How Each Enneagram Type Can Build Healthy Habits
/What is the Enneagram?
The Enneagram is a powerful tool for transformation. It can help you build healthy habits that will help you to be the best you can be.
Most people know the Enneagram as a personality typing system. Naming your personality type is a small part of what it is all about.
At its best, the Enneagram is a psychological-spiritual map to help you become self-aware, noticing the habits that no longer serve you and learning new ways of being that will bring you joy, purpose and the freedom to be your best self.
Your primary Type will never change—your levels of health shift which will impact how you show up in the world. As you get healthier in your Type, you will get stronger in all nine Enneagram types.
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Learn to Observe Yourself in Action
With the help of the Enneagram and Coaching, you can learn how to observe yourself in action. Each Type will show you behaviours you need to watch out for and give clues on how you can make better choices that will help you create healthy habits.
This work is about creating new neural pathways that will get stronger every time you practice a new way of being that brings out the best in you. The stronger your neural pathways are, the easier it will be to build new habits that serve you.
Remember that you have all nine types within you so that you can learn from every Type.
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The Journey to Better Health For each Enneagram Type
1. Enneagram Type One (The Reformer)
As a Type One, you can build healthy habits by lowering your expectations of yourself and others around you. Learn to be okay with doing your best. Learn to be okay with doing an OK job.
Learn to befriend your inner critic. You might want to give your inner critic a name so you have a conversation with this part of you.
Remember, there is more than one right way. Get out of your mind and into the heart and gut. Learn to trust your instincts. Get "messy," lighten up, play and have fun; learn to relax.
Over time you will build healthy habits.
2. Type Two (The Helper)
As a Type Two, you can build healthy habits when you acknowledge your worth and value for being you.
Learn to identify and acknowledge your own needs and feelings and open up to receiving help from others.
Utilize anger as a sign that you need to meet your own needs. Learn to acknowledge your limits and accept there are some things you can not help.
3. Type Three (The Achiever)
As a Type Three, you can build healthy habits when you learn to accept you have value no matter how successful you are.
Learn to be more introspective to discover your inner life and your purpose. Accept failure as a normal part of life. Sometimes we learn the most from our failures.
Differentiate between your real feelings and your image-driven ones. Pay attention to your self-care, especially your physical needs and learn to relax. This will help you to build healthy habits.
4. Type Four (The Individualist)
As a Type Four, you can build healthy habits when you appreciate what you already have and learn to differentiate between your true feelings and what you think you are feeling.
Learn to accept the ordinary as just fine and that the status quo is acceptable. Overcome your addiction to misery to find your freedom and bliss.
Get present through your three centers of intelligence and release the fantasizing about the past or future. Learn to see beauty everywhere and not just in the exceptional and suffering.
5. Type Five (The Investigator)
As a Type Five, you can build healthy habits when you risk sharing insights when you don't think you know enough. Your friends' colleagues, and family are eager for you to share what you are learning.
Learn to share now, and don't wait to formulate a conclusion. Reach out to others, take risks, share ideas and be expressive.
Lighten up, and let your enthusiasm and zest for life emerge. Focus on the abundance of life and strengthen your spirit of generosity and giving.
Want to Learn More about how the Enneagram Growth and Stress Lines Should be Read? Click Here
6. Type Six (The Loyalist)
As a Type Six, you can build healthy habits when you learn to quiet your mind. Learn to differentiate between manufactured fear and something you should be worried about in the world.
Limit your tendency to over-question and project doubt onto others. Ask for feedback: "Does my fear/doubt seem proportionate to the reality of the situation?
Imagine the positive instead of the negative. Focus on the good instead of the bad. Practice affirming yourself and the positive things going on in the world.
7. Type Seven (The Enthusiast)
As a Type Seven, you can build healthy habits when you slow down to feel what is happening inside you. Learn to accept pain and limitation in the present moment while still having an enjoyable life of possibilities.
Pick something to commit to and stick with it until you follow through. Slow down to stay in the moment. Stop your habit of justifying your behaviours and practice living in the moment.
Develop and take care of significant relationships. Value maturity and personal growth and be honest when needed.
8. Type Eight (The Challenger)
As a Type Eight, you can build healthy habits when you risk opening your heart to be vulnerable. You can strengthen your heart by building relationships of trust with others.
Learn to manage and control your anger so your anger will no longer be destructive. Develop a softness by becoming more reflective and self-aware.
Reduce intensity and impulsiveness by making space for self-reflection before reacting. Find the right moment for confrontation and deliver constructive feedback so you can be heard and understood.
9. Enneagram Type Nine (The Peacemaker)
As a Type Nine, you can build better habits when you share with others what are your desires, wishes, opinions and wisdom.
Learn to recognize your anger and use it as a resource for change. Be brave in the face of necessary conflict and don't soothe or hide.
Learn to be more selfish to know and claim what you want. Stay in the body through vigorous physical exercise. Identify your needs and desires and stay present and engaged until the task gets done or the problem is fixed.
No matter your Enneagram Type, you can learn to let go of old habits that no longer serve you and build new habits that will help you well in the here and now.
It is a matter of learning to notice when you are stuck in your personality type and then make better choices that will serve you well.
When you practice the suggestions above, you will build new neural pathways to help you find greater flow in your life.
There is a better way ahead for you if you are willing to do the long-term work of becoming more and more of your true self.
Roland Legge is a Certified Spiritual Life Coach and a minister in the United Church of Canada in Yorkton, Saskatchewan. With the help of the Enneagram and Coaching, you can build new neural pathways to find greater flow in your life. You can join my newsletter for free advice, get your free E-book, and sign up for a Discovery Call that will include a mini-coaching session at no charge
