Enneagram: THREE
I) In General
If you are a THREE,
you are gifted in many ways. In particular, you are:
☺ Adaptable ☺
Energetic ☺
Self‑Confident
☺ Outgoing ☺
Efficient ☺
Pragmatic
☺ Industrious ☺
Optimistic ☺
Goal‑Oriented
However, like
everyone else, you have your flaws. For example, you can be:
S Devious S Vain S Image-Conscious
S Pretentious S Calculating S Manipulative
S Misleading S Narcissistic S Callous
As an Achiever you are so
competitive and image‑conscious that you are prepared to deceive others
in order to win or promote yourself. But you are so oblivious to your deceit that you deny how controlling and
destructive it is.
II) SUBTYPES
A.
Self‑Preservation: Focus on Security
You equate
being happy with being affluent and link your earning power to your personal
security. A modest income is never enough. Therefore, financial health (a
secure job, a good house, and more than enough money) is a constant
preoccupation.
As a workaholic, you "do" lunch rather than eat it, and your focus is regularly on the next deal. You find it hard to relax and often bring your work home with you even on vacations (which you rarely take). Afraid of being unemployed or made redundant, you develop work-related skills, invest as wisely as you can, and seek to multiply your assets.
When all else fails you put on a show of being well-heeled and successful This deception may not only fool others, but may also blind yourself to the reality of your situation.
B. Sexual: Focus on Masculinity /Femininity
You are a past master at looking attractive. You connect with others by looking good, radiating attention, appearing upbeat, cheerful, and well-integrated-having your act together. You readily adapt to your partner's needs and style.
You go with whatever works in order to captivate and enthral. You especially work at being sexually pleasing. You dress well to suit the occasion, with an elegance even in your casual wear. If you are a woman you discreetly emphasize your femininity; if you are a man you are equally discreet in stressing your masculinity. Everything is done to impress your chosen partner.
Behind all
the glamour, you are basically afraid that when people really get to know you,
they will find there's nobody at home and will then reject you. Rather than
risk this, you tend to move on to someone else.
C. Social: Focus on Prestige
Social status and club or committee membership are serious issues for you. Being the centre of attention wards off the anxiety attendant upon being anonymous. "You're just not anybody if nobody thinks you're somebody!" So you offer your services as president, secretary,
or treasurer,
and court smart publicity, especially a photo in the paper or a radio or
(better still) television interview.
As a public speaker your priority is to hold the audience’s attention. You like being noticed and being looked up to. Playing a role and being a role model are an accepted part of the prestige package. You dislike being upstaged by someone else. Indeed, you are hurt by it. You change your clothes with the role you are playing (theatregoer or cyclist), because it is essential to look the part.
III WINGS 2 & 4
As you grew up you began to realize that your preening, self-promotion, and win-at-all-costs attitude were a turnoff. After all, most people prefer to come in contact with a real person who admits failures, rather than a performer continually hooked on success. So you began to rely on the personality style nearest to you to give your own style some balance. You may, for example, have spotted that pretentiousness is among the list of your characteristic flaws. But authenticity is one of the strengths of your Four Wing. When you learn to incorporate your wing-strength into your own personality style, you begin to soar.
Two Wing: When you access the strengths of your Two Wing you have a heart combination. The Two influence allows you to become more giving, especially if you're in a "caring" profession. It also means that you will be more in touch with your heart and look for more intimacy in your life. Additionally, you will grow in your one-to-one relationship skills. There is a danger, though, that you will become even more outward-looking and blind to your deepest needs.
Four Wing: When you access the strengths of your Four Wing you have another heart combination, but this will help you in a different way. With it you learn to maintain a balance between your authentic self and the role you have adopted to play. You will be more willing to explore your own feelings and less likely to be satisfied with success at the expense of integrity. You will, however, need to be careful of becoming more "precious," style-conscious, and narcissistic.
Proper balance is achieved by accessing the strengths of both your
wings and taking care to avoid their characteristic weaknesses. When you do so,
you learn to let go of your obsessive Achiever viewpoint and begin to
experience the advantages of other
points of view.
IV ARROWS 9 & 6
The Arrow Theory
of the Enneagram can be very helpful when you are feeling either stressed or
secure.
As an Achiever
you are motivated by your need to succeed and be the center of attention. You
are stressed at the prospect of failure, loss of status, or any threat to your
ideal self‑image.
Almost as soon
as the pressure begins to build up, you gradually tend to slide to the lower
end of your own personality style. When this happens your natural tendency is
to "rev up" the engine, diversify your interests, accept new tasks,
press more flesh, and generally move into overdrive in the fast lane. Your self‑confidence
may suffer and doubts about your abilities come to the surface. This may lead
you to "act out" and, chameleon‑like, adopt an image to match
the circumstances rather than reveal your true self.
As your stress
increases you find yourself all too easily adopting the negative characteristics of your Nine-stress point. However, this
need not be an inevitable progression. You can, instead, get in touch with the positive side.
Nine: (Stress Point)
-
You lose
touch with your outer as well as inner self.
-
You lose
confidence and become less productive.
-
You
redouble your efforts but lose sight of your aims.
-
You
anesthetize feelings with food, drink, drugs, etc.
+ You contemplatively begin to see the bigger
picture.
+ You slow down and
learn to relax.
When you are
secure you are generally more in touch with the higher side of your personality
style. As a Three this allows you to become more honest with yourself. This
will lead you to rediscover your deepest feelings and risk expressing them
more. When you do, you will find you become less superficial, mechanical, and
even cold W relationships. This, in turn, will help you accept failure and
learn from it. As you begin to reveal your real self and take time out to
nourish your spirit, you will become free of the compulsion to justify your
worth by being the continual achiever.
All of this
feeds into the positive strengths of
your Six security point. But, here too there can be some negatives. Dealing with the pluses and minuses helps us grow.
Six: (Security Point)
+ Yon become more
"present" to people.
+ You value loyalty to family and
friends.
+ Yon embrace the team spirit and
moderate "lime-lighting."
+ Yon open up to feelings through
reflection.
-You feel more dependent on the approval
of others.
-Your anxiety levels and fear of
rejection increase.
1.
Don't just
do something, stand there!
2.
I am
responsible for what I tame.
3.
Dim the
headlights and reveal your self.
4.
I'm loved
for myself, not for what I do.
5.
Slow down
and listen to your feelings.
6.
Be still
and know that I am God. (Psalm 46:10)
This portrait is
of the provident love of Jesus. It is a love that is revealed in the depth and
the pervasiveness of his practical concern for us. The depth of Jesus' concern is revealed in his hope for us which is
that we would realise all the potential that is in us. It is this hope which sustains our efforts to realise our dream in
spite of our limitations. The object of this hope is what Jesus calls the truth
or the revelation of who we are in
his eyes. The pervasive quality of Jesus' concern means that it covers all our
needs from the deepest to the most practical. Because Jesus sees the relative
importance of all these needs he has great clarity of purpose. He sees clearly
how his practical concern to set us free and heal us are all part of the truth
or good news he reveals to us.
The provident love depicted in this portrait is experienced in people
whose concern for our welfare is profound, pervasive and practical. Their
concern is profound in that they focus on our deepest need to realise our dream or
all the potential that is in us. When this potential becomes clear and a real
practical possibility, we experience
hope. This hope gets us out
on the road towards the realisation of our dream or all that we are capable of and
sustains us on our journey there.
The pervasive
quality of the concern of those who love us in a providential way means that
their hope for us covers all our needs from the most profound to the most
practical and above all the need to face our poverty as well as our potential.
Therefore, for our hope to be healthy we need first of all to learn how to live
constructively and contentedly with our poverty. This means that we must face our
limitations in a realistic way and accept that we cannot realise our dream or
reach the object of our hope on our own. For our hope to be healthy we must
also face the truth about ourselves, the truth that is an
articulation of all that our potential makes us capable of. We need to
discover, define and own the dream which those who are most concerned for us
want us to realise.
If we are to realise our dream we need clarity of
purpose. This involves
keeping in touch with our dream, constantly clarifying it and working out the
most effective ways of realising it. We easily lose a sense of direction
if we allow the demands of our more superficial dreams to obscure or deflect us
from our sense of purpose. Clarity of purpose in turn invites us to work out
the practical implications of realising our dream and being true to ourselves. Our
time, energy and resources are often
tied to the preoccupations of our outer world. Therefore, we need freedom from these demands if we are to be in touch with our true selves.
If, due to a lack of space in our lives, we have become estranged from our true
selves and from others, we will have a need for healing.
A) Provident love is an experience of practical concern that
seeks to clarify our dream and how we might realise it. The dream is an expression of our potential that hope defines.
B) Holy Hope is experienced as a deep desire to realise our potential or our dream.
It is a practical desire in that it gets us out on the road and keeps us moving
towards our goal.
Poverty helps us to face our limitations and our
failures realistically, as well as our need to rely on the support of others to
realise our dream.
Clarifying the object of our hope and how we get to it.
C) Truth is the virtue which helps us to clarify the dream which is the object of
our hope. It helps us be true to ourselves not to wear a mask.
Clarity of purpose helps us to keep our dream in focus and to be
well‑organised in our plans to realise it.
D) Provident love is practical, it carries out its plans graciously
Practical concern can translate our plans into action in a
graceful, enthusiastic and effective way, by for example,
Freeing us from enslavement to superficial concerns and
compulsive behaviour.
Healing wounds of separation from our true self and others.