Have you heard of the Enneagram?

Hello all! What a crazy busy summer it has been so far here on the farm. With the busy season comes long nights and early mornings. Our family also added a little boy over the last few months, and adjusting to life with a new baby also adds to the crazy. Being busy ultimately means we are often tired and running on low energy, and when you are working with other people, especially your family, we may have more disagreements and knocking of heads during this time. Now there is really no way to avoid the exhaustion and over heightened senses during the busy season. We have recently come across a personality test called the enneagram that has allowed us to know each other's personality type. Although we are still dipping our toes into what this means, we wanted to share it with you because it has really helped us understand ourselves better and those in our family. 

What is the enneagram? It is an online test you can take that breaks personalities down into 9 distinct types based on how people view the world and how they interact with others in it. When researching the origin of the enneagram, the roots go back to the Greek word. The enneagram is a 9 pointed Greek symbol that has three shapes in it (circle, triangle, hexagon). We included a picture of the diagram below. 

https://www.enneagraminstitute.com/how-the-enneagram-system-works/

The nine personality types are:

1. The reformer

2. The helper

3. The achiever 

4. The individualist

5. The investigator

6. The loyalist 

7. The enthusiast 

8. The challenger

9. The peacemaker

Now, according to the enneagram institute, each person has a basic personality type which is one of the above. The system uses numbers to identify the personalities because numbers often tend to be neutral, and in this system, a larger number isn’t better or worse, they are just identifying a type. 

Since we all don’t fall perfectly in one box, the enneagram system has a wing personality. Generally, the wing personalities are those adjacent to your basic personality, so if you are a 2 than your wing personality is generally a 1 or a 3. 

Finally, the 9 personalities can be broken down into 3 centers and that subsection of personality share common positive and negative points of their personalities. The three centers are the Instinctive center, the Feeling center, and the Thinking center.  When the three centers lose touch with themselves the dominant emotion that presents is: 

Instinctive center: anger or rage 

Feeling center: shame

Thinking center: fear

Within each center the 3 personalities present and cope with the dominant emotion in different ways. This knowledge can be helpful when working through stressful scenarios with other personalities. 

Now if you made it this far, you might be curious about this test and what you personally might be. Others might continue reading because they think it is whoo whoo and what to be entertained by the crazy. I’m here to say we had both thoughts in our family about the test, but after taking it we really think it is accurate to our own personalities. 

Right now, we are in the current process of understanding our own individual personalities after taking the test. Reading the results has been pretty eye opening and honestly very accurate to how each of us are navigating life and our relationships. What started out as a curiosity of why people were talking about personality numbers, turned into a really interesting discussion between us sisters and others in our close circle. Who knows what will come of our personality results, but we hope to use it as a tool to navigate our working relationship as a family! We hope you check it out and have some good conversations with your family members! 

https://www.eclecticenergies.com/enneagram/test 

Love,

Olivia, Tabby, Gina, & Kendra