Enneagram Bascis: The Centers of Intelligence

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Transcript

Speaker 2: 0:09

Welcome to the Live A Vibrant Life podcast. I'm life coach Kelly Titz, and each week I'll be here to encourage and equip you with the tools you need to grow in self-awareness and invest your best energy in your dreams and your purpose. I believe self-awareness changes everything. Let's get started.

Speaker 3: 0:30

Hey friends.

Speaker: 0:34

we are on session two of Enneagram basics. Last week we talked a little bit about what the Enneagram is and how people have these instincts that drive our behavior as humans. The reason I start with instincts is this is what flavors your Enneagram number. So some of us, the very first time we hear information about the Enneagram, we have an aha moment and we understand ourselves and we almost. Within a little bit of time, find our number. Other people, when your instinct is different than the instinct that normally flavors your Enneagram number makes it a little bit different. So I just want to take one moment and remind you of the three instincts and see if you notice either. That is not true of me, which is often what, as humans, we discover first that is not true, or a hundred percent this is what I think is true about myself because that little bit of information will help you later. So as humans, we need all three of these instincts, or we could not survive. So we need self-preservation, the ability to take care of ourselves. Do you notice what the weather's gonna be? Do you take that umbrella with you? Do you keep the house nice and warm? Are there blankets and extra food everywhere? Would people generally save about you? They'd say. You're very grounded and practical. This is the instinct that drives my behavior. And if you spent time with me, you'd say she's a pretty practical, grounded person. The next instinct is the social instinct. And this is when you take care of everybody else first, the y'all before me, and you're in your church group, or you're part of a girl scout or a sports team, and you just always find your heard. And so again, we need all three of these, but which one is primarily driving your behavior? If this is, people would often say, you're so positive, you're warm and open and engaging. I. And then the third instinct is the one-to-one connection. It's the drive for intimacy. Intimacy into me. See, getting to know people, having them feel seen and known. You prefer intense stimulation. You're like, Hey, let's go rock climbing, or ride that motorcycle. And generally you are the energized person in the group. People would never say you're the back of the room person. You're the front and you're the energy. So see if you just noticed anything from those three. And if you haven't yet, nothing's gone wrong. We'll talk about it after. So today we're going one layer deeper in the Enneagram, and that is the centers of intelligence. So as human beings, we all think. And feel and somatically process things in our body. You notice that stomach ache, that tightness in your jaw, and when you are processing your body, it helps you know what to do. So do you think first feel first or know first? That's what we're trying to notice today. Again, you're gonna use all free. If you were with me in person, I just did this workshop a few weeks ago, I would give you three Legos. And I would say one is the bottom. It's the foundational Lego. It's the reason why you do life the way you do. The next one you would put on top of that, and that's the one you can access if you have good energy. And then at the top is the third. And that's hard. Even with therapy and with lots of coaching, it's not a natural place for you to go. So as a human being. I'm an Enneagram two. I process life by feeling and then I sort of know what to do. And finally, I think now that says nothing about my intelligence. I can tell you I'm very smart. I've always gotten excellent grades. I can read quickly, I can discern information, but when I'm processing the information of life, I don't think about it. I feel something and then I have a knowing. So we're gonna look a little bit at these three and talk about the balance. What does it look like when your dominant center isn't the only center processing information? When you have awareness and intention and you begin to be somebody who's healthier in the way that you think and feel and do life? So I have a little graph here, which is a circle split in two thirds, and each third is called a triad. And there's three numbers in each of these triads. So the first one at the top is the body. It's the somatic knowing, the eight, nine, and one path on the Enneagram. Next we have the heart or the feeling center, the twos, threes, and fours on the Enneagram. And then next to that we have the head or the thinking center, and those are the fives, the sixes, and the sevens. And so the first thing we're trying to notice is how do we naturally and habitually process information? How do you just naturally respond to the information of life? The phone rings and it's the middle of the night. Do you think something, do you feel something? Is your body processing what to do or what not to do? So if you're in the Thinking Center, are you noticing now that you tend to analyze things? If you're in the Feeling center, you're feeling the emotions, and if you're in the body center, your gut is driving your behavior? I think what's really interesting is when we don't know that other people aren't doing it like us, we assume everybody does. So you must have that friend who's come to you before and said, just trust your gut. That person is probably an eight, nine, or one. Someone else who's just encouraging you to feel your feelings and write them down and paint them. And dance might be in the Feeling center and someone else who's trying to stay very logical and helping you find the logical answer is probably a five, a six, or a seven. So here's a few questions. Again, we don't know ourselves well. Almost every human is walking through life with a lot of just. An unaware energy about why do we think and feel and do life the way we do? We might act one way at work. Completely differently when we're with our family of origin and then differently with a group of friends. So even as you're doing these questions, this is the first time you're hearing this, you might be answering the way you think your second grade teacher would want you to answer, or how you think somebody that invited you to this program might want you to answer. So it's okay if you don't know in your own body, in your own heart, in your own mind, what your. Real true answer is we're just beginning to notice. But as you grow in self-awareness, I like to think of it like a set of spiral staircases going up in, um, a treehouse or someplace fun. As you're growing in self-awareness, this becomes a little bit easier. It does not mean anything. If you don't have great answers today, or it feels hard, or you're unsure, you are starting your path to self-awareness. That's what's so exciting. So some of these are gonna be easier, some will be a little bit harder. Okay, so the first one, again, if you didn't do this, pick a different example of when you had to make a decision, but after high school, did you decide to pursue work or go to college? If you did, how did you make that decision? And again, your family of origin may have really played a big part or a teacher or a coach. It might be hard to know how you decided, but did you take out a piece of paper and write a pro and con list? Did you just get really excited and sort of fall in love when you went to that job or in that college location? Or did you just instinctively know in your body this is what you wanted to do? The second question, when you have to make a choice, like what to go do, um, for the weekend if it's going to rain. Do you look for information to guide you to get out your apps and start to look at the weather channel? Do you just notice how you're feeling and how the people around you are feeling? Or do you just intuitively in your body say, I know what I need to do, and you go and do it When you're having a family conversation and the people are there and. Everyone's getting really lively and engaged. How do you stay engaged? Do you need the facts and the data that support your viewpoint? You've been in those conversations where two people have two very different information and different opinions about something. Do you need your facts and your data? Do you need to. Really care more about the relationship than being right and notice how they're feeling and how you're feeling. Or is it just a knowing in your body of when to speak and when to be quiet? If you wrote a a lot, it's probably because you are thinking your answers through. If you spent a lot of time and noticed a lot of bs, you might be a heart-centered energy, and if you're answering a lot of Cs, you might be noticing that your body or your knowing is guiding your answers. So again, all human beings think and feel and do. So what if you're noticing today one of these is probably not it? Then you've narrowed it down from nine possible paths to six. That's really exciting. Um, maybe you're starting to notice a pattern here. If you're an Enneagram five, six, or seven, you're gonna notice that most of the time when you are processing information in life, you're thinking about it, you notice that you tend to worry. Do you have enough? Are you safe? Um, and your desire is security. Whether that is an intellectual security, you've got your facts on your side. It's a financial security. Five sixes and sevens tend to have a common struggle, which is worry, and a common desire, which is security, and they tend to process the information of life by thinking about it, by having the data, by having information. Any grams, twos, threes and fours tend to struggle with shame. We call it guilt, but guilt is when you do something wrong. Shame is just, I am wrong. I'm not a good enough daughter, mother, friend. And their common desire is the validation of their identity. And so if you can feel other people's feelings and your feeling things all the time, it can get very, very exhausting. See, if you notice that that might be true of you, you tend to engage in life and the circumstances of life by feeling your way through it. You notice when someone else is sad or happy, frustrated, and you are finding that most of your decisions come from a place of either being emotionally aligned and enthusiastic, calm and connected, or you're out of alignment and you're feeling things like overwhelmed and frustrated and depleted. Then eights, nines and ones tend to process life and engage in the circumstances of life through their body, through their gut, through a knowing, and their common struggle is rage. Now, rage. We often call anger, but anger is such a good emotion. It's saying, Hey, that boundary that I set was crossed. You said you'd be here at eight. It's nine o'clock. I'm feeling angry. That's good information. Rage actually moves us from that place of good information to the light in me no longer sees and honors the light in you. It happens all the time when we're driving, doesn't it? Somebody does something that's wrong. We move from anger to you shouldn't have cut me off to rage, I'm gonna drive you off the road. Now obviously we don't go that far, but you understand rage and anger very different. But that's the struggle. It's in your gut. Things are either right or wrong, and you just have a knowing about it. And the struggle is rage. And what you're desiring is justice. That there'd be justice in this world, that the things that should be are the way that they are. So that's a lot of information, isn't it? I want you to think of it like this cake. Or three Legos, there's a layer on the bottom, and that's your foundational way of doing life. Then there's the second layer, and as long as you're healthy, you're accessing that on a regular basis. But to get to that third layer, you need a lot of energy. It needs to be aligned, and you might even need tools that you don't currently have. So my favorite story to talk about this is my husband and I been together 32 birthdays this week and we think, feel, and do life completely differently, but we didn't know that about each other. And so he processes life through his thinking center. He is in Enneagram six. He's looking for security. He's trying to avoid worrying about things. I'm an Enneagram too. I process life through my heart, through my emotions. Then we both have secondary access to the body center, that 8, 9 1 gut information, knowing what to do. And then the third part of being a human that he has access to is his feelings. And the third part for me is my thinking. So if we went for a walk together and we live on a pretty quiet place, so generally there are no cars, and then out of nowhere a car comes really quickly up my road, I'm going to feel scared. Move and then think, which way should I move? He's gonna think, which way should I move? Then move and then notice the feeling of fear. That's what I mean about being a human. We're all doing this completely differently, right? You might begin to notice today, I am a feeler, then a thinker, then a doer, and my boss tends to just intuitively know what to do, then they think about it, and then they notice feelings. When we connect, it's like they don't see me. I'm not known. When we don't understand ourselves, it's really hard to have empathy and connection to other people. That's why we wanted to spend a little bit of time today talking about the centers of intelligence. Next week we will go one layer deeper and talk about our energy types.

Speaker 4: 13:28

Thank you for joining the Live A Vibrant Life podcast. I hope our time together encourage you and we'll equip you with the tools you need to move into the vibrant life you desire. I'm here to help you live a brave, creative. Purpose-filled life. And if you'd like to learn more, you can follow me on Instagram or Facebook, Kelly tibbits life coach, or visit my website kelly tibbits.com. I look forward to connecting

Speaker 5: 13:52

again soon.