One of the best-laid health plan could come to nothing if it doesn’t actually fit your character. And typically understanding the motivations behind what you want and what you’ll keep on with could be robust.
Welcome to the Enneagram, a software that synthesizes the knowledge of a number of non secular traditions. It will probably show you how to maximize your inherent strengths, comprehend your weaknesses, and uncover the actions and circumstances that may show you how to thrive.
Briefly, the Enneagram could also be simply the kind of private coach you’ve been in search of.
“What makes the Enneagram totally different from different character assessments is that it’s not about your behaviors, so it’s not that you just’re outgoing or shy,” says Ashton Whitmoyer-Ober, creator of The Enneagram Made Easy. “It’s about your motivations behind these behaviors.”
Ennéa is Greek for 9; “gram” is a determine or one thing written. The Enneagram consists of 9 fundamental character varieties, every having its personal traits, fears, and needs. (For extra on the system’s background, see “Peace By means of Character“.)
“The Enneagram is a superb, in-depth solution to be taught extra about your self to be able to work out how you can make your character traits give you the results you want,” says Life Time private coach Lindsay Ogden, CPT.
Understanding her Enneagram kind — predominantly kind 1 — helped Ogden higher plan her exercise routine.
Sort 1s love group and are sometimes perfectionists, she explains. “Realizing this, I’ve employed coaches to jot down applications to assist me get organized, whereas monitoring permits me to see progress.”
“If health is pushed by motivation, you may relate what motivates or doesn’t encourage you to your health actions,” says Whitmoyer-Ober, who’s a sort 2, the Helper or Giver.
But there are additionally advantages to stepping exterior your consolation zone — that’s how and the place development occurs.
“A kind 8 is often extra aggressive, so that they usually like boxing and heavy lifting. Nonetheless, that is probably not what they want for private development and better self-awareness,” says kind 8 Dave Nixon, proprietor of Purposeful Health Australia and creator of Minding Your self.
Should you’re a sort 8 — the Challenger — you would possibly profit from incorporating extra enjoyable actions like yoga, Pilates, and nostril respiration into your routine, even for those who discover these pursuits difficult, he advises.
Step one to utilizing the Enneagram is to determine your kind. To find out this, take an assessment at Truity.com or any of a number of different Enneagram-related websites.
Subsequent, familiarize your self with the motivations, needs, and fears associated to your character kind. Observe that the core “needs” and “fears” are deeper than eager to set a 5K PR and feeling spooked by spiders; core fears and needs type the premise of your motivation.
And they’re intently linked. For instance, a sort 1’s core worry is being dangerous or being unsuitable, whereas their core need is to be good or proper.
In the meantime, a 4’s core worry is having no significance or which means; their core need is to be genuine and discover which means.
Realizing your main fears and needs — your core motivation — may also help open pathways to overcoming obstacles and resistance as you pursue your health objectives.
After you have this consciousness, it’s seemingly that some behaviors will change naturally. Take issues a step additional by making use of your new information to deliberately modify behaviors that aren’t serving you and to create new techniques in your life that assist, reasonably than pressure, a sustainable health behavior.
Needless to say working along with your core needs and fears isn’t designed to alter them. They’re a part of who you’re.
This counters a deeply ingrained facet of health tradition: the idea that we should change who we’re, and that train may also help us improve to a brand new and higher model of ourselves.
Enneagram is helpful, in health and in different life areas, as a result of it teaches us that we’re not dangerous or unsuitable or undesirable as we’re. It teaches us to start out the place we’re, work with what we now have, and develop from there if we need.
“Your fears and needs gained’t go away, however you may discover ways to handle them so that they work for, as an alternative of towards, you,” Whitmoyer-Ober says.
Able to get began? Our specialists clarify the 9 Enneagram varieties in better element and provide options to assist every kind thrive on their health journey.
