“Be here now” – But What if Now Sucks?

Be Here Now. The Power of Now. The Naked Now. These books capture current popular thought about the importance of being present to your own life. I am a huge proponent of this idea; I’ve written multiple posts about becoming aware, waking up out of our auto-pilot existence and truly living in each moment.

And still, the question above came to me today. I have more tasks than time right now, and I don’t actually want to do any of them. Prioritizing is hard. People around me are crabby. Now feels pretty sucky.

But here’s the thing. Now doesn’t get better by avoiding it. In our highly distractable culture, it’s easy to escape into my Twitter feed or Facebook page or numb out to streaming Netflix instead of being present to now. Those distractions don’t change the reasons why I feel negative about now.

So, instead of escaping into some happy veneer overlaying now, I choose to take the opportunity to think about WHY my current now feels sucky. As I do this, I see that I don’t like to be hurried because I fear making mistakes, and I know that when there is more to do than can be done, at least one person will be disappointed with me. That also makes me afraid. I see people feeling stressed (a fancy word for fear) and being unkind to others as a result; that makes me sad.

This is just what’s going on with me. You, of course, are triggered by different things and respond in different ways. It’s even possible that something tragic has happened in your life and you’re having a hard time dealing with it. That is okay. That is also now.

The idea behind being in the now is that you let each moment unfold as it does, rather than arguing with reality by insisting that things go your way. Being aware and present isn’t some hippy bliss fantasy; it involves a determination to actually experience your life rather than reacting to everything based on what’s happened in the past or anticipation of what might happen.

Being present, in short, is hard work. It takes practice. It’s a muscle that is seldom flexed and needs lots of conditioning. Lucky us, life keeps exposing us to things that knock up against our personalities – opportunities to practice. If we are willing to slow down even a little and observe our emotions and thoughts, we begin to see our behavior patterns in action. We “catch ourselves in the act,” as Riso & Hudson put it. We loosen the grip of our personalities and can make different choices. We draw closer to our true selves, to God and to our destinies. To me, that outcome is worth the hard practice.

Ultimately, it’s not that “now” sucks. It’s our reaction to it that does. With compassionate self-observation, we can learn to accept what is beyond our control and live with tremendous peace in the midst of what is.

Top Five UNtrue “Inspirational” Quotes

The more I learn and experience of the Enneagram of personality, the more I see the fallacy of many inspirational or motivational quotes. Like opinions, most of these quotes are not “one size fits all.” Instead, they tend to validate the personality filter you have, make you wish you could have that personality filter or smack up against your personality in a way that makes you dismiss the quote outright.

As I come across these untrue quotes, I save them for illustrative purposes. Here are five of them, in no particular order. I know the quote’s author in most cases, but I’m not out to shame anyone. We’re all doing the best we can, and the quotes were heart-felt and well-intentioned.

1. When you want something, all the Universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.

This sounds beautiful on the surface, but it is flatly untrue. First, there have been some things in my life that I’ve wanted desperately and worked really hard for, and…crickets. I’m sure this has been true at least once in your life as well. Also, if this were true, it would apply equally to serial murders, would-be dictators and so on. So, I’m super glad it’s not true. Second, the universe is not sentient; it doesn’t conspire to do anything. It was made by a sentient Creator, and not even he wants everything for you that you want.

2. All your dreams can come true, if you have the courage to pursue them.

If all it took were courage to succeed, my company would be a multi-million-dollar, international organization. History is full of people with courage whose dreams did not come true. There are a millions reasons why people succeed or don’t; courage is not the single determining factor. It sure helps, but it’s not the key. So, people who are courageous may take this quote and run with it, and be shocked if they fail. People who lack courage—certain Enneagram Types have a hard time with this attribute—may feel like they’re doomed to failure and not ever try.

3. Always do your best and you will find that you never need to compare yourself to others.

Ha! Tell that to a Type 3, whose entire raison d’etre is be better at something than others and gain recognition for it. Or to a Type 4, who constantly compares herself to others because she is certain that others have something she inherently lacks. In fact, all Types have a need to be known for being special in some way so that they will feel valued. And, in fact, the quote itself employs a bit of circular logic: how do you know what your best is if you’ve never compared what you do to some external standard? If you’re not comparing yourself to others, you are comparing yourself to your own standards – which were created by your subjective Inner Critic, based on its observations of the external world. That is, of others. Oy.

4. Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Hellen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson and Albert Einstein.

Nice try, but no cigar. Granted, Einstein did work as a patent clerk in his early 20s while writing his Theory of General Relativity, but then he got to spend the rest of his life at a job that enabled him to pursue his passion. And I’m pretty sure the wonderful Helen Keller didn’t work 40 hours a week, buy groceries and clean her house while squeezing in book writing and speaking tours on the weekend. In short, most of us do NOT have the same number of hours as famous people we admire. This quote has a sort of shaming edge to it, like “Don’t be a slouch. Your circumstances don’t matter. Get ‘er done.” Circumstances do matter, but by the same token, I hope they don’t dissuade you from pursuing what God has put on your heart to do and be. It may take longer than you’d like, but do it as you can. That’s what I’m doing.

5. A mistake that keeps being repeated is not a mistake – it’s a choice.

Nope, not this one, either. If you know it’s a mistake, and you make it anyway, did you actually have a choice? Who made that choice – you or your personality? When you are asleep to your personality, you have limited choices. It’s usually just one choice: act according to the impulse your personality is sending out, and do it NOW. Your personality actually limits your free will. This is why people repeat the same relationship with different people, for instance. It’s not so much a choice as a command.

All right, after all the myth-busting negativity, here’s one just for fun.

6. Fall down seven times, get up eight.

This is physically impossible! You can’t get up more times than you’ve fallen down – unless you were on the ground to begin with. But though the math is off, it’s a good point: keep getting up.

Have you ever read an “inspirational” quote that depressed you? Or have you found one that’s universally true? (They do exist.) If so, please share! And please keep doing the work of getting free of your personality’s grip so that you can find your true self, live your destiny and give God maximum glory with your life.

Toward Emotional AND Spiritual Health in the New Year

I recommended a post-election emotional cleanse, and now that the holidays have passed, I recommend a post-holidays one, too.

Because family dynamics are tricky, right? Being with family can be a joyful time of reliving cherished memories and creating new ones with the people we love most in the world. But is also lends itself to reverting back to childhood roles, opening old wounds and creating new ones. Some people have the same fight with the same relative every year. Others suffer in silent sorrow or anger.

For most people, it’s a mix of both. A huge factor in the unpleasant part of this equation is that people don’t tend to change much. Most people aren’t aware that change is necessary; they view the world through a certain filter and their way of seeing makes sense to them. It’s other people who don’t see things right. Personalities flare, and conflict ensues. Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it – and that goes for personal history, too.

I’ve been reminded of this maxim lately as I navigate the world of people in pain and conflict: “You can only be as spiritually mature as you are emotionally mature.” This is so profoundly true that I wish it were written on at least one wall of every sanctuary in the land. Its evidence lies in people with great theology and disastrous lives, and in people who have non-biblical theology because it suits their emotional bent better than what God’s word actually says.

I am not criticizing here; I am making an assessment of what I’ve seen in my 42 years as a Christian. Everyone is truly doing the best they are able to, and no one can do better until they gain self-awareness and the tools to get free of what negatively influences them. Undeveloped emotional health is why you may encounter someone who’s been a Christian for decades but still struggles with jealousy or rage or low self-esteem, for instance.

The Holy Spirit is pretty amazing at conforming our nature to that of Jesus. But we usually have to recognize that something in us needs conforming and then submit ourselves to his work. A Type One, for example, often has a hard time recognizing that perfectionistic righteousness is not the only game in town. A Seven may have a hard time mourning with those who mourn or even understanding that this is necessary. Our personalities select which parts of Christianity make sense to us and which to focus on. This lessens our experience of God, others and ourselves.

In addition, people have all suffered emotional pain that taints their experience. Those who have suffered abuse are often seriously emotionally stunted by their trauma. Interestingly, personal observation suggests that neglect and rejection have almost as serious an impact.

People in this group often endure ongoing suffering, and they are therefore more aware that their emotions need healing. For others, it’s not so clear. The analogy that comes to mind is of a broken guitar amp. God is playing all the notes you need to hear, but the sound comes out through your broken amp (emotional filter) so that the notes are distorted and/or you only hear some of them.

Let’s not stay this way. The world is waiting for us to be the amazing selves that lie at the core of our being, the selves God created. God calls us through Paul to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. That just happens to be where emotional maturity (or immaturity) resides. Will you make this the year that you grow emotionally? Learn the Enneagram. Get counseling if you’ve suffered trauma. Learn how to be still and quiet. Keep a judgements journal. Heck, you can even buy my audio program & journal, Know Yourself to Know God, which teaches on three of those four things. But this isn’t an ad for my stuff; it’s an earnest plea to grow toward your authentic self. Will this finally be the year?

We Are Desperately Afraid That We’re Unlovable

I had a really painful relationship conflict earlier this year, and though I’m mostly over it, the sharp sting of it has been jabbing me at random in the last two weeks. The sadness comes screaming back in with startling force. After the third episode, I figured that I needed to process this conflict a bit more.

Here’s what I realized, as I’ve realized many times before: When you get to the root of relationship issues, it’s really about fear. The reason this conflict was so painful was that the nature of it suggested to me that the person didn’t actually love me. This sent a tsunami of fear through me, because a) humans are meant for relationship but, more pertinent to the point here, b) we are all desperately afraid in the core of our being that we aren’t worthy of love.

So, this conflict reinforced the key lie of our existence, and I was devastated. As a Fear Type, the worst-case scenarios began to spiral up. Gut and Heart Types react differently, but the point is that we all share the same core lie.

How did this happen? How did we end up with this lie? I believe it comes from our fundamental disconnection from God. We were made for relationship with him, but our sin nature separates us from him. And that feels horrific. It’s an unlivable feeling. So our psyche kicks in and says, “I’ll handle this. I will make rules for you to follow so that you will be acceptable to the world. Just follow me.” And voila – the personality comes into being.

Now, when we say yes to Jesus, who alone is able to deal with that whole sin nature thing, that core lie doesn’t go away. Our eternal selves get saved, but our minds don’t automatically, do they? The concept of sanctification exists exactly because while the spirit’s salvation is instantaneous, the soul’s (which includes the mind) is not.

There is a huge gap between what our heads know and what our hearts know. That gap is created by the personality. So, we can have all kinds of good theology in our heads and still be devastated by a relationship crisis. We can “know” God loves us unconditionally and still “know” in our inner being that we’re not worthy of love and had better behave or else.

One of my favorite verses is one that is perennially taken out of context: 1 John 4:18. “Perfect love casts out fear.” Most people use this to combat fear in general, because they don’t understand the context provided by the rest of the sentence: “because fear has to do with punishment.” John is trying to help people understand grace and the nature of God’s love, not telling them to stop being afraid of spiders etc. The next sentence makes this quite clear – I’m quoting the New Living Translation because it’s so beautifully plain: “If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love.”

We fear punishment because our personalities are based on a system of Law that does not understand perfect love. We fear that we are not inherently lovable because we know in our core that we are incapable of keeping the personality’s Law.

So, I’ll bring this back to my own story now. I was hurt and deeply saddened by this conflict, but those emotions were covering over the deeper emotion of fear. I fear because I have not been able to fully grasp just how beloved I am. I know all the right verses, but they have not yet worked their way down to the part of me where the lie of unlovability lives.

How can we change this dilemma? As I said, knowing Scripture is a huge part of the answer, but another huge part is understanding how our particular personality operates. This is why I study and teach the Enneagram and why I practice stillness every day. Greater self-awareness helps us to overcome fear of not being lovable. This makes interpersonal conflicts much less scary. I am convinced that this self-knowledge and these practices help us experience “his perfect love” and even be able to extend that kind of love to others. That’s a journey worth taking, in my book.

What Does it Mean to Be Awake, and How Do You Get There?

“Awakening isn’t simple. What is simple is our part in it…You are not responsible for your own awakening. But it is a gift you can receive, and there are things you can do to increase that possibility. In any moment you can choose to pay attention.” –Dr. David G. Benner, Spirituality and the Awakening Self

Humans like to earn stuff. The Olympics, the Academy Awards, scout badges, employee of the week – you name it, we want to earn it. At a scholarship pageant in high school, I won the talent competition with an a cappella rendition of “Stormy Weather.” That made me feel pretty good. I competed for plenty of accolades before and after, too. It’s expected. It’s assumed. It feels good. It’s what we do.

We like to earn our salvation, too. We grow up learning the lists of do’s and don’ts, seeing who can memorize the most Bible verses, faithfully attending church and having devotional times and volunteering at church functions…and so on. In all this religious scurry, the idea creeps in that these good deeds are what keep us on God’s good side.

Grace is hard for us. That’s because our Inner Critic is law-based. The personality is the soul’s attempt to organize and live out a life apart from direct contact with God. The Inner Critic does its best to play the part of the Holy Spirit, nudging us to do this and not do that, but it’s a poor substitute. It follows a set of self-created rules that cannot comprehend the unearned kindness of God.

This is almost certainly why most of us don’t get to the “awakening” phase of existence that Dr. Benner speaks of in the quote above. Awakening is not a New Age term here; it just means waking up from the sleepwalk of our limiting, habitual behavior patterns so we can see our true selves and God more clearly. It’s not something we can earn or make happen, and that is anathema to our standard operating procedure. It doesn’t seem to make sense. We make all kinds of things happen – why not this, too? “Surely,” the argument goes, “if I apply myself, create a schedule and try really hard, I can create my own awakening.”

Herein lies the central paradox. We cannot awaken ourselves, precisely because awakening is not based on action. It is based on a kind of inaction that most of us find abhorrent: sitting still and being quiet. This simple yet often excruciating act (at least, initially) facilitates what Dr. Benner means by paying attention. Stillness teaches us how unstill and noisy our minds are, shows us how we fill our brains with useless “action” and live on the autopilot set forth by our personality type. As we practice being still, a measure of quiet comes, and we can begin to hear the still, small voice of the God who lives inside us and even the voice of our true selves.

Paying attention requires great courage. That’s why it is so seldom undertaken. In my work with individuals, I find that this step is the one people are most resistant to and least likely to do. And that’s tragic, because I have become convinced, as Dr. Benner makes plain, that transformation is not possible without it.

Choosing to be still, to begin to pay attention, is one of the few things in life you get to decide. You can’t make awakening happen, but you can make room for its happening – or, as a friend would say, for the action of grace. If you’re tired of trying to earn everything, accept grace where it can be found. Lose your (false) life and you will find it (your real life). Be strong and courageous; learn to be still.

I’ve created a 2017 Stillness Pledge and hope you’ll join me. It’s simple: Pledge to yourself that you will devote five minutes a day—to start with—learning to be still. This video is a great place to start. Increase by a minute every week until you get to 20 minutes. And watch the transformation unfold! Please let me know in the comments below, on Facebook or on Twitter that you’ve joined in so we can all support each other.

Surviving Relationship Devastation with the Enneagram

I am going through an extremely difficult family relationship challenge. It feels like a piece of my heart just died. In periods of intense pain like this, I am profoundly grateful for two things: the presence of the Holy Spirit and the Enneagram.

The Holy Spirit literally surrounds me with his tangible love and with the constant reminder that there is always hope because nothing is impossible for God. I have rarely, if ever, found it helpful to talk to other people about relational struggles – maybe because I’m low Social, maybe because I’m a Head Type. But I am never alone in times of pain, and that is a tremendous help.

How the Enneagram figures in is a bit more complex, but I’ll try to articulate it. First, understanding my Type helps me observe how my personality is reacting to this devastating situation. For instance, I can see the fear spiral of projected worst-case scenarios beginning: Does this person even love me? Is s/he going to abandon our relationship? What will life be like without her/him? Because I understand that this is how my personality operates, I can (eventually) choose not to indulge this thought behavior. That lessens my fear.

Second, understanding the other person’s Enneagram Type is immeasurably helpful. And I don’t mean the textbook knowledge of what a Two or a Nine is, for example. I mean really knowing the person deeply and understanding the specific ways in which Type is influencing their behavior at this time. This keeps me from demonizing the person or unleashing the fear-inspired vitriol my personality would like to spew out. Also, for the most part, it helps me to not take everything being said personally. Yes, there are kernels of truth here and there to learn from, but in this instance, I can see how my family member’s Type is warping external input, overemphasizing some things while ignoring others.

This enables tremendous compassion at a time when I really just want to scream and defend my (false) self by pointing all of this stuff out – in other words, weaponizing the Enneagram. So, the wisdom inherent in this system helps me avoid using it as lighter fuel on an open flame. It reminds me that we cannot fix ourselves, that each of us is doing the absolute best we can in any moment. There is plenty of reason for sadness, but no reason for blame.

Third, the Enneagram helps me understand how to relate to this person going forward. The gift of this devastation is that of clarity. I understand now that my assumption about my relationship with this family member was wrong; I was living a sort of lie. And isn’t that why we do the hard work of self-uncovery – to stop living the lie spun up by our psyche? So I know now what to say and how to say it, and what things not to say at all.

If you haven’t studied the Enneagram yet, I hope this post has given you an idea of just how helpful it can be – and this is in only one area of life. If you have studied, please share from your own life how this model of human behavior has been of help.

The Post-Election Cleanse: How to Center and Move Forward

Well, we made it. The election is over, and we survived. It’s likely that half of you are elated at the seemingly miraculous Trump win, and the other half are devastated by the Clinton loss. For some, you didn’t vote for either of the two main candidates because you were already devastated that these were the choices you had. But we lived through it and now, as Hillary Clinton, president-elect Donald Trump and Barak Obama all said, it’s time to heal the divide.

Now, most of us aren’t in positions of political power; we aren’t the power brokers who can reach across the aisle and make concessions to push deals through. Instead, I’m talking about healing your own heart and any divides you may have created in your relationships at work, at church and at home.

Easier said than done, I know. But here are a few practical things you can do to cleanse your emotional system:

1. Practice stillness: Let go of the noise of news commentators, social media and the voices in your head (especially the Inner Critic). It’s super-easy right now to be gloating and snarky or angry and disappointed; choose not to take that wide path. Sit quietly, eyes closed, with just your own presence. Feel your own breath. Reconnect with the feeling of existing in the eternal now of God.
2. Pray: I’m talking the time-consuming, real-deal, speaking as well as listening kind of prayer. Do some soul-searching. After all, that’s where your personality is, the source of all conflict. Ask God to show you where you missed the mark in how you interacted with others, and if you’re in pain, give that to him. He loves to take it away. If there’s somebody you need to forgive, do that.
3. Mend fences: You may have been right on every point. You may even have received divine revelation about God’s will for this election (which I totally believe is possible, by the way). But, as The Enneagram Institute’s Russ Hudson says, “The cost of being right is love.” For every unloving social media post, send out two filled with compassion and hope. If you’ve argued with someone, what kind act of service can you render them? Write a note or tell them in person that your passion overcame your compassion and that you’d like to start over.
4. Take a break from responsible adulthood: Whether or not your candidate won, it’s been a long 18 months with a lot of emotion and sometimes hard decision-making. Here in California, for instance, the voter guide was 223 pages long! That’s a privilege and an awesome responsibility, and it makes us tired. So, if you haven’t already, do something for yourself that is joyful and life-giving. Me? I’m going Christmas shopping with family this weekend.

If you have any other suggestions on how to get centered and move forward, please share them!

Please, Christians, Don’t Fear the Enneagram

I was beyond pleased to see an article about the Enneagram appear in Christianity Today recently. It gives me hope that the Body of Christ is more fully embracing this excellent tool as an aid to self-knowing, God-knowing and transformation. That’s not currently the case in my own church, and I know I am not alone, so I’ve pulled a section from the book I’m writing to talk about what the Enneagram is NOT in the hopes of providing clarity – and, if necessary, talking points for your church’s leadership.

First, let’s consider the troublesome symbol. It looks ever-so-vaguely like a pentagram, but it is NOT. Penta is Greek for “five,” and ennea is Greek for “nine.” The word “gram” means “drawing.” So, enneagram just means “nine drawing.” It’s a picture of nine points, all of them connected by lines. Each of these lines means something; they are not arbitrary or optional. Each point represents one of the nine personality types. That’s it.

Second, the Enneagram is not a religion. People of many faiths, and no faith, learn and benefit from the Enneagram. It’s like anything else in life: you bring you worldview to whatever you encounter. So, there are books and classes on the Enneagram from a Buddhist perspective or a New Age or Christian perspective. But it is not a faith-based system. It’s just a thing that is true, like the sky being blue or the Earth rotating on its axis or me hating beets. All truth is God’s truth; if a thing is true, it is because God made it to be so. The human mind was fashioned in such a way that it falls into one of nine ways of being and of experiencing the world. I hope you will trust me when I say that as you delve into this model, you will quickly see how amazingly accurate and specific and true it is.

Third, the Enneagram is not a replacement for the Holy Spirit. It’s not as if you will learn a model of human behavior that gives you such clarity that you no longer need the guidance and counsel of the Spirit. No such model exists; we were never intended to be without the Spirit in our lives.

This brings me to the fourth point: the Enneagram is not THE answer. It is an incredible tool for knowing the self and knowing God, but it is not the only tool or resource. As my husband describes it, the Enneagram is the rocket engine you add to your tricycle of self-awareness. You can pedal your tricycle on its own and will eventually arrive at your destination, but the rocket engine will get you there a lot faster.

Fifth, the Enneagram is not your typical personality test. It is not a feel-good list of strengths. It can be and is used in corporate settings to help individuals become better leaders and help teams work more effectively. However, it is not a list of static descriptors that determine who you will be for the rest of your life.

Sixth, the Enneagram is not an opportunity to put yourself or others in a box. Just because you know someone’s personality type doesn’t mean you automatically know everything about them. It doesn’t give you license to ascribe positive or negative attributes to people based solely on their type. It’s easy, in the beginning, to turn your knowledge of this model into a weapon that hurts people. Cron & Stabile call this “number-thumping.”

One final note: some people think that the Enneagram involves astrology. Nope. I don’t know a thing about astrology, and I’ve been studying and teaching the Enneagram for a decade plus. You can add any ancillary accessory to the Enneagram, just like you can paint your car purple. The car is not inherently purple; that’s something you added. So, some people may want to add on to the Enneagram, but that’s totally unnecessary, because the system works just great without it. I saw a link online once to someone using the Enneagram with Vedic astrology (whatever THAT is), but again, that’s about someone bringing his or her worldview to whatever they encounter.

I hope this was helpful. Have you heard any of the above myths, or different ones? Have you experienced opposition to the Enneagram? If so, please share!

Before You Vote, Read THIS

I come across all kinds of things on the interwebs. Here’s a statement I saw today: “Human beings tend to be emotionally charged and factually drained, causing them to be irrational.” Yep, I thought, that about sums it up. And I also saw today a photo of two young women holding up a sign at a rally that read, “Trust Women.” Yep, I thought, irrational.

Not because women aren’t capable of being trusted, but because the idea that the number of X chromosomes one has determines one’s trustworthiness is irrational – and, in fact, sexist. Of course, there’s a larger sentiment beneath that two-word sign, but the wording of the sign isn’t helping.

The book Predictably Irrational looks at human behavior through the lens of the brain’s physiology, using research, experiments and anecdotes to explain why we are less rational than we would like to believe. It’s a bit of a blow to the ego (i.e. personality), but that’s always a good thing.

I bring this up because it’s almost Election Day and because every day is a good day for self-awareness. Once you understand how irrational you often are, the door to self-awareness is opened a bit wider. So, let’s all think about why we believe what we believe in the political arena – particularly in light of our Enneagram type.

Now, I know that this can be extremely difficult. People believe that their way of seeing and experiencing the world is correct (thanks, Inner Critic), so they will rationalize—to attempt to make rational that which is not necessarily—almost anything so that it conforms to their worldview and they can feel good about what they feel and how they think. We are constantly propping up or defending the personality we’ve become so identified with.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the current election cycle. For example, if you are a One who believes that the lofty end justifies any means, you will set up your own email server and lie about the classification of emails sent and received. If you are an Eight who’s focused on power and control, you will brag about assaulting women and chide your opponent for being sick because it’s a sign of physical weakness.

Our presidential candidates are stuck in their Type, just like most of us. It’s easy to vilify one or both of them, since their actions are writ large for all to see. The point is, if we’re not careful, we will filter our political stance and voting decisions based on our assumptions, level of emotional health and the lie at the core of our Enneagram type.

And Christians, don’t assume that because you love Jesus, you are automatically right. We filter our faith through our personality type and our irrational brain physiology, too. Our need for security and strong leaders may cause us to focus on those issues above all others, while if our personality focuses on compassion for others, we may feel convinced that social issues are of primary importance. And so on and so forth. Each of the nine Types can find Scripture to back up their position.

It’s hard to find balance. Yet that’s what we need, perhaps now more than ever. So, before you vote, I hope you will join me in re-examining the WHY behind our political convictions. Maybe there’s something we’ve missed. Maybe there’s a way of looking at the other party’s stance on a particular issue we hadn’t thought of before. This exercise will probably not change your mind—though let yourself be open to that possibility—but perhaps it will help you see beyond your own personality filter. That’s always a good thing. And perhaps it will help you have compassion on people whose deeply held convictions are the opposite of yours. That’s always a good thing, too.

Five Videos on the Enneagram to Watch

I sometimes wish I’d become a librarian, because they have contributed a lot to my enjoyment of life, and to my knowledge base. Especially when I was a child, a good recommendation was gold to me. So, in the spirit of sharing resources, here are a few videos I’ve come across that you might like.

Ian Morgan Cron and Suzanne Stabile recently came out with a series of videos to promote their excellent book, The Road Back to You. In this one, the authors talk about the Enneagram and church. Cron used to pastor a church, and Stabile’s husband is a pastor, so this is 2:55 of wisdom from the trenches. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rJTiFVI3RE

At 1:40:38, this video’s a bit of an investment, but really interesting. Peter O’Hanrahan, a faculty member of Enneagram Worldwide and the most soft-spoken Eight I’ve ever met, discusses the history of the Enneagram: http://www.typologycentral.com/forums/vbtube_show.php?tubeid=253

From enneagram.co.uk, we get a great bit of insight on how the Enneagram can help us to resolve conflicts by understanding how others experience things differently than we do and react from their own inner drive (2:58): http://www.typologycentral.com/forums/vbtube_show.php?tubeid=86

Here’s a short video (3:38) from Leslie Hershberger about each Type’s idealization or self-concept and how that shows up for each of us. I like how she points out that there are nine Enneagram Types but billions of people, so you will “do” your Type uniquely:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6n9-sv-498

And finally, the Inner Critic doll video (1:15). This is the one I’d really love to get your feedback on, because I just don’t know how to feel about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPxjycCY6Ig

Please let me know how you liked or didn’t like any of these videos. Also, please share resources that you’ve found helpful!