Myth Monday [14]: “The more Enneagram labels I stack, the better I know myself.” There is a strange trend of treating the Enneagram like a collection game. People introduce themselves with long strings of lore: instincts, wings, tritypes, stackings, variants of variants, as if the goal were to build the most elaborate Enneagram bio possible. In the extreme, you end up with something like “sp/so/sx 4w5 so/sx/sp 3 sx/sp/so 6w5 so/sp/sx 7 sx/so/sp 8w9 sp/sx/so 9”… which sounds impressive, but what does it actually do for you in real life? The more labels you pile on, the easier it becomes to decorate yourself instead of changing yourself. Every behaviour can be explained away by some extra code, and the focus quietly shifts from “What is not working in my life and how can I fix it?” to “How do I describe myself as precisely as possible inside the system?” It feels like refinement, but it often becomes a way to avoid the discomfort of picking one main strategy and...
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Sundays with the Enneagram The “Three Centres” Myth – Part 7: If You Really Want Three Domains, Look at the Instinctual Biases (But… Still No Proof) At this point it should be clear that the traditional head, heart, and gut centres do not cleanly describe how the nine types actually function. If someone still insists on having three basic human domains, a far more plausible home for them is in the instinctual biases, not in the centres. Preserving, Navigating, and Transmitting already point to three survival-relevant directions of attention that everyone shares, rather than trying to lock whole types into three unequal buckets. A “certainty” or safety domain sits much more naturally with the Preserving bias: attention to resources, security, health, and what is needed to keep life going. A “bonding” domain aligns far better with Navigating, which is about group belonging, roles, alliances, and knowing how one fits into the social fi...
Playful Friday [13]: You might be a Preserver if… Your kitchen cupboards are organised by category, expiry date, and a backup system for the backup system. You've said "just in case" more times today than most people say it in a week. You go to the supermarket for three things and come back with seventeen, because you might need them. You have a running list of everything that needs fixing in the house, another list of who can fix it, and a third list of when you last checked the first two lists. You don't like talking about money. You just quietly make sure there's enough of it. Your home is your castle. Unannounced visitors are technically an invasion. You've already thought about what you'd do if the heating breaks, the car breaks down, and the Wi-Fi goes out — ideally all at once. "Spontaneous weekend away" is not a holiday. It's a stress test. The Preserving instinct is not about being boring ...
Communication Wednesday [13]: Type One Type Two When Ones and Twos get along, they can be a quietly powerful pair: “I’ll make it right” meets “I’ll make it better for you.” Both care about being good people and doing the right thing, and both often feel responsible for fixing what’s wrong around them. That shared sense of duty can make them feel like natural allies at work and at home. But they usually organise that duty differently. Ones tend to focus on systems, standards, and “how things should be,” while Twos focus on people, feelings, and “how you are doing.” So a One may think they are helping by correcting a process, while a Two feels unseen because no one asked how they were. A Two may think they are helping by stepping in personally, while a One experiences it as messy, boundary‑blurring, or “not the proper way.” If you are a One with a Two: Say explicitly that you see their care, not just the task they did “wrong.” Watch the ton...
Myth Monday [13]: “The Enneagram must be a spiritual tool, because it was designed as one.” It is true that the Enneagram of personality grew out of a strongly spiritual context. Oscar Ichazo, founder of the Arica School, developed his system as a path to higher states of consciousness, combining meditation, ritual, and “protoanalysis” in an explicitly esoteric training aimed at enlightenment, not at coaching or HR workshops. He mapped ego-fixations, passions, holy ideas and virtues onto the enneagon and, over time, created a very large number of enneagram-based schemas (Arica speaks today of 108 enneagrams, most of which were never part of mainstream personality teaching). The first problem is that “spirituality” is a very murky concept. For some people it means mystical practice, for others religious faith, for others a sense of meaning and values, and for many it simply means “woo-woo stuff I do not trust.” Treating the Enneagram as inh...
Sundays with the Enneagram The “Three Centres” Myth – Part 6: If Any Type Can Be “Head,” What Does Head Even Mean? If the head centre really captured people who “live in their minds,” then 5, 6, and 7 would all share a clearly distinct, thinking-first style that other types lack. In reality, each of them can be argued just as convincingly into other supposed domains, which again shows how loose and shape-shifty the whole head/heart/gut scheme actually is. Take Type 5. The stereotype is “pure head,” yet many 5s are extremely sensitive, not only emotionally but also to sound, light, smell, and social intrusion. It often looks as if they had to build a kind of emotional and sensory buffer to protect themselves from the messiness of the world, retreating to reduce overwhelm; that is easy to read as a deeply feeling type whose heart is so exposed that withdrawal becomes a defensive move, rather than as a coldly cerebral creature. Type 6 can fit into e...
Playful Friday [12]: Type 9 Type 9s strive to feel peaceful: they scan for tension, conflict, and disharmony, wanting enough calm and inclusion to stay connected without feeling friction or pressure to choose sides. Their energy often smooths edges and bridges gaps, creating space for everyone to coexist comfortably. Type 9 is likely to say: “I see both sides, and maybe there’s a way to do a bit of each.” “Let’s not rush; things have a way of working out if we give them time.” “It’s fine either way; whatever keeps things smooth for everyone.” “I’m not avoiding deciding, I’m just waiting until it’s clearer for all of us.” “Why fight when we could just find the middle ground?” “I tend to go along because harmony usually matters more than being right.” “My superpower? Making a room feel okay even when no one agrees.” “I don’t have strong opinions; I have strong preferences for peace.” Type 9 is unlikely to ...