3 Reasons You Should Care About the Enneagram

The enneagram is a personality typing system, and you don’t like those. You have your reasons. I get it. Not everyone is a structure freak like me.

1. It’s Versatile.

In its simplest form, the enneagram splits people in nine categories, but you can complexify it if you feel like it.  25,244 categories? You can’t say that’s too little.

You found another person with the same type as you, and you wonder how that can be, because you’re nothing alike? The enneagram has explanations for that. Moreover, the enneagram doesn’t try to explain everything. It doesn’t explain cognition or intelligence, for instance.

2. It’s Deep.

This isn’t a Buzzfeed quiz telling you you’re most like Snow White because you like apples. The Enneagram goes to the heart of whom you are, right to your weaknesses. Sure, that kind of sounds like a self-flagellation session, but how do you expect to better yourself if you don’t identify your weaknesses – your true weaknesses – and work on them?

Imagine you have a car with no windshield, but an amazing motor and wheels. You keep working on the motor, making the car faster. You now have the fastest car around. Only trouble is, you keep eating flies.

Whether you like it or not, working on your weaknesses is instrumental to becoming a better person – a person who is kind, wholesome, happy, successful, knowledgeable, ethical, creative, independent, strong and empathetic.

3. It’s Helpful

The Enneagram will help you along your path of growth.

It will show you how to grow as the type you are. How to harness your strengths and weaknesses. What direction to go in. What signs to look for that will tell you how healthy you are, or if you’re stressed.

The Enneagram gives you concrete advice, abstract advice, the works.

And when you’re done going along your path of growth, you can try walking down the universal path of growth. According to enneagram theory, yes, the nine types describe nine kinds of people, but also, they describe the nine facets of every human being. The “fully integrated” human being would be a person who has developed the healthy characteristics of every type. Therefore, it is possible for someone to be typeless. When someone has fully developed (this is rare and mostly theoretical), they become typeless.

Bonus: What Type You Might Be, Based on Why You’re Reluctant About the Enneagram

What’s you excuse for not liking the enneagram? Come on, spit it out. Is it…

“I don’t like the enneagram because I don’t want to be told…

I’m imperfect”: type 1

I have needs”: type 2

I’m not unstoppable”: type 3

I’m not unique”: type 4

I’m irrational”: type 5

how afraid I am”: type 6

I feel pain”: type 7

I’m vulnerable”: type 8

I’m not like other people”: type 9

 

I invite you to study the enneagram and think for yourself. Does the enneagram make sense to you? Could it be helpful to you? Trust your inner voice. What does it say?

And if you still think the enneagram’s crap after that, it’s fine. As Fleetwood Mac sings, you can go on your own way.