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| Leaders.
Type eight is the toughest on the outside. At work, eights are assertive, blunt and fearless; they speak their minds, and respect others who do the same. They like a strong power base, independence from outside authority or competitors, and are often shrewd in accumulating wealth and assets. They do not like threats to their dominance, or people who hide information from them, and may force confrontations with others just to get at the truth. Eights may show a softer side at home, where their strength is used not to dominate, but to protect. 8s are the prototypical "father figures", (even if they are women). When eights are secure in their dominance, they may then expand this softer side by becoming extremely magnanimous or philanthropic. Eights in this mode become heroic on a scale that none others can match. Less successful eights may not amass money or power, but they still talk big, entertain big dreams, and possibly spend big (although some eights are also surprisingly stingy). Tom's site : http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~tchou/ennea_intro.html |
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| People who need to be strong, to prevail over circumstance. When healthy they often are powerful, protective and committed to a cause. When unhealthy they can be destructive, excessive and sadistic. Eights, Nines and Ones share a general undercurrent of anger and form another emotional trio. Remember Twos, Threes, and Fours are confused about who they are and how they feel. Fives, Sixes and Sevens react fearfully and are confused around taking action. Eights, Nines and Ones react from a baseline anger and have the most confusion in the realm of clearheaded thought. It may affect their feelings and actions but the area of disturbance is in the head. This difficulty is often described as a condition of mental sleep. Eights, Nines, and Ones all have trouble with accurate mental conception, that is to say, thinking clearly. An Eight's thinking will tend to be distorted by narcissism and the need to be strong. Nines lose focus and get absorbed in the irrelevant. Ones distort their thinking when they reduce multidimensional reality down into simple moral catagories. The anger in Eights is related to the desire to seem and feel strong. Most Eights mobilize their will to this end and are keenly aware of power. Nines tend to bury their anger or express it indirectly while Ones route their anger through judgment and disapproval. Healthy Eights are often dynamic, strong and independent. When awakened, they can demonstrate the virtue of power, how to wield influence for constructive purposes. Many Eights are natural leaders who inspire others, protect the weak, and strive for justice. They may use their power to shake things up and have the courage and will to implement new ideas. They are generally honest, direct, and bring an energetic, lusty gusto to whatever they try. Healthy Eights are often generous, loyal friends who protect what is soft and vulnerable in others. This is also a metaphor for how Eights relate to themselves; beneath their strong outer armor is a younger, more vulnerable part of them that they protect. This part is related to an innocence of perception that awakened Eights can have. They are sometimes able to see the world as if for the first time, with the eyes of a child. They may have a related love of nature that is a source of spirituality and evokes this innocent quality. Unguarded Eights often demonstrate the strength of gentleness - they are strong enough to be kind, open enough to be touched, secure enough to be wrong, rich enough to be giving. When more entranced or defensive, an Eight's preoccupation with power begins to be tainted with self-interest. While still fairly free of self-doubt, entranced Eights cover up their vulnerabilities with aggressive displays of strength. They overidentify with being powerful as a way to deny their softness and survive in a world that they think is full of dangers. They may also have a tendency to excess - staying up late, doing too much, driving too hard, indulging in addictions. This has the function of numbing their more vulnerable feelings. Entranced Eights enjoy confrontation and try to make contact with others primarily through fighting. They push to measure others' motives and assess external threats. Eights may narcissistically inflate their presence and try to take up more than their share of space in a room. To protect the child within, they can act overbearing, arrogant, and insensitive. Underneath this intimidating shell the Eight may feel sensitive to betrayal, vulnerable to ridicule, or weak in a way that they are ashamed of. Most entranced Eights don't quite realize how belligerent they seem. This is because they defensively deny feedback, especially about ways they might have been hurtful to others. Eights often specifically deny their guilt, covering it up with more aggression and pretending that they have nothing to apologize for. In the movie White Hunter, Black Heart, Clint Eastwood's Eight character deliberately offends a number of people in a way that is very telling about this style. He doesn't just call them names, he sucks them into a dialogue or story that ultimately is insulting. Each time he does this, he takes out a sketch pad and draws the person as a caricature. This is very much a reflection of what Eights do in their minds when they are cruel to people - they make others into cartoons, two-dimensional objects that can then be skewered without conscience. As with Twos, the healthy versus unhealthy expressions of the Eight style are unusually extreme. Their benign awakened use of power is corrupted drastically when Eights are deeply entranced. They can do immense damage - mostly to others - in the service of maintaining their grandiose image of an invulnerable self. A "get them before they get me" attitude thoroughly rules the Eight's behavior. To this end, they can be suspicious, bullying, vengeful, ruthless, psychopathic or murderous. Many of the world's bloody dictators have been very entranced Eights, and their brutal excesses reflect how unhealthy people with this style may ultimately murder their own humanity. FAMOUS EIGHTS Lawyer Leslie Abramson, Gloria Allred, Edward Asner, F. Lee Bailey, Actor Joe Don Baker, Lucille Ball, Charles Barkley, Richard Belzer, Humphrey Bogart, Napoleon Bonaparte, Charles Bronson, James Brown, Football's Jim Brown, Pat Buchanan, Richard Burton, Johnny Cash, John Cassavetes, Fidel Castro, Eldridge Cleaver, Ty Cobb, Sean Connery, Jimmy Connors, Robert Conrad, Brian Dennehy, Lawyer Alan Dershowitz, Danny DeVito, Football's Mike Ditka, U.S. Senator Robert Dole, Reporter Sam Donaldson, Kirk Douglas, Michael Douglas, Morton Downey Jr., Fred Dryer, Boxer Roberto Duran, Lawrence Eagleburger, Author Harlan Ellison, Hypnotherapist Milton Erickson, Moshe Feldenkrais, Tom's site : http://www.thechangeworks.com/ |
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| The Advocate Buddy Halstrom called and said, "I need someone to come and teach my people how to stand up to me." Right away I guessed he might be an Eight. At our first meeting I found that he's an entrepreneur and owner of a rapidly growing service business, and he'd just gotten backing for a manufacturing venture that required all of his personal attention. Two key executives were threatening to quit because they felt he was too aggressive, controlling, and intimidating. Not a particularly big man, Buddy can fill a room when people do things that are contrary to his expectations. Consequently, when he challenged them to own up to problems he discovered, his subordinates tended to beat around the bush--the very behavior that was most counterproductive because he wanted them to "tell it like it is!" Buddy didn't realize how much his own behavior invited the very response he disliked. Because he pushed and challenged everyone he unwittingly invited them to "waffle" (most of us are at least a little uncomfortable in a confrontation with our boss, and Eights seem to invoke authority issues in just about everyone--in other words, our response is often stronger than the Eight's behavior fairly warrants). His subordinates did benefit from learning to be more assertive (and were surprised to find that he liked that, as long as they maintained respect for him and didn't become aggressive). But that took a while. So the first thing I recommended to Buddy was that he bring in filled water pistols to his staff meeting the next morning and invite people to "shoot" him if he began to "steam-roll" over them. The water pistols were symbolic of empowering his team members to "defend" themselves against him, but in a playful way that also gave him badly needed feedback--otherwise he could slip into overdrive without even realizing it! So if you're an Eight, be creative, be playful, use metaphor to help yourself and others change. Buddy (not his real name) became very special to me over the years and very much an individual, not a "type." But that first day I had to rely on some guess-work about his Enneagram style. When he met me at the airport one of the first things he said was, "Now, I don't want you giving me any bullshit" (further confirming the likelihood that he was an Eight). So as we were driving back at the end of the day he asked me what I'd learned from interviews with his staff. Dropping all attempts to be "nice" I said, "Well, Buddy, as one person summed up very well, they shrivel up like raisins in your presence." He loved it! (I wouldn't recommend this approach to feedback with any other style, especially a One...) During the years of our work together Buddy helped develop his own paradoxical intervention by creating the phrase, "I'm in control of not being in control." Then he called me one time to tell me how annoyed he was by a big man who stepped in front of a line he was in at the airport waiting for a flight that had been delayed. Mentally repeating his paradoxical mantra, Buddy stepped up to this guy and said, "Excuse me, Sir, you probably didn't realize that a number of us were already in line here." "F--- off!" was the guy's reply. Any Eights out there reading this? What would you be likely to do at this point? Well, Buddy didn't. He let it go and was feeling very proud of himself (and was congratulated by the other passengers for representing them and for backing off)--until the passengers got off the plane at their destination and this guy walked up and began to badger him. Buddy kept repeating his mantra until the guy grabbed something on letterhead from his briefcase and threatened to stalk him. At this point they were at the bottom of an escalator. "I don't know what happened," mused Buddy, "but the next thing I know we're at the top of the escalator and I'm on top of him with my knee in his chest and my hands around his throat, and everybody's calling for the cops!" Sometimes we get tested in our desire for transformation The Advocate Buddy Halstrom called and said, "I need someone to come and teach my people how to stand up to me." Right away I guessed he might be an Eight. At our first meeting I found that he's an entrepreneur and owner of a rapidly growing service business, and he'd just gotten backing for a manufacturing venture that required all of his personal attention. Two key executives were threatening to quit because they felt he was too aggressive, controlling, and intimidating. Not a particularly big man, Buddy can fill a room when people do things that are contrary to his expectations. Consequently, when he challenged them to own up to problems he discovered, his subordinates tended to beat around the bush--the very behavior that was most counterproductive because he wanted them to "tell it like it is!" Buddy didn't realize how much his own behavior invited the very response he disliked. Because he pushed and challenged everyone he unwittingly invited them to "waffle" (most of us are at least a little uncomfortable in a confrontation with our boss, and Eights seem to invoke authority issues in just about everyone--in other words, our response is often stronger than the Eight's behavior fairly warrants). His subordinates did benefit from learning to be more assertive (and were surprised to find that he liked that, as long as they maintained respect for him and didn't become aggressive). But that took a while. So the first thing I recommended to Buddy was that he bring in filled water pistols to his staff meeting the next morning and invite people to "shoot" him if he began to "steam-roll" over them. The water pistols were symbolic of empowering his team members to "defend" themselves against him, but in a playful way that also gave him badly needed feedback--otherwise he could slip into overdrive without even realizing it! So if you're an Eight, be creative, be playful, use metaphor to help yourself and others change. Buddy (not his real name) became very special to me over the years and very much an individual, not a "type." But that first day I had to rely on some guess-work about his Enneagram style. When he met me at the airport one of the first things he said was, "Now, I don't want you giving me any bullshit" (further confirming the likelihood that he was an Eight). So as we were driving back at the end of the day he asked me what I'd learned from interviews with his staff. Dropping all attempts to be "nice" I said, "Well, Buddy, as one person summed up very well, they shrivel up like raisins in your presence." He loved it! (I wouldn't recommend this approach to feedback with any other style, especially a One...) During the years of our work together Buddy helped develop his own paradoxical intervention by creating the phrase, "I'm in control of not being in control." Then he called me one time to tell me how annoyed he was by a big man who stepped in front of a line he was in at the airport waiting for a flight that had been delayed. Mentally repeating his paradoxical mantra, Buddy stepped up to this guy and said, "Excuse me, Sir, you probably didn't realize that a number of us were already in line here." "F--- off!" was the guy's reply. Any Eights out there reading this? What would you be likely to do at this point? Well, Buddy didn't. He let it go and was feeling very proud of himself (and was congratulated by the other passengers for representing them and for backing off)--until the passengers got off the plane at their destination and this guy walked up and began to badger him. Buddy kept repeating his mantra until the guy grabbed something on letterhead from his briefcase and threatened to stalk him. At this point they were at the bottom of an escalator. "I don't know what happened," mused Buddy, "but the next thing I know we're at the top of the escalator and I'm on top of him with my knee in his chest and my hands around his throat, and everybody's calling for the cops!" Sometimes we get tested in our desire for transformation Typical Comments: "I've always been very responsible." "I have a very hard time asking for help-- I'll just charge ahead and do it myself." "I can't really think of a time when I was afraid." "I had to grow up fast." Description: Advocate leaders who have paid attention to their own development are able to shoulder huge responsibility without having to control everything. Right beneath the surface they are soft-hearted; when this is tempered with their typical self-confidence, they have loyal followers and can truly move mountains. Unfortunately, Eights have the reputation of power mongers and tyrants because it is difficult for them to feel enough trust to acknowledge any vulnerability. Their driving force is lust/excess. Often, they feel it is their responsibility to intervene in and direct situations, and they pursue power and control aggressively. They hold a value for justice--as self-defined! Advocates can have a "bull-in-the-china-shop" approach because they speak in imperatives. Developmental skills include developing their ability to put themselves in others' shoes, collaborative negotiation and active listening skills, and respecting and mentoring others. A key development need is wisdom, a shift to more altruistic and benign modes of operating, a focus on service to the world; this arises from innocence. Gathering Courage "For Eights to be able to embrace their bigness of heart, they must first gather the courage to reveal it. This requires that they trust in something beyond their own wits and power--and that, of course, requires letting go of many of their fundamental defenses. No matter how full of rage and shut down an Eight may be, the sensitive child that made the decision to protect itself still lives inside, waiting for the opportunity to contact the world again" (Riso and Hudson, The Wisdom of the Enneagram). "I've had profound moments in my life," said an Eight. "Actual events where I came out the other side." Another mused, "It's like opening a door that I have never opened. And in many cases it's a door that I've seen and wondered about, but I was either afraid or just simply unable to approach the door or open it. And suddenly a whole new place has opened up that you can walk into and look around and see how wholly different it is from where you just were, where the possibilities are endless." A third concluded, "One of my friends had said several times to me that you can't fundamentally change--all you can do is change your behavior, and I had argued that point with him. I don't have to argue it anymore. I think that transformation is profound change, to the point where you never want to go back where you came from." Are these Enneagram Eights? I think so. Listen to how they describe themselves: "I remember standing in the shower with my friend at the Y, buck naked, fifteen - sixteen years old," explained the woman we'll refer to as Ursula. "She asked me, 'What do you really wish for?' And I said, 'You know what, I just hope that my life isn't too easy.' I guess I was thinking, 'I want to wrestle, I want to engage, I want it to be full, I want it to be real, I don't want it to be all warm and fuzzy, I want to really live.' I once participated in a native American ceremony where I was given the name, 'She who farts like a bear.' That's where I am -- I want to be who I am without apology! I also want to be able to acknowledge my own shit and I don't want to have to hide it from others, but sometimes I'm less successful than others -- it's part of my history to hide it from myself. You know, I really did think I was doing the right thing. From childhood right on through, I thought that I was attempting to live a good life. But it was a delusion. This can be bad if I'm being hyper-responsible -- which I tend to do -- because then I'm the fixer, I'll take care of it. And tied to this willingness to acknowledge my own shit is the tendency to go too far, taking on too much, and then that becomes a burden." "Here's how the Eight's 'lust' or 'excess' plays out for me," said "Bart": "I have a long history of seeking peak experiences, seeking adrenaline rushes, climbing rocks, hanging from one hand over precipices and things like that. I was always keen on river rafting and I wanted to do it in wild rivers like the Amazon: three or four rivers that you could gauge by the number of maimings they have per season. There's probably nothing more exhilarating than going down a rapids with nothing but a helmet and a jacket and a life vest. And kicking yourself off of rocks as they come to you, and trying to keep your head up far enough where you can see them and presenting either your feet or a shoulder to something you're going to hit such that you weren't simply splatted like a fly swatter! That's a kick. Last year I was hit by a truck, and badly broke some ribs and an arm--with some nerve damage. It was distressing from the point of view that I'm not the same person I once was, in terms of now being only as strong as a regular person." (Note that while Bart's Seven wing is strong, his emphasis is on danger and strength--more the preoccupations of the Eight.) "David" first saw himself in Goldberg's The Nine Ways of Working: "He wrote that 'Eights see black or white, friend or foe, strong or weak, likeable or not,' and these were the extremes in me that bothered me so much. I was bothered by my anger, and by what my anger did to people, including me--I probably took minutes or hours off my life every time I lost it. I recognized that my anger was really getting me in trouble early in my career. Goldberg said, 'Choose your battles--is it worth getting fired over?' And I came close to getting fired, as great a job as I was doing. It was the weak guys I didn't like--I didn't have any use for them! There was one thing he wrote, that 'Eights are apparently guilt-free', where he used the word 'apparently' though he didn't underline it. I underlined it because it's not true. Along with the desire to change I carried this tremendous guilt that I wasn't able to change effectively, or wasn't making any progress, or would revert. But I didn't have any real clue as to how to keep it going." Experiences of Change Some of the transformation experiences these Eights described were events, points in time where something shifted: "I can remember the exact date of what was probably my last big transformation experience," recalled Ursula. "It was just absolutely incredible, gut-wrenching! As if I had shed my skin! I recognized that I could no longer live the way I had been living with the man I was married to for twelve years. It was a lie, it was unauthentic, it was so incongruent with who I was and what I believed. It had been impossible to sort out what was me and what was my own internalization of other peoples' expectations--it wasn't a conscious notion that I was setting aside my self--I didn't say, 'Well, this is what they expect so this is what I'll do, even though I don't want to.' But when this shift occurred those others' voices were totally eliminated. Their 'shoulds' and their rules for my life were blown out of the water. Gone. Totally invalid. And it scared the fucking shit out of me! It was terrifying and yet I've got to tell you, somewhere in there was exhilaration." In a similar vein, but with different content, Bart reported: "My wife and I were sitting in front of our therapist when he said a few simple words that opened a door. It was very much like the movie, 'What Dreams May Come,' where Robin Williams died and everything was sort of technicolor. There I was in this place that was different from where I just left. I was loaded with feelings and thoughts about what's possible from this new place inside the door instead of standing outside looking at it. The therapist had asked, 'What do you feel like when you see your wife depressed or unhappy?' and I had at first answered with, 'Helpless in the face of her discomfort.' And he wasn't buying that, especially. He said, 'I would have expected you to say something like, 'I see how badly you feel. Is it anything I am doing, or is there anything I can do about it?' And I thought, 'My God! Such a simple statement, so easily made, so totally different than anything I would have ever thought of!' If I can simply make statements like that in the face of my wife's distress, it's a whole new place to be! It wasn't much, but it was a lot for me. I realized that I had grown up in a place where when you're hurt or in pain you go away alone and come back out when you're healed. What I learned simply wasn't the right stuff--it thwarted my growth in the area of caring for people and being cared for, in ways that I never would have suspected. To me, that was a transforming moment." Sometimes transformation is not an event, but more of a process: "I feel like I'm moving now," said Ursula. "I'm going through some changes and my husband is seeing a different person. He's sometimes baffled, I think, uncomfortable. And here's a paradox--I'm baffled, too--except that I'm moving into this new place of comfort that feels real, like I'm getting down to the core. Do you know the book, The Soul's Code, by James Hillman? The premise is that you come into the world with a soul, a core that's solid, real, warm, and all this light resonates from it. What appeals to me about this metaphor is that oftentimes when we think about spirituality it's kind of a coming up and going out. This is not. This is going in and going down, and that just really resonates with me. I'm being drawn down, and yet it's not ever a place I'll reach because it is never-ending. The other thing I know is that it's always been there. It's always been with me." Being hit by a truck was both an event and a process for Bart: "It forced me to ask for help in ways that I never had before," he admitted. "I had always tended to be at sixes and sevens when it came to, on the one hand, having the most qualified person do it, and on the other hand, doing everything myself, approaching every act as a Warrior with absolutely everything he's got. It's a guaranteed burn-out but that's one of the facts of life for Warriors. This was deeply frustrating because you can't do everything. My sense of failure was always with me because I put myself in a no-win. So the experience of being partially incapacitated gave me the feeling that I can say no sometimes to things in a way I couldn't have before. I haven't gotten perfect at that yet--the habit of doing everything is still with me. It's one of the constant challenges I face, but I'm getting better because the awareness is there that I'm not as strong as I was. That also means I'm not as dumb as I was and I don't have to do all this stuff and I don't have to pretend that I can. So I recognized a physical difference but there was an emotional change, too, of facing reality. I mean, what becomes the credibility of somebody who doesn't perform like they say they will, both to themselves and to the people around them?" David, at 60, has had a late and rapid change. "I recognized that I had to change a long time ago, for my own well-being as well as for those around me," he offered sadly. "I have been yearning for this transformation process for a long time, I just never found a way to do it. Frankly, when I first looked at your web site I thought, 'My God, this is some sort of cult!' It's that funny diagram--I thought, 'What the heck is that?' Then I read what you wrote about an Eight, and while it's not very flattering I began to recognize that part of the reason my company hasn't been successful in our new ventures was because I had a tendency to state my objections in such a blunt and often angry way, I put my partners on the defensive. And that bothered me to the extent that I began to examine my own contribution to the fact that we had not made any progress toward our strategic objectives, that we were ineffective as a leadership group. Once, I got so furious about someone we'd hired that the President looked at me and said, 'You know, I'm worried about you; you're displaying an anger that's beyond anything that's called for.' He was very brave in saying that because usually I'd hit him over the head with a baseball bat. But this time I said, 'This has got to change, for two reasons--I can't stay here like this, and we're not effective.'" David did believe he had made substantial changes earlier in his marriage, but these changes weren't so far-reaching: "I could be biting, I could be sarcastic, and not even realize it. It was just the way I expressed myself. But I recognized that if I didn't make any changes at home I was going to lose my marriage, and I began a real campaign to do something about it. I think that was fairly profound, but I never carried it outside my marriage. I didn't care what other people thought about me! I was going to go get the job done, and fuck 'em if they didn't like the way I did it!" Results of Change When asked how they are different as a result of these transforming experiences, these Eights spoke in tough but poignant ways about opening their hearts, about developing empathy, about taking risks in relationships. Ursula had been estranged from her parents for three years (when she divorced her first husband to marry her second husband her mother had stopped speaking to her, and her father followed suit). "Then I found out through my son that my dad had a heart attack. When my son called, there was another shift from, 'Well, O.K., this is the way they want it,' to 'Fuck what they want! I'm done! I'm not playing by their rules. I'm not doing this anymore!' I went home, called immediately, and we were there that day. Well, she was a bitch with a capital B for months. It finally warmed up, and relations--as they say--have normalized. But here's the way in which I'm different. Before, she never hugged me, I wouldn't hug her. She wouldn't tell me she loved me, I'd never tell her I loved her. Her rules. 'This is the way she wants it, O.K., I respect that.' Now that's over: I hug her, I touch her, I tell her I love her. And you know what's happened? She's changed. This last time when my husband and I went on vacation and they were nearby, she could not keep her hands off of me. And it was real! When we left I remember especially, she just held my arms and looked right at me. Isn't that amazing! I talked to her on the phone last night, and at the end I said, 'I love you.' And she said, 'Oh, I love you, too.' There you go! That's how I've changed. And look what happened!" "Well, like anybody who's over fifty--or forty, or thirty," speculated Bart, "I've had a lot of encounters with people, both superficial and more profound, and the person that I brought to them was not a person who could really enrich them or their lives. I'm sure a lot of people saw good stuff in me, but I wasn't able to bring all I could to them because I was far too insular. And I often think of the loss, both to me and to all those people, of what could have been. I was ignorant as a post, simply not equipped to talk about larger issues--my ability to hear was incapacitated. Now I'd say I'm more participative, somehow--what I mean by that is being with somebody when I'm with them, actually sharing what's going on, rather than standing at something of a distance and pot-shooting at what they're saying. Yeah, and I'm self-disclosing with more ease, and on subjects that I never dreamed of talking to anyone else about. Before, I was always there back in the cave, conjecturing, and I would never share. When I'm really listening to someone now it's like walking down the sidewalk with our arms around each other, in step, making eye contact, walking together. To me it's nothing more and nothing less than being with someone, right with them. I remember when Dad died," he continued, "how awful I felt leaving his bedside with him not having enough strength to open his eyes but being conscious behind his lids, and his life draining away. And I thought to myself that I was truly alive in my grief for him, in my sense of who he was. To me, that was a good outcome of his dying, that all the clutter that can keep me from being in the moment went away." David's awareness of changes in himself illustrates a newfound empathy, with unanticipated (and heartwarming) results: "This has taught me to look at somebody and listen to them and not to be in a hurry to overwhelm them with my answer. What happened to me this weekend was just unbelievable. We had two huge training sessions, and from the minute I stood up in front of that 90-person group I felt different about them, what I was going to say, and how I was going to say it. I never paid any attention before to how people responded to me. I didn't care. 'Go do what I said and let's get on with the next problem.' But I watched their response and I found myself letting people answer their own questions. I would have never done that before this process started. My attitude was, 'They're not smart enough to answer their own questions or they wouldn't have asked them in the first place.' There was a guy whose ass I'd chewed so badly in the past, and he walked up to me after these sessions with a big grin on his face. This guy is no sentimental slob, by any means--he's a tough young man, but he stuck out his hand, and said, 'Wasn't this a really great weekend?' I had to get in the car and put my dark glasses on--there were a lot of people standing around there and I wasn't going to let them see all the tears in my eyes. I had tried to work with him since I'd chewed him out so unmercifully but there had always been--as there is with anybody I've flayed--this guarded, 'When's he going to do that to me again?' But he just dropped his guard in the parking lot, and this is so overwhelming that I don't even quite know how to think about it. I keep getting different responses in people. And I walk away myself with a different view of what happened because I've paid attention to how the person is responding to me. The other part is just how I feel. It's very different. For one thing I'm far more relaxed. I used to get just furious at little things. Just this morning I went in the garage to put some stuff into the trunk of my car and the trunk was locked. My reaction a few weeks ago would have been, 'Goddamn it! Why is the trunk locked?' Well, I know why the trunk is locked--the damned thing locks automatically! But this morning I just said, 'Oh, the trunk is locked,' and I walked around to the door and unlocked the trunk. This is the sort of thing that happens to me all the time now. I don't know where my anger went. And I have to tell you that one of the results of this is that I'm just having so much more fun. A year ago someone told me, 'You never smile,' and I've thought about that a lot recently, because I find myself smiling all the time. 'Pleasant' doesn't even begin to describe it." Resources Along The Way: Personal and Transpersonal Like anyone undergoing change, these Eights have been helped along the way by counselors and/or intimate relationships. Sometimes these resources were sought out, sometimes they seemed to show up as if by mysterious force: "I've always had people who have helped me along the way," said Ursula. "In my childhood my Dad was a great dad for a little kid--playful, active, doing cartwheels, handstands, very physical, fun and funny, and then I got to be fourteen and whoa! I got turned over to my mother, and we know what that was like! I remember in my teens telling my mother I really felt like I was falling apart and she said, 'Well, now I suppose you're going to tell me you need a psychiatrist!' You know what I did? I said, 'I don't need anything,' and shut it all down, and it was gone. But I had a surrogate family, the family of my best friend--who's still my best friend in the whole world. I lived with her family and they loved me unconditionally--they thought I was absolutely terrific! People who challenge you can be resources, too. My so-called ex-husband was the ultimate challenge in that he was 'perfect' for all my buried shit. Perfect! I was raised to marry him with the messages, 'Make everything O.K. for everybody else. Don't have a feeling of your own.' It was brutal." Bart has found his wife to be a support in voicing what he's struggling with: "An amazing number of times I'll be in that awareness that 'I don't have to?' or 'I shouldn't agree to take this on?' and my wife will say exactly what I'm thinking and it will tip me towards taking an appropriate position. My tendency is to try to bunch things together in a way that creates an impossible set of circumstances, and her efforts are always to spread out what I do to actually occupy times when they can realistically be done. I might still say, 'Nahhh?' but the unreality of the position I've taken will gnaw at me in ways that would never have touched me before." For much of their lives, these Eights had little success with therapists--perhaps because they weren't ready, perhaps because the right "teacher" didn't appear, probably because they were pushed into it by others, most likely because they bought the message that "I don't need anything" to the point that it became "It's not O.K. for me to get help." "I did finally find help with one psychologist," Ursula offered, "but before that it was just an intellectual exercise." David had a similar early experience with therapists: "When I talked to the first guy about my anger he said, 'Ah, that's O.K. You're doing fine.' And that didn't help, obviously, because I knew he was wrong, but he gave me an out. Yeah, here he was sitting across from this ferocious man who said, 'I really get angry, SO WHAT!!!!' What the hell was he going to say? So we can figure out why that one didn't work! The next counselor I saw was not by choice either. The President of that company said, 'You go get some help or you're out of here.' But also, I was very dissatisfied where I was--I could do absolutely superb work but offset it by my relationships with other people, and at that particular time I had really lit into somebody to the extent where even I recognized it. So I worked with the counselor and it was good, but we just scratched the surface. We never got into the soul of what was going on--it was more techniques than it was a transformation. For example, I'd put Post-It stickers on my dashboard to try and remind myself that if something occurred I ought not to lose my temper. And it worked until the Post-It fell off, as they always do--you know, things aren't permanent. So the Post-It fell off the dashboard and the next thing you knew, I was pissed off at some old lady who was in my way. It was a series of Band-Aids and I don't say that was bad, but it wasn't very satisfying, it wasn't getting me where I wanted to go. Yet I kept recognizing through all of that, I think, that I really needed to make the profound change. I had no knowledge of the Enneagram, no idea that I'm an Eight, no idea where the hell the journey would go or how the hell you even start. So I think that's why it never happened. I knew I had to change for my own good, for my marriage, for my job, whatever--probably mostly for my own good--but I didn't know how to do it." As David talked about his current work he emphasized the importance of trust in the person helping--a key element for Eights: "What's so awesome about this to me is that for some reason I had absolute, almost child-like, unqualified trust in you, so I took what you said and I went in that direction, and I don't know why. Maybe it's because I had so many years of being ready to do this without having the roadmap to do it, but I also think that you can't be questioning or fighting with the person who's helping you. I didn't distrust the counselor I had before, but Rilke's poem Liebeslied says it for me: "?everything that touches us, you and me, takes us together as a bow's stroke does, that out of two strings draws a single voice. Upon what instrument are we two spanned? And what player has us in his hand??" This transpersonal element was new for David: "I marvel at two things: One, that I have been able to continue the process as profoundly as I have, and secondly, I don't care where it ends. It's a kind of surrender, which is very interesting, because growing up a Christian Scientist, one of the fundamental notions was, 'yield to God's will' and I always resisted that. I mean, 'Nobody's going to tell me what to do! Goddamn it, I'm strong enough to figure it out for myself!' So here I am in this transformation, and the notion of spirituality has gained a significance to me that I don't think it's ever had. What I've done here is yield to something that has let me change. There's this incredible sense of peace, and I've started praying. A lot of my prayer is just thanks, but part of it is a recognition that there is some sort of spiritual force--relinquishing the notion that there's nothing out there or that it won't help us!" Bart was equally eloquent about his own spirituality, though he framed it differently from David: "I don't necessarily believe that there is any guiding higher power, or any natural urge toward positive direction. I do believe there are laws governing us that, if you were to list them, would become the characteristics of that higher power. For example, there is a law that's built into our humanness of a need for connectedness that's similar to gravity. These are natural laws. We can operate in concert with them or fight with them, but if we had a list of these laws and acted in concert with them, I'm hesitant to say what would ever form our limits as sentient souls. Somehow, I do believe in the soul, in the essence of us. I can't say that it lives beyond our death, but I get glimpses from another dimension that I don't feel compelled to understand. In each of these moments we are going through, we have choices of 'What is the law that's prevailing at this moment, and am I in concert with it or am I fighting it?' For me it's being in touch with the real, being in touch with the same things I was in touch with when Dad died. Moments when everything falls away, where--without distraction--you can be wholly where you are and in touch with all that's good. There's an experience when I'm drawing or painting or just looking around me, where I see something that is the absolute, total epitome of what it is--it's a tree that is the perfect sycamore, it's a child's drawing, or someone looking at someone else lovingly. That's what 'poignancy' means for me. What gives meaning to my life is seeing people, not necessarily at their best, but in the wholeness of who they are, unfettered by fears or distractions." Practices Supporting Change Ursula described her spirituality in a way even more attuned with nature: "I go on long walks and my preparation beforehand is, 'I'm not going to think about anything and I'm going to think about everything! Whatever I draw to me, I'll take it in.' It was on one of these walks that I had an encounter with a Red Fox. Man, it was just incredible, truly awesome! I was leaving a meadow heading into the woods, and being just open. There before me was this creature, just a few feet away, and I thought, 'Is that a dog? Oh, fuck! It's a red fox!' This is really hard to put into words, but we just looked at each other for an endless amount of time and there was no fear. Then as soon as I became self-conscious, she looked at me and turned and walked away--didn't run, walked away, at the moment I became self-conscious. Did I make this up? I don't even care! But it was absolutely a going down." She also meditates: "That same kind of opening, that same receptive state that I use on these walks, I also use in my meditation. I see steps made of stone that take me into a pool in which I submerge myself, and then I go farther down through what looks like a storm sewer, but I end up in a place where I am literally floating or flying. And that's an energizing piece of this, because that little seed or acorn or whatever comes out, goes above me, catches all the energy that's in the universe then goes back into me. In the next stage there's a vortex. I go down into this vortex and there's a person there, real androgynous. His name is Paul. Boy this sounds crazy! This is anonymous, right? Well, he is constantly there--he, she, it--he is constantly there and we have dialogue. He never, ever, ever, ever tells me what to do. He just asks the right questions. Sometimes we sit by a fire and talk and then sometimes I go into his cabin and rest. In the final place is a sea that's similar to the one in Journey to the Center of the Earth. And it's down in the guts because I go into the sea and look up and I can see a heart beating, pulsing." Ursula also uses journaling as a way to be present in her journey: "I've kept a diary since I was ten years old. And drawing--as a child even, I'd go up to my room, close my door, lock it, get my pencils and paper out, and draw scenes." And like most Eights she's very physical: "The other thing I've always done is get into my body--walk, run, feel the burn, treadmill, swimming, those kinds of things. There's this woman who wrote a book called 'Sweat Your Prayers.'" David and Bart were more concrete, looking for "how-to" practices that hold them to the present. Bart said, "I don't deal in images much. But when the therapist gave me that piece of paper with four or five points of what to do, step-by-step, to get in contact with my feelings so I could speak from my feelings, that did touch me as a path to communication that I don't exercise and that is available to me. This was very similar to what I felt when he said, 'What if you tried this?' in listening to my wife, and I thought, 'Oh, there's something I can do.'" David found benefit in Gendlin's Focusing technique: "The interesting part about Focusing is that you're not self-condemning, you're simply noting. When I understood that, then it was easy. It's tied to what I was saying before about yielding. You've got to accept that it's the right thing and go with it. And it's now probably become subconscious. I don't have to sit there and think about what I'm doing. Focusing taught me how to be where I wanted to be anyway." He's also done a lot of reading: "I can go back, look at the behaviors of an Eight, recognize how that relates to me and where I manifest myself in that behavior, and what I can do about it. The funniest part is that I haven't had to sit here and plot some kind of change. It has just sort of unfolded in front of me, and that has continued to awe me. It's that notion of yielding and letting it happen." Self-disclosure has also played a significant role for David, changing in its nature over the years: "Self-disclosure is something I've never been reluctant to do, once I got over figuring out that I really needed to change. But earlier in my life when I began the process of self-disclosure, the result was to beat myself up. Now I just tell everybody, 'Listen, I've got to tell you, this is so great!'--and I don't think I beat myself up anymore." Resistances to Change David expanded on the theme of self-disclosure in response to my question about resistance to change: "I had looked at myself for a long time and been on the one hand pretty objective and on the other hand self-condemning. The objectivity is fine; the self-condemning is a major impediment to change. That's the gorilla I've been wrestling with, and you don't easily get that off of your shoulders. But when I look at the responses to what I'm doing from guys I've treated pretty roughly, it is so rewarding that I've begun to say to myself, 'There's not a damn thing you can do about that. Get off the guilt trip. You probably couldn't have changed the situation anyway and now there's nothing you can do about it, other than change your own behavior.' And I think I've made more progress than I give myself credit for. I mean, I beat myself up pretty badly. I beat myself up about things I did to my wife. And I don't know that the pain of recollecting that is ever going to go away--I don't know if I'm ever going to be able to say, 'It was all right.' I think I have more work to do there. If you want the ultimate transformation, it would probably be to let go of that." Among other things, Bart is aware of how his unwillingness to seek help has been a source of resistance: "I was a long time letting go of the notion that two people of intelligence and good will can find a way through a problem without outside help. And even though I had been through the Forum, where the concept of the 'box' was brought home to me, I never really applied it to myself, that there are things you just can't see because you're inside the box. My world would have been a different place if I had understood earlier that someone else could help me. It's another facet of my insularity. And of course, when it comes down finally to it, it's not a matter of skills, it's not a matter of adroitness, it's not a matter of sensitivity, it's a matter of being inside the box." He also listed his lack of self-disclosure and his tendency to stereotype people as barriers to change: "People may have said something to me, but I just couldn't hear it--what was lacking in me is what you were calling 'empathy'. It's a trite word, 'listening,' but I just never did it before! And part of listening was responding to make sure I heard what they said, and I didn't do that. I can think of at least two women I lost because I wasn't open enough. The first one knew that my feelings were strong and that I was dedicated to her, but thought I was just too wild a child to be dependable. And that was exacerbated, I'm sure, by the fact that I tended towards an insularity that didn't give her a lot to hold onto. The loss of the second woman was much the same thing, actually. I cared for her a lot, she knew that, and I was long past being a wild child, but I was still insular and not sharing or collaborative, so she went away. I think in her heart, finally, what bothered her most was that she didn't really feel I needed anybody. I've also tended to put people in a box, hear some words, and say to myself, 'Oh, there they go again' and act out of that assumption as opposed to where they really are. 'Categorize them as soon as possible so you can put them away and let them just rattle on, and mentally go about your own business.' A horrid place, as much for oneself as well as for them, because if you're not there you're not in real time, you're not in the moment. And in truth, you're not anyplace. You're mentally staring off into space and giving up the opportunity to live." "If I feel threatened I withdraw," acknowledged Ursula. "Maybe it's the Eight disintegrating to Five, but there are times in my marriage where we will have a disagreement and I get angry, then I get hurt, then I go away. It's not conscious, I don't say to myself, 'I'm going to withdraw.' I fucking disintegrate! That's what it feels like! My thoughts are gone, I'm in little pieces, feeling, 'That's enough, go away, stop, I am gone, I am out of here.' So I don't want to paint myself as some paragon. Heaven forbid! When I feel defensive--when I'm trying to defend my ego--I get in my own way. This occurs when I feel attacked by someone who's really important to me. You know, there are other people who can attack me and I'll turn it right back on them, or let them know how little their opinion means to me. But when I'm self-conscious, conscious of how I might be harmed, that's when the armor goes up--it doesn't let anything out and it doesn't let anything in." Metaphors of Change In interviewing people, I've found a wide variety of metaphors for transformation, without any apparent reflection of type. You've already heard how Ursula seeks her soul's code, "going in and going down", a place from which she looks up and sees her own heart beating. Bart's transformation metaphor has to do with "stepping out of the box": "We spend all our lives exploring the corners of our box, and then when we step out of it into a new, larger box--it becomes the object of the remaining lifetime to explore the corners and pieces of that box. That's what I'm doing and that's what I think the 'path' is, learning what life is all about inside of this box. There's an endless supply of boxes, each one containing new wisdom, new insights. As you're stepping across into the next larger box, you are at that moment the epitome of the old box, you are all that the old box can be, you've taken all that it can give you. And then it's time for the new box. It's not only being able to look over the fence and see into the old box, but having genuinely new stuff that wasn't visible to you from being inside the walls of the old box. And by and large, you've got to have help to see outside of it." "I think if I sat here and tried to model this, I probably could," said David, "but I'm not sure that wouldn't be an artificial process." His experience of transformation is intuitive, diffuse, emotion-laden. "It's joy that moves it along. I don't know if it has stages. I didn't spiral into this, I didn't go up steps, I didn't go down steps--there's been no fight here. It's a process that goes on without conscious thought in my case. I'm not struggling or trying. I still find it amazing that I don't have to go through this great labor that I had been for years. Whatever it was that was blocking this transformation hasn't fought back very effectively recently. Maybe it was tired. Maybe I had beat that little mother to death!" Progress Along The Path These three offered suggestions to other Eights based on their own experience: "You're in the box," advised Bart, "and either you open the door or somebody else opens the door, and on the other side you're in this technicolor place, a place where you can't, you mustn't stop listening. Listen to everything, make it important--be present and don't characterize. Don't necessarily do anything, but really be there while you're talking, while you're doing things together, and let that lead to whatever changes come down the pike." Bart echoed the desire of the other two when he said that he wants to become aware "in a deeper way" what he wants from his life. "I think of that wonderful story that Mel Brooks told about Moses coming down from the mountain with two tablets and standing before the multitude, stepping up on a rock, losing his balance. As he was saying, 'I've got to share with you the twenty?' one tablet fell and broke, and he finished, '?ten commandments!' There are other things equally important to traditional values that are on the broken tablet--like anger--that don't appear in the ten commandments, but are as life-damaging as any other of the more heinous things that you could give in to. In terms of my own criteria for life, my primary one is illustrated by the story of the ten talens from the bible. The father gave his three sons ten talens each and set them adrift, and they all came back. One of them had gambled it away, another had invested it but lost it, and the third one buried his--so he still had ten talens. The father took back the first two sons and divided his kingdom among them, but he told the third son to take his goddamn ten talens and shove them up his ass! That was what he was given to make his life from, and all he had at the end was what he started with. So the others may have lost, but at least they risked. And every moment is a talen." David's perspective is similar to Bart's--the importance of being in the moment: "One of the things I've asked is, 'Where am I going with all of this?' I've gone through life always having to know where I was going; otherwise I wasn't going to do it. I mean, why the hell would we start if we aren't going some place, and someplace that we had defined and we knew? But I got to thinking about your question of where do you see this going and where am I in it? That supposes that there is an end point, and I'm not sure I want to define an end point. Probably the most important part of all this is the continuing recognition that transformation makes sense, that it's 'right', and just to continue the process." I'll leave you with Ursula's advice: "Well, the only thing that comes to mind is something that I think is pretty commonly known. And that would be, 'When you're in it, stay in it. Don't push it away. Don't leave. Stay there. You may find it's not what you thought it might be.' I was working with my therapist on a dream where I was running away from something, really terrified. I remember running down this hall, and behind me these monsters--these creepy-crawly things--were after me, and I got to this door thinking, 'Don't open the door! Don't open the door! Oh, God, don't open the door! What if these creatures come and they open the door!' I opened the door, and you know what was there? It was a little Jack-in-the-Box. It came out and went 'Boinggg,' and I said, 'You're kidding!' It had a really ugly face, but it was like, 'And??' So that's what I mean, don't waste your energy wrestling things to the ground, because you may not need to. Stay with it. And just have courage." MaryBast's site : http://ww4.choice.net/~marybast/index.htm |
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| The Powerful, Dominating Type: Self-Confident, Decisive, Aggressive, and Combative Basic Fear: Of being harmed or controlled by others Basic Desire: To protect themselves, to be in control of their own life and destiny The Eight with a Seven-Wing: "The Maverick" The Eight with a Nine-Wing: "The Bear" Potential Neuroses: Antisocial and Sadistic Personality Disorders Key Motivations: Want to be self-reliant, to prove their strength and resist weakness, to be important in their world, to dominate the environment, and to stay in control of their situation. Expanded Profile Healthy Self-assertive, self-confident, and strong: have learned to stand up for what they need and want. A resourceful, "can do" attitude and passionate inner drive. Decisive, authoritative, and commanding: the natural leader others look up to. Take initiative, make things happen: champion people, provider, protective, and honorable, carrying others with their strength. At Their Best: Become self-restrained and magnanimous, merciful and forbearing, mastering self through their self-surrender to a higher authority. Courageous, willing to put self in serious jeopardy to achieve their vision and have a lasting influence. May achieve true heroism and historical greatness. Average Self-sufficiency, financial independence, and having enough resources are important concerns: become enterprising, pragmatic, "rugged individualists," wheeler-dealers. Risk-taking, hardworking, denying own emotional needs. Begin to dominate their environment, including others: want to feel that others are behind them, supporting their efforts. Swaggering, boastful, forceful, and expansive: the "boss" whose word is law. Proud, ego-centric, want to impose their will and vision on everything, not seeing others as equals or treating them with respect. Become highly combative and intimidating to get their way: confrontational, belligerent, creating adversarial relationships. Everything a test of wills, and they will not back down. Use threats and reprisals to get obedience from others, to keep others off balance and insecure. However, unjust treatment makes others fear and resent them, possibly also band together against them. Unhealthy Defying any attempt to control them, become completely ruthless, dictatorial, "might makes right." The criminal and outlaw, renegade, and con-artist. Hard-hearted, immoral and potentially violent. Develop delusional ideas about their power, invincibility, and ability to prevail: megalomania, feeling omnipotent, invulnerable. Recklessly over-extending self. If they get in danger, they may brutally destroy everything that has not conformed to their will rather than surrender to anyone else. Vengeful, barbaric, murderous. Sociopathic tendencies. Don Riso's site : http://www.enneagraminstitute.com/ |
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| Football is an Eight Paradigm On Super Bowl Sunday America celebrates eightness. Football is an eight paradigm. To begin with, each team wears matching jerseys, so the field is recognizably divided into good guys and bad guys. This kind of emotional clarity resembles the mind of an entranced eight. Eights live in a hostile world and eights are fiercely loyal to those they love and want to protect. Secondly, eightishness is about power. "Smash-mouth football," as it is referred to, is an eight trademark. Eights look for power in all situations. In a hostile world you have to know who is powerful and who isn't. Many eights will start fights, verbal or physical, just to find out the strength of their partner. If you stand strong in one way or another, you earn an eight's respect. If you are weak, no amount of goodness or placating or appeal to authority will endear you to them. Eights are fiercely loyal, especially in combat, so they make fine teammates. You can count on them to give it their all. And in combat, another characteristic shows up: they frequently have extremely high pain thresholds. Nobody can play injured like an eight. They pride themselves on not showing or giving into weakness or pain. Eights, unless they have an unusually strong connection to five, focus their attention outwardly. They like their power physical, not mental or artistic, so football suits them well. Football teams often develop fierce rivalries. Eights do, too. People who oppose them can become objects of obsessive hatred. (Think of Rush Limbaugh's obsession with the Clintons, especially Hilary). This obsession reduces the enemy to nothing but evil, without nuance, differentiation or redeeming feature. The high side of the obsession, of course, is the fanatic loyalty to the team. In times of trial, you want an eight on your side! Eights have an inner need to be strong. Regardless of the situation (I saw an eight get angry because he felt bad that he couldn't help his daughter with her algebra), an eight feels an inner responsibility to be strong enough to handle the situation. This quality makes them ultra-responsible at times, and can become unreasonable. They can make exorbitant demands on their body, for example, driving themselves to get control of a situation, a business or a relationship. All enneagram styles are control strategies. An Eight prefers the tactic of getting you to surrender. Football is pleasing to them because there is no doubt about who won. Whoever has the most points is stronger and is in control. Sportsmanship trophies are not awarded or wanted. Just answer this: "Who is number one?" Eights inflate their presence. They can fill up a room with their expansive energy. This expansion is in service of protecting the soft inner self within. As with a 280 pound lineman, approach an eight with gentleness. Many women with type Eight husbands describe them as pussy-cats. Beneath that bluff exterior is a child in need of protection. An Eight friend of mine broke into tears several times while reading about eights in an enneagram book. At first I was shocked when I heard it, but it makes sense--the author didn't attack, he appealed to their inner sense of justice. Which leads me back to the Superbrawl. It is not a brawl. They play by strict rules and eights like it that way. They want fairness. One reason they are hostile is that they see the world as hostile and unfair. When eights are entranced they seek vengeance instead of justice, but when healthy they appreciate justice a great deal. The referees know all the players want a fair game when the atmosphere is this eightish. The Sicilian defense department, or mob as it is usually called, came into being precisely because the immigrants were not getting justice from the police and juridical system. Most gangs are eightish in their energy and they see themselves as having to defend themselves against a system rigged against them. Teamwork is healthy for eights. When eights are entranced, they turn their power to protect their self-interest. The glory hog who doesn't help the team doesn't last long in football and everyone connected with the game admires modesty, especially among the talented who could play more for themselves. Giving up one's body for the team is considered a highly virtuous act. Teamwork is underestimated as a way to overcome egotism, but it is one of the great things preserved by a seriously flawed patriarchal system. Exercises: Eights often cannot hear opposition. If you are an eight, attend a meeting, take notes and see how well you can recall the opinions of others. Nuance is important to an eight. If you are an eight, describe your opposition (and trust me, you will be able to think of people and ideas you oppose) Describe their attitudes with as much accuracy, stating what they don't hold and what they are ambiguous about. Avoid all temptation to say things like "Well, it all boils down to..." When you boil things down, you lose many subtle flavors. Describe your opponents with subtlety. Discussion questions: 1) How does Rush Limbaugh use his eight energy to make friends and dittoheads? What would happen if a Republican president came into power? 2) John Wayne is an eight. Compare and contrast with Limbaugh. (Excuse me for using all male examples, but our culture doesn't allow female eights to become popular). 3) Jesus in the first century and many corporate leaders these days talk about Servant Leadership. Describe how an eight would fare trying to implement this notion. Clarence Thomson's site : http://www.enneagramcentral.com/ |
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| Personality Style Eight: The Powerful Person Core Value Tendency: EIGHTS are attracted to and appreciate power. They desire to be strong, independent, straightforward, assertive persons, who use their strength and influence to make the world a more just place to live in. They value equity, the equal distribution of power, and show a concern for the underprivileged and disenfranchised. Being your own person, doing your own thing, protecting your own is what life is all about. Jerome Wagner's site : http://www.enneagramspectrum.com/ |
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