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The Enneagram
Knowing Your
Type Is the Easy Part
You can find your type online in twenty minutes and get a decent explanation of it for free. What nobody hands you is the next part: which pattern is costing you right now, what to change first, and what to do when it comes back in week three and you're the last one to notice.
Find the pattern.
Name what it's costing you.
Change one thing that matters.
The Nine Types
One of these is probably running your week. See which one makes you uncomfortable.
If I get it right, no one can criticize me.
If I'm needed, I'm safe.
Type
What's running underneath
The Perfectionist
The Helper
The
Achiever
If I'm winning, I matter.
You might be this one if...
You reread the email five times and still spot the flaw after you send it.
You said yes before you looked at the calendar. Again.
Resting feels like falling behind.
The
Individualist
If something's missing, it must be missing in me.
You can name exactly what's absent, and nobody else seems to notice it.
The Investigator
If I know enough, I won't get caught out.
You'd rather research it for a week than be asked something you can't answer.
The
Loyalist
If I plan for what goes wrong, I'll be ready for it.
You've already run the worst case, and the three after it.
The
Enthusiast
If I keep moving, the hard thing can't land.
The
Challenger
If I stay in control, nobody can take advantage of me.
The
Peacemaker
If I don't make waves, everything holds.
The calendar is full and the hard conversation still hasn't happened.
You'd rather say the uncomfortable thing than sit in the silence.
You went along with it and only noticed you disagreed later.
Most people recognize themselves in two or three of these, and you could probably narrow it down yourself tonight. What a list can't do is tell you which of those patterns is costing you most right now, or stay with you while you change it. That's the part I do.
Your First Steps with the Enneagram
Four steps. The first takes a minute and you can do it right now. The fourth is where anything changes.
1. See The Nine Patterns. Read the nine lines above and notice which two or three make you shift in your seat. That's your working hypothesis, and finding out whether you were right is half of what makes the session interesting.
2. Book The Hour. One hour, $150, assessment included. The assessment link arrives the moment you book.
3. Take The Assessment, Then Bring It To Me. Fifteen or twenty minutes online, results back immediately with a short guide on how to read them. In our hour we test the top scores against how you've handled real things, and you leave with your type confirmed and the first thing worth working on.
4. Keep Going If It's Worth It. Seeing the pattern and interrupting it are two different jobs, and the second one takes longer than an hour. Most people book one or two more sessions from here, same length, same price.
The assessment hands you a number. The session is where you find out whether it's the right one and what to do about it. A few people come in with a result that turns out to be their second-closest type, and that conversation is usually the useful one.
Knowing your number is the smallest part of this. What changes is what you catch yourself doing, and how fast. Some of what people come back and tell me:
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The email you rewrite five times. One client worked out that the rewriting was insurance against being criticized. She sends the third draft now and got about an hour of her week back.
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Saying yes before you've decided. When your worth has been tied to being needed, the yes is out of your mouth before you've looked at the calendar. The whole fix is one sentence: "Let me check and come back to you today." Twenty seconds of room is usually enough to answer honestly.
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Going quiet in conflict and calling it “staying calm”. This one lands hard on people. Withdrawing feels like steadiness from the inside and reads as absence from the other chair.
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Catching your own stress spiral early. Everyone has a tell. Reorganizing the garage instead of making the decision. Booking three more meetings so there's no room left to think. Once you know yours, you get a few hours of warning instead of finding out on Thursday.
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Understanding the person you'd written off. The most common thing people say to me after a typing conversation has nothing to do with themselves. It's that a parent, a spouse, or the coworker they gave up on years ago finally makes sense.
There's no system to maintain here. The gap between doing the thing and seeing the thing gets shorter, and that's where every change I've watched hold got started.
What This Looks Like in Real Life
You take the assessment, then we spend an hour on what it means. You leave knowing your type, why it fits, and the one thing worth working on first.
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What happens in it. We start with your results in front of both of us. I ask about specific situations rather than abstract preferences, because people answer abstract questions the way they'd like to be, and we test your top scores against how you handled real things. Where the report and your life disagree, your life wins.
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What you'll be able to do afterward. Name your type and the motivation driving it in your own words, not the report's. Point at the two or three specific places that pattern is costing you right now. Do one thing differently this week, and recognize the pattern reasserting itself when it does.
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What usually happens next. Most people book one or two more sessions after this one. Not a program, and nothing you sign up to for months. The first conversation names the pattern, and the next one or two are where you take it into the specific thing it's been costing you, whether that's a job you keep almost leaving, an argument that runs on rails, or a version of yourself you're tired of. Some people don't need those, and I'll tell you if I don't think you do.
Enneagram Typing Session
Frequently Asked Questions
Start With One Conversation
You don't need to have read a book about this or narrowed yourself to one number. Take the assessment, bring the result, and we'll work out together what it's telling you.
An hour from now you'll know which pattern has been running the week and what it's been costing you. Whether you book another session or take it from here on your own is a decision for the end of that call, and there's no pressure attached to either answer.
