The perfect-laid health plan might come to nothing if it doesn’t actually fit your character. And generally understanding the motivations behind what you want and what you’ll persist with may be robust.
Welcome to the Enneagram, a device that synthesizes the knowledge of a number of religious traditions. It may aid you maximize your inherent strengths, comprehend your weaknesses, and uncover the actions and circumstances that may aid you thrive.
In brief, the Enneagram could also be simply the form of private coach you’ve been searching for.
“What makes the Enneagram totally different from different character assessments is that it’s not about your behaviors, so it’s not that you simply’re outgoing or shy,” says Ashton Whitmoyer-Ober, writer 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 sorts, every having its personal traits, fears, and needs. (For extra on the system’s background, see “Peace By Character“.)
“The Enneagram is a good, in-depth option to be taught extra about your self as a way to determine easy methods to make your character traits be just right for you,” says Life Time private coach Lindsay Ogden, CPT.
Understanding her Enneagram sort — predominantly sort 1 — helped Ogden higher plan her exercise routine.
Kind 1s love group and are sometimes perfectionists, she explains. “Realizing this, I’ve employed coaches to put in writing packages 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 inspire you to your health actions,” says Whitmoyer-Ober, who’s a kind 2, the Helper or Giver.
But there are additionally advantages to stepping outdoors your consolation zone — that’s how and the place development occurs.
“A sort 8 is often extra aggressive, so that they sometimes like boxing and heavy lifting. Nonetheless, that will not be what they want for private development and higher self-awareness,” says sort 8 Dave Nixon, proprietor of Practical Health Australia and writer of Minding Your self.
In case you’re a kind 8 — the Challenger — you would possibly profit from incorporating extra stress-free actions like yoga, Pilates, and nostril respiration into your routine, even if you happen to discover these pursuits difficult, he advises.
Step one to utilizing the Enneagram is to determine your sort. 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 sort. Notice that the core “needs” and “fears” are deeper than desirous to set a 5K PR and feeling spooked by spiders; core fears and needs kind the idea of your motivation.
And they’re carefully linked. For instance, a kind 1’s core worry is being unhealthy or being unsuitable, whereas their core want is to be good or proper.
In the meantime, a 4’s core worry is having no significance or that means; their core want is to be genuine and discover that means.
Realizing your main fears and needs — your core motivation — may help open pathways to overcoming obstacles and resistance as you pursue your health objectives.
After you have this consciousness, it’s doubtless that some behaviors will change naturally. Take issues a step additional by making use of your new data to deliberately modify behaviors that aren’t serving you and to create new techniques in your life that assist, slightly than pressure, a sustainable health behavior.
Understand that working together with your core needs and fears isn’t designed to vary them. They’re a part of who you might be.
This counters a deeply ingrained facet of health tradition: the assumption that we should change who we’re, and that train may 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 aren’t unhealthy or unsuitable or undesirable as we’re. It teaches us to begin 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 learn to handle them so that they work for, as a substitute of towards, you,” Whitmoyer-Ober says.
Able to get began? Our consultants clarify the 9 Enneagram sorts in higher element and supply ideas to assist every sort thrive on their health journey.
