Ever get the feeling that there is no progressive change or the feeling that life is monotonous at work? As if you are on a hamster wheel only that the pace at which it spins is incredibly slow. So here from PROUD PEGASUS It’s high time we WAKE UP and smell the personal growth coffee. The best thing that you can do now – yes, RIGHT NOW – is to take a free enneagram test.
Why? Because self-awareness is the greatest ability of all.
Think about it. How many times have you wondered:How many times have you wondered:
- Why are you repeating the same folly?
- Here the patient is able to identify the factors that hinder him or her from achieving his or her goal:
- What is it that I do not understand about people and why can’t I be able to approach them the way I want?
These mysteries can only be explained by something known as the enneagram. It’s like a satnav for the inner self, helping you navigate the bends and turns of one’s mind.
But first, let me say one thing that you must have learned from your own experience as bait:
Here again, some people are likely to ask: “Oh, isn’t personality testing just a bunch of new-age mumbo jumbo?”
I get it. You’re skeptical. And you should be! And what the consumer finds easy to read is often padded with a lot of nonsense. But the enneagram? It’s different. Recalling the moves can be traced to human practice for century with psychologists and spiritual leaders contributing to the advancement of the discipline. So it’s not about placing you in a particular slot – it’s about releasing you from the confines of the slot you did not even realize you were in.
Still not convinced? Allow me to give you a picture.
Think about it; you are, for example, trying to blow up a bicycle. You blow and blow but the thing is never weak of air. Frustrating, right? That is why you have not identified the leak. What I mean when I say the enneagram is like a tire pressure gauge for your life is that it is a tool for identifying the strength is that it is a tool for the pressure points in your life. Focused solely on companies, Career Pilot helps you identify those subtle air leaks, the patterns and behavior that are quietly puncturing your dreams.
But here’s the kicker: once this has been done, one can then seal off the cracks where the leak is emanating from. And then, you are driving on the highway of life with the sun in your hair thinking why did you waste this much time to get going.
The Power of Self-Awareness: Da, your secret weapon
For God’s sake, let me be brutally honest for a moment. There has never been a time where women and men have not been told those crippling norms on who we should be. Magazines, billboards, people whom we interact with daily – individuals who care about us – they are never shy when it comes to dictating how we should lead our lives. It’s exhausting, isn’t it?
But let me tell you that all answers that you are looking for are within you and only need to be discovered.
It is important to underline the fact that the enneagram is not a process of imposing a standard on to you. In its simplest form, it’s all about how to make you understand the box you have been fitted into and how then get out of it.
Here’s the thing: self-awareness is not an understanding that gets locked away the moment the lesson is done. The muscles that you use regularly get developed; that’s the same case with the knowledge which increases the more it is applied. The enneagram is your personal trainer, getting you to work out those introspection muscles that you did not know you possessed.
It would also be helpful to remember the last time you had an ‘entitlement epiphany’ about yourself. Perhaps, you discovered why one intends to do a big project at the eleventh hour or why one repels friends and family. How did that feel? Liberating, right?
But think how valuable such news would be if one received it on a daily basis? That’s what it is to be in the grips of the enneagram.
That Said, Don’t Just Take My Word For It. ..
Research has established that self-awareness of employees leads to the promotion of the employees as well as better performance marks. Even more so, research shows that people with high level of self-awareness are 36% more likely to be satisfied with their jobs.
But it is not only tied to work. Psychologists have established various benefits of self-awareness such as; improved relationships, better decisions making skills, and even improved health.
It is not a personality test like many people conceive it, it is indeed the entry key into a much happier life.
Breaking Down the Enneagram: The Concept of Your Personal GPS
Well, you may be asking ‘What is the enneagram?’ This is a system that documents nine various personality styles as far as the primary desires, worries, and drives are concerned. But here’s where it gets interesting: we are not only one thing, an identity, or a way of perceiving ourselves and the world. We are a mix and match system where aspects of one type may affect us under different circumstances than aspects of another type.
Let’s break it down:
1. The Perfectionist: Getting better
2. The Helper: In the interest of getting love and attention
3. The Achiever: Pursued achievement, attainment of high status
4. The Individualist: Coveting so earnestness and substance
5. The Investigator: Education principles: The first of education principles is the pursuit of knowledge and understanding.
6. The Loyalist: Trying to find this support and security
7. The Enthusiast: Shopping for fun and thrill
8. The Challenger: To want control and protection
9. The Peacemaker: Striving for commonality and coziness
You might be asking yourself, ‘Well, this is just one more thing to add to my list of labels.’ Hear me out; it’s not like that.
The Effect Is in the Detail
Enneagram is not a way of categorizing the shape, size, or color of your personality package. It is about presenting you the box into which you have put yourself and then offering the key so that you can get out of it.
These types have their paradigms of health and development. Because there is great news: you are not predetermined to be your worst, and you are not confined to only your best. By nature of the enneagram, one gets to know his or her strengths or growth areas as well as the weaknesses, vices or areas of blind spots.
It’s as if one receives a personal guide in the process of development. Well, you wouldn’t go on a cross state drive without a map, would you? That being the case, why would a person venture into the minefield of the mind without a map?
But Here’s the Real Kicker has more tension than a caricature of a high school student wielding a pencil in the style of Charles Addams. ..
The enneagram is not only a tool for gaining distant self-knowledge. But it also assists one learn about other people as well.
Many a time have you sit and asked yourself why is it that your best friend end up solving the problems of the entire team? Or why your partner has to go to the club every weekend, or needs so much space? The enneagram tells tell you about the desires and the fears of the people around you.
It is more like someone giving you a set of keys or a code to decode other people’s behavior. At this time those seemingly complex behaviours make a lot of sense. You come to feel compassion for the afflictions of people around you. And your relationships? They transform.
‘But I already know my self, pretty well.. .. ‘
Do you, though? Really?
You know we all have things we do not see, or at least have a hard time seeing, and that is the essence of a blind spot. Places where we are doing things automatically the way we did them many years ago and did not even know that we were doing them.
The enneagram, in fact, turns a light on those blind spots. Sometimes cleaning is like erasing the actual reality of a situation which is actually not particularly clear, but rather hazy. Suddenly, everything looks clearer.
And let’s be sincere – how many times a day do we actually stop and take an effort to reflect inside ourselves? To ask about our purpose, analyse our concerns, and doubt our opinions about ourselves?
Life moves fast. It’s really strange one sometimes goes through days, weeks, and even months without ever wondering, why am I doing this? What the enneagram does is it provides structures to which you can attribute those thoughts and processes to. For all intents and purposes, this is akin to a retreat for the psyche, packaged into a single test.
The Ripple Effect: How Knowing Who You Were Really Born to Be Turns Everything Around
Here is the best part, in my opinion. The moment you begin to MEME thus nothing can ever remain the same again in your life. And I mean EVERYTHING.
Your career? Finally, you begin to discern what really drives you; you make decisions that are consistent with your interests.
Your relationships? From my experience, the user gains a new level of empathy as well as personal as well as interpersonal insight.
Your personal growth? You learn where you are lacking some form of drive, and ways to overcome that.
It’s like dominoes falling. It’s one observation leading to another and then to another and then you are viewing the world and your existence in its entirety.
But Don’t Just Take the Test and Call it a Day
This is where a significant number of people make a mistake, not understanding that. They sit for the test, read their result, and say to themselves, ‘Oh, that was rather fascinating,’ and then get on with their other unhealthful habits.
Don’t Make This Mistake.
The enneagram is not however a one time process that is done and dusted. It is a process that is used continuously and creatively in the learning process. It’s initialising and not conclusory…Like the famous tag line of a car company where the only solid ground is the start.
Well, what must one do?
1. Take the test (duh)
2. Education about one’s type – and the types of one’s acquaintances
3. Get on forums or join real life groups to share and gain insight.
4. Mentally make a journal where you have to pen down your findings and personal development.
5. For additional understanding, one could consult an enneagram coach.
Do not forget that knowledge is beauty – but only, of course, if it will be used.
But I Don’t Have the Time for.. All This Self-Discovery Options…
Hold on a moment let me interrupt you. You don’t have time NOT to do it.
Think about how much time you waste: Think about how much time you waste:
- Stuck on the same issues.
- Being bored or in a rut
- Hindrances that are related to disagreements and misunderstandings in people’s interpersonal relationships
- If only you could understand why it is that you cannot attain the goals that you set, may be it would be easier to cope with the situation.
Well, would you not love it if you could trim those precious hours down to half of what you spend on nothing? Or eliminate it entirely. That is the magic of taking stock of one’s self. And no, it is not just a whim – it has to be a must-have.
The Enneagram: What you need in a turbulent world
There is no doubt and this is now a universally accepted fact – we are dealing with unique and extremely strange circumstances. The existing world is becoming different at a faster rate than was earlier observed. Super had announced employment as sacrosanct, yet jobs are changing, relations are being renegotiated and the future looks more promising than ever.
But all this confusion is an indication that self-knowledge is akin to an anchor in a storm. Whereas all the other aspects of life are relatively fluid and dynamic, you possess a firm grasp of your identity and the conditions necessary for your success.
That is in fact the beauty of the enneagram, it provides you with that stable point. It helps you:
- Do things that are consistent with your principles
- Mend relationships with more proficiency
- Enduring change without compromising on self-identity
- Discover the reason for existence and the mission in your career and in life
That is like having power in powerlessness in a world that has lost its mind.
But what if you don’t like what you’ve discovered about yourself?
Here is the lovely thing about the Enneagram – it is not a matter of being verdictive. It’s about understanding.
As with all types, there are pros and cons in each of them. All types have the possibility of growth and all types have the possibility of suffering. Shakes looks at the positive side of life and there is no ‘bad’ type to be.
And what the Enneagram is not, is about transforming yourself into someone you are not, which unfortunately is a common misconception about this personality system. It is about growing into the best version of the person that perhaps you’ve always known you can be.
And lets be frank – is it not preferable to be more knowledgeable about oneself, warts included, than to continue to fumble through the darkness?
The Challenge: It is time now to Fearless Take for the Leap.
So here’s my challenge to you: Do an enneagram test right now. It is not something that can be done tomorrow or even the next week. Today.
Why the urgency? Because every day that you continue not to embrace yourself as adequately as you should is a day thrown away. It is one of those days that you wish that you were smarter, more polite, and more of a better person in general.
That’s it ain’t no one going to take a dump tomorrow or any other day that you let slip by. The single best thing you can do right now is invest in self-knowledge.
Are you ready to reach its own potential? For a new pair of glasses through which to view yourselves and the world around you? To begin steering your life in the direction of your authentic self to be?
Enneagram test is sitting there. Now is when your self discovery begins.
Questions for Reflection:
1. In your life, which patterns you have difficulty in comprehending or altering?
2. What might happen if you infused each of the five aspects with even more self-awareness?
3. What concerns do you have concerning uninhibited investigations of who you really are?
4. In what ways can one’s decisions benefit from knowing an individual’s basic drives and threats?
5. Where do you experience most frustration or feeling “stuck”, and might the enneagram help?
Please bear in mind that this is a lifelong process of self-discovery we are discussing here. But that is where it starts, by participating in the enneagram test. Still, it is one of the most influential doctrines. Will you jump to that position?
Your future self is now ready and willing to greet you and get to know you or at least be around you. Well, believe you me, they will be grateful to you for doing so.
