Nine Keys to Forgiveness: Finding your way through the Maze

Nine Keys to Forgiveness:  Finding your way through the Maze

Forgiveness is misunderstood, especially among people of faith.  How often have you heard the saying “forgive and forget”?   If only it were that simple.  

Declaring forgiveness is hollow if you cannot release the pain inflicted on you. It's meaningless if you keep passing on your pain to someone else. But when you let go, a sense of relief and freedom washes over you, paving the way for a brighter future.

If you do not release the pain, and this is not about forgetting, you will suppress the pain until it adversely affects your health.

Most of all, forgiveness takes time. It can be a lifelong process, but that doesn’t mean everything will be resolved.

The Enneagram is a powerful psychological and spiritual tool that can help you tap into the wisdom within and around you. Understanding and accessing the three centers of intelligence, sensations of the body, the emotions of the heart, and a quiet mind, can unlock the potential for forgiveness, both for yourself and others. This transformative process can lead to healing and the restoration of relationships, making the Enneagram a fascinating and inspiring journey of self-discovery.

 

You will benefit from learning from the wisdom of all nine types.

 

Here are nine ways to forgiveness through the Enneagram: 

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Getting Real with Spiritual Bypass: Finding Your Path to Freedom

Getting Real with Spiritual Bypass: Finding Your Path to Freedom

Spiritual bypassing, a phenomenon that can hinder your physical, spiritual, emotional, and mental health, is often unknowingly encouraged on social media and even used as a marketing tool. However, it's important to understand that avoiding self-reflection and emotional processing can impede personal growth and well-being. By acknowledging and confronting your blind spots, fears, grief, and disappointments, you are not alone in your journey. You are supported and understood.  Getting real with spiritual bypass will reveal new paths for your life.

Let’s begin with a definition of spiritual bypass I find helpful from an article by Ingrid Clayton, Ph.D., in Psychology Today.

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Nine Ways to Recover from Burnout (Through the Lens of the Enneagram)

 Nine Ways to Recover from Burnout (Through the Lens of the Enneagram)

Are you feeling down, lacking energy, unmotivated, depressed and have feelings of hopelessness?  Maybe you are burnt out. 

Burnout gradually catches up with you when you fail to notice what is happening inside you. 

Maybe you are in a relationship where you feel like you are walking on eggshells.  Maybe you are in a job that under-uses your skills. Maybe you feel stuck in life and don’t know what to do.

Learning to face your reality while hard can be the critical step to move you towards healing. Learning the Enneagram can help you find your way to healing.

The Enneagram is a powerful spiritual tool to help you notice what is happening in your internal world. Through discerning your Enneagram type, you will discover what happens to you when you get stuck in the limitation of your ego.

Here are nine ways to begin your healing journey through the lens of the Enneagram.  We will begin with the wisdom of the body center. 

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Ten Steps to Beating Burnout: A Guide to a Better Life

Ten Steps to Beating Burnout: A Guide to a Better Life

We live in a chaotic world. It is hard to separate our work and business life because of smartphones, computers and social media. Beating burnout is a lifelong process.

People expect to hear back immediately when they text or email you. Organizations pressure their employees to produce and expect them to work overtime at home.

Churches put more pressure on their leaders to keep their doors open. As congregations decline, more expectations are put on their ministers.

How pressured do you feel to work on your days off and your holidays?  Do you fear losing your job if you don’t put in the extra hours?

More people realize that it is not a badge of honour to overwork.

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Calling, Caring, and Connecting: Burnout in Christian Ministry

Calling, Caring, and Connecting:  Burnout in Christian Ministry

 Remember when you felt the strong call to go into Christian Ministry?  Testing your call through your denomination and theological school was a long process. Can you remember the day you were ordained or commissioned? 

Seeing the increasing pressure church leadership faces in mainline denominations today is concerning. With the shift in cultural values, where the church is no longer the focal point of communities and congregations are dwindling, it seems ministers are too often the target of blame. This trend is worrying and deserves our attention. You are now at a higher risk of burnout in Christian ministry.

First, you need to remember that you are not God.  You cannot fix your congregation. If your community wants to grow, it needs to work with you. It needs to be open to new ways of being church.  It would be best if you got beyond “We have not done it this way before.”

Establishing and maintaining healthy habits and lifestyle is essential to perform your tasks effectively. Here are eight ways to keep you healthy:

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Five Ways to Cultivate a Healthy Masculinity and Femininity

Five Ways to Cultivate a Healthy Masculinity and Femininity

We live in a complex world, yet we want to divide people into two genders. We expect men to be masculine and women to be feminine. 

With modern psychology, we have learned that we have both within us. It is a like a continuum with masculinity and femininity at either end of the spectrum. Most of us land in the middle of the continuum. We all need a healthy masculinity and femininity.

Until recently, children have been raised to behave in specific ways depending on their gender identity. Girls were brought up to be caring, maternal, gentle and obedient to parents, particularly men.

Boys were considered tough, assertive, violent, and controlling. Boys grew up with the belief that they were superior to girls. You still hear the excuse for male violence with the saying, “Boys will be boys.” We still see signs of this in our society with a high rate of violence against girls and women.

Women and men are both hurt by this sexist divide. We are forced into being people we are not. When women are not permitted to be strong, assertive and outspoken, they often take out their anger on other women. 

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9 Ways to Create an Amazing Life After Divorce

9 Ways to Create an Amazing Life After Divorce

Acceptance

You entered your marriage thinking it would last the rest of your life. You had dreams of what it would be like to grow older together. All these dreams have now come to an end. After the divorce, what kind of life do you want?

Grief Work

When you accept that your marriage is over, you can begin the grieving process. Grieving takes time; sometimes, you will need help from a professional if you feel stuck in your emotions.

After you have done the work to ready yourself for your new life, you can begin the next chapter of your life.

Learning through the Enneagram

A great tool to help you renew your life is the psychological-spiritual tool called the Enneagram. The Enneagram comprises nine personality types, and you have all nine types within you. Each of us has one type we go to when we are stressed, and this is our personality type. Your type reveals to you the lens through which you see the world.

If you want to create an amazing life after the divorce, you will benefit from accessing the gifts from the nine types.

Here is how each of the nine types can help us to find new life after divorce:

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How Each Enneagram Type Can Build Healthy Habits

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.

Want to Discover Your Enneagram Type? Click Here to Book your Free Enneagram Typing Session.

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 healthier 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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