It's Not Who You ARE, It's What You DO

Creek: 00:01

And we're back on the Awareness to Action Enneagram podcast. We are here together once again.

Mario: 00:08

I feel like we just did this.

Creek: 00:12

Dear listener, we often record a couple episodes in a row. So this is round two. And we're just as excited to get into this because we're about ready to embark on the journey of the strategies, the types, as some people call them. And this is the origin story, the dark and mysterious origin story of the strategies.

Mario: 00:33

Sifting through the midst of time.

María José: 00:38

Going back hundreds of years.

Creek: 00:42

Hundreds. Thousands.

Mario: 00:44

I'm gonna share what I learned from the Sufis when…

Creek: 00:49

Okay, you're gonna have to explain that.

Mario: 00:51

Well, you know, the whole idea of the Enneagram coming from the Sufis and so forth and having a good friend who is a Sufi scholar and Sufi Sheikh, the one thing I've learned is that the Enneagram of personality did not come from the Sufis, but that's a whole different story.

Creek: 01:08

It's another story. That's the prequel.

Mario: 01:10

That’s the prequel.

Creek: 01:11

Yeah. scandalous. So the implications and the explanation of why does Awareness to Action use the word strategies and the corresponding words associated with that? That would be great to talk about.

Mario: 01:30

So should I just start talking?

Creek: 01:32

Actually, I want to hear from María José first.

Mario: 01:34

Yeah, go ahead, María José.

María José: 01:36

No, no, no. You go ahead. You are prepared for this.

Creek: 01:38

No. I want you.

María José: 01:40

That’s your thing. And you know, I was wondering.

Mario: 01:45

You want to take the rest of the day off? Is that what you’re saying?

María José: 01:50

Yes, No, I will add during this talk, conversation, but go ahead.

Creek: 01:57

Actually, I want you to say what you think he's going to say in Spanish, and then he's going to pretend to translate it. And he’s probably going to be exactly accurate.

Mario: 02:08

And then somebody will ask me, are you familiar with María José's work?

María José: 02:12

Yes, especially after all the videos I've been posting. You know, I don't mention your name at all. They’re… Just so you know, be prepared for it. It's in Spanish. And I have not mentioned your name.

Creek: 02:24

Is this like the beginning stages of you two suing each other for?

Mario: 02:28

That's exactly right. That's exactly right.

Creek: 02:30

Round Two.

Mario: 02:31

Like the, you know, the NLP guys, you know, she'll try to shoot me or something.

Creek: 02:35

Gosh.

Mario: 02:35

What happened there. I don’t know.

María José: 02:39

Too expensive to go there, to shoot you.

Creek: 02:43

Thank goodness there’s a country between us.

María José: 02:42

I’ll send you an envelope with Anthrax. Something like that.

Creek: 02:51

Well, bringing us back to some actual valuable content for our listeners: Strategies. What are they? Why are they there?

María José: 03:00

Well, I will say something. No, go ahead.

Mario: 03:03

So way back in the last century, that literally, you know, the the end of the ‘90s. When I started using the in the Enneagram in organizations way back, you start to run into different challenges using the Enneagram in organizations. And one of the first ones is that the people you're working with are not seeking to become Enneagram experts. They're seeking information that they can remember and that they can use.

And one of my frustrations with the Enneagram, as it was being taught and written about at the time, was that when people talked about what it meant to be a particular type, it would either just give a name, like the peacemaker, or the helper or something like that, which never really felt right to me, because it felt like a label that you're placing on someone that is describing something external rather than something internal. Or you could say, well, you know, this is the lustful type or the angry type or the envious type or something like that using the nine vices. Again, doesn't translate real well to organizations. Well, the problem is, you're the gluttonous type. Most of the descriptions of the types were basically lists of traits, which people aren't going to remember.

So I started wrestling with, when we say somebody's a Four or a One or an Eight, or whatever they are, what are we actually saying? What's the thing we can say to be true of everybody of that, quote unquote, type? Now I don't have an issue with the word type. A lot of people do. That used to be a big topic of conversation on Facebook forums, oh, people aren't types blah, blah, blah. That's besides the point, right? When we say somebody's a type, we're just saying that the type of person who does this. They’re the type of person who likes football. They're the type of person who likes asparagus or turnips in their beef stew. You know, it's just… So yeah, boy, I bring it all the way around. Right? So, calling somebody a type, all we're saying is that they’re the kind of person who does x, but what is that x that they're doing?

And so I was wrestling with that. And I was reading Claudio Naranjo’s Character and Neurosis at the time. It's great book, don't agree with everything in it, but it's a great book. And at some point, he refers to the Enneatypes as adaptive strategies, meaning ways that we solve the problems that life brings our way. And I thought, that's it. I like that term. First of all, it was accurate in my experience. It reflected a way of engaging with the world, rather than what someone is. And it was also business friendly, because businesses talk about strategy all the time. So now all we're doing…

So it was an idea that business people could certainly get. Oh, okay. Well, we know what a strategy is. It's how you tell you sell your product. It's the theme of the things you do. So I decided that would be it, but then I had to figure out okay, well, what does that mean. I mean, what are these strategies? So I landed on this idea at the time, I was talking about people striving to be something. That's the original terminology we used. And I think it's still in the print version of Awareness to Action. Striving to be.

María José: 06:45

In English.

Mario: 06:47

In English, yes. Striving to be unique. Striving to be perfect. Striving to be this or that. Eventually, I started to realize it was more about striving to feel a certain way, that the strategy started with an affective need a regulating way, because all the great philosophers, all the great cognitive scientists will tell you that we are affect driven or feeling driven creatures. We make decisions based on feelings. And then we rationalize those feelings and then act on those rationalizations. Even though we think that we're rational creatures, we're really not most of the time. So started thinking, Alright, well, like this idea of striving to feel, my strategy is, if I feel this way, then I'll be able to solve my problems.

wrote Awareness to Action in: 2004

Creek: 08:45

Okay, so explain like striving to feel perfect, striving to feel connected? How does that work in congruence with striving to feel unique?

Mario: 08:54

Yeah. So at the time, again, the teaching that I had learned was that there was your type. I was a Type Eight. I am a Type Eight.

Creek: 09:07

You haven't transcended your type yet?

Mario: 09:10

Not yet. I'm working on it. I’m really, really close. I'm hoping by Sunday that I’ll get there.

María José: 09:17

How many hours have you been working on it?

Mario: 09:19

3 or 4. 3-4. Yeah, over a long time, of course. A few minutes here, a few minutes there. So as an Eight, for me, I'm connected to points Five and a point Two. And the way I had learned it, the way it was taught at the time for the most part, was one of the connecting points was a stress point. One was a security point. Or one was your direction of integration, the other was your direction of disintegration. And I remember thinking, because I would have a lot of people come to me and say, you've got a lot of Five stuff going on. You seem Five-ish in some ways

María José: 10:04

Had not really met you. It's like me when I first met you. I felt just so silly.

Mario: 10:12

You felt so silly. Well, I'm sorry. What do you mean?

María José: 10:15

When I said, ah, you should talk more. You should influence more, I was like not understanding that you were doing all of that behind the scenes. But anyway, go ahead.

Mario: 10:26

Right. And, you know, look, I'm a writer, and I've read a book or two, and I like to use big words and all that sort of stuff. And honestly, I'm fairly shy. Outside of my professional domain, I'm a fairly shy person. So people would say you got a Five going on. And I would interpret that as well, that's a negative thing. Because as an Eight, looking Five-ish means that you're disintegrating, or you're under stress or something like that. But it just didn't feel as if my Five-ness, or whatever people were seeing was necessarily negative.

And then Sandra Maitri came along, and in her book, talked about this and said, no, it's more complicated than that. We go each direction in good times or bad times. So an Eight can access Five in a good way, or it can access Five in a negative way. With you as a Four, you can access Point One in a positive way, Point Two in a negative way. It doesn't mean that if you're accessing Point Two, you're disintegrating in some way, or you're under stress. It's just where we go, because when one strategy doesn't work, we go to another.

And that's, again, what I liked about the strategy, and the Enneagram is set up in such a way that the connecting points have a logic to them. It's not just random. Although, the question is, could we rationalize some logic, even if you threw all the numbers up, and they landed in different places may be? But there is a logic to it.

María José: 12:05

Yeah. And just like with the instinctual biases, more than these discrete jumps from one to another, it's more of a profile that it's created. So Ones have or use strategy at Point One, and pPoint Seven and Point Four in different ways. Looking at it like that, it's not like you're becoming somebody else. But there was a point of view that behaves in some ways, and in different ways in other situations. It's not that you're kind of becoming something else.

Mario: 12:41

Yeah, that's a really important point. And it gets to the problem of seeing these types as entities rather than strategies. Because when people say, Oh, we have all nine types in us, I just don't know what that means. Does it mean I've got all these eight or nine little people living inside my head, and every so often one of them comes forward or something like that? And you're kind of like the alien from Men in Black, the little guy inside my head.

But when you start to say, well, you can use all nine of the strategies. I say, okay. Yeah, I mean, that makes sense. But also, everybody is going to be more naturally inclined to using some of the strategies more frequently than others. So there's some strategies, I'm sure I've used them at some point in my life, but not very much. Striving to feel peaceful, for example, is collecting a lot of dust in my psyche. It's just not a strategy that I use all that much. Anyway, so the strategies are a way of being. They're not discrete entities.

When it comes to the connecting point, because Bob and I, when we were writing Awareness to Action, we were thinking about, okay, how do people get into trouble? Because when I'm working with a client, that's what I'm interested in. If you if you're doing fine, okay, good for you. You don't need me. I'm not a cheerleader. I'm a coach. I'm a consultant.

María José: 14:23

So just kind of take that image of you being a cheerleader out of my head.

Mario: 14:29

Well, you know, George W. Bush was a cheerleader. Anyway. So, we started looking at the problematic dynamic of the connecting points. And we started calling one of them that neglected strategy because I get into trouble when I tend to neglect this strategy. And the other one, the support strategy, because I can fall back on using That strategy to reinforce some of my negative behaviors related to my own strategy.

So as an Eight, I don't go to Five because I'm disintegrating. I don't go to Five because I'm under stress. I go there in two circumstances. Sometimes good ways because it helps me to take a deep breath to think, to plan rather than just to impulsively act, to get perspective. Or I can do it in a more negative way where I emotionally detach, and I can fall into a pattern of almost aloof aggression, we call it. It's like Michael Corleone…

María José: 15:43

Almost?

Mario: 15:44

only during the… Yeah, almost.

María José: 15:48

You don’t make it so relative in this case.

Creek: 15:55

Folks, this is why we have María José on. She knows Mario too well, and we'll call him out. I love it.

Mario: 16:03

She removes all the qualifiers I try to stick in there. Who you trying to fool? So, it's like Michael Corleone, and during the baptism scene. Do you renounce Satan? Yes, I do. Kaboom, you know, blowing people up and shooting them, and that sort of thing.

So, these are some of the problematic dynamics we see. Now, again, to my point is the terminology had to work in those circumstances. It wouldn't have worked if Eights didn't get into trouble when they neglected striving to feel connected, which is the strategy of Point Two.

María José: 16:39

To me, one of the beauties of looking at the strategies or the types through these lens is that it is easier to remember. It's not just a long list of traits, but it also speaks to the logic of each profile, and how they see the world when Mario was saying, we're all striving to feel a particular way, and that influences the way we think about the world, and then how we act. That is the logic of each person.

And when you understand the logic, that's a very powerful tool. That's what truly allows you to put yourself in other people's shoes. When you see the traits, you're able to classify them, but you're not able to understand them as well as with logic.

Creek: 17:32

That’s great.

Mario: 17:34

It's a really important point, because it does allow you to be more compassionate, because you stop looking at people and thinking, what's the matter with that person? The line from Full Metal Jacket, what is your major malfunction, Pyle? You know, it's not that. It’s just a different kind of logic. So when I look at, say, a Four, and he is doing all those weird things that Fours do.

Creek: 18:01

Unique things, not weird.

Mario: 18:02

Unique things. There you go.

María José: 18:03

Distinct, if you want.

Mario: 18:09

It's logical. If I were motivated by the same thing, I would probably end up in the same place.

Creek: 18:16

Yeah. I think the Enneagram already fosters compassion to begin with, even in the language of be, right? But I think your language takes it a step further in that it's more dynamic. And it encapsulates things a little bit more freely.

Mario: 18:36

And I want to be careful about comparisons, because I'm not fully up to date on what everybody is saying and writing out there. So, your comparison’s fine, but for me, the big distinction is not… staying away from what somebody is, and focusing on what they do. Because I'm a nominalist. I'm not an essentialist.

Creek: 19:10

Which means?

Mario: 19:12

I thought you'd never ask.

Creek: 19:14

Oh no. That’s…Look. We're out of time today.

María José: 19:21

…your lunch.

Creek: 19:24

María José, can you shorten this podcast up for us and just tell us what Mario's gonna say in shorter words?

María José: 19:29

Nah.

Mario: 19:34

So essentialism is that this thing has an essence. A horse is a horse is a horse, of course, of course. And that's all there is to it. So there's a core essence of the thing that is eternal and so forth. It's a way of classifying things. That's the way biology used to happen if you go back to Aristotle because Aristotle didn't understand evolution. They didn't have any history and no fossil record or anything like that. So horses were always horses. And that's all there was to it.

But then we start to learn that, well, horses aren't just horses. There's been a whole chain of different entities and so forth. Now, nominalism is the assumption that there's a core essence to something and the thing is the thing itself. Nominalism, on the other hand, is, well, that's just what we call something that has these characteristics. So, again, when…

Creek: 20:33

I think you misspoke.

Mario: 20:35

Did I misspeak? Okay. Yeah, thanks.

María José: 20:37

You said nominalism twice. I mean, described both…

Mario: 20:41

Well, thank you. Thank you. They're both the same thing? Well, I see one of them has two m’s. And so…

Creek: 20:47

We don't need any more complications.

Mario: 20:51

What I meant was essentialism is this view that the thing is the thing itself.

María José: 20:57

Well, I have my own description of this.

Mario: 20:59

Yeah, go ahead.

María José: 21:00

In practical terms, when you think that something, somebody is a particular way, then I can't change. If I'm acting a particular way, I can change my behavior. So it's much more practical to think in terms of using a strategy, rather than being a type.

Mario: 21:22

Yes. Yes. So the type is not fixed. Right, is the point. You're absolutely right, María José, and this is what we find with our clients very often, is that when we explain to them is the issue is not that you are a Three. It's that you tend to overdo, or ineffectively do striving to feel outstanding. And you can modify that.

Now, will anything other than striving to feel outstanding ever be your most habitually used strategy? Probably not. Unless there's some extreme experience that occurs, okay. But you can change the way that expresses in you from a maladaptive way to an adaptive way.

María José: 22:14

Yeah, it will manifest in different ways. I was playing tennis this morning. I have a class every week, and my teacher was observing me and how when I made a mistake, I kind of lost focus. And I stopped looking at the ball. And he said, Don't focus on getting the movement perfect. Just continue, go on. Don't don't pay attention to that. It doesn't need to be perfect. You need to just put it on the other side, on the other side of the court. And I said to him, Look, that will not work with me, you know?

Mario: 22:56

Just be happy.

María José: 22:58

Yeah, it’s another version of just be happy. I said, Look, I will continue to worry about getting it perfect. Now, if you helped me really find perfect here, and it's not just doing the perfect movement, but putting it in a particular place, or with a particular speed, or something more broader than just the movement, I can focus on that. But don't even try. I mean, I can try to not worry about getting it perfect, but it will not work.

Mario: 23:33

Yeah, you can't ask people to abandon the strategy. You have to help them use in a more adaptive way. ‘Cause what it's coming down to.

Creek: 23:42

What we're referring to, on the just be happy thing, as an as an example. I was part of a panel at some Enneagram event. And I was trying to be authentic and real and I shared some like personal things in front of everyone. And the person that was in charge of facilitating that panel just said, Well, I just tell Fours that you just need to work on being happy. I was stunned. It doesn't work like that. And it was just not the greatest moment.

Mario: 24:27

Not only does it not work, but it's disrespectful in a way.

Creek: 24:33

Absolutely

Mario: 24:35

Right? It is, you know what? What you're experiencing is not valid. Just abandon it and be what I want you to be.

María José: 24:46

It also shows just not getting it to me.

Mario: 24:50

Not understanding what works and what doesn’t.

María José: 24:51

Yeah, what are you talking about? This doesn't work like that. Have you really worked? Has it really worked for you? To tell people to stop, I mean, just be happy, and they become, they're happy. It just doesn't work like that.

Creek: 25:08

Yeah. And I can extrapolate from that and understand the path to how I can get caught in my own emotions and make myself sad, right? In some ways it's not true sadness. But just to say, it’s… What's that? The late night host long time ago who was like, stop it?

Mario: 25:32

Oh, yeah, it was Bob Newhart, the comedian.

Creek: 25:34

Bob Newhart. We should put that in the show notes for people to watch. Yeah, even when I'm working with some clients, I'm just listening to them go on and I’m like just gosh, just stop it.

Mario: 25:50

And not only is it all these things we've already talked about, dismissive, insulting, not going to work, but it's just not helpful. And it leads to additional frustration, because you can say to yourself, even if you took that in the best possible way, and said, you know what, I do just need to be happy. Well, how the hell do I do that?

Give me some tools I can use here. Give me some techniques. Help me get there. And so with the strategies that, you know again, this is how… We have a particular process and down the road, we'll get to the Awareness to Action process, because we don't want to just tell somebody stop doing this and start doing that. We need to help them get there step by step in a way that's going to resonate with them, in a way that's going to work with them. But if you're seeing them as just this fixed thing, well then, you can’t help them get there, because by definition, they're not going to change.

Creek: 26:46

The irony is, in my situation, right? The way to be more happy is to actually be more sad at first. Like I have to go deeper into the sadness, like being aware of that emotion. And figure out what's actually going on and let that emotion metabolize, before I can start having some level of perspective and ability to possibly feel the sensation we call happiness, or at least neutrality.

Mario: 27:19

Yeah, I may have used this example before, but it's Emerson and his monster. I can run around trying to avoid this thing. Emerson said, we all have this monster that we carry around that’s all our fears and anxieties, and hostilities, and so forth. And we all try to get away from it, running zigzagging through the woods, but the way to get, to resolve it is to just sit on a log and talk to it. So the Four needs to spend some time sitting on the log and talking with their melancholy or their sadness, or whatever it is, and work through it and dissipate, rather than rejecting it and just letting it get stronger and stronger.

Now, I do want to say that there are people who will kind of make these differentiations too. Of levels of health, for example, Don and Russ’s model of levels of health that delineate healthy versions of the type from unhealthy versions of the type. So we're not the only ones who have come along and said, there's movement of sorts. The reason that language doesn't work for us is because it's not language you can use in the workplace. You can't go in and start saying that some people are unhealthy, and others are healthy. Because it's discriminatory. Its labeling. It's judgmental.

The language we use is under stress. Typically at our best when under stress, which is more neutral, and something that everybody can relate to. It's not that I'm unhealthy. It's that I'm feeling stress and pressure and not at my best. And I feel like I have some ability to manage that. You tell me I'm unhealthy. Well. Okay, that's a bigger kettle of fish to deal with.

María José: 29:12

Yeah, I think that there are two additional points there. And you're not, you might not be unhealthy all the time. You might be showing unhealthy behaviors with some people in some circumstances, but not necessarily all the time. And my experience is that Don and Russ did used to teach it that way, but it's not always understood in that, I mean, like that.

Mario: 29:39

Absolutely.

María José: 29:40

You just say this person is unhealthy or at level five, and it doesn't show the whole reality of the person.

Mario: 29:50

And I'm also not suggesting I disagree with the language. In principle. right. It's valid language. It's just not valid language for the work environment.

María José: 30:02

Yeah. And I think that in general, because at some point, I did try to use it outside of the work environment, when you have labels that are not neutral, as you were saying, people tend to avoid resonating with them. It is natural. So you need to use things that people don't feel bad for saying, Yeah, I'm like that. And that applies not only to the different levels, but to the strategies.

If there is something like with Type Eight, when we say striving to feel powerful, every time we teach it, we do explain what we mean by power, because in some cultures, power is a bad thing. It's wrong. There’s abuse attached to it. So we define the terms so that it doesn't cause this kind of rejection that makes people not want to see themselves as an Eight, even if they are.

Creek: 30:59

I think the power of finding that neutral language is, I see all the time in the Enneagram community and outside of it too, but either toxic positivity or toxic negativity. Either addicted to finding all the things that are wrong with me, or addicted to finding all the ways in which I am superior in some way. And sometimes those are overlapped in some way.

But I think finding that neutral language of the dynamic language of verbs of striving to feel this way, and those actions can be healthy and unhealthy, can be adaptive and maladaptive. And those can be, depending on the situation, the same action could be any of those all at the same time.

Mario: 31:47

Yeah. And the strategy can manifest itself in all sorts of forms and all sorts of environments. If we take striving to feel powerful, for example, well a priest, or a monk or a nun can be striving to feel powerful. And so can a mafia boss. It expresses differently, but it's a term that's value neutral. Energy, for example, is value neutral. I can burn down a house with it, or I can light a house with it. And all of these words that we chose are similar.

With a lot of the terminology, for some reason, somebody told me the other day, oh, well, I'm a loyal skeptic on the Enneagram. And so you take a phrase like that, and for me, okay, I've narrowed it down to two things about this person. And I'm thinking about them being a loyal person. I'm thinking about them being a skeptical person. But I can't take it that much further.

But if I say that it's somebody that's striving to feel secure, there's a whole bunch of ways that can manifest itself. And skepticism might be one of them. And loyalty might be one of them. But there are a whole lot of other ways. And so people will be able to better identify themselves, because not all Sixes are loyal. And not all Sixes are necessarily skeptics. But they all are striving to feel secure in some way.

María José: 33:17

Why don't you go through the symbol and explain, not explain, but mention all nine strategies?

Mario: 33:24

Yeah, sure. Sure. Yeah, I'll make it quick. So Point One, striving to feel perfect. And with all of these, people are going to quibble and that's okay. And in the book, we gave some synonyms. They might say this. They might say that. One of the, I think, the better quibbles we've had, María José, somebody saying it's more about striving to be beyond reproach. And that's a refinement. But when I started thinking about it, I was like, Okay, how do you get beyond reproach? By being perfect. So, right? So, so, okay, that's fine. It still means the same thing. And if you feel more comfortable saying that, then okay, but I'm still gonna think of as striving to feel perfect.

Ah, Point Two, striving to feel connected. Now, this is a little bit different, because everybody talks about the Two as helpers. And in my experience, not all Twos are helpers. That was the language I used early on. I was working with a team, and there was a woman there who was a Two. She was Transmitting Two. And when I was talking to somebody else, and I said, oh, so and so's a helper, his response was that ** is a helper? Are you kidding me? Is that going to get us an explicit rating again? On this one?

Creek: 34:47

Maybe. I might just take it out.

Mario: 34:51

That unpleasant person was a helper? So not all Twos are helpers. So then the reason that a lot of Twos do help is because it makes them feel connected. What better way to connect to somebody than to do something for them? If I bring you pie, you're gonna love me right kind of thing. Okay, so we so we think, again, that's one of those things where something's deeper going on than just this idea of being a helper.

Point Three, we call striving to feel outstanding. Again, that's fairly common. It's somebody who's trying to stand out in some way to be better than others. I had somebody say to me one time, I don't have to be the best. I just have to be better than everybody else. Who was Three, which, you know, okay. And it shows to how people kind of internalize these things, and how they wrestle with them. That to somebody on the outside, that's a distinction without a difference. But to him, it was a real difference.

Point Four, we call striving to feel unique. And you said before the session that you resonate more with striving to feel distinct. And all right, what makes somebody distinct? Well, there’s nobody else like them. What is something that there's nothing else like? It's unique, so…

Creek: 36:08

I’ll quickly to defend myself in that sometimes, I find myself knowing how to be distinct without trying to feel unique.

María José: 36:22

How is that?

Creek: 36:23

In that…

Mario: 36:25

Say more words.

Mario: 36:30

Here's a bit more rope.

Creek: 36:37

Yeah, sure. We're saying the same things on some level. But what I hear when people describe uniqueness is often not what I experience as a Four. And so the reason for changing that word is to kind of help shake that unique means strange or weird.

Mario: 36:57

But that’s not what it means.

Creek: 37:01

Sure, but I throw the distinctness in there is because it's not like, I don't need to be weird and off the charts in order to be different or distinct. That's my only critique. I mean, yes, we're saying the same thing. But I, yeah.

Mario: 37:19

And so you're absolutely right. And so we all bring baggage to words. We all bring baggage to language. And María José talked about the baggage around the striving to feel powerful. And so again, we're not dogmatic about this. If you're more comfortable with that, that's fine. You know, we're going to talk about you behind your back.

María José: 37:39

And we’ll still think about you as trying to feel unique and not distinct. Whatever you say.

Mario: 37:45

But distinct is just another word of saying unique. And we can get into okay, well, what does that mean for you, Creek? And then how can we use whatever that means for you to help you grow is what we're after here. Not to say no, no, no, you have to use our language. I don’t care.

Creek: 38:07

Yeah, no. I use it in addition to unique in order to help reclarify…

Mario: 38:12

Its an additional qualifier or something. Yeah, that's fine. But you know, what we don't say is that every Four, we don't say the artist, for example. Because there's a lot of Fours out there, to your point, who are not beret-wearing, purple suited, clove cigarette smoking weirdos, right? There's just regular people who you can't pick out of a crowd. But there's something about them that's striving to feel unique in some way.

So, Type Five, it's always interesting because this one is one that to some people feel is not value neutral. We call striving to feel detached. Some people call it the investigators. Some people call it… People often highlight…

María José: 38:55

The observer.

Mario: 38:57

The Observer. That sort of thing. But we've met people who are not investigators. We've met Fives who aren't that smart, aren't that curious, so forth. It's about an emotional detachment that they're trying to maintain. There’s emotional buffer that they're putting in the world. And the observing is a way to do that. I don't detach so I can observe. I don't detach so I can investigate. I investigate and I observe so I can feel detached. So it's not a chicken in the egg. It's the egg did come first. Because eggs were around before chickens. Dinosaurs laid eggs. So that solves that. It's not really an eternal question, because we know the answer to it. So I'll move on.

Point Six, striving to feel secure. Not all Sixes are loyal. Not all Sixes are skeptics. Not all Sixes are anything that I'm aware of other than on the lookout for what could go wrong, and trying to mitigate against it. That's what's happening.

Point Seven. We call striving to feel excited. In an ideal world, we would use striving to feel stimulated. In English that has a different connotation sometimes that might be a little awkward. In Spanish, it's the opposite, right? María José uses the Spanish version of stimulated there rather than excited.

María José: 40:27

You were going to try to say it?

Mario: 40:29

I was but then I know better because you'd mock me. So I would lose my position of authority on the podcast by being mocked.

María José: 40:38

Which you think you have.

Mario: 40:42

So anyway, striving to feel excited, it's not always being optimistic. It's not always being happy. It's not always being upbeat. Because I live with three Sevens, and they just ain't. There's a lot of Sevens who wrestle with depression, and who complain and do all these other sorts of things.

Type Eight is striving to feel powerful. Powers the capacity to produce a result. Does that include very often controlling their environment? Absolutely. But the reason that Eights want to control their environment dominate other people so they can feel powerful, so I can get done the things that I feel like I need to get done.

And finally, Point Nine, striving to feel peaceful. Again, that's a pretty common way of thinking about this. I just just want a state of inner peace, so I can kind of chill out psychologically.

So the idea behind the strategy is when I feel this way, everything is okay. When I don't feel this way. When I don't feel powerful. I don't feel perfect. I don't feel unique. Then I start acting out in some way in order to get back to that state, I am trying to feel. So if I'm not feeling powerful, what do I do? I exert my power. If María José's not feeling perfect, what does she do? She criticizes herself, tries to fix things, tries to fix her environment, et cetera. If a Four doesn't feel unique, or distinct, or whatever they want to call it, what do they do? They prove that I am.

María José: 42:19

By coming up with a different name for it, for example.

Creek: 42:23

Ok. Shots fired.

Mario: 42:24

But when we feel that state, all feels as if it's in equilibrium. And this is what is driving the types from our perspective. I need to feel a certain way. When I feel that way, everything’s fine. When I don't, I start acting out so I can get back to feeling that way.

Creek: 42:45

Ok. Well, hopefully all that makes sense. That was a lot, I think, but we have many more episodes to come to explore these concepts and the strategies, so we will talk to you next week.

Thanks for listening to the Awareness to Action Enneagram podcast. If you're interested in more information or talking to Mario, MJ or myself, feel free to reach out to us through the links in the show notes or by emailing info@awarenesstoaction.com. All episode transcriptions and further information can be found at awarenesstoaction.com/podcast.