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easy time getting jobs done efficiently and competently, aiming for and achieving personal goals, as well as inspiring and motivating other people and making it possible for them to get ahead too.
THREEs have the greatest difficulties of all the Enneagram types in perceiving their own feelings.
As children THREEs were often loved not for their own sake but were praised and rewarded when they were successful
THREEs draw their life energy from their successes.
Praise is the gas that makes the THREE’s motor go.
Immature THREEs have no longing for depth. What’s the point of depth when superficiality works and when image without content sells?
whatever works is true. The
THREEs are the proverbial used car salesmen: everything is polished and shines.
The pitfall in which the immature THREEs are caught is vanity. By vanity we mean that secondary, external things (packaging, clothing, outside impact) are more important than essentials (substance, person, content).
The THREEs’ gift, or fruit of the spirit, is the reverse of their sin: truthfulness or honesty.
The long-term goal of counseling for heart types must be to bundle away the peacock and to dock his tail, so that it becomes clear that without his finery he is just as much a normal, ugly chicken as the rest of us.
FOURs trapped in themselves will repeatedly cultivate their “badness” and thereby keep producing situations in which they are rejected or abandoned.
Scandalous behavior exercises a certain charm on them; what is dark and forbidden has a peculiar power of attraction.
On the strength of their extraordinary suffering they usually feel themselves to be strangers and outsiders by nature.
they assume the right to lay down their own norms.
elitist consci...
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Longing is more important than having.
As soon as they possess the object of their desires, they are generally disappointed.
very complicated love...
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authenticity.
In the past FOURs were often thrown out of (religious) communities because they didn’t conform.
melancholy,
FOURs have to be depressed and suffer from time to time in order to be happy.
affinity with death, perhaps because it means the ultimate lament, the definitive longing, or also because only death can make beauty eternal.
FOURs as a rule direct their aggressions against themselves,
They keep trying new diet plans;
Since FOURs find the present—including their current partner—deficient to begin with, that partner can be exposed to a steady stream of biting criticism.
If the partner is available, then his or her faults and defects once again come into a harsh light. It’s like a rehearsed dance: “If you take a step forward, I take a step back. If you take a step back, I take a step toward you.”
Many FOURs vacillate between phases of exaggerated activity and others in which they are withdrawn and quasi-paralyzed. This manic-depressive structure can in some people who are highly introverted (stronger influence of the FIVE wing) turn into an altogether depressive structure. FOURs whose more success-oriented, extroverted THREE wing is dominant are by contrast often hyperactive. These two “subtypes” of FOUR do not look very similar at first glance.9
A painter who is a FOUR is the only one allowed to criticize his pictures.
FOURs view their whole life as a great stage.
The gift, or fruit of the spirit, of redeemed FOURs is balance.
At twenty-five FOURs have already lived through all emotional spaces and experiences from agony to ecstasy.
If they muster the discipline to bring their emotional life into balance, they can become impressive personalities. It’s discipline that makes the difference between a second...
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Great FOURs concentrate and discipline their emotions; they can distance themselves from them ...
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This is my beloved and this is my friend,
If they can admit that they live “in God” and God “in them,” their soul will come to the rest and balance they have long yearned for.
Unredeemed FOURs love ritual more than reality. They glorify their memories, which are more beautiful than the actual event was.
That’s why it’s necessary for them to confront reality. Incarnation is called for, that is, accepting reality, even when it’s ugly and dirty. There the FOURs will truly find themselves.
long-term burdens on a relationship.
Friendship with a FIVE can be enriching if one doesn’t expect three things: initiative-taking, continual physical nearness, and total surrender.
FIVEs are afraid of giving their little finger lest people want the whole hand or even more. But anyone who is content with the little finger will find in a friend who is a FIVE a true companion, a patient, silent listener, and a fair counselor.
The famous key principles of his philosophy, “I doubt, therefore I am; I think, therefore I am,” could probably be formulated and thoroughly understood only by a FIVE.
FIVEs are by nature primarily drawn by religious mysticism.
FIVEs too can have a sort of “rehearsed” behavior. It serves the process of adaptation: “How should I behave so that as few people as possible will notice that I’m here or want something from me?” If the subject of a conversation gets too personal, FIVEs sometimes develop great skill in turning the discussion away from themselves. As soon as they have the feeling that someone wants to “sound them out,” they clam up.
Many FIVEs hate words like “share” or “communicate.” As soon as the demand is made in a group to exchange views spontaneously, most FIVEs let down the shades and think how they can neatly and unobtrusively pull out of the whole business. FIVEs don’t want to surrender themselves and put their inmost selves on display. If they can’t avoid getting involved, they generally wait before expressing themselves. Then they communicate as little as possible. But they listen well to what other people say. Nothing escapes their attention.
FIVEs need their private realm. That’s
FIVEs hate intrusiveness and intruders.
If you want to find out how an otherwise so retiring FIVE can fly into a rage, you need only run through a FIVE’s room without knocking.
Most FIVEs find too many people and too much closeness fatiguing and exhausting.
