The Enneagram is ROCKING. MY. WORLD. this week.

This past weekend, I was away on my first trip without my children. I was with my best friends, three of them. Here they are. (Aren’t they cute?!) One of these gals knows a LOT about the Enneagram – have you heard about it?

As a Marriage & Family Therapist, she will at times use it as a tool to help clients better understand themselves and their responses to different people and situations. She loves it and wanted us to know more. Thus began a head-first dive into this thing called the Enneagram.

So what exactly IS the Enneagram?

Okay, so it’s NOT something that happens to a cat at the vet’s office. (Ha!)

(Be prepared to get a similar response when you start talking to your friends *or mom* about this).

In short, the Enneagram outlines 9 personality types, and everyone (it seems authors agree on this) emerges from childhood with one of these types as being their dominant type.

Of course, as life happens, your personality can be influenced by the millions of external factors that change us, creating a more complicated personality than can be put nicely into one little box. That being said, even in adulthood, most individuals will still strongly see themselves as their dominant type.

The 9 types are usually seen in a format such as this (which for me was a little disturbing as it looked kind of Satanic. It’s not, just FYI).

You’ll notice in the image that many of the types are connected. These connections end up being fascinating information, because though you are one dominant type, you can have tendencies of the other connected types when in periods of either stress or of health and growth.

A simple summary of each type is available on the Enneagram Institute website, found HERE:

Types:

• Ones are principled, purposeful, self-controlled, and perfectionistic.
• Twos are generous, demonstrative, people-pleasing, and possessive.
• Threes are adaptable, excelling, driven, and image-conscious.
• Fours are expressive, dramatic, self-absorbed, and temperamental.
• Fives are perceptive, innovative, secretive, and isolated.
• Sixs are engaging, responsible, anxious, and suspicious.
• Sevens are spontaneous, versatile, acquisitive, and scattered.
• Eights are self-confident, decisive, willful, and confrontational.”
• Nines are receptive, reassuring, complacent, and resigned.
  

The Enneagram may look simple, but is actually enormously complex. Many Enneagram teachers dedicate their lives to understanding it further. But we’ll keep it simple today for us beginners!

Why Learn Your Type?

Learning your Enneagram type can be a profound tool for transformation in your life. The day I learned my type, I felt like I was understood in a way that I had never been before. Instead of simply providing a description of my personality, the Enneagram went…deeper.

Once you learn your type, further study can help to increase your self-awareness and alert you when you are behaving in an unhealthy way for your type. With that information, you can begin to recognize patterns that are maybe self-destructive or creating conflict in your life And relationships. This knowledge can lead you to take steps toward becoming a healthier version of your God-given self.

Ready to learn more?!

How to Learn Your Enneagram Type

Here’s how it happened for me. On the trip I referenced earlier, after hours of personal sharing and soul-searching among us four friends, our Enneagram lover was curious what each of our Enneagram types would be. We obliged by immediately taking out our phones and powering through the relatively quick and painless ( & FREE) test that would likely give us our types. We took the “classic” version on this site: Eclectic Energies Enneagram Test. On the Enneagram Institute website (a favored source of Enneagram information) there is a more “official” version of the test which costs $12. I’ve also heard this test recommended, The Enneagram Paragraph Test, which is $10 and can be a more accurate indicator of your type. For this test, you write narratives in response to questions.

Most tests will tell you your dominant type, as well as your wing, so don’t be freaked out when you see that word. “Wing” is a cute little word to tell you which number next to your dominant number that you are most influenced by and/or resonate with most. It will likely be written as a second number, like 9w1. The 9, in this example, would be your dominant type, and the 1 would be your wing.

Whichever test you choose, follow the directions carefully. My friends and I asked each other what our responses should be to some of the questions (sometimes our close friends know us a little better than we know ourselves, especially if we struggle with self-awareness). So be sure to respond based on your most common tendencies in your past, rather than how you might be feeling or acting today.

Go ahead. Click it. Take the test. Come back here. I’ll wait.

*Twiddles fingers.* *Hums Taylor Swift song.* *Watches cute cat video.* *Watches cute Taylor Swift cat video*

Okay. Perfect. (Perrrrrfect? Um, anyway…)

Now you know your type! Hopefully. I say thaaaat because my friend also said that if your results were close between two options, sometimes the best way to determine your type is to read or listen to descriptions of each (which you can do here: The Type Descriptions), and whatever sounds most like you (which will often make you cringe or feel uncomfortable), is probably your type. So consider the test and your reading of the types before coming to your conclusion. Feel free to take extra time (days, weeks, etc) to settle on a type, as sometimes it’s not as straightforward as it initially looks, and this part of the process is important and shouldn’t be trivialized. Fortunately for me, it was CLEAR.

Now, what do I do with this information?

(*some of these links may be affiliate links, which means if you make a purchase by clicking them, I may earn some coffee money, at no added cost to you! Thank you so much for supporting my work here, friend!)

Once you have your type determined, (hooray!) I recommend that you don’t stop there.

There is SO. MUCH. TO. LEARN. that can help you (me).

Step 1.

Read a thorough description of your type. If you didn’t read through the description of your type before, do it now. My favorite, free descriptions are HERE on the Enneagram Institute page. Detailed and helpful, they provide a great framework for beginning to understand your type a little better. The description provides a breakdown of behaviors within your type, including when you’re acting healthy, average, or unhealthy for your type, which helps you check yourself.

Step 2.

Listen to your enneagram song. “Sleeping at Last” has created songs for each type on the Enneagram. The song for your type is certain to strike you to the core (*ahem*…make you curl up into the fetal position). These are on Spotify and can also be found on YouTube (do a search for “Sleeping at Last Enneagram type ____”). Be sure to watch with lyrics (or look the lyrics up). The songs are inspiring and so well done.

Step 3.

Dive Deeper. There are many next steps into diving deeper, so I’ll tell you about some of my favorites:

1. The Selfie Podcast on the Enneagram types. I listened to this podcast, which really helped me just solidify I had chosen the right type for me, as cringy as it was. These girls are former bloggers and a lot of fun. But here you can listen to descriptions of each. (PS – these gals and I are all type 3). The also did episodes about each type which are worth listening to!
2. The Road Back to You is a book I am currently listening to on Audible (I wish I had purchased it paperback because I want to COMB THROUGH IT). The author, Ian Morgan Cron, is lovely and relatable, (albeit slightly cheesy). However, I appreciate him and love that he states a list for each type to use to become a healthier version of their type. He is a Christian and also includes a section of spiritual growth strategies or challenges for each type.
3. Typology Podcast by Ian Morgan Cron (The Road Back to You author I just mentioned) is a candid look into his teachings and vastly different from his book. I appreciate that you can easily select podcasts that include interviews with individuals who are the type that you are wanting to learn more about. It’s upbeat, positive, and great for furthering your knowledge on the Enneagram.
4. The Sacred Enneagram is a book by Christopher L. Heuertz that comes highly recommended – a great place to start. Mine just arrived so I can’t tell you much more about it (yet!)
5. Follow Enneagram.life on Instagram to get some daily Enneagram inspiration!

Hopefully this helps you get started on what will be a lifelong journey of self-discovery. I mean that.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, I am a 3. I’m not proud of it. Come back next week and we’ll discuss in a promisingly self-serving post. (Sorry).

So, to be continued.

But tell me below…what’s your Enneagram type? Was the Enneagram a useful tool to you?! Can’t WAIT to hear!

Love you alllll!!!!