All Episodes
Previous Next
Jan. 31, 2019 - Dr. Oz Podcast
41:56
Could Not Knowing Your Personality Type Sabotage Your Success?

How well do you know yourself? Author and friar Richard Rohr argues uncovering your specific personality type could lead you to the life you were born to live. Based on his surprising system of nine traits, find your true self  and how to use your personality type for ultimate success.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
The happy optimist.
If you see someone walking along the street and there's just a natural smile on their face, they're almost always the seven.
Their eyes shine.
They immediately see what's good about things.
We ones would see what's bad.
They will immediately see the bright side of everything, but it's to the point of denying the dark side.
Hey everyone, I'm Dr. Oz and this is the Dr. Oz I'm Dr. Oz and this is the Dr. Oz Podcast.
Father Richard Rohr is very well known within Franciscan circles, but within the Catholic Church as well, as someone who's able to criticize from within.
someone who has developed a huge following by telling us his insights, sharing with us his thoughts on a spiritual path that for many of us might be the enlightenment that we seek.
And Father, thank you very much for joining us.
Good to be with you.
And he's agreed to talk a little bit about some of the books that he's written.
And I've been exposed to many of these through a guiding light in my life, my mother-in-law and father-in-law, who have been to many of the seminars.
They came back and kept bragging about you and talking about how great you were and So let me start off with a theme that I don't think any of you out there listening probably have heard that much about.
But the few who know about this, I'm hoping you'll enjoy this discussion.
But Richard Rohr is actually very well known for his work on enneagrams.
Now, first of all, can you spell that for me?
E-N-N-E-A-G-R-A-M. And when I first learned about these, when Lisa started sharing them with me, she was reading a book, and it was your book, and it had these numbers in it, one through nine.
And I have, every once in a while, mentioned the Enneagram to friends, and it is interesting to me how folks from very disparate parts of the world, people who I would never expect to know anything about the Enneagram, actually know a fair amount about it.
It's almost addictive.
How are you exposed to it?
You know, it was a strange providence.
Early in the 70s, I was just a young priest, and my spiritual director taught it to me.
And at that time, it was considered secret knowledge only to be taught by spiritual director to spiritual director.
And it was a way to read the soul, if you can put it that way.
Since that time...
It's become now written and talked about, and the secret is out, as it were.
We were afraid originally it would become a cheap parlor game and become trivialized, but it really is an amazing tool by which you can understand how human personality works.
Thank you.
So sometime in between those two points, you began to become more and more active in teaching folks about some of the things that you were learning about.
Enneagram, I gather, was one of these first areas.
Sort of walk me through this process, both to learn about the Enneagram but also learn about you.
But how you took a topic that was thought to be not for the masses and made it accessible to so many folks.
I guess you've used it as well in marital counseling and in a lot of different endeavors to try to bring some of these teachings into practical use.
Well, the first 10 years, I didn't teach it publicly.
I tried to be a good boy, and that's a one on the Enneagram to try to do it right.
And then in the mid-80s, a woman named Helen Palmer from Berkeley, she wrote it.
And I said, well, the secret's out.
And so at that point, I started talking about it publicly.
And my version came out more on CD. The book only came out later.
But you're right.
I think my desire, and the desire of others, was if this is wisdom, then wisdom is meant for the masses.
It's not meant to be esoteric or elite.
And how can we get this out to really help marriages, to help people have this great jolt of self-understanding?
It's an amazing opening of wisdom.
Of the self.
Because the anagram helps you see why you do the things you do.
And you get it configured correctly.
And once you get the right configuration, it's an epiphany of insight.
Define for everybody out there listening what an anagram is.
It is a funny word.
And of course it sounds like angiogram.
I can define that.
It's from two Greek words, which ennia means the nine forms or the nine types.
But the best we can research it at this point, it goes back to one of the early fathers of the church, a man called Avagrius Ponticus, a fourth century deacon in Syria, who was trying already then to name what eventually were called in Christianity the capital sins.
And at that time they had seven capital sins.
Eventually it was expanded to nine, that there were nine different entrapments, nine different illusions, nine different defense mechanisms would probably be a modern term.
What were the two he missed?
He missed deceit and fear.
And the interesting thing is, those were never in the classic listing.
Deceit and fear were never called capital sins.
And as we have come to know human nature better, they're probably the two biggest ones.
The most universal ones, proving the very point, as Thomas Aquinas would have said, you can't see your own sin.
What you're really doing, you take as such normal behavior that you don't perceive it as an aberration.
So you get the nine sins, and you sort of tie them together into...
Well, go ahead.
You can explain it better.
No, I can't.
Well, each one of them is a very different set of blinders.
That's probably the best way to say it.
And because it's the set of blinders from which you look out at reality, it's very hard for you to see that they're blinders.
What happens if you have a good spiritual director is they can sort of take those blinders off or expose them to you.
And that's what I mean by the epiphany.
It's actually rather humiliating to recognize, gosh, I do that, don't I? I see everything through one compulsive set of glasses.
Once that's taken from you, and you can sort of see, well, there's another way, the second way, or the third way, or the fourth way.
It's the whole thing of standing in someone else's moccasins and saying, you know, that's a valid way to look at reality, too.
But it doesn't come naturally to me.
It's always a decision.
It's always a surrender to get out of your own perspective, your own slot, and to look at life from another one.
Last time when we were discussing me, it's always about me, Lisa quickly said, oh, he's a three.
So everyone around the table said, yeah, three, three, three.
And I had no idea what a three was.
And you kindly said, well, you know, we characterize people, and you'll describe a three in a second, but 70% of the characteristics that make a three or any of the nine numbers are good things.
Are gifts.
But it's your tragic flaw as well.
Together with what makes your gift is what will ultimately lead to your demise, if you allow it to.
Well said.
You remembered, yeah.
That's just my way of putting it.
It's a somewhat artificial number.
But I'd say 70% or something like that.
The vast majority of the energy is good.
It's your gift.
It's your insight.
It's the way you're going to change the world and influence reality.
But we overdo our gift.
As the early teachers said, we're destroyed by our gift.
Too much of a good thing is a bad thing.
And we see this in Greek drama.
We see it in Shakespearean drama called, as you said, the tragic flaw.
But your tragic flaw...
The anagram would say, is initially your gift.
And you overdo your gift.
You overplay your strength.
Why wouldn't you?
I do.
We all do.
But a good spiritual teacher helps you see that.
That your seeing can become your blindness.
Because you so move with it.
And by the time, usually you're middle-aged...
I always say it starts rotting on you.
It's excessive.
It's too much.
To use our language, you've got to balance yourself out.
You've got to get out of yourself and look at life from a different perspective.
So, I'm a three.
What does that mean?
The threes are the dynamos.
They are efficiency experts.
I always say they grease the wheels of life.
They can do in one day more than the rest of us can do in three days.
And it just comes naturally to them.
They define themselves by performance.
Success.
And they're usually naturally successful people.
It's amazing.
And the weakness of being a three?
What's the tragic flaw for us?
He's hesitating because the word he used last night, I'll tell you right now, was deceit.
And then he quickly said, oh, I don't mean like deceit like you're lying or anything.
Maybe that would work too, right?
Deceit sort of sounds like lying.
Thank you for being so upfront.
The so-called sin, if you want to use that word, of the three is deceit.
It's not that they'd go out and tell blatant lies, but they're going to always put their best face forward.
They're going to embroider the truth.
They're going to make it look as good as it can look.
And, of course, this is what allows them to make things happen, because they further the project.
Whatever it is, they know how to multiply it.
That doesn't mean you can defend it, sweetheart.
Now that you can see it, you can transcend it.
I have a tragic flaw.
I can't do that.
But you can see, like in the case of the three, how, I mean, they are workaholics.
They're doers, doers, doers.
And that allows them to get so much done.
But then, usually in the middle of life, they'll say...
But I then, in doing this so well, I in fact avoided that.
You know, stopping and smelling the roses, as they say, or whatever it might be.
That some aspects of life got overlooked or avoided in doing the one thing that I was really good at.
You're a one.
Yes, I'm a one.
What's a one mean?
We ones are perfectionists.
We're idealists.
We always want to do the right thing, the best thing, the good thing.
So you can see how that edges us toward judgmentalism of other people who don't do the good thing.
Of course, it's always as we define the good thing.
So we're reformers by nature.
We're idealists by nature.
We're also workaholics.
But ours would come out of idealism and righteousness.
Whereas yours would come out of almost just the joy of productivity itself.
You see?
Threes aren't really righteous people.
Why are you smiling, Lisa?
This is me.
I'm the prototypical three.
It's fascinating.
But we can be.
We can be very obnoxious because we're so sure that we're right.
And it's my gift.
It gives me a kind of focus, conviction, direction, authority.
And it's helped me as a teacher, having that assurance.
But I can go over the edge very often and become arrogant, righteous, too sure of myself.
Do ones also tend to be critical of their spouses frequently?
I'm just trying to complete the diagnosis with Lisa here.
Lisa's telling me she doesn't know what number she is.
She's absolutely a one.
I mean, don't worry about the ones.
We are critical by nature.
There's no question, she's a one.
She's a one.
Lisa, what is the struggle around figuring out what number you are?
You're obviously a one.
I think I could be a one.
I'm not...
What other number are you?
That's it.
Basically, he took your biography and just described it to me.
We have a lot more to talk about, but first, let's take a quick break.
Father Richard Rohr, diagnosed me as a three, which is pretty simple.
That was a chip shot.
Himself was a one.
And I think Lisa pretty clearly is a one.
So I'm going to pursue that diagnosis on her.
But the best way to do it is to look at the other numbers.
So we know a one is an idealist, but tends to be resentful.
That's the weakness.
That's right.
A three is a productive, very efficient person, but tends to embellish the truth.
So actually is rich with self-deceit.
We believe our lies, so I guess that makes it that much more dangerous.
That's well put, that's it.
So what's the two?
The two is the need to be needed.
They are always, and they're brilliant at it, creating connections, relationships.
They're the natural helpers, servants, do-gooders.
But have you ever been helped by somebody, and sort of after it's happening, or after it has happened, or while it's happening, you sense, I'm helping them more than they're helping me.
LAUGHTER If you have that feeling, they're almost certainly a two.
They don't realize that there's a hook to their helpfulness, to their servanthood.
They need you to need them.
And so they can ingratiate themselves into your life.
And I'm putting it negatively, but that's part of the genius of the anagram.
It's sort of Puts your game right in your face in a humiliating way.
I've seen twos, for example, when they discover that they are a two, actually just weep because they recognize, my God, that's what I do and I don't want to do that, you know?
Well, you mentioned earlier that you use this a lot in relationship counseling, which makes a lot of sense.
For example, now that I know I'm a three, Lisa can look at me and point out aspects that are obviously a three, and I can't get out of it because a three is a three is a three.
Can you ever be a hybrid?
Can I be like a three and a one together?
Uh...
You're one big number.
That's the whole power of it, to recognize that you're compulsively one number.
But it is true that each number tends to take on some of the other characteristics.
In fact, if we have real self-knowledge, you'll see you're a little bit of all nine.
It's the nine ways that human beings play the game of life.
Can you transcend your number?
Yes.
Yes.
Now, I use the word redeem, the redeemed personality, in my early book.
And, you know, it has a lot of religious connotations.
So for some people, it probably isn't the best word.
But you can.
In other words, all the nine types, the nine personality types, are equally good, equally bad.
But you can live them out on a scale of a rather healthy three, or rather...
Deceitful three, who really is into deceit, you see.
The irony is, now I haven't emphasized the gift, I'm sorry, but a healthy three, for example, actually just has an amazing love of integrity.
They've seen through their game...
Do you understand?
I don't want to do that anymore.
I'm sick of doing that, you know?
And they'll actually have a passion for integrity more than most people.
We ones, if we're both ones, we can be resentful and judgmental, but we see through that finally.
And on my better days, I would like to say I'm actually more serene And less judgmental than a lot of people.
But I've had to work at that for many years.
So when you see it, you almost overcome it More than most people do.
Do you understand?
Like the sixth type, the fear-based person.
When they recognize how fear has controlled their whole life, it becomes such a humiliating recognition that they can become the most courageous of all people.
So your gift is your sin, if I can use that word, or your flaw, overcome.
Got it.
Overcome.
So how do you think they arise in us?
Did God say they were going to divide you into nines?
It's ironic that it's nine, by the way.
It's one of those spiritual numbers.
Isn't it?
Do you think it's hardwired on genetic code?
Is it because there are only nine ways you could possibly behave?
Mm-hmm.
You know, that's still a mystery to me.
It really is.
And what I said in my last book on it was just...
And probably this is a way to avoid making a decision.
But I really say it's one-third nature, one-third nurture, and one-third free choice.
I'm a lover of freedom, if human beings are going to be human beings.
And I can remember, for example...
As a little boy, somewhere thinking, I want to be a good boy.
I want to do it right.
Maybe I'm just three or four.
But now I think there was already an inclination that we would call nature, a predisposition in that direction.
Probably my Catholic training and my parenting told me it's wonderful to be a good boy and to follow the rules and do it right, whatever the rules might be.
So there was the nurturing in that direction.
But I can feel, at least in myself...
That there was some level of choicefulness, too.
So that's my analysis.
I don't know if it's true.
The number four you said was dark.
Well, they get their energy from darkness, from depression, from sadness, from tragedy.
So many novelists and playwrights are the four type, you know?
And that's why, you know...
He's a tortured artist.
A dark film, you know, film noir.
The French culture is even a four culture.
We analyze cultures this way.
It helps you recognize...
Is the American culture a three-culture?
Absolutely!
Hey, you figured it out!
See, yeah, you fit in America.
Your gift will be rewarded, promoted, recognized, and loved.
Because we are a three culture, you know?
And, again, our deceit is somewhat obvious to the rest of the world.
But when you're inside of America, you can't see how much we embellish our own truth and deny our own dark side.
But the four on the opposite would...
Would sort of revel in revealing the dark side.
Right.
Yeah.
And what's the five?
The fives are the compulsive perceivers.
As a way of life, they gather ideas, information, books, theories, theologies, philosophies.
They love to know.
It's a compulsive need to know.
At the worst, they're the old curmudgeon or the nerd who is just totally preoccupied with their world of ideas.
And that's their energy.
That's how they get their energy.
The good side of it is they are marvelously objective observers who And there are great advisors behind the throne who can point out to you from this, you know, detached observation.
A kind of clarity.
Yes.
They're very good advisors, very often.
Seven.
The seven would be...
You skipped six.
We did six.
Oh, the fear.
No, you said they're fear-based.
We probably should say a little bit about six, because we think, most teachers of the Enneagram, I think that six is by far the biggest number.
Is that right?
Maybe as much as 50% of the population.
You're kidding me!
Isn't that amazing?
Yeah.
And you can see why, you know, teachers like Jesus would say, do not be afraid.
Because I'm convinced it's true.
I've been a priest 37 years in working with people and seeing how the church works.
It seems to me you can pretty much rely on people being fear-based.
We just gravitate toward fear.
It's amazing that one number would so trump all the rest.
So describe it a bit more.
I must say, I've never had much fear in my life.
It's not the three energy.
But I always thought it was because I just ignored it and that I was fooling myself.
I never actually thought that I wasn't fearful.
I just...
Made myself believe that if I just sort of ignored the fears, they wouldn't be as much of a problem for me.
In fact, failure for me has always been discarded to the side.
I never thought about it.
I remember early in my career, I... When you write manuscripts for medical journals, you send them in and they reject the paper sometimes.
So there was a paper that I had written that was controversial, so they wanted to see all the backup information on it.
So I had all the data, I sent it in, and they said, where are all the rejection letters?
Because I got it published ultimately, but it wasn't initially, it was rejected.
And I said, well, I threw them away.
And they said, what do you mean you threw them away?
I said, why would I save a rejection letter?
It's bad karma.
I never filed it.
As soon as I get a rejection of any kind, I throw it away.
Yeah, the avoidance of the three is failure.
They almost refuse to see it.
And let's say you really did have a major failure.
There the fear energy would start coming to the surface.
If there was a failure you could not deny, it'd be torture for you.
But you would feel fears like, am I an adequate person?
Is there something wrong with me?
So let's go back to six then.
If the number is six, the fear-based Enneagram number.
The fear person, there's basically two types of the fear.
It's so big, you have to have two.
There's the one who denies their fears and overcompensates for them with bravado and gusto.
This would be Adolf Hitler.
He's basically a fear-based person.
You can see it in his eyes.
But they so deny it And overcompensate for it.
They pretend to be self-assured.
I was just teaching in Germany recently and the German culture as a whole is six culture.
They even agree with me on that.
This anagram book probably sells bigger in Germany than anywhere else because they're really coming to recognize that that bravado, if you will, that the German is sometimes identified with is in fact a cover-up for fear.
Now, the more common 6, however, is the self-doubting, mousy person that you'd perhaps more identify, always questioning themselves, never sure they're right, needing to ask endless questions to clarify, what if I'm wrong, what if I'm wrong?
You can see it in their eyes, you can hear it in their voice, filled with self-doubt.
And these are the people you sort of want to hold up, you want to support, because you realize, my gosh, this guy doesn't trust himself.
This is a lot of people.
What's their strength?
What I love, by the way, about the Enneagram is, as you said, strength is the majority of us.
What makes them strong?
When they can recognize their fear, all nine types depends upon this epiphany of recognition, how I'm trapped inside of my blinders.
Once you get that, and the positive gift can emerge, then it's quite wonderful.
And in this case, it would be a kind of loyalty gift.
And courage.
Those would be the two main words I'd identify with a healthy six.
Courage.
They'll be very loyal to what they believe in, to their marriage, to their friendships, and ironically, in the great moments.
Not the ordinary, just walking down the street moments.
But if there's a crisis, ironically...
A healthy fear-based person will rise to the occasion better than the rest of us.
In other words, they've dealt with this demon of fear for so many years that when push comes to shove, they actually can rise above it better than we can.
Now, they'll fall apart afterwards.
But in the moment, they're quite amazing how they will gather their energies and move through it.
But that's only a healthy six.
You know, it seems almost as though these were made for cinema.
So often in our films, at least you study films, you must see these characters frequently portrayed.
The idea of someone who comes from an un-great circumstance and is able to rise to greatness during a crisis seems almost six-ish.
Because they're sort of ordinary and maybe living in fear or maybe not facing their fears.
Then something happens, and you're right, they're practiced.
They do affairs every single day.
Once you learn the anagram, it's hard not to do that, to see a piece of theater or film and recognize the archetypal energy that's going on there.
And people have, once they learn the anagram, tried to create theater pieces with all nine characters.
And it's clever.
It works.
It can work, I should say.
Father, if people want to get some of your tapes, how do they do it?
Well, the Center for Action and Contemplation is in Albuquerque.
We have a website.
They could find it, I'm sure.
What's the site?
Remember it?
CACRadicalGrace.org.
Radical Grace.
Yeah.
I love it.
It's all right.
There's a lot of part where that came from, but first, a quick break.
We're talking about Fr. Richard Richard Rorp, and he's written a bunch of wonderful books, including Simplicity, The Wild Man's Journey, Quest for the Grail, and on and on.
Great books.
But one work of his that he's really well known for is his writings and speakings on the Enneagram.
And we've covered the first six.
I'm a three.
The super achiever who's prone to deceit, self-deceit.
He's a one, the idealist, that sometimes can be resentful.
And the number six we just finished discussing, perhaps the most common in the world or in this country, that are being fear-based.
But someone who can see their fear when they get through it is able to be present with remarkable courage.
What's number seven?
Seven is one of the best disguises of all the nine types.
Because just to see them externally, you're going to see the happy optimist.
If you see someone walking along the street and there's just a natural smile on their face, they're almost always a seven.
Their eyes shine.
They immediately see what's good about things.
We ones would see what's bad.
They will immediately see the bright side of everything, but it's to the point of denying the dark side.
They're the eternal optimists, and you could say even the naive optimists.
And that's what destroys them.
The refusal to deal with pain, with difficulty.
Their whole life could be described as an avoiding of pain.
Psychological pain, relational pain, physical pain.
They don't like darkness, negativity, or pain.
So when they reform, when they get through their potential tragic flaw, what do they look like on the other side?
They have a psychotic break.
Well, to be honest, their joy just has depth to it and groundedness to it.
When they can find their happiness in Inside of difficulty, instead of by avoiding difficulty.
Got it.
Oh, you did it so beautifully.
That's perfect.
Then you've got a healthy seven.
That, I still, you know, have a hard life, but I'm okay, you know.
And in that sense, they really are uppers for the rest of us.
They can pull the energy of a whole room upward.
Just the naturalness of their smile.
Joy is their gift.
Do they tend to be leaders?
Yes.
They wouldn't tend to be leaders.
They would tend to be energizers.
Now, that could be a type of leadership.
But because of their refusal to deal with difficulty...
I mean, you know, if you're a leader, you have to deal with difficulty.
And they really fall at that.
They can ignore a difficulty in their company for six months and then it's too late.
Do you understand?
So I wouldn't say...
Like, I can't think...
Of a recent U.S. president who would be a 7. What do you think President Bush is now?
A 6. He's very clearly a 6. He's fear-based.
You can see it in his eyes.
And again, he overcompensated for it.
I mean, I'm not trying to be unfair, but yeah, they try to deny their fear and rush in with aggressiveness and assertiveness.
But you can see it's not really...
It's a grounded authority.
It's an overcompensating authority.
I'm not trying to be political or, you know, unfair.
Take a Democrat, the President Clinton.
Clinton would be a three.
He'd be a three.
Although with a very strong two-wing that need to be needed, that need to be liked, that need to be a nice buddy and friend to people, which is why so many people liked Clinton.
But his deceit is what got him in trouble, do you see?
I'm glad you brought it up in that.
He's a classic three in many ways.
An overachiever, a performer, but his deceit was his tragic flaw.
A guy.
Reagan?
I would classify Reagan as also a three.
His attraction, we mostly elect threes in this country.
But you can see his attraction to being an actor as a young man.
In a certain sense, this is a playing out of the deceit thing.
A formal actor.
Right.
That he's acting a way of life, which served him very well, you know.
We call him the great communicator.
But things like the Iran-Contra affair are just, you know, denied, overlooked.
And everybody's willing to go along with his deceit on that, which is really amazing.
Because they sell themselves so well that you almost buy their lie.
Right.
Now, it didn't work for Clinton.
It partially did, maybe.
But it worked pretty much for Reagan.
People could almost not see his deceit because he was so likable.
Right.
And number eight on the enneagram.
Now, eights are easy to spot.
Eights operate by oppositional energy.
You say yes, they'll say no.
Oh, gosh, that's so right.
They need to fight you.
They need...
To define themselves by being against.
You know, they're loud, they're bombastic, they're overstated.
I think I have a lot of eights in my family.
There are some eights out there.
They're power people.
They walk into the room and they immediately see who's got the power.
And they're out to take it.
Even in the volume of their voice.
They're amazing people.
And their strength?
What makes them so important?
Well, you know, I think to be a revolutionary, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara would be AIDS. To reform a whole country and to take on the whole system.
If you had the courage to take on the whole healthcare system, you'd almost have to be an 8. No one else is going to do it.
I sometimes wonder if Hillary Clinton is not an 8. I'm not sure.
But it's probably why she elicits so much opposition.
8s are easily resentable because we see all that power and we either are fascinated by it or we fear it and hate it.
So eights, you either love them or hate them.
If they're on your side and fighting for your team and your values, you've got a good fighter.
They're going to make it happen.
But if they're fighting against your values, you'll of course be very threatened by them because they can make it happen.
The nines, the last of the nines.
I'm sort of curious.
Ideally, you would be first or last, I guess.
What makes nines so unique?
Nines are sort of in a category all their own.
Because it's not that they have any one strong, focused direction like the others do.
It's almost a lack of focus is their way of life.
They spend their whole life trying to find their focus.
What do I really want?
What do I really believe in?
What do I really care about?
So I always say they're jack of all trades and master of none.
They're a little bit good at everything, but are not really good at anything.
And that sounds unkind, but most nines would identify with it.
They're masters of trivia.
I have a brother and a sister who are both nines.
And they're the most likable people.
You cannot not like nines because they're never pushing their agenda.
They're easy to be around.
They're nice to have a meal with.
Do you understand?
They go with the flow.
What's the flaw?
The flaw would be that lack of focus.
And in terms of the capital sins, it was called sloth or laziness.
It doesn't mean they're lazy by our classic definition, although some can be.
But it just means they're everywhere and therefore they're nowhere.
Do you understand?
They can't bring their whole self to really invest in any one thing.
So they appear lazy.
What's their strength?
Uh...
They're harmonizers.
They're peacemakers.
That very unwillingness to put all their eggs in one basket allows them to see the truth in this basket and that basket.
Do you understand?
Just having a nine in the room can lower the energy.
And you can feel like you want to harmonize and negotiate and compromise when you're around nines.
They call that energy into the room and into the relationship.
They're easygoing people.
Their voice will often be peaceful even and calm.
And just when you're around them, you find yourself getting a little calmer yourself.
That's a great gift.
Absolutely.
Yeah, to have nines around, sort of settle the waters.
As you mature in life, do you ever shift numbers?
Teenagers often don't know where they're going.
They often seem slothful.
They live like bats.
Kids actually have different circadian rhythms almost.
They get up later.
There are these school programs now in the United States because we have so many kids in our schools that stagger the classes.
The kids that start at 7.30 can't function that well because the kids don't wake up until 9 or 10. They're not designed to.
And it's true.
It's not that they're lazy necessarily.
You know, most teachers of the anagram would insist that you're one number forever.
But that you do, during periods of stress, crisis, great elation, significantly move toward other energies for a while.
That's clear.
But you'll still do the seventh thing in a three-way.
You'll still do the eighth thing, but in a three-way.
Do you see?
You'll do the two thing, but in a three-way, if you are a three.
You're stuck there forever.
Yeah, yeah.
Now that I'm stuck here forever, how do ones and threes get along?
Why are you so sure that I'm a one?
I could be a six.
I asked the following questions.
Are they often resentful?
Are they harsh on their spouses?
Oh my gosh.
You know, I got yeses to both those answers.
I wish you could see these eyes here.
So funny.
Actually, you do.
Because one key I know when I did more marriage counseling in my earlier years, young couples, I'd encourage them to, do you have a similar pace toward life?
I'd say, I find this is so important.
Somewhat similar energy in terms of the way you reach out toward the world.
And in that sense, a one and a three are very similar.
You're both high-energy people.
You're a power couple in that sense.
Ones, threes, and eights are the natural leaders.
Natural leaders.
They lead in very different ways.
But one-three marriages, you probably exhaust your kids sometimes.
They exhaust us, I think, actually.
They got a lot of their mother's genes.
Fifty percent, roughly.
Gosh.
It's interesting because now that I know the 8, I start thinking about the kids.
You can sort of begin to see.
None of our kids are 8s.
No, we don't have any 8s.
We have some threes.
I don't think so.
I think Zoe's much more of a one.
She's so righteous, honey.
Yes.
She's so, it's so important for her to be perfect.
She's very moralistic.
What else about her, actually keep going.
So you're talking about pacing between, so I would gather that there were probably times when you have folks who on the Enneagram may not be so compatible.
It's really true.
And you don't want to be fatalistic or this always works.
I mean, anything can work.
I'm a great believer in grace.
Grace fills in all the gaps of everything.
But there certainly are some relationships.
Let me tell you one that's rather common.
The two and the eight.
It's amazing how often they marry one another.
Because the eight is, in some ways, the non-lover.
They're the power person.
And the two is the ultimate lover.
But they can work out a compatibility.
If the two likes a power partner to compensate for their over-heart space, it can work.
But not without tension.
Not without tension.
Because they're really very different people.
Obviously if their heart is given to one another, I know some two-eight marriages that have worked.
But usually the two has to give up most of their power needs.
And the eight has to...
In many ways, let the two do all the loving.
So it's a trade-off.
It's a trade-off.
And in a certain sense, unless they do a lot of inner work, both of them can remain very immature.
I don't know how else to say it.
You know, if one partner does all the loving and the other does all the power, it's not really a compatible partnership.
Yeah, honey.
Yeah.
They don't evolve.
On that quick note, I'm going to run from the show.
Father, it's been a great pleasure having you on, full of knowledge, such a peaceful way, a non-ego-centered way of explaining some very challenging topics.
▲
Export Selection