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After several weeks of travel and holiday celebrations, I’m back with the final installment of the series, “What if?” The basic premise of the series is this: Transformation is not becoming someone different than who we are. Transformation is discovering and remembering who we truly are. The problematic patterns of our lives—our dysfunctions and self-defeating…

Transformation is not becoming someone different. Transformation discovering and remembering who we truly are. The problematic patterns of our lives—our dysfunctions and self-defeating habits—are a distortion of who we are created to be. They are not our true self. Growth and transformation are all about getting into contact with our essence. The process consists of…

In our pursuit for personal growth and improvement, we are actually seeking what we already possess. Wise teachers remind us that the personal growth and transformation we long for doesn’t come by addition (trying harder to live up to expectations, taking on new goals, etc.) but by subtraction—relaxing our type structure and allowing our true…

“We cannot heal what we do not acknowledge.” Richard Rohr “Waking up is hard to do.” We continue identifying the blind spots of each Enneagram Type. Awareness of our blind spots is crucial for our growth because it’s so easy to slip back into old, unproductive and self-defeating habits. This is what the Enneagram system…

“We cannot heal what we do not acknowledge.” Richard Rohr “Waking up is hard to do.” In this blog post, we continue identifying the blind spots of each Enneagram Type. Awareness of our blind spots is crucial for our growth because it’s so easy to slip back into old, unproductive and self-defeating habits. We often…

“We cannot heal what we do not acknowledge.” Richard Rohr Each Enneagram Type contains the paradox of the both-and. What we call our Enneagram Type contains incredible strengths and gifts. The intricate and complex strategies of our personality structure empower us to survive perilous times, overcome our fears and successfully navigate life’s challenges with a sense…

“Often, seeing the root causes of a habit—why it exists and what it is designed to do—is enough to allow you to break out of the pattern. In other cases, with more entrenched habits, knowing how and why they operate as defenses can be a first step to eventually being able to release them” (Beatrice…

“Self-observation aims to create enough internal space to really watch—with fresh eyes and adequate distance—what you are thinking, feeling and doing in your everyday life,” Beatrice Chestnut, The Complete Enneagram. As many young boys do, Terrance idolized his father. As a six-year-old, he tagged along with his dad every chance he got. One day dad…

“If we have the courage to be honest with ourselves about the things we know we do, the things we avoid knowing we do, and the adaptive strategies that ultimately limit us . . . If we can recognize the Shadow cast by our personality, consciously bear the suffering we normally defend against, and accept…

“The Enneagram’s greatest gift to us is growth—and not growth in the capitalistic, productivity-metric sense, but growth more in the sense of thriving and flourishing” (Abi Robins, The Conscious Enneagram). As highlighted in the previous post, the transformative work of the Enneagram is rooted in our inherent value and sacredness. Transformation is the process of…