at maybe not taking everything so personally and also investing more of your time and energy into artistic creations, because this is really where four thrives. Another five, you might want to look a bit at the overview and not always be stuck in details and maybe work on social skills. A lot of these things you might be aware that you need to work on. But once more, when you start to look into it more in depth, you will see different aspects of yourself that maybe you don't like, maybe you haven't admitted to yourself up till now. And this will be a huge benefit both in terms of emotional management, communication and any type of personal growth. It is really tremendous. So I hope from today's episode you've been able to identify your in airtime type. If not, the show notes will definitely help, and that this will really improve the way you interact with the world and your own understanding of yourself and others. Thank you very much for listening. Bye.
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