The Road Back to You Quotes

“The Enneagram is a tool that awakens our compassion for people just as they are, not the people we wish they would become so our lives would become easier.”
― Ian Morgan Cron, The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery

“The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them.”
― Ian Morgan Cron, The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery

“Once you know the dark side of your personality, simply give God consent to do for you what you’ve never been able to do for yourself, namely, bring meaningful and lasting change to your life.”
― Ian Morgan Cron, The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery

“The Enneagram doesn’t put you in a box. It shows you the box you’re already in and how to get out of it.”
― Ian Morgan Cron, The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery

“Anyone who says they’re “trying” to be a good Christian right away reveals they have no idea what a Christian is. Christianity is not something you do as much as something that gets done to you. Once you know the dark side of your personality, simply give God consent to do for you what you’ve never been able to do for yourself, namely, bring meaningful and lasting change to your life.”
― Ian Morgan Cron, The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery

“Sooner or later we must distinguish between what we are not and what we are. We must accept the fact that we are not what we would like to be. We must cast off our false, exterior self like the cheap and showy garment that it is”
― Ian Morgan Cron, The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery

“Risking vulnerability and love is what takes courage.”
― Ian Morgan Cron, The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery

“your number is not determined by what you do so much as by why you do it.”
― Ian Morgan Cron, The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery

“How, as John Calvin put it, “without knowledge of self there is no knowledge of God.” “For”
― Ian Morgan Cron, The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery

“Ironically, the term personality is derived from the Greek word for mask ( persona), reflecting our tendency to confuse the masks we wear with our true selves, even long after the threats of early childhood have passed.”
― Ian Morgan Cron, The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery

“Either way, always maintain a compassionate stance toward yourself as God does. Self-contempt will never produce lasting, healing change in our lives, only love.”
― Ian Morgan Cron, The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery

“Sadly, the unlived lives of parents sometimes push their children toward destinies not of their own choosing.”
― Ian Morgan Cron, The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery

“the source of most of your problems is you.”
― Ian Morgan Cron, The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery

“I love a lot of people, understand none of them.” Flannery O’Connor”
― Ian Morgan Cron, The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery

“Atticus tells her, “Before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”
― Ian Morgan Cron, The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery

“Information is not transformation.”
― Ian Morgan Cron, The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery

“We must find our real self, in all its elemental poverty, but also in its great and very simple dignity: created to be the child of God, and capable of loving with something of God’s own sincerity and his unselfishness”
― Ian Morgan Cron, The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery

“Human beings are wired for survival. As little kids we instinctually place a mask called personality over parts of our authentic self to protect us from harm and make our way in the world. Made up of innate qualities, coping strategies, conditioned reflexes and defense mechanisms, among lots of other things, our personality helps us know and do what we sense is required to please our parents, to fit in and relate well to our friends, to satisfy the expectations of our culture and to get our basic needs met.”
― Ian Morgan Cron, The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery

“Whenever possible, perform acts of anonymous service.”
― Ian Morgan Cron, The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery

“Stop fantasizing about the ideal relationship, career or community and getting stuck in longing for it. Instead, work hard for what’s possible and see it through to completion. Don’t look for beauty and meaning only in the extraordinary or unusual but in the ordinary and simple as well. When the past calls, let it go to voicemail. It has nothing new to say to you. Don’t embellish and get swept up in your feelings. In the words of Jack Kornfield, “No emotion is final.”
― Ian Morgan Cron, The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery

“When our hearts are small, our understanding and compassion are limited, and we suffer. We can’t accept or tolerate others and their shortcomings, and we demand that they change,” he says. “But when our hearts expand, these same things don’t make us suffer anymore. We have a lot of understanding and compassion and can embrace others. We accept others as they are, and then they have a chance to transform.”
― Ian Morgan Cron, The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery

“Thomas Merton wrote, “For me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and of discovering my true self.”
― Ian Morgan Cron, The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery

“Buried in the deepest precincts of being I sense there’s a truer, more luminous expression of myself, and that as long as I remain estranged from it I will never feel fully alive or whole.”
― Ian Morgan Cron, The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery

“Neuroscientists have determined the brain’s dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is associated with decision making and cost-benefit assessments. If MRI brain scans had been performed on my friends and me one summer’s night when we were fifteen, they would have revealed a dark spot indicating a complete absence of activity in this region of our brains.”
― Ian Morgan Cron, The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery

“Most people don’t ever anticipate that a sudden change in cabin pressure might occur in their home, triggering the hope that an oxygen mask would fall from somewhere overhead to replace the air that shock has just sucked out of their lungs.”
― Ian Morgan Cron, The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery

“The good news is we have a God who would know our scrawny butt anywhere. He remembers who we are, the person he knit together in our mother’s womb, and he wants to help restore us to our authentic selves.”
― Ian Morgan Cron, The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery

“In stress Nines start to act like unhealthy Sixes (the Loyalists). They become overcommitted, worried, rigid, wary of others and anxious, even though they don’t know why.”
― Ian Morgan Cron, The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery

“Ones show us God’s perfection and his desire to restore the world to its original goodness, while Twos witness to God’s unstoppable, selfless giving. Threes remind us about God’s glory, and Fours about the creativity and pathos of God. Fives show God’s omniscience, Sixes God’s steadfast love and loyalty, and Sevens God’s childlike joy and delight in creation. Eights mirror God’s power and intensity, while Nines reflect God’s love of peace and desire for union with his children.”
― Ian Morgan Cron, The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery

“Healthy Eights are great friends, exceptional leaders and champions of those who cannot fight on their own behalf. They have the intelligence, courage and stamina to do what others say can’t be done.”
― Ian Morgan Cron, The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery

“Knowledge and information of almost any kind (even the strangest information) provide Fives with a sense of control and a defense against feelings of inadequacy. Fives also collect information or knowledge because they don’t want to appear foolish or uninformed, or be humiliated for not having the correct answer. They don’t want to feel incapable or inept, which is what they believe they are. Needless to say, the best and worst thing that ever happened to Fives is the advent of the Internet. Once they tumble down that bottomless wormhole, these information junkies fall into their trance of knowledge collecting and there’s no telling when they’re coming back and what new and fun information they’re hauling back with them.”
― Ian Morgan Cron, The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery