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Towards Eden, an Enneagram Podcast
Welcome to Towards Eden Enneagram, a show where we dissect our Enneagram types so we can understand ourselves and have way better relationships.
The Enneagram is a tool that illuminates our motivations, our blind spots, and the differences between myself and others.
We can use it to see ourselves more clearly and to get healthier.
The Enneagram isn’t about what we do. It’s about WHY we do what we do.
Towards Eden, an Enneagram Podcast
#26 - A Book Q&A with Jeff Cook from Around the Circle
Jeff Cook joins me to talk about his brand new Enneagram book, “Around the Circle: An Enneagram Book.”
The book asks nine key questions, like “What do I want?” and “How do I solve my problems?” The authors go around the circle, answering each question for all nine Enneagram types.
The Around the Circle podcast has been around since 2019, hosted by Jeff Cook and Tj Wilson. They’ve compiled their insights from years of studying and podcasting into this debut book (they have four more books planned for the series).
Jeff Cook is a longtime professor of philosophy and the author of three books exploring ethics and personal growth. He taught virtue, existentialism, postmodernity and philosophy of religion for over a decade at the University of Northern Colorado and currently co-hosts a handful of Enneagram podcast, including "Around the Circle," "Start Here," and "Movie Typing."
Jeff lives in Greeley, Colorado with his wife and their two cheagles dogs.
📚 Here are all 9 questions from the book:
1. Who am I?
2. What do I want most?
3. How do I get what I want?
4. Where do I struggle most?
5. What are the biggest obstacles that I have?
6. How do I connect with people?
7. How do I solve problems?
8. How do I see the world?
9. What are my gifts?
Check out Jeff & Tj’s content at their Patreon site here.
Around the Circle Podcast - listen here
Buy “Around the Circle: An Enneagram Book” on Amazon.
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The Road Back to You by Ian Cron- start here to find your type
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Email me 📩
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This guide is a great quick-reference to help you remember the types.
Today, my guest is Jeff Cook from Around the Circle Podcast, which is an Enneagram podcast that's been around since 2019. And they also have a separate podcast series called Start here, which is all about finding one's type. And now Jeff and his co-host, tj, have just published their first book. So the book is called Around the Circle, an Enneagram book. It was just published in June 2025. And today we'll be talking about this book. Jeff Cook, thank you for being here.
Speaker 2:Elise, thank you.
Speaker 1:Can you please introduce yourself, introduce Around the Circle. What do you want people to know about you?
Speaker 2:Sure, my name is Jeff Cook. I was a longtime professor of philosophy at the University of Northern Colorado and transitioned to doing a lot more Enneagram work post COVID. Covid kind of ended up being a great transition point for me to do something else, and so last few years we've really put in a lot of energy into doing both Enneagram and trying to create more of a hub for other creators as well. So that's really what I'm into now. So our book, our first book, is one of five and it's mostly on typing, typology, and the structure of our book is teaching Enneagram through nine big questions. How do you solve problems? What do you want? How do you uh, how do you connect with other people? What are your gifts? Things like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, great. Um, I have spent the week reading this book, so I am excited to talk more about it, read some content, ask some questions. Um, I do want to tell a story about my memorable moment with your podcast, which is I must have discovered your podcast a couple years ago and then, early on, it was in the middle of my husband and I reading the lord of the rings series. And then my parents live down in nashville and it takes us seven hours to drive there.
Speaker 1:So I found in your podcast this series about typing the enneagram types of the lord of the rings characters come on it's just this crazy niche, nerdy situation where you're gonna have like a few people who really love it and then then I happen to be one of those people. So we spent a road trip listening to these episodes, which are so funny but also so entertaining, and it's like it was you and TJ made your list of what you thought each character's Enneagram type was, and then you debated it. This was supremely entertaining on my road trip.
Speaker 2:You are one of the 20 people in the world that will really appreciate that, so I'm glad it found its way into your hands. Those are a lot of fun and they take forever to do.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh. Well, it was like what? Eight episodes that are each an hour and a half long, something like that.
Speaker 2:It's a lot of time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, super long Passion project.
Speaker 2:That's it. It's a passion project. I taught again in teaching philosophy. I taught the philosophy of Tolkien for a long time and so that overlap of Tolkien's world and Enneagram, it's catnip.
Speaker 1:That was really cool. Yeah, I uh I noticed some of you bringing in some of the philosophical insights into the book as well. Um, I actually want to go and read through the chapter titles in your book. Uh, you mentioned a couple of these questions, Um, but yeah, I think the way that you structure the book and the questions are really interesting and I want people to have a little more context about what's going on in the book.
Speaker 2:Yeah challenge.
Speaker 1:How do I get what I want? When do I solve my problems? Why do I feel out of balance? How do I connect with others? How do I solve problems? What are my biggest strengths? I would love to hear about how you guys came up with this structure. Um, and I have to imagine it comes from a long time and a long period of working. It's true.
Speaker 2:A lot of the structure came out of the first five years of our podcast, trying to put our thumb on the things that were most essential. One of the big things that you'll see in the book, especially as you get towards the end, is that we want to highlight how each of the types end up connecting with all the other types in a certain way. So if you looked at your type, what's your type, elise? I'm a type one like you Perfect. So let's talk about ones for a second. You and I share.
Speaker 2:We're part of the body center with eights and nines. We are part of the reactive or dependent triad with twos and sixes. We are part of the competency group with threes and fives, and we are part of the idealist group with fours and sevens. There's those triangles. I think that's is that four triangles. Those triangles end up connecting us with all the other types in a really meaningful way and coming to creating the structure of the book. That, wayne, to showcase that was really important. The structure of the book. Wanting to showcase that was really important. The other thing that we noted that was really important is that stance and your center end up really dividing into a bunch of different topics, Like when you get into Enneagram, your center is pretty primary and your stance is pretty primary, and so the first six questions actually delve into your center and stance. But, big picture wise, I love the image that we're connected with all the other types in certain ways in terms of how we function think about.
Speaker 1:A lot, too, is how. How is one type connected to the other? And there really are so many ways. Um, I think that I think a beginner can pick up this book and understand it pretty clearly, but it's also really great for people who know a lot about the enneagram to go a lot deeper than you, um, typically would it's good.
Speaker 2:I'm glad that that's how it caught you.
Speaker 1:So here's a question. There are a lot of Enneagram books out there. Why did you guys write one?
Speaker 2:Well, ours is going to be when we finish the five books, ours is going to be the largest study that's ever been done. When we finish the five books, it's going to be our masterwork. And this is I'm. You know, again, I'm a longtime professor and no one's really done the sort of work in Engram that I feel like is mine to do, and it's mostly on the philosophical level and that is like asking some of the bigger questions of meaning, of purpose, of ethics, of what does it mean to be a human being, of what does it look like for you to be your healthiest self. I'm not a psychologist, so I'm coming at this from a different kind of vantage point that is a little bit more artistic in terms of thinking about what it means to be a human being.
Speaker 2:But our first book, this one, actually will look a lot like some of the other books that you'll see on Enneagram. It's very much about typology, it's about kind of outlining the types. The thing that's very different about ours is we don't. Most Enneagram books structure themselves by doing like chapter one on type ones, chapter two on type twos. By doing like chapter one on type ones, chapter two on type twos.
Speaker 2:We decided to go around the circle with the nine questions for each of the types, so every single chapter ends up showing the differences between the nine types as you come to the nine different questions. I feel like that's a better, more holistic way to understand the Enneagram, because it gets your mind off exclusively yourself and looking at others. But when you're able to see others clearly, it actually can help you see yourself more clearly, because you can see the distinctions between yourself and others, and so that's how we routinely like to type or to talk about type in the Enneagram. So I could talk for days about what we're up to in terms of the other four books, but really it's going to be one big masterwork, and so that just hasn't been done since, arguably, riso and Hudson's work in the late nineties and the wisdom of the Enneagram, but ours is going to be bigger.
Speaker 1:It's very ambitious, isn't it? I like being ambitious.
Speaker 2:It's very ambitious, isn't it? I like being ambitious, the one that I am. I feel like there is something to be done here in terms of the credibility of Enneagram and the depth that I routinely I don't know if this is your experience, but the further that I get into enneagram, the more that it just awakens. It's like. It's like you've uh, you know, dug a little bit and found the head of a dinosaur and like at first you're like, wow, there's this, this dinosaur head is is amazing, and you really get into it and then you realize you just have discovered the head and there's so much more down the line. And my experience of Engram has been of that sort. That's just consistently unfolding in new and surprising ways, and I'm sure it will be the case that when we're done, I'll be kicking myself for the things we didn't do when we were treating the topic at length at first.
Speaker 1:So you had mentioned about a study. You said this is going to be something like the biggest study. Are you guys planning on doing some research for the next couple of books?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I mean most of our work. So the books that we're going to write are listed in the in upfront, but the this one's on typology. Our second book is going to be on what we call the steps. So oftentimes, once you know your type, the question is what, what's next? And it's really outlining.
Speaker 2:Here are seven things, the kind of the steps that we would recommend that for lifelong learners, people who are going to have this for the rest of their life, where would you go as you are thinking about the Enneagram and yourself and actually using it as a tool. So it's one thing to know your type and be able to talk intelligently at a cocktail party. Very, very different is actually using the Enneagram to do some real transformative work. And some of us really need to get into that space with the Enneagram because we have found ourselves in a rut in life and it's time to move. And sometimes, when you get to that spot where you're like something different needs to happen, the Enneagram can be incredibly valuable for that person, and we're not all at that spot. A lot of times, things are just working just fine for us, and so Enneagram knowledge is just kind of yeah, that's just how, how my type works in the world. But some of us actually need to move and that's what we're hoping to achieve with that second book.
Speaker 2:Third book is on balance and we're going to detail. We don't go into stress and security moves or wings or instincts or what's started to be called processing center in this first book. Our third book is going to be about balance and it's going to be on those larger topics of what does it look like for us to incorporate the other tools. So I'm a one, I have tools in four space, I have tools in seven space and I have two wings. What does it look like for me to engage those?
Speaker 2:It's also the case that some folks in the Enneagram world are getting into what are called the instincts or subtypes, and these are biological drives that influence how our type is in the world. Specifically with our social energy. Are we more aware of our own needs, the needs of a partner or the needs of a community, and those can drastically affect how our type is in the world. And so our third book is going to go down some of those paths and go for depth there. Our fourth book is going to be called Chemistry and it'll be about the overlap of the types, specifically in relationships.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's fun.
Speaker 2:Parental relationships, romantic relationships, friendships that's going to be the backbone of it and then the fifth book is going to be a book on happiness and that will probably take a lot more time. We'll probably end with a flourish, but, but I'm really excited for the study to unfold in that way.
Speaker 1:That's exciting. You yeah a lot of ideas and again it's ambitious, but you've got it set out. And the relationships, one that's especially interesting to me. I love exploring about how the types interact with each other.
Speaker 2:Yeah, perfect. There there is something to be said. Most, most of the books are on relationships, and there's a bunch of good ones. Helen Palmer's book in particular is really good. Steph Baron Hall's book is all right. The we hope to do lots of overlaps with these triads that we outlined in the first book. So in the first book we're talking about stance.
Speaker 2:I'm a reactive type. Ones, twos and sixes are reactive types. I am married to an independent type, to an assertive type, to a three, three, sevens and eights. In terms of how they get what they want, take hold of what they want, they stand independent. They're feeling repressed. As a reactive type, I often seek to earn what I want. I react to the energies of those around me. I'm thinking repressed. The dynamic just there, if you were just to talk about reactive types versus assertive types and in the first book are going to get translated there. So there's how you get what you want.
Speaker 2:But, as you may have seen, like I think our, what our eighth chapter is called how do you solve problems, and it's on coping style. My wife and I share the same coping style. She's a three, I'm a one, alongside fives. We are part of the competency group. We shut down our feelings and try to take hold of what we want with action and thinking. When things break, that's our first move is to say, well, for us ones what's the right thing to do? And go get it For threes it's what's the goal, and go get it For fives, it's what's the data. Let's allow that to have power in our lives.
Speaker 2:It's all very active and very thinking oriented when you put people in combination. So my wife and I, when solving problems together, both shut down our feelings and that can be great on one front and it can be a real detriment on another front. Talking about the chemistry, there is gonna be a big part of that, but the vocabulary, really all the vocabulary moving forward, is in this, is in this first book. When learning Enneagram, it's like learning a language. You know you gotta get the, you're gonna get the language kind of in your bones and then, once you do, then you can speak about it and new and different ways and and as you know the dinosaur metaphor it just kind of blows up. You can start, you know, seeing all sorts of new and surprising things about yourself and others.
Speaker 1:I heard you say that on a podcast. I think about learning Enneagram is like learning a new language. I really like that and yeah, even for me, like when I'm teaching Enneagram to people who are new, it feels really difficult, I mean, especially as a one. I'm like I need to do it right and teach you like correctly so you don't get a wrong idea. And it it feels hard to be like how do we distill the most important things? Or I just I like love this tool so much I want you to be able to understand it well, and if I mess, mess up, then maybe you'll like walk away from the enneagram forever, whatever you know. But the analogy of the learning a language is really helpful good, I find that helpful as well so okay, also I wanted to comment on.
Speaker 1:You were talking about the coping styles. This was a new concept to me about how each conflict style coping style group represses one of the centers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's fresh material for us in terms of, like, our articulation is that it repressing one of the centers. One of the things that we continue to find about Enneagram and again in our third book this is probably going to be a big element of it is that if you were to look at the center's head, heart, body we all have a head, heart and body, even though one of them may be repressed in our experience. So for us as ones, the head comes last. It's our repressed center. It's almost like you and I we take in the world through our body, but our support center, our secondary center, is our heart. So ones intuit their feelings. That's kind of where we live, whereas what's another type, a type like fours are going to feel their thinking. They're part of the heart triad but they sit right on that line with the head triad and that they're receiving the world through their heart, but they're supporting their experience of the world with thinking. So they're feeling their thoughts, whereas fives are also on that same line, but they are thinking about their feelings, they're analyzing their emotions and that's kind of where they live, and action comes last for fives and action comes last for fours.
Speaker 2:All of this ends up being you have the three centers and how you navigate the centers can really matter and depend on what's going on out there. So when I'm centered, I'm in one space. Things are going fine. I'm intuiting my feelings and getting what I want that way. But when something breaks and I'm not getting what I want, I will go into problem solving mode. And the way that ones do this is we're going to shut down our feeling center and we're going to elevate our thinking center. Thinking had been repressed. But when something breaks and we're not getting what we want, we pivot away from feeling and we push into that repressed center. Say to ourselves you know what is the right thing to do. We are thinking about what's right and if we can find what's right, then this will. We believe intuitively that this is going to solve the problem. They'll get us back to center and we'll be copacetic.
Speaker 2:And so all of the types when solving problems. Here would be the pitch when it's the case that they're not getting what they want, their first move before going into their stress number. Their first move before going into their stress number is to shut down one of their centers, to almost see it as the problem and to elevate the power of the other two centers to really address why am I not getting what I want?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like how you guys are connecting, connecting all of these disparate enneagram concepts and like kind of making a flow with them. Um. So when I look at the content in your book, you first are talking about the center many people, most people, know about centers head, heart, gut and then you're talking about stance, and then you move to talking about the coping style some people know that as conflict style, um, and then you go a little bit into the stress move. You start touching on that. Um. I was hoping that you could kind of take us through that whole flow with one or two types as examples, um to kind of give the in uh, in terms of uh, the flow of your book.
Speaker 1:So starting with the center and then going to the stance, and then going to affect um, yeah, well, we can.
Speaker 2:Uh, I mean just to stick on ones for a minute. Ones are going to take in the world through their body, through their intuitive center. This matters. How you take in the world is like a filter, and the filter matters. Naming the filter matters because part of us taking in the world through our intuitive center means that the world that we experience is colored by that filter, and so the intuitional side, the physical side, is going to be dominant for us. So this does a couple things. One, when we take in the world through our body, we are pulling in the world through the present moment, and so all the issues of now are what is most important.
Speaker 2:That's not true of the head types. Head types are in the future because they're taking in the world through their thinking. They actually lean towards projecting what will happen, towards analysis, towards prediction. What five, sixes and sevens really see when the world is coming at them is what is going to happen. And so, as opposed to body types, who are going to be resistant to the present, five, sixes and sevens are going to be resistant to the future. And so the anxiety, sometimes the fear that can characterize fivees and sevens as their underlying feeling emerges from that filter, whereas you and I eights, nines and ones the underlying feeling we're going to experience is anger, because we can't control the present moment. And so eights, nines and ones all want agency, want personal oversight, and that emerges, that primary desire emerges because we're very much taking the world through the present, very different from the heart triad.
Speaker 2:Heart triad is past oriented. They're taking in the world through the relational past, through all the things that have happened, and the emotion of shame, the underlying feeling of shame that can characterize two, three and four, emerges from that filter. So our centers end up being incredibly important on these fronts. You're taking in the world through past, present and future. You're taking in the world through your heart, body, mind. All these overlap and they cause you to have those emotions of shame, anger and fear. And that's the starting line. Your center is the starting line for everything else you're going to believe about yourself, about your world, about your relationships. And you need to name it because that underlying emotion colors how you see your spouse, how you see your job, how you see your spouse, how you see your job, how you see your future, how you see your past. All of these things are tainted by by the way that you take in the world and that would be your centers, and the first three chapters are on that. Yeah, great, I can keep rolling. Do you have thoughts on that?
Speaker 1:Um, my thoughts on that are are uh, pairing a time orientation with the centers was also new to me. So I've still, you know, heard about, obviously, stances with time orientation, but talking about the centers with time orientation, I mean it just makes sense. Um, yeah, it makes sense. Like with your heart types, they are in the past because it's about how did people react to me in the past and did people reject me or appreciate me in the past? And what do I do now, knowing how relationships have gone in the past? I mean, like, of course they're in the future, what could happen? What comes next? What do I need to plan and find the contingencies and troubleshoot? So I think it's kind of like pieces sliding into place. The more you learn about the Enneagram, there's always, there's always more right ahead of dinosaur, neck of the dinosaur, and on we go.
Speaker 2:Well, the second third of the book is on stance, and really there's an image that's primary here, that you breathe in through your center but then you breathe out. You engage the world primarily through your stance. And stance is about how you get what you want. There are some of us who take a big step back fours, fives and nines to get what we want we would draw. There are some of us who stand independent from the world, are feeling repressed and are more assertive about getting what we want threes, sevens and eights. And then there are some of us who are very much in the moment, very reactive to the energy of the people in front of them, seek to earn what we want. And these are ones, twos and sixes. It's again the case that that, so as I breathe in the world through my center, I'm engaging the world through my stance. So let's take a number like sixes. Sixes take in the world through their head center, which is future focused, and the future is unknown. Because it's unknown, it's a source of anxiety, it's a potentials, it's all potentials. And so the six is taking in the world through the future, but they don't engage the world in the future, they engage the world now. Sixes are earners. Sixers are reactive. When sixes take in their future anxieties, they respond to them in the present moment. And ones, twos and sixes are all now focused. They're very external in their focus, whereas a type like fives fives are also taking in the world through that same filter. The input the five gets is nearly identical to the input the six gets, but where the six engages the world in the present moment, what the five does is they push to the past. Withdrawn types all incorporate past tools to seek to meet their underlying feeling. So the fear that the five experiences is not going to be met with present activity. What the five is going to do is they're going to look to the past and use past tools to meet their anxieties. So fives commonly will store up resources, financial resources, their own energy, their understanding of the world and how it functions. All of these are past tools. They've accumulated knowledge, they've accumulated wealth, they've accumulated friendships, they've accumulated spaces that matter to them and they use those, leverage those, in order to meet their future fears. Sevens don't meet their future fears with past tools or present tools. What sevens do is they scheme and they think about the future. This bad thing is coming in the future. What am I going to do in the future to jump away from it? And so the future tools are for for assertive types come into play there. So three, sevens and eights all are looking towards next Thursday to get what they want. All of them are taking in the world through their center. But in order to get what they want, they're saying next Thursday, how do I win, how do I ensure I'm not vulnerable and how do I ensure that I have lots of options? Three, seven, eight, or three, eight, seven. That's how I did that.
Speaker 2:And so that breathing in and breathing out has a time orientation, and nearly all of it is about meeting your underlying feeling of shame, anger and fear, like how are you going to wrestle with this? And when you start to wrestle with your underlying feeling, it comes out in your stance. So so you and I, we are present. We take in the world through the present, but we also engage the world in the present. Ones are kind of strange on this front. We bring in the world immediately and then we react to the world in the present. Ones are kind of strange on this front. We bring in the world immediately and then we react to the world immediately.
Speaker 2:So to get what we want, to get the control that we want, we do things now, and a lot of the anger that ones feel and we can talk about why in a second but a lot of the anger that ones feel first goes inward.
Speaker 2:So the present moment is coming at us. We're feeling the world. If we're angry about not being in control, it's probably our fault, and so we're going to do something now to ensure that we get control. And the way we get control is we control ourselves and our responses and we're very critical about our own responses to the world in order to ensure that we get the control that we want. A lot of times that ensure that we get the control that we want. A lot of times that control that we want is about how we feel. It's about having agency over and being able to do the things that we want to be able to do, and so the self critique comes in in terms of that movement. And again, I could go on for days, but it's all in the book. It's all in the book, just get the book everybody.
Speaker 1:And then yeah, and then you move to affect, right. So you kind of just explain what you go over, and the first third, and then the second third and then the third third of this book is about affect. So again those questions are how do I connect with others? How do I solve problems? What are my biggest strengths? So will you take a moment and talk about the idealist triad for this topic?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so big idea on affect is. Affect is how we connect with others. Ones, fours and sevens are one triad. These are called the idealists. Three, sixes and nines are the pragmatists, and twos, fives and eights are the relationists. Three, sixes and nines are the pragmatists, and twos, fives and eights are the relationists. I'll talk about each of them in turn, but starting with ones, fours and sevens.
Speaker 2:In order to connect with the world, ones, fours and sevens will pull others into what matters most to them. Sevens pull people into their thinking, fours pull people into their emotional life and ones pull people into action. The energy of connection for these types really hinges on that. Now, ones, fours and sevens can go with other people, can meet other people in different spaces, but when they initiate relationships, a lot of the energy is going to be in these spots. So with sevens, sevens don't necessarily need to take you somewhere physically, but they do want you to envision what might be. So sevens are fantastic storytellers. They're going to pull you into the energy of the story they want to articulate and they oftentimes are going to be saying, hey, next year we could do this, this and this, and you don't even have to do that with them next year. You just have to get excited about doing that with them now, as it were.
Speaker 2:What's your partner's type? By the way, I'm married to a three, two or three oh, perfect. So we're both married to threes, yeah, and then three, oh perfect. We're both married to threes, yeah. And then for fours many of us will know this Like if fours can be fantastic companions, but when they initiate the relationship, they're going to pull you into an emotional spot and they're going to go for depth.
Speaker 2:And if you can go there with them, that's the place of connection. If you can't go there with them, then that may not be. You may not connect with the four, right, and so it's one. Sevens and fours are all the loneliest of the types. These are the most likely types to be alone, to be isolated, because they pull, they put out that fish hook and say I really want you to come and do this thing with me, think this thing with me, feel this thing with me, feel this thing with me and if you can, we're together. If you can't, then the connection doesn't happen. And for us as ones, we're pulling people into action. Let's make the world better. Why don't you come on our podcast? We're going to talk shop. Let's do this thing. We're going to do this thing because it's going to be great.
Speaker 1:We're going to make positive change together. That's it. Otherwise, what are we doing here? Uh, exactly exactly. We get it. So this is. That was really great examples of kind of what I'm what the whole book is about, right, so we'll. We'll leave it there for now. I I have a couple other process questions. I also have some content I want to read, so I think I'm going to read a couple pages from your book. I'm going to page 32 for all of you at home listening along with the book in your hand. That's probably nobody.
Speaker 2:No, you need to right now. Just go buy the book. Come back Podcast will be here, page 32.
Speaker 1:That's where we're picking up press pause until you have the book in your hand and then follow along.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'm gonna read from your book, page 32. Enneagram provides basic language for how we process the world and what we long for most now. Language by its nature categorizes. Language takes all the particulars and pulls them into groups. Specific birds all become ducks. Specific plants become trees. Once we can call something a duck or a tree, we can analyze it and find connections, and language gives us power over what we name.
Speaker 1:The Enneagram is a language and it seeks to describe our motive. We are part of a beautifully diverse world full of people and the Enneagram gives us big terms for creating some big categories. These categories fill with very different people and yet when very different people look within and talk about their inner life, they use very similar language and describe overlapping experiences. They name why they act, and anything that can be named can be analyzed, evaluated and even employed for good. I mean, this is one of my favorite analogies I've ever heard for describing the types as categories. Right, because we run into this barrier all the time of people saying you're putting me in a box and I'm I'm not. You know, it's not. Life's not derivative like that. Yep, anything.
Speaker 2:If you use language at all, you are putting reality in a box. You need to stop using language if you don't want to categorize the world. That's what language is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I, as a type one, I'm in a category of people. It's, we're in a category of ones. You and I were both in this category. That doesn't mean that we are. It doesn't, you know, necessarily mean we're going to find all of these similarities between us. We're very different people, but it's so helpful when we can categorize what's motivating us internally.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so I mean said a different way. There's there's nothing wrong with in my view, there's nothing wrong with categorizing myself as a male, with categorizing myself as an American, withorizing myself as an American with categorizing myself as a 21st century person is categorizing myself, as you know, from a certain economic class, or I'm Gen X or these. It's just the language that helps to some, given, given the framework or given the question that you're asking those sorts of details about myself, boxes that I'm putting myself in. All it is is just being able to name some stuff about yourself. That gives you oversight and control and perhaps some self-revelation.
Speaker 2:The biggest misconception about Enneagram is here. Enneagram isn't a new age. You know mystical. I heard voices and these nine types emerge.
Speaker 2:Enneagram, all it is is trying to name motive. You have a motive. If you cannot name what is going on in your motive, you don't have power over your motive. You will be controlled, and one that I am. I'm really interested in control. But if you can give a name to something, it allows you to oversee it with understanding and you can ask a much more important question, which is is my motive healthy and making me more healthy? My motive healthy and making me more healthy, or is my motive and how it's being, you know, directing me in the world? Is it the case that it's making me more unhealthy? Have I, is my motive actually leading me into places that are destructive? That's the best utilization of this. So, yeah, fine, you're categorized.
Speaker 2:Here's the thing, the question, really. I mean a doctor does this. So, yeah, fine, you're categorized. Here's the thing, the question, really. I mean a doctor does this. A doctor will categorize your. You know you take blood work and they'll say, look, here you find yourself in this camp with those who have, you know the this sort of blood pressure and these, this sort of. You know I don't know anything about science, by the way, but you have this much levels of of your white blood cells and you have this much levels of. You know you should probably stop drinking. Is what they're really going to say. And you know the.
Speaker 2:The categorization matters with saying you're in this level of person with this kind of blood pressure or with these sorts of. You know you've slid into diabetes regions. That's all putting you in a box. You were now in a box. You were a sort of person who's got diabetes. The question isn't whether or not you're in a box. The question is whether or not you're going to get healthy. You know you're going to die of diabetes or heart disease or whatever. Again, I don't do science. The categorization is completely irrelevant. All languages categorization. What really matters is are you going to be a healthy person? It was a much longer answer than I was hoping for, but you see where I'm going.
Speaker 1:No, that's great. Some of that's got to make it into a clip for Instagram. Come on, please.
Speaker 2:My rage. You are the sort of person putting me in a box. As somebody who puts people in a box. This is unacceptable. Quit putting me in the box of people who put people in a box. Yeah, because now we're both in the same box Now that you've put me in the box of a person who puts people in a box, you also are putting me in a box, so you're in that same box Checkmate Categories.
Speaker 1:It're in that same box, checkmate, it's all categories.
Speaker 2:Anyway Checkmate Uh.
Speaker 1:I don't have anything to add to that. I'm going to ask you some process questions.
Speaker 2:Please, we should move on.
Speaker 1:Q&A at the end. And it's not just watching a movie, but it's like, okay, whether you know. A couple times I got to be the person on stage, but a lot of times it was like attending and getting to meet the people who made the film. It's like, oh my gosh, we can ask questions about how this was made and what the decisions you made and all the things. So I don't know, I'm kind of geeking out about the fact that I can ask some behind the scenes questions now.
Speaker 2:It's a Word document, that's it. Oh, my goodness, how many pages is your Word document?
Speaker 1:Well, this book is 50,000 words, which is approximately 120 pages. On the way that I format things. Okay, I want to know about what was the writing process like. For example, did one person or the other do most of the actual writing? How long did it take you to come up with outline and structure?
Speaker 2:So most of the study came from the podcast. What's been fantastic is some of the tools are available now. I was able to rip the podcast, transcribe it, put it into chat and ask chat to clean up that it from a transcript and make it more readable. So I started with a very robust. You know, we have easily over three or 400 hours of podcasts and so I was taking some of our best material or stuff I wanted to work on and doing it with that process. So that was creating for me some of the outline and some of the just capturing some of our language, cause it really what the podcast ended up being was a brainstorming for a text like this. So, in terms of writing, I'm doing all the writing, tj is doing a severe edit and um, but it's our study, you know those. It's that time in front of a microphone that really matters, and sometimes you're only getting a few sentences from a podcast, but, but those still matter quite a bit. So we um, yeah, but I think in. In short, we I don't remember how we came across the questions, but I really like dividing our conversations into questions and saying here's the answer from the types, and so the structure came early the intro.
Speaker 2:I've been working on this intro for five years and I'm really proud of of the introduction to the book. By the way, dear listener, uh, the intro is free on Kendall because it gives you the intro to free for free. So if you just want to see this stuff I'm most proud of, it's right there. Um, but like being able to outline how do you get from like just you know, standing still to we're going 60 miles an hour with Enneagram. That's what the intro is about. Let me get you in the mood to talk about your inner life motive, meaning happiness. We're going to go on an adventure, and so those are some of the first steps towards getting towards the book.
Speaker 1:I find your writing to be very precise and very thoughtful, which makes sense that Type 1 wrote this book, type 1 philosopher. Type 1 philosopher wrote this book. Yeah, I enjoyed that. I enjoy, um, the honestly just the language that you use. Yeah, it was a good read, good read thank you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the. I mean there's the, the way that the book it really unfolds. It's there's going to be the places where you can be poetic and you're trying to to build the idea. Let me, let me, let me bring you into this world. And then there's typology. Now let's talk about your type. You're a two. Let me do three, two or three paragraphs on this question and to this and how it overlaps with everything else.
Speaker 1:That's really the flow of the book so in the enneagram world, something that I think about a lot is, uh, plagiarism like does it exist? How do you avoid plagiarizing and like, what's it like to take learning stuff that you've learned from so many different experts and distill that down?
Speaker 2:there's some folks, it seemed. I think that you're right to think about this, uh, one that you are. You're entirely right to think about this. Principles Some folks work now is so much part of the Enneagram vocabulary it's incredibly difficult to footnote it.
Speaker 2:So we in the bibliography and in the acknowledgements just kind of give the floor to Riso, hudson and Stabile. Deriso, hudson and Stabile. They have created much of the language that we use and you simply cannot write our book without their ideas in hand. They are primary and every other paragraph would have had footnotes if we actually did the work, and so that's our best attempt at footnoting. There's a lot of footnotes in our book that go towards more of the more recent stuff that people who are building on those three where they're taking us, and so Joey Shuey, dr Daniel Dennett is in there a bunch.
Speaker 2:I'm trying to think of other people that we footnote a lot on the Enneagram side, but the newer ideas we did footnote because, especially if people are just trying to get off the ground and are unknown, it's important to give them their shout out. Oh, totally. And then I suppose it's the case in our podcast. We did nine in-depth interviews that were about two or three hours with the most informed people that we knew in Enneagram, who it's just talking about their own type. So we spent three hours with a therapist named Heidi, who's a four, who just went into fourness and went through these nine questions and really spent like a half hour just unpacking how she came to the question as a for, self-actualized, for, self-aware, for, and so we tried to footnote that as well. Like this, this person gave us a ton of material but in but that's. That's about what we can do on these fronts.
Speaker 1:You can never learn everything there is to know about the Enneagram, because you're never going to run out of people to talk to.
Speaker 2:It's true? Yeah, it doesn't. Your type is just it's like having a map of the United States and you can see the coastline, but actually going there and experiencing it physically and interacting with the land, it's a very different experience. So, yes, there's nine types. All that's doing is saying there's nine primary motives that drive a person, but that is a fraction of who you are. Your Enneagram type is depthy. Nearly everything that you want is going to be colored by it, and your wants are inextractable from your soul. Who you are and what you want are nearly the same thing. So Enneagram's deep, but it's not everything.
Speaker 1:What are your hopes for how people use this book? What?
Speaker 2:are your hopes for how people use this book? We use so. One of the things I'm most proud of is the last 60 pages in which we put together a typing guide. We spent a ton of time on mistyping at the end. So, with all the combinations, there's 36 combinations. I might be a one, I might be a three, I might be a four, I might be a seven. We went through each of the combinations and did 30 distinctions between the two types.
Speaker 2:My hope is that that's really really helpful, especially to practicing therapists, enneagram coaches, people who are going to jump into this with a friend and they're like let's talk about you, like you know, and finding yourself in this matrix. That's a deep hope. My deep hope is that this is the most extensive Enneagram study that has been done, you know, and I. My hope is that, where Riso and Hudson's work was incredibly helpful, influential and really set the vocabulary for Enneagram for the next 30 years, my hope is that this book takes its place. So that's not because their stuff needs to get replaced. It's more that we've learned a ton of stuff in the last 30 years that just isn't in that book. So and I could go through, like here the thing like, for example, discussions about high side and low side are real recent, how you should understand stress and security moves. A lot of work has been done there that just isn't in Riso and Hudson or in Stabile's work. There's going to be ideas like Processing Center, which is a creation of Joey Shuey, which is about how each of the types arrive at happiness, in my view, um, how we assess whether or not we're good in the world. We're going to do that in our third book, but but that's important.
Speaker 2:Um, what else is? And then, as you kind of mentioned, affect groups really got hit by dr david daniels, but it I don't see affect groups in a lot of people's writing, aside from Chris Hurwitz. And then coping styles is in Riso and Hudson's work, but nobody picked up on this and I think it is just central. There's so much there, especially as how coping style and how we solve problems, how it relates to our stress move and that's fresh to us. And then, like a lot of the time orientation stuff that we've been talking about, and then, like a lot of the time orientation stuff that we've been talking about, that you don't have one time orientation, you have two time orientations. You take in the world temporarily and you respond temporarily. Those are really important, so I'm hoping that we end up. Philosopher that I am, I really want to create the philosophical vocabulary of Enneagram for the next 20 years, and if we do that, we win. That would be us really doing something valuable.
Speaker 1:That's pretty awesome. Yeah, I want to just draw a little more attention to some of the things in the back of your book. So, like you said, the mistyping guide is pretty awesome. I mean, I love mistyping guides, any book that has a mistyping guide. Mistyping guide is pretty awesome. I, I mean I'm I love mistyping guides, any book that has a mistyping guide. I'm like reading through it. This one is really good with the lists comparing, um, just like comparing a lot of different points. Um, you have a section about vocabulary in the back which, well, you actually just said to me you're hoping to um do a lot of work with, kind of setting the enneagram vocabulary for the next couple decades. And then, of course, there's a section in the appendix about typing. So you know, if someone's a beginner picking up this book, not quite sure about their type, you guys could start there in the back, get a little more insight onto which one your type is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what we tried to do there aside from quoting people which I think is the most helpful way to kind of learn your type, hearing people who are your type talking about themselves Aside from quoting people we tried to put a hundred themes for each of the types. So here are a hundred big ideas about ones, here are a hundred big ideas about ones, here are a hundred big ideas about eights. You can just kind of go down them and say, oh, okay, yeah, that's, I see how eightness works, and if things are still kind of confusing, you can move to that. Uh, to the mistyping section.
Speaker 2:The thing the mistyping section also does is like if you were to look up ones verse threes and you were to talk about it with your spouse, you will see where you guys, just where you're most complimentary and where you disagree most, and like where the tensions are probably going to take place. Because here's your type, is your motive, here's how you come to the world, and this is where they're the most different, because that's what we're trying to expose. How are they the most different from each other? And so I always find misdiaping guides can be most helpful in those spaces of relationships.
Speaker 1:So I recorded a podcast last week with a friend of mine from college, noah, and he was going to be my type seven guest for my type seven episode in a series with somebody from each type. And we got about halfway through the episode and I was like, oh man, noah, have you ever considered that you might be a type two? And he was like, uh, not really. And um, so then we kind of spent the rest of that episode not talking about sevens but talking about kind of seven, verse two. Anyways, the next day I got into your book and I was like, taking a picture of this page, send it to him immediately Two, verse seven. He was like oh shoot.
Speaker 1:Here's all the things about twos that I relate to.
Speaker 2:Good, that's what I want to see. I've done that at least 82 times. Good, that's what I want to see. I've I've done that at least 82 times. So I, like I, owe the universe photos of, of the mistyping guide, uh, by far, you know, in terms of so.
Speaker 1:So if you buy the book, you feel free, feel free to lavishly send these to uh, to friends who are in those spaces of of trying to find their time, their number. Yeah, so good.
Speaker 2:And I, I did this shout out on instagram, but I want to give a shout out to the graphics visually very well designed, and you, you, you gotta love it in any grand books, you gotta love a well-designed book that, uh, by far is the highest cost on the book, um, oh really, the great camry r ross, who used to do uh at enneagram cam on instagram, and the great paul beverage, um, who did the layout and revisions, um, did, did all the graphics, and that the that element is what took most of the time and money is is just trying to get visuals. Enneagram is so ethereal it to get, get the idea into a, you know, a clear picture so that people can see the idea. That is really essential in my mind and so, as was said, nearly every page has a graphic on it and that was by design.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm. All right, Jeff Cook, last question for you what do you do to have fun these days?
Speaker 2:I'm a skier, I, but I have a. I have some knee issues recently and so I got into weight lifting. So I'm that guy. Now, um the um, I have two dogs. They're brand new. They're a chihuahua beagle mix, two sisters. So I spent a lot of time walking my dogs and my youngest is going to go to Michigan University in the fall, so we're losing him. My oldest is still at home. My oldest is neurodivergent but is high functioning and is going to college as well. But I love the hell out of those two kids and we do a lot of board games together. And, yeah, when I'm at my best, I'm watching movies in my basement. When I'm at my best, I'm getting out of town and going on hikes. When I'm on my best, I've really enjoyed biking. So I don't know if you know like ones and rest. It can be a very difficult thing because other, because I'm a workaholic dweeb is what I am, so you know. But but that's what I'm trying to do to have fun. How about yourself? What do you do for fun?
Speaker 1:Oh, what do I do for fun? Um, I read a lot of fiction. Um, I'm on 60 books this year and I'm going for a hundred. Yeah, you are, come on and that's. And, uh, I've been painting. So i've've been finding walls in my house and painting them lately and that's been a super fun project.
Speaker 2:Are you at home right now and is this a painting?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I just painted this last week. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I think I'm happy with how I turned out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this office has been just a lot darker than I've liked Because this bottom color is the whole wall was this bottom color, so I added some whiteness, which I really like. There you go, and I play soccer. So I'm in a couple adult rec soccer leagues. Which is usually the highlight of my week Is playing soccer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there is something about, I think, for all the types. If you want to be centered in your type, finding ways to engage your primary center and real meaningful meaningful being the operative word is most essential. So for eights, nine ones in particular, you need, you just need to get into your body. How does it look like?
Speaker 2:totally in your body, because that will make you feel grounded, because you're taking the world through the center and if your center is healthy generally, that's gonna like. Everything else is gonna flow from that. And so, as you're, as you're saying, like the, the soccer playing being the best part of your week, that that needs to be remain the big part of your week, because that's your center, you're taking care of your center yeah, something about that is.
Speaker 1:It rings so true and like. I have enjoyed playing soccer more now as an adult, like than I did when I was in high school. It's just, yeah, it's been really meaningful. Thanks so much for your time, jeff. Are there any parting words that you need to tell the listeners.
Speaker 2:If you want to listen to our new content, it's Around the Circle. It's a podcast. We have a few thousand listeners and it's a good little community. You know that's kind of part of what we're doing. If you want to see some of our more detailed work, go to around the circleorg. We will be releasing video college style courses through the next year. All of our long form, all of our full interviews are there and you can listen to the audio book if you prefer that at around the circleorg and you can read it.
Speaker 2:The first chapter. So what we did was a. So we tried. So I love being a little bit more creative in the in the publishing world. I think the publishing world for the most part is very boring. I think publishing houses themselves are very boring. What we did with our audio book was we did a commentary on the book, so we read passages, but then we ended up spending time dialoguing and making fun of what we wrote, but trying to highlight the ideas in a way that has some energy, because Enneagram books on audio are the worst Nobody has done with maybe. So Stabile's book uh, journey to wholeness was actually kind of good. For the most part, however, they are all garbage. They're garbage because they're boring. They have these people reading about type and this anyway we. We tried to avoid that, so we went, had a nice bottle of whiskey and talked about our book and it came out great.
Speaker 1:I am so happy about our audio book.
Speaker 2:So if you get an audio books around the circleorg or someday it'll be up on audible. Audible has taken a month to post our audio book. It's I have. I have zero understanding of how this works, but it's still in process. So but you can. Anyway. You can find it at our website. If you are trying to find your type, we have a second podcast called Start here, which you referenced earlier, but it's designed. We think the best way to do an Enneagram test, as it were, is to listen to our podcast called Start here, where we quote people who are the type so that you can hear the actual vocabulary of people talking about their inner lives, and we tried to systematize it so that you can listen to an introductory podcast that bounces you to I might be a two, I might be a seven, I might be a nine. We think this is the best way to find your type. So, start here podcast if you're looking for a tool.
Speaker 1:Where should people go to buy the physical book?
Speaker 2:Hmm, where should people go to buy the physical book? It's only on Amazon, so we're self-published. Um, again, I'm against. I'm I'm really anti publishing houses right now. Um, I'm not apparently more than I'm anti Amazon, but, but it can't. But the text came out really well. I was super surprised at the quality and cause. It's print on demand. Um, they print a single copy for you when you order it and send it to you in a day, and it's really crazy little system they got going, oh interesting so they're printing a book per order yep, that's how it works.
Speaker 2:So they have printing presses all around the world. So you order in japan, it prints a copy off in japan, send it to you. So it's a great system because, like traditional publishing houses you, you know, you do a first printing, a second printing, a third printing. You house 30,000 copies of your book in a warehouse somewhere and you hope that they get sold, but otherwise it's taking up space. Amazon, but, but you know, kindle, there's no space. And with print on demand, they print a single copy, ship it off. It's really a clever little system.
Speaker 1:Very cool, very good way to do it. I mean, amazon obviously is just continuing to take over the world, so kudos to them.
Speaker 2:Kudos to you and your world domination. Well done Bezos.
Speaker 1:Good job, jeff, but I'm going to take advantage of it for now. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Now, I mean, I could talk about this for days. I'm just going to plug this for a second. But the world of content is changing. You are a content creator, you have a podcast. You are skipping the middleman by doing that, like it used to be the case, you would have to go through a tv station, you'd have to go through a radio station in order to get your creative uh thing that you're doing into the world through the. You know the mechanisms they have. But what podcasting, youtube, print on demand? Um, you know twitter, to some extent substack.
Speaker 2:What these do is they allow creators to have a platform where they don't have to have millions of dollars of infrastructure and have to have, you know, the owners of the infrastructure checking their work, as it were. This has all sorts of downsides to it, but the positive side is, for creators like us, we can come to the. We can come, and if we can just market ourselves and elevate our materials, then you know I, when I've I've sold two books to a huge publishing house, I make a dollar per copy that they sell. When I go through Amazon, I make $7 per copy I sell. Oh my, it's a seven fold increase in terms of the numbers that I move in.
Speaker 2:Nearly all the advertising, dear creators, all the advertising is going to come from you, anyway. Book publishing houses are terrible at marketing. Nearly all the advertising, dear creators, all the advertising is going to come from you, anyway. Book publishing houses are terrible at marketing. They are signing contracts with people they think already have a platform. They're actually looking to invest in people who have already done the work getting their name out there so that they can profit off it.
Speaker 2:But if you already have content and you're willing to just go do the little bit of extra to get your stuff out there. It's a much better way to go. Anyway, sorry, I nerd out about this stuff. This is the stuff I really nerd. You think Enneagram's bad? Let me tell you about self-publishing.
Speaker 1:The system of self-publishing. Oh, the system of publishing, it's systems. Here's what's wrong with it. No-transcript.
