Laura Miltenberger - Enneagram Empowerment: Discover Your Personality Type and Unlock Your Potential

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Introduction

The enneagram is not like any other personality test you have taken before. Because it doesnt just give you awareness of who you are now, in the present. It helps you pave a path toward who you want to become.

The dynamic system of the enneagram will give you the opportunity to invest in your strengths, compassionately work on your weaknesses, and understand yourself and your potential in a whole new way. If you want to become more confident in your ability to live life well, you need the deep kind of self-awareness that the enneagram can bring. And this is why the enneagram is so empowering.

What does it mean to be empowered? Well, do you remember what it felt like, as a child, when you were first able to see over kitchen countertops? Or first able to read and understand the world around you in a whole new way? Or first learned how to swim? Maybe you remember the first time you were strong enough to swing across the monkey bars, write your own name, or do a backflip on a trampoline. As you grew new muscles, gained more control over your body, and found new understanding of yourself and the world, you felt increasingly stronger and more confident in your abilities. This is what empowerment feels like. And this is really all that empowerment is; to be empowered is to become stronger and more confident in your ability to control your own life.

The enneagram is a tool that meets you right where you are and shows you who you have the potential to become. It can be utilized in all areas of your life. If you let it, the enneagram will help you grow new muscles, understand the world in a whole new way, and increase your confidence in your ability to live life well.

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What is the enneagram?

The enneagram is a nine-point personality-typing system. But its not a typical personality-typing system, because it doesnt just describe your characteristics and traits. It goes much deeper than that, describing the driving forces behind your personality, like your core fears and motivations. And although the enneagram describes your strengths and virtues, it also addresses your weaknesses and obstacles to growththe patterns of thought and behavior that are holding you back.

Why is the enneagram empowering?

Personal weaknesses can be difficult to accept, but when you realize which patterns in your personality are holding you back, then you know what you need to change in order to grow. Nothing is more empowering than when you take ownership of your whole self, along with all of your beauty and all of your flaws...when you use your strengths with confidence while still addressing your weaknesses to move toward maturity and growth.

Where does the enneagram come from?

The enneagram symbol has ancient roots. But the contemporary understanding of the enneagram system derives from the mid-twentieth century teachings of Oscar Ichazo, a Bolivian spiritual teacher, and Claudio Naranjo, a Chilean psychiatrist.

How does the enneagram work?

The enneagram symbol has nine points, each describing a unique personality. One of these numbers is your dominant personality type, but all of the nine points of the enneagram are interconnected, accounting for the dynamic scope of personality and shifts in behavior that you have access to. For example, during times of security, you will have access to the traits of your security type. And during times of stress, you will have access to traits of your stress type. Rather than viewing yourself as static and predictable, the enneagram helps you understand yourself as you are, while showing you paths toward healthy change.

Enneagram simply means nine-pointed (ennea-) drawing (-gram). The nine core types are often represented with a nine-pointed diagram.

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What are the nine enneagram types?

The enneagram is based on nine personality types. Your dominant enneagram type is based on your core fears, motivations, and obstacles. You will relate to all nine types in one way or another, but your dominant type is the one that speaks the most directly to your life experience. Each type is described in full in the upcoming pages.

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Heres a sneak peek at the nine types.

What is the goal of the enneagram?

The goal of the enneagram is to help you find acceptance for who you are and freedom to become much more. Through the enneagram, you will find valid and illuminating reasons behind your unhelpful behavioral patterns. You might say Aha! Thats why I always self-sabotage my relationships or Oh! Thats why I always lose my temper and blow up at people. This recognition and self-awareness will, hopefully, enable you to have more compassion for yourself in those circumstances. But learning about your personalitys natural tendencies is not an excuse to continue in behavioral patterns that are unhelpful or harmful to you or other people. Instead, learning about these patterns is an invitation for you to get space and freedom from them...to wriggle free from the rigidity of what you have always done and find new flexibility to make new and different choices. The enneagram will help you understand why you act the way you do. The goal is that you let this empower you to stretch, take small steps out of your comfort zone, and grow into a better person than you were yesterday.

Identifying Key Obstacles

Your dominant enneagram type has unique obstacles to growth that play a crucial part in the pain, suffering, or frustration you have experienced in life so far. These obstacles are patterns of thinking, feeling, or behaving that you probably developed initially as a way of coping with the world and protecting yourself. Often, these patterns of coping are no longer needed and are most likely getting in your way. For example, a child who gets scolded for crying might learn that life goes better for them if they ignore their feelings. But as they grow up, they might realize that ignoring their own feelings has caused problems, and it is a coping mechanism that they no longer need. Knowing about your unique personal obstacles to growth is crucial if you want to use the enneagram for empowerment. You must learn how you are getting in your own way if you want to get out of your own way and expand into the most confident and capable version of yourself.