“He who knows others is learned. He who knows himself is wise.” Lao Tzu
The Enneagram is a profound and comprehensive system for understanding self and others. This personality system has combined the modern psychology and ancient wisdoms to give you a cutting edge technology to understand human nature with new depth and clarity. Learning this powerful knowledge will change all aspects of your life through developing your Emotional Intelligence (EQ), increasing your self-awareness and improving your relationships with your family and friends, your colleagues and business associates.
Develop EQ
Emotional Intelligence (EQ) accounts for 80% of one’s life success across the globe, IQ only accounts for 20%. EQ is a combination of intrapersonal intelligence (self-awareness, self‐regulation, motivation), and interpersonal (empathy and social skills) . Certain minimum level of IQ is required to solve our life or job problem, but beyond that level EQ plays a bigger role because it helps us evaluate and regulate our emotions, and adapt to our environment and work with other people more effectively.
Enneagram offers a great and long lasting solution to develop EQ. Enneagram has an effect on all the five components of emotional intelligence, which are self-awareness, self‐regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills. Enneagram helps us identify our own and other people’s patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving, and describing the underlying motivations with great accuracy.
Peter O’Hanrahan on The Enneagram in the Workplace
Increase Self-Awareness
We all take on specific coping strategies early in life to get along with others and get what we need in life for security, love, and self-worth. This coping strategy was wonderful and served us well when we were young, but these early coping strategies for dealing with the world around us become fixed and rigid patterns that can be hard to change because they’re familiar and comfortable.
The Enneagram shows us the box we are in (without knowing it) and the way out by waking us up to our unconscious and repetitive patterns that direct our beliefs, our emotions and our behaviours. The Enneagram provides us the map to free us from our compulsive habit, and guide us to experience and build upon our strengths.
When we know our personality type, we become more mindful and aware of our patterns and unconscious motivation underneath our behaviours. Through observing our own thoughts, feelings, emotions, imaginations without judging or repressing them, we develop the habit of allowing and observing. With a regular practice of self observation, we become less reactive and defensive and more conscious in the choices we make, and more capable of a wider range of coping strategies in daily life.
Improve Relationship
The Enneagram helps us change the way we relate to others. Without the Enneagram knowledge, we tend to believe that others think like us and have the same kind of motivations, values and priorities as we do. With the Enneagram insights, we know that others see the world through a different set of filters and have different motivations, values and priorities. This awareness makes us more sensitive toward the differences, enhance our ability to see others’ perspectives and experience their emotions. When we are able to make sense of why people do what they do, we become more empathetic and less reactive.
When we learn to dis-identify with our personality type, we begin to view our thoughts and feelings with a different perspective, we no longer need to protect ourselves by making justification for our thoughts, feelings and behaviours. We can take responsibility for own reactivity without blaming others, and be honest with our true thoughts and feeling without worrying about rejection. Real communication and connection become possible because when we are not protecting and defending ourselves, others become more compassionate with our sufferings and struggles. When we are able to communicate in a compassionate way, our relationships with others will take a quantum leap toward mutual satisfaction and happiness.
Use of Enneagram
What is important in studying Enneagram is not knowing more, but rather knowing how it can be used in changing our life. Knowing our Enneagram type and our truth is only the first step because this self-awareness will remain as an observation of the head if we do not take the next step and choose to act differently because of our insight. When we use the Enneagram as a mirror of truth in which we see ourselves and as a motivator to choose new ways of relating to ourselves and others, this tool becomes a guide to the most important values of our life.
We believe that the most meaningful use of the Enneagram comes from the integration of our head, heart and body for us to act in new ways. Action guided by both the heart and mind is our hope for creating a new society and a new world with individuals who are mature, balanced and compassionate.