Striving to Feel Outstanding (Enneagram Type Three)

Creek: 00:01

Welcome to another episode of Awareness to Action Enneagram podcast. And we are continuing our series on type. And today we have a Type Three on someone who is a great friend of mine and a co-host of the other podcast that I do. My more favorite podcast.

Mario: 00:21

Oh.

María José: 00:22

Wow. Come on. You’re deleting that.

Drew: 00:27

I feel like I’ve stepped into something.

Creek: 00:32

Yes, I knew I knew the joke was gonna come up eventually, so I just decided to…

Mario: 00:36

Preempt it.

Creek: 00:37

Preempt it. Yes. We have Drew Moser on. Dr. Drew Moser. Drew, how's it going?

Drew: 00:44

It's going well. Although I'm a little nervous now.

Creek: 00:48

Oh dear.

Drew: 00:49

When the kids fight, it's hard on mom and dad, you know? Or the other way around, maybe? When the parents fight, it’s hard on these kids. Yeah.

Creek: 00:59

Drew, you're a professor. You're an author. You're a wrangler of children. Tell us a little bit more about yourself. Can you open up those packages and explain that to people?

Drew: 01:10

Oh boy. Yeah, I am those things. So I do teach at a small private university here in Indiana. So therefore I live in Indiana. Alongside, well, a few hours south of you, Creek. And then yeah, my wife and I, we live here in a small town, Indiana with our five kids. So five kids, a dog, a cat. We were talking about pets earlier. And…

Mario: 01:42

Drew likes to add complexity to his life.

Drew: 01:46

Yeah, no kidding. Bring it on. Yeah. And then yeah, I do write about the Enneagram. Talk about it with you on Fathoms. And yeah, spend a lot of time with that. So that's a lot of fun too.

Mario: 02:01

Drew, tell us a little bit about your book.

Drew: 02:03

Okay. Yeah. So the book is called Enneagram of Discernment. And so what I do in the book is try to look at how type and just the whole system of the Enneagram helps us better understand a process of discernment. How do we make good and wise decisions? And so, yeah, that's what the book is about. It's been out. Let's see. Has it been three years now? It happened in COVID time, which feels like another dimension. So yeah, I think it's been about three years ago that it came out.

Creek: 02:27

Wow, really. That’s crazy.

Drew: 02:37

Yeah.

Mario: 02:38

it's a good book. So I recommend it for our listeners who have not read it yet. It’s a well read.

Drew: 02:43

Yeah. Thank you.

María José: 02:45

You will not hear Mario say that often.

Mario: 02:48

You won’t.

Drew: 02:48

I know, I'll take it. I received and I'm very grateful for it.

Mario: 03:00

I have a discriminating palette when it comes to Enneagram books. Let's put it that way.

Drew: 03:04

And more should. Let's be honest, right?

Creek: 03:09

When people tell me, I'm like a…

Drew: 03:13

Snob? Elitist? Bougie?

Creek: 03:16

Yes, when people call me a snob on like coffee or food, right? I just said, No, I'm an enthusiast.

Mario: 03:22

You're an enthusiast.

Creek: 03:24

I'm a coffee enthusiast.

Drew: 03:28

Unfortunately, in the Enneagram community, most quote unquote enthusiasts are not very discriminating in my experience, unfortunately,

Mario: 03:39

Yeah, I'm feeling we could go a whole different direction with this podcast here on the merits, but let's not for now. So we'll save that for another time.

Creek: 03:49

Mario, why don't you take us into the Type Three, and then we can hear some things from Drew.

Mario: 03:56

So Enneagram Type Three we call Striving to Feel Outstanding. It's a personality style rooted in this need to feel like they're standing out in some way. Now, it's important to understand again, how the instinctual biases will shape the expression of this, you know, what it means to be outstanding. A Preserving Three like Drew is, and finally we got somebody who's not a navigator on the podcast. That's a landmarking…

Drew: 04:27

You're welcome.

Mario: 04:28

Thank you. So a Preserving Three will look very different from a Transmitting Three. The Transmitting Three and the Navigating Threes are usually what people think of when they think of Threes—more image conscious—whereas the Preserving Three is Striving to Feel Outstanding in getting their preserving needs met. So these are the classic workaholics of the Enneagram. Much more focused. Much more task oriented than the Navigating or Transmitting Threes are. So it's a very different character as you can see. Now our listeners, of course can't see Drew, but we can. And you can tell he's not as focused on his appearance as some of the other Threes would be.

María José: 05:16

Say more, Mario. Or people will get the wrong impression.

Mario: 05:19

No, no, I'm teasing. I'm teasing.

Drew: 05:23

I am in a hoodie and a ball-cap today, yes.

Mario: 05:27

But Drew is a handsome fit guy, so I’m just taking jabs at him because I'm jealous. But in addition to the striving to feel outstanding, there is this desire to achieve things. So there's this issue around the value that they have, and trying to understand what their value is, and what is valuable in the world. They have a particular relationship with the connecting points. Now, do we get into the connecting points here or do we save those? I think we save those, right? So all right, so we'll talk more about that.

But again, Threes are driven. They’re success oriented, even though success will be different for each Three, or what it means to be successful will be different for each Three. And they're just trying to achieve things. Now, I do think that the Three is one of the most misunderstood Enneagram types. I remember one time, an Enneagram teacher in South America saying to me that she didn't feel that Threes had souls and asked my opinion on that. And I said, Well, I think they have just as much soul as anybody else.

Drew: 06:40

I’m clutching my pearls right now.

Mario: 06:42

Yeah, right. And I always think of that episode of The Simpsons where Bart sold his soul to Milhouse for $5. And then he went to the Kwik-E-Mart and the automatic door wouldn't open anymore, you know, that sort of thing. The automatic doors seem to work for most of the Threes that I've met. But even more relevant here is that people often feel that Threes don't have emotions, or that they're not caring, that they're not loving.

And people tend to think that they're all phonies, or fakes, or deceptive, or liars, or something like that, which is just not my experience of Threes. And it's a misunderstanding of the concept of deceit or vanity, which are at the heart of the Three, because what that really refers to is an identification with the sense of self, which we all suffer from, but Threes suffer a little bit more.

Creek: 07:41

Drew, you’ve done a fair bit of teaching the Enneagram, and obviously, you've had to know it on some level to write a book. Well, I guess not.

Drew: 07:51

I like to think I chose to know it at a certain level before I wrote the book.

Creek: 07:56

Yeah.

Mario: 06:56

Some people actually learn the Enneagram before they write a book about t.

Drew: 07:57

Thank you very much.

Creek: 07:59

Yeah, it’s admirable. So how have you in the past, and maybe comparatively to now, what some new language that you've adopted for describing the Three?

Drew: 08:12

Oh yeah, that's a great question. And early on, kind of in my Enneagram journey, the language was, it was helpful, but it was simple, in that Threes want to achieve. They want to be successful, and they want to look good while doing it. And that's not untrue. But I think what you alluded to, Mario, in your description is that underneath that surface is there's so much more going on than maybe initially meets the eye with the Type Three. And so that's been an important kind of growth journey for me, as a Three, trying to figure out what is it that makes me kind of do the things that I do, and think the way that I think, and continue to put myself in the environments that I put myself in.

And a lot of it is, yeah, that kind of striving to understand the value proposition that is me. I think that's at the core of the Type Three is they're always calibrating the value proposition of their lives. And when when Threes get into trouble, that's when you start to see the stereotypes of the Threes that we all know about. Pure image, don't care about others, only out for their own kind of selfish gain. It's because they've calibrated the value proposition in those terms. And they look happy and successful, maybe on the outside, but are miserable on the inside. I think that's what often leads to these kind of catastrophic downfalls that we see. Some of these Threes in celebrity or political culture kind of collapse. It's because it just becomes a house of cards that kind of falls in on itself.

Because you're right. There's so much beneath the surface going on that Threes are trying to mitigate and figure out in their own lives. And it often just manifests itself as, okay, the best way I know to figure out this now is I'm gonna go do something that's successful. Or I'm gonna go do something that people will be impressed by. I'm gonna go do something and in order to assuage whatever is kind of going on internally. So it's not that we don't have this internal world. It's that we often don't know how to reconcile it well, other than going and just killing it out in the world.

Mario: 10:39

Again, I think it's important to draw this distinction as Drew did between a healthy Three or an adaptive Three, and somebody who's not. And we talked about how when, under stress, the Three puts more emphasis on appearance than they do on substance. The healthier Three puts the emphasis on substance. So I really do want to add value. I really do want to make the world a better place.

And not only that, but I hear Threes all the time talking about making other people's lives better. So they have this reputation in the Enneagram world of being self-centered and selfish, but healthy Threes are really, really trying to make the world better for everybody. And that, for me, is one of the things that I find so interesting about them. Is that desire to do for others, to be of service in some way.

Drew: 11:32

Yeah. And I think you're right. Healthy Threes, that when they use all of those skills and abilities that you mentioned in healthy ways, how could it not lead to the improvement of those kind of in their spheres of life and influence? Absolutely.

María José: 11:50

Yeah. So Drew, tell us how you knew about the Enneagram? When did you learn about the Enneagram? And how did you realize that you were a Type Three?

Drew: 12:02

Yeah, that was a fascinating experience. We were living in Vancouver, British Columbia at the time working for a nonprofit. And part of the, you know, nonprofits have these kind of forced Family Fun retreats or staff development times. And so we were on one of those, and were informed that we were going to take this personality test called the Enneagram, which I had heard of, but wouldn't be able to tell you what it was at the time. And so internally—I hope at least internally—kind of rolled my eyes and oh, great, here we go, another waste of a day, as a Three didn’t know… I didn't have the language at the time. I thought there are better things we can be doing. We can be more productive.

Mario: 12:50

I could be building a fence today.

Drew: 12:52

Yeah, navel gazing, right? And putting these simplistic labels on one another. But we took the RHETI assessment. And then they had a facilitator who I think, had been trained, at least in some way, or fashion in the Riso-Hudson kind of tradition, Enneagram Institute, and who talked us through our results. And I took the test. And I know this isn't everyone's experience, but the test did accurately depict me as a Type Three.

And as I'm hearing this facilitator talk about the Type Three, I had this sense that I was getting language—even though now, it seems somewhat simplistic—but I was getting language about myself that I couldn't put words to before. You've probably heard others talk about someone's been following them around or reading their mail. And I had that experience. So I was kind of blown away and thought, Okay, this is different. I found other personality assessments helpful to a degree, but this feels like a different level, a deeper level of understanding of who I am.

was back in, I want to say to: 2008

Creek: 14:57

So Drew, we've touched on this a little bit. But when we met Mario—Mario was a guest on our podcast. My second favorite podcast.

Drew: 15:11

Wait a second.

Creek: 15:14

Since meeting Mario, MJ and kind of getting familiar with the Awareness to Action approach, what's like a surprising realization? Or how has your language shifted, your understanding shifted about the Enneagram.

Drew: 15:28

We could probably spend a lot of time talking about that, and how their approach has really shifted the way I think about the Enneagram. So I'll just say a few things. One is to not worry about what in theology, it's kind of called the apostolic succession of things. And I think there's a lot of time and energy wasted on trying to link one's training and understanding of the Enneagram, to some sort of original source that no one understands or knows about. And so I think that was very freeing, someone who cares about the Enneagram deeply and wanted to treat the tool with care and wisdom, and also wanting to have some credibility in the space. And I think to hear Mario and MJ, it's not that it doesn't matter, but the way in which we talk about it too often doesn't matter. And what matters far more that you're using it correctly and effectively.

And I think that is what I really appreciate about the whole approach, the whole ATA approach, is that it's really more—as a Three—the pragmatism of it is really great. It's not simplistic in… Your approach is not simplistic, but it is simple in that stick with what works and what matters to the people that you're interacting with. And I think that's also been really profound, because I think the layers of the Enneagram are such that, I mean, there's so many garbage hot takes and approaches out there. And it just gets really convoluted quickly.

In terms of the languaging. I think the the more action-oriented approach to talking about the types is really helpful. I think that striving to feel insert-your-own-types, whether it's outstanding, in my case, is really helpful, because it really focuses more… It gets out of this kind of weird, ego essence, esoteric conversation, and more. No, this is what the type does. It strives to feel this, and once you understand that, then you can start to work in some really helpful ways. And then, of course, I think the approach to the instincts, instinctual biases, is really helpful and profound as well, which I'm sure we'll talk about.

Creek: 18:06

What's one thing that you had a hard time accepting or maybe still don't accept about the ATA model?

Drew: 18:13

Oh, let's see.

Mario: 18:15

Tighten your helmet, Drew.

Drew: 18:19

Things that I don't know. Oh, okay. So I think, yeah, this is one I'm still wrestling with. In most other schools of thought and the Enneagram, you can kind of choose your own adventure in terms of your stacking. And the patterns of expression are fixed in your system. And it is not that I don't disagree with that. I just don't quite understand how it has to be, how it's fixed that way necessarily. I don't disagree with it necessarily, but the other schools of thought let you kind of choose your stacking. Well, in the other kind of lingo, the sexual or one-to-one, social and self preservation, you can kind of choose the order, whereas that's not the case of the ATA patterns of expression.

Mario: 19:08

I'll just comment on that. I mean I don’t want to go… Well, I don't want to go…

Creek: 19:15

I should have… Mario, you’re not allowed to respond to this. And his head explodes.

Mario: 19:23

in the words of Samuel Johnson, I refute you thus. No.

María José: 19:29

He needs to get it off his chest.

Mario: 19:33

No, come on, come on. No, hang in there. While you were talking, Drew. I was looking for the title of a book that I read a review of in the Wall Street Journal recently. It’s a book on how we know ourselves. This idea is how hard it is to know ourselves. And the ultimate conclusion is the only way we can know ourselves as to our actions. So we can say I am this, I am this.

I can say, for example, that I'm a great cook. But if you analyze my behaviors related to cooking, you will see that I am deluding myself. I am not a great cook. I can say all sorts of things, and really, really believe them. But it's our actions. And it's the data that demonstrates you are this. And so, to get back to your earlier point that we talk about what somebody does, rather than how they take themselves to be.

And I remember having a… well remember, it was only a few weeks ago, but I was having a conversation with a woman, Enneagramer, who was saying to me, Well, when you describe the Transmitting Three, that is me, but it's not who I am. That's what I do, but it's not who I am. Well, okay. And so, when we look at this, we look at what people do. And that's why we call it a pattern of expression. Because it's all about how these things express themselves. Now, again, everybody thinks we're wrong. You know, everybody disagree.

María José: 21:20

Not everybody.

Drew: 21:21

They do. Yeah.

María José: 21:22

Not everybody, Mario, but most people.

Mario: 21:23

Yeah, you know, but the smart people don’t. I’m kidding. I'm just seeing who's listening out there.

Creek: 21:33

Well, a lot less now.

María José: 21:36

You know, I think and I think we agree here, the people who have learned it differently, tend to disagree with it, because they get this dissonance. But people who are not familiar with the Enneagram, who get to hear about it, they see it very quickly. And they agree with it. So I think it's more of a friction with the prior beliefs.

Drew: 22:05

Yeah, and I think no matter what your… any sort of kind of training or apprenticeship model, you have this emotional tie to your school or your teacher. And when you encounter views that are differ that, it can be disorienting. And so it requires kind of some deconstruction, in order to, which takes a little bit more time for sure.

Mario: 22:32

Yeah, you’re right. And that's one of the things we always say is that it's easier to work with people who are not familiar with the Enneagram, because we don't have to unteach them. Or deconstruct like you're saying. And the other thing is, the mechanism, the why, is something that people wrestle. But why is it only one way versus multiple ways? And my only reaction to that is I have no idea. It's just what I see. And I also will point to well, we don't know why gravity works either, but we see it everywhere. And we don't know what dark matter is, or dark energy, but the math indicate that they're there. So I don't know why it comes out the way it does.

Creek: 23:21

All I'm hearing is the pattern of expression is as sure as gravity is what Mario is saying.

Mario: 23:26

Pretty much. You inferred the right implication there.

Creek: 23:33

All right.

María José: 23:34

When he says I don't know, some people take it as well, he's not knowledgeable. And I think that it takes a lot of study and effort to try to find an answer for it and say, you know what, I don't know. And that's where we're coming from. And people, at least in the Enneagram community, have a hard time saying, I don't know. I think that it's something that is very important to say, I don't know, when you really don't know.

Drew: 24:10

Sure. Because people come to a school expecting answers and paying for answers. And yeah. And so that's why most people who lead schools come up with them, one way or the other.

María José: 24:25

So Drew, your strategy—striving to feel outstanding—how do you see that in yourself in adaptive and maladaptive ways? Can you give us some examples?

Drew: 24:38

Yeah, I can start with a maladaptive, first if that's all right, because there's plenty of that. And I learn plenty of those lessons the hard way. I think, maladaptively, I think a Three can have delusions of grandeur that she or he can do anything. And throughout my life, it's been really easy for me to imagine myself doing all sorts of different things successfully. And with some voices of reason in a Three’s life, which is really important, I'll get to that. And you can kind of come back down to earth and realize, okay, you can't do everything, nor should you.

Because maladaptively, Threes can often overcommit to things that they really aren't interested in, or have no business doing. But because they saw themselves being successful or imagining themselves being successful when completing that thing, that was a great feeling. It's a nice dopamine hit. And so they say yes. And then once they get into the commitment that they've committed themselves to, they start to think, what the heck have I done? Why’ve I said yes to this thing? So I just got to get through it as quickly as possible.

María José: 25:54

That's what we call one of the derailers of Type Three—the I’ll do it syndrome. It's just addictive to say yes to doing things because of that dopamine you mentioned.

Drew: 26:06

Yeah, that's absolutely true. So over commitments a big deal. Spreading oneself too thin is a big deal, which is why I think the accelerator of purpose in the ATA system is so critical for a Three because it actually orients and aligns all the Three skills and abilities towards a purpose, and not just anything and everything. And maladaptively too, I alluded to this before, I think the Three’s penchant for getting things done, for doing things, for being successful, can be a cover for not dealing with the Three zone internal stuff, right?

I think when difficult emotions, failures, in the past, difficult relationships, kind of rear their ugly head, it's easier for a Three to just go kill it somewhere else, to then to face those things. And so that's why Threes who are unhealthy, again, are so good externally, and their internal world can just be an absolute dumpster fire.

Mario: 27:17

I just want to point out, first of all, I completely agree with what you said, Drew, and also comment that all the types escape through their strategy. So we all run from things we don't want to face in very specific ways. Okay, so I think when we talked about the the Eight in that episode, we talked about how the Eight’s dysfunction tends to be more outward in its expression. So I avoid my pain by inflicting pain on others. Some of the types are more internal in the way they express it. Threes lose it through manufactured identity and busyness.

Drew: 27:56

Yeah. No, that’s exactly right. And then, so for me, a lot of my kind of adult journey has been learning to sit with kind of my emotional world and not just go build a fence, as you said, Mario. Because I need to expand my vocabulary of what is going on internally with me, as opposed to just what it was before it was, I'm hungry, or angry, or happy. It was very simple. And I've had to really expand my notion and my nuance and complexity of my internal world.

Mario: 28:36

Now you realized that you're really hungry.

Drew: 28:38

Yeah, right. Or maybe I'm not hungry, as a Preserving Three, maybe I'm not hungry. So, now adaptively, I think, like you said, this strategy of striving to feel outstanding, it's a strategy. It's a strategy for good. It's a strategy for bad. It's a strategy for ugly. And when it comes to the adaptive tendencies of the Three, I think, and we did talk about this somewhat earlier, that all of that productivity, efficiency, success, drive, commitment to excelling, when harnessed for a common good or for those who maybe are overlooked or towards a company or organizational culture or key performance indicators, any of those things, it can be fuel. It can be really good, sustainable fuel for whatever that endeavor is.

And so, I think adaptively I found myself able to use the strategies, the strategy of striving to feel outstanding, not just for me, but for us. And that's been really important because I think… And that's so critical, I think, because a lot of Threes when they encounter the Enneagram, they end up thinking I'm such a selfish jerk. And so I have to kill the strategy in order to not be a selfish jerk anymore, which is horrible. Because not only are you killing some of the maladaptive tendencies in your life, but you're also killing all the good stuff, too. And so the goal is not to stop being a Three, but to be a more healthy adaptive version of a Three. Yeah.

Mario: 30:27

You know, it struck me, when you kind of commented on this idea of killing this selfish individual, how the Three is often viewed as not being a particularly compassionate and sensitive type. And yet, they're one of the types that are shown the least amount of compassion in the Enneagram world. There's this view that well, they got it all together, and we kind of hate them for it, and so we labeled them as superficial and shallow, and whatever else, which is an expression of that very thing that people accused Threes of doing and being.

Drew: 31:10

Yeah, and I also think there's this kind of broad stroke, cultural assessment, especially in the West, that we're a Three kind of culture and therefore, Threes are exalted, which to some degree is true in certain instances. And therefore, they said, Well, you've just got a pass in your life over and over again as a Three. Therefore, it's time for you to…

Mario: 31:35

Some attributive justice.

Drew: 31:37

Yes, feel it a little bit. Yeah. And again, it's not that that's entirely untrue. But at the same time, it's a broad stroke that isn't always helpful to the Three, because what happens then is an existential crisis. If you take this away from me, this strategy, I don't know how to be. Not to mention how to do. I don't know how to be. And that's really hard for Three.

Creek: 32:01

Drew, the connecting points for Three is striving to feel secure and striving to feel peaceful. Where do you see those show up in your life? And how would you say you use those adaptively and maladaptively?

Drew: 32:17

Yeah, I think that striving to feel peaceful is is a tricky one. Because I think I find myself as a more assertive kind of personality in general. Forcing my way into my world, but trying to do so in ways that everyone likes it and is impressed by it. And so I'm always trying to make calm and peace, to kind of smoothed over the rough edges that I've created in my world. I assert myself, and then I want to kind of polish it all up. And I think that's a tough thing to reconcile.

And then I also think, too, this is where I find some interesting intersections with my instinctual bias as a Preserving Three. It feels like in my life, I'm trying to push the gas and the brake at the same time. Because I don't want to be too forceful, yet, I can't help it at the same time, striving to feel outstanding, so I'm always trying… I’m restraining myself and pushing myself at the same time.

And so I think that comes out in that support strategy, that connecting point of the Type Nine, where I find myself kind of holding myself back more than people realize. And, yeah, there's this internal regulator that I think as a preserver is trying to harness some of my kind of Three-ness so to speak, because I don't want to be as disruptive. I want to keep things more peaceful than—and I don't know how to reconcile it well, and so it feels kind of jerky. Most of the time, like I'm lunging forward, hitting the breaks.

Creek: 34:05

Student driver.

Drew: 34:07

Yeah. Student driver.

Creek: 34:10

That you’re familiar with right now.

Drew: 34:12

I am. Yes, I have one. And yeah, pray for me. But I do think adaptively when that's going well, it does allow me to be at peace with and just okay with what is. I think and sometimes that I don't always have… That striving to be outstanding can be kind of dialed back just a little bit in a healthy and more authentic way, especially around those I care about the most and care about me the most. That's when I don't have to… I feel like I can take the mask off a little bit and kind of rest in that support strategy. Anything you all want to say about that before I move on to the Six?

María José: 34:56

I wanted to highlight how your description of Type Nine is nothing like it… Nothing close to what a Nine would say about being a Nine, I think.

Drew: 34:08

Yes, you’re absolutely right.

María José: 34:10

It’s how a Three embodies the Type Nine strategy of striving to feel peaceful. And that's interesting. And that's how we see that it's a profile. That it's Threes use this strategy at Point Nine in a very particular way, not like a Nine would.

Mario: 35:29

The Three doesn't become a Nine temporarily. They just start using the strategy of striving to feel peaceful in a particular way. But like María José said a very Three-ish way rather than a way that a Nine would. I think, too, the comment that you made about having one foot on the brake and one foot on the gas is similar with all of the subtypes, where the instinctual bias and the strategy are in some conflict with each other. Because I experienced the same thing as a Navigating Eight.

That the Eight is very aggressive and outward and pushing, and the navigating causes me to hold back on occasion. And people who don't know it, people who don't see it, don't see it. They’ll focus on one part of it. So with you, my guess is they see this Three stuff, but they don't necessarily see that foot on the brake that you're so aware of.

Drew: 36:27

Right. And there are a lot of even charged or tense environments that I have walked away from thinking I could have eviscerated you. But I didn't, because as a Three, that would have violated a lot of my strategies’ core tenants.

Creek: 36:49

How often does that happen during our podcast on Fathoms?

Drew: 36:54

Depends on the guest. No, not very often, but some of it is I'm a quick thinker. I'm a smart guy. I'm not too easily rattled. And in so I'm kind of restraining my words a lot in some of those environments, and some of that is to keep the image, and because I don't want to be known as the jerk in the room. Yeah, there's some of that kind of better to keep the peace than just slay them. And before me, there's some of that.

Mario: 37:35

And this, my friends, is the primary distinction between a Three and an Eight.

Drew: 37:41

There you go. Someone is like what’s the difference?

Mario: 37:42

Drew is Describing right here, but go ahead.

Creek: 37:48

Yeah, let's move to striving to feel secure. Point Six.

Drew: 37:50

Yeah, this is another interesting one. Because I think, as a Preserving Three, a lot of my outstanding-ness is measured by the things that I can preserve in my life, or kind of rack up, mount up, store up, that sort of thing. And so for me, I interpret that often as secure, security. I'm secure because of all these things I've been able to achieve and therefore preserve. All the things I'm able to do, which is why I have a full time job and side hustles. And I think that is a form of security for me, as opposed to not taking the time and energy to do those things.

And also, I think this does come out—correct me if I'm wrong, I’m remembering—for the Three, that neglected strategy, the Type Six, is kind of a fear of being average. And so by being perceived as average, or kind of assessing oneself as average is a form of insecurity. Because if I am average, I'm expendable. I'm discardable, and therefore I cannot be average. I have to be outstanding. And my pursuit of being outstanding is a form of me trying to be secure, because then I have value and I have worth.

Mario: 39:11

Yeah, when we talk about that neglected strategy, you're right, that there is this fear in the Three, when they look at this striving to feel secure, and for them, they interpret it as average. And with the Six, it's, I don't want to stand out too much, because if I stand out too much, I’m at risk. We always use the example of a herd of zebras.

So, zebras have evolved their stripes and a tendency to herd because it makes it harder for predators to pick one out of the group and attack it. So there's the safety and blending in. And Sixes can very much manifest that certain ways. If I draw too much attention to myself, I'll be at risk. But for the Three, the striving to feel outstanding? Well, just being another zebra in the herd that's blending in, kind of goes against this fundamental goal that I have.

Drew: 40:07

Yeah. But I think when I'm able to connect to the Six adaptively, I think I can find rest and solace and security among my people without having to continue to strive, strive, strive, because it can be exhausting.

María José: 40:24

There's also the contradiction created, when we neglect or when Threes neglect the Type Six strategy that it achievement versus anxiety. So these anxiety that people don't always see, how is that in your experience? How do you deal with anxiety?

Drew: 40:44

Oh, yeah, I think this is what most people don't understand about Threes, is that, because externally, they look totally put together. They’ve got things figured out. They present themselves as confident and assured. They tend to follow through on their commitments really well, even though they've overcommitted themselves, or a lot of times we wing it. And so underneath that, a lot of that energy for that striving to feel outstanding is fueled by anxiety, that we are anxious, either, can I do this? Am I good enough to do this thing that I've committed myself to? Or I think even deeper, am I valuable or worthy? And am I going to prove that I'm valuable or worthy by doing this thing?

And whereas most people just see Threes as yeah, they're immensely valuable, because of all the things they can get done, how successful they are. Think of the value they've created. Whereas Three doesn't necessarily see the value we've created. It's just the value that we have manufactured in order to feel like we mean something and matter. And so that, there's a lot of anxiety underneath the surface of that, that fuels that achievement.

And so I remember, very kind of distinct memory in my childhood. I moved in third grade to a different state, different school system. But I moved from a high achieving suburban elementary school to a rural school, that was very fine, but it was behind academically where I was. And so I showed up, and I think, my first day they were doing around the world with multiplication. It's a game where you kind of… if you when you advance, and you keep moving around the classroom until someone beats you to the answer, and then you have to sit down at your seat. And I destroyed it. I remember because I was so nervous to be in this new environment. I didn’t know anyone, new school, nine years old. It’s a stressful thing. But here, and then I do this around the world, and I go around the entire class. And then the teacher just asked me to sit down because there was no end in sight. I was just going to keep winning. And I felt…

Mario: 43:05

So all the other kids really loved you, didn’t they?

Drew: 43:07

Yeah, well, that's it. But to me, I didn't even think of that. It was totally like, hoo, because I achieved, I felt that temporary release of that anxiety that I was feeling. Like I'm going to be okay here. And I didn't even think about the fact Oh, who's the new kid who thinks he's so smart? Came from the city, you know, that sort of thing? And I didn't even think of that. And so it was if I can achieve, I'll be okay. That's an anxiety-fueled proposition for a lot of Three kinds of activity in the world.

Mario: 43:43

I think this is a real important takeaway for listeners to, you know, this idea of anxiety with Threes, because again, it's something that's just not recognized, and it's rarely talked about is that they are fueled to a great deal by this fear of failure, this fear of… and more so than fear of failure. It's the threat of regret, I think. I could have done this. I could have written three books. I only wrote two, sort of thing. I could have done this. I could have done that. That really drives them.

Drew: 44:22

Yeah, I think you're right.

Creek: 44:23

Can we quickly define why we use neglected and support strategy? I don't think we've actually touched on that in podcasts. Why are we using that language?

Mario: 44:35

I'll give you the short version. So originally, the idea is, as I learned, it was integration and disintegration or stress and security. And that didn't seem to work for me for a variety of reasons. Wanted to call them something else with the understanding that we actually go to both connecting points in both adaptive and maladaptive ways as we've described. We all do them in ways that are useful in ways that are non useful.

But as a coach, my focus is on what gets us into trouble, not necessarily what's helpful for us. I always tell people I'm not a cheerleader, I'm a coach. So we started looking at okay, well, how do we get in trouble at these connecting points, and it's usually because I'm neglecting one of them. Drew is a Three—neglects striving to feel secure at times when he should feel secure. María José as an One—neglect striving to feel excited. So at times when it's perfectly appropriate, to be excited, she doesn't allow herself to. I, as an Eight, should connect to people and at certain times I don't when I should. So we neglect it, it gets us into trouble.

Now go in the other direction, we tend to get into trouble when we use that strategy to maladaptively reinforce our preferred strategy or to support it in some way. So again, Drew, as a Three, uses Nine as a support strategy. I’m gonna make it look like I've got it all together. I'm gonna make it look like I'm perfectly fine, when in fact, I'm not. María José uses striving to feel unique to reinforce this sense of being perfect or support this sense of being perfect, but again, in a maladaptive way. And I do the same thing with Point Five. I become detached, insensitive and reflective in a maladaptive way.

María José: 46:44

Could be adaptive ways as well.

Mario: 46:46

Could be but again, we use both. But when I'm doing it in an adaptive way as a coach, that's not something I worry about. So you're doing it adaptively, great. Keep doing it. But what we need to talk about is when you're doing it maladaptive, so that's why we put those labels on it. Is it perfect? No, it can give the impression, much like integration and disintegration, but it's only one thing. But it's what we're working with at this point.

María José: 47:17

So Drew, we have for each type, we have a blind spot identified. And it's not like, people are not aware that they do it, but they're not aware of all the implications and how they're perceived, and the impact on other people. For Type Three, is inauthenticity. How would you describe that in your life? What's your experience with it? What have you noticed in yourself regarding that?

Drew: 47:49

Yeah, well, yeah, there's a lot I could say about that. I think, probably the most important thing I could say about the inauthenticity blind spot of the Type Three is that it's a blind spot for most Threes, not because they're just completely self-absorbed jerks. It's a blind spot for most Threes, because they don't fully understand what being authentic means for them. And so there's this perpetual kind of pursuit of striving to fill outstanding as a means to try to figure out, okay, who am I really? Because I don't, I don't quite know. And if I stopped doing this striving to feel outstanding, there may be nothing there. And that's a terrifying prospect for a Type Three.

And so, again, of course we can find plenty of stories of Threes who have put themselves on this platform or stage and identified with a certain persona, and it's completely fake and fabricated. And that's fairly easy to see. I think what most people don't realize about Threes is that this drive against… often this anxiety-fueled drive to achieve is often a pursuit of this question, Who am I? Who is the real me? And so that authenticity is a really hard question for Threes to answer.

It's really difficult to be able to talk about ourselves without… avoid of the things that we do. Because those things, we closely identify with those things in good and bad ways. And so I think the good of it is that we can really wing it and that chameleon or shapeshifter qualities of the Three. We can enter a room and very quickly see, this is who I need to be in order to be successful in this space. So that serves us well. But over a lifetime, the cumulative effect of that is when we're always orienting how we present ourselves to our external kind of factors, we lose sight of what does it mean to show up authentically me? That's really hard for us to figure out. Yeah.

Mario: 50:12

You know, as you were saying that, what I was reflecting on is how true that is for everybody. I mean, we always talk about authenticity as an issue around Three. And it is. It's a heightened issue. And I think the rest of us are fooling ourselves when we think we know who we authentically are. And I think it's kind of almost one of these things where the Threes almost worry about it more, or feel more anxiety about those questions, and other people should actually give more thought to it of who am I really? And what does it mean to be authentic?

Because, again, you know, there's a great saying from Zen Buddhism, that the first mistake is to think that there is no self. And the second mistake is to think that there is. So when we start talking about authentic self, and most cognitive psychologists would tell you that that's just an artifact of the brain to help create security. This sense of a going on being, this sense of an authentic self, when the reality is, is that we're all just this bundle of sense perceptions and responses to those sense perceptions. And there's much less consistency in any one of us than we believe there to be.

So I just bring this up for anybody working with the Enneagram, to be more sensitive to Threes as they wrestle with this question, and not be so smug in thinking, ah, those superficial Threes. They're not authentic. I got news for you, pal. You're not authentic either.

Drew: 51:59

That’s a great word. Yeah, yeah.

Creek: 52:00

Drew, our final question. And you've probably touched on a few of these things. But a lot of what we've talked about kind of falls under this question. But I'm curious if you'd add any other things to things that you feel that most people miss about your type or misunderstand? What's the one thing people need to walk away with with nothing else?

Drew: 52:21

I think it's important for people to know that they still need to check in on their Threes in their lives. I think I've had to learn how to ask for that of people that I trust and close to me. Like, hey. I think because the assumption is you're fine. You're okay, because you've got your stuff together. And you seem to be doing well in all these areas of life. And what that can mask is, yeah, there is a lot of turmoil beneath the surface that eventually leads to all these external results. And so they do need to be checked in on, even if they don't have good answers or responses to questions regarding, Hey, how are you doing? Because a lot of times, I don't have a good answer for that question, but it's still important that I get asked the question. I think that's important.

Because I need to have relational encounters that aren't purely transactional. We all do. And I think Threes need to have that, but they can, in maladaptive states, can just get into those transactional states and have plenty of human interaction that's really positive and exciting and charged. But it is kind of that transactional nature. And it doesn't always have to be baring your soul. It just has to be connecting in levels other than that. Other than those things, I think that's important, so if Threes do need that, even though they may present themselves as they don’t.

Creek: 53:59

Well Drew, thank so much this lovely conversation. There's a lot of great insight here. So thanks for joining us on this episode.

Drew: 54:08

Well, hey.

Mario: 54:09

Good stuff, Drew. Thanks.

Drew: 54:10

Thanks. Yeah, the phrase's “Longtime listener, first time caller.” So I’m honored to be on. Yeah.

Creek: 54:17

And if people want to engage in your work, where should they go?

Drew: 54:21

You can find the book anywhere you buy books online, and typetrail.co is kind of my web home for the work that I do. Typetrail.com.

Creek: 54:33

And your Instagram is @typetrail as well. Correct?

Drew: 54:36

Yeah, TypeTrail… @TypeTrailEnneagram.

Creek: 54:39

Alright, thanks, Drew.

Creek: 54:44

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.