you will learn optimally.
Have an open, receptive mind: The more baggage you carry around — for example, from studies and experience — the more difficult it can be to maintain an open and receptive mind. Because I am so strongly specialized in the Enneagram, I notice how difficult it is for me to learn new methods. I would rarely succeed in this effort without consciously making myself open and receptive toward it. When you open up to your learning process, you become receptive to new kinds of considerations. Try something new before you instantly reject it — you can always still do that later. When you deal with the learning processes of other people, an open-minded attitude is also necessary to support others with their studies. An open, nonjudgmental attitude is one where you truly listen and let what another person is thinking or writing affect you.
Keep an open, receptive heart: When it comes to human behavior, learning involves not just the mind but also the heart. Nothing can grow without love, which is certainly true for you as well. You can absorb a lot of knowledge, but if you don’t (learn to) look at yourself with leniency, forgiveness, and love, you will hold yourself back. When you deal with the learning processes of other people, this attitude is also necessary to support the others in their studies. An open heart, one filled with empathy, is necessary for you to sympathize with others, understand them, and honestly deal with their existence as human beings and their problems.
Make an effort and apply yourself: Nothing ever happens on its own. Get to work with this book, complete the exercises, and focus on the text every day. You'll soon notice a result — even if the result is the simple joy of engaging with this topic.
Mental Fitness
Did this section heading make you sigh in frustration? That’s how I always feel when I hear the word fitness. I know that it’s good for me to work out or exercise in some way. Afterward, I always feel better and more energetic. You can look at the idea of internal work in the same way: You're seeking fitness not for the body but rather for the mind and heart — mental fitness, in other words.
It goes without saying that people have to exercise and train for their physical well-being; it’s no different when it comes to their mental well-being, and this won’t happen on its own, either. Get up and join in! As with physical activity, getting started can be tough, but once you get a taste of it, you won’t want to stop.
Chapter 3
All Good Things Come in Threes
IN THIS CHAPTER
Nine is the same as three times three,
and we all sing our own song for free.
Three times three is the same as nine,
and Mark, he sings his song just fine.
Every person does indeed sing their own song in their life. The Enneagram is structured like this short verse: The nine personality structures are divided into three groups with three types each. The three types in each group have this-or-that in common. This chapter describes the three groups, or centers. You'll come across other groups of three in the Enneagram, as spelled out later in this chapter. They lead to ever deeper insights into other aspects of your human self — aspects that I tackle one at a time over the course of this chapter. This inner work helps you peel away your old and battered outer skin just as you would peel off the outer skin of an onion — or, if you'd prefer an image from the Eastern spiritual tradition, this work serves to unveil the true personality within you. With this in mind, this chapter looks at some of the basic points to have under your belt in order to carry out your further studies of the Enneagram as it applies to your own personality.
The Three Little Rules of Behavior
Behavior is clearly visible and can thus be readily observed. But — as you may often hear from other people — a person's behavior is often difficult to interpret, because people act differently in one situation than they do in another. So, behavior depends on the situation. That’s why it isn’t effective to use behavior as an object of self-observation. After all, it changes from situation to situation. This is why the Enneagram is used to explore what the behavior is based on. It’s designed to answer the question, “Why does someone behave in a certain way?” In the Enneagram, that which spurs your behavior is referred to as the unconscious driving force, or underlying motivation. Dr. David Daniels formulated three little rules for determining this driving force or motivation — three rules of thumb you can use when exploring your personality:
The energy that drives behavior flows wherever your attention is directed.
Managing this attention and energy requires the ability to observe yourself.
You can learn self-observation, but it will never become a natural habit.
Recognizing the importance of attentiveness
The word attention probably makes you think of getting attention or paying attention — paying attention to your children or your work, for example. People are more or less conscious of this paying attention or getting attention on this level. It’s important to pay attention to things that mean something to you. Just think about what happens when you don’t pay attention to certain things sufficiently — often, something goes wrong, from the failure of a professional project to problems in a relationship. This is attention in action — be attentive, pay attention, get attention — these are all things people actively do.
The attention I talk about with the Enneagram and in this book refers to the attention inside you — attention at a deeper level. You aren’t conscious of it if you don’t discover it inside yourself. This attention lies on the level of your hidden drivers — your underlying driving forces and motivations. Here you find the things that you subconsciously and automatically direct your attention toward because you consider them important, even if you aren’t aware of the importance you place on them. Exploring this attention and the unconscious goals it focuses on is
