Getting Started
Everything you need to know about the TrueSelf system to kick you off on your journey. This will be especially useful to you if you haven’t heard a lot about the Enneagram before.
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This Profile is more than just a description of your personality type. It is a first step on your path towards understanding who you really are. There will be moments of joy in here, when you realize how many great things your personality brings with it. There will also be parts that will sting, when you see how your personality can hold you back – and maybe has done so for a long time.
Right from the start, we want you to know that Enneagram is not a system that tries to box you in. This is not about stereotypes, about judging you, or telling you “This is what you are. Good luck!” The Enneagram is incredibly dynamic. It allows for all the colorful shades and flavors of the unique person that is you. And even more than that, the Enneagram acknowledges our potential as human beings to become aware of our worldview and to step beyond it. Humans have the incredible ability to take on different perspectives and see the world through new eyes. This is the essence of what we want to achieve with this Profile.
The 9 Types Of The Enneagram
The 9 Enneagram Types are divided into 3 Centers of Intelligence: Head, Heart and Body. Each center has 3 Types and represents a different way of expressing the energy of that center of intelligence.
Heart types
Heart types depend on their emotional intelligence to understand their own reactions and connect with others.
The three types in the Heart Center are 2, 3 and 4. These types lead with their emotions and much of their personality focus, attention and unconscious strategy is on human relationships. They value things such as emotional support, recognition, and inclusion.
Two | The Nurturing Advisor
wos are a thoughtful, generous, warm-hearted person that strives for connection and being a helpful and person. You love to anticipate, read and respond to the needs and concerns of others, often being of great service.
Three | The Successful Achiever
Threes are a driven, confident, and efficient person who strives for excellence and can achieve extraordinary things. You delight in accomplishing goals, completing tasks, and celebrating “a job well done.” Others see you as polished.
Four | The Romantic Individualist
Fours are a deep, intuitive, self-aware person who strives to be unique and individualistic. Your passionate nature, incredible sensitivity, vision and emotional intelligence affords you the ability to see things in an entirely original way which is inspiring to others.
Head Types
Head types depend on their intellectual intelligence to make sense of things and navigate the world around them.
The three types in the Head Center are 5, 6 and 7. These types lead with a mental relationship to the world. They connect with other people on an intellectual level, and make sense of the world by understanding the systems and theories that underlie what they observe.
Body Types
Body types depend on their instinctual intelligence to follow their "gut" and respond to threats and opportunities.
The three types in the Body center are 8, 9 and 1. These types lead with an instinctive relationship to the world. They make sense of the world by tuning into their body’s instinctive reactions. The primary drive for this triad is to maintain their independence and limit control from outside influences.
Five | The Investigative Thinker
Fives are a perceptive, observant and analytical person who strives to be wise and knowledgeable. You are an original, strategic thinker that can easily master complex concepts and solve difficult problems. You value self-sufficiency and privacy and may be reclusive and secretive to protect yourself from intrusions by others or the demands of the world.
Eight | The Protective Challanger
Eights are a powerful, decisive, and action-oriented person who strives to overcome adversity by righting wrongs and seeking competitive advantage. You can be a charismatic and compassionate leader that champions others by fighting injustice and protecting the weak, downtrodden and underrepresented.
Six | The Loyal Guardian
Sixes are a conscientious, loyal, and dependable person who strives for certainty and security in a world that can be unsafe and unpredictable. You are cautious and have a knack for knowing who can be trusted. You seek reliable authorities, trusted friends, credible systems of reference, and valued traditions.
Seven | The Entertaining Optimist
Sevens are an upbeat, spontaneous, and energetic person that strives for stimulation by focusing on what is new, novel and exciting. You are eternally optimistic about life’s possibilities. Your creative problem solving skills can make you a grand visionary, breakthrough inventor and inspiring leader.
Nine | The Peaceful Mediator
Nines are an easy-going, kind, and accepting person who strives to be in harmony by accommodating and supporting what is essential to others. Your gift for seeing many sides of an issue enables you to mediate differences and bring peace to people around you.
One | The Moralist
Ones are a conscientious, hardworking, and ethical, person who strives to make things better. You are a fair and just person and love to be meticulous.
Your attention to detail and careful adherence to protocols and procedures can be great assets to any team.
What is the Enneagram?
The Enneagram (pronounced “any-a-gram”) is a personality system with roots in ancient Middle Eastern spiritual traditions. "Ennea” is the Greek word for nine, and “gram” means drawing or graph.
Many people first come to learn about other personality systems like Myers-Briggs, Strengths Finder or the Big Five. Each of these personality systems are modeling a different of our complex, multidimensional human selves.
In short, Myers-Briggs primarily models how you process information and make decisions, Strengths Finder and Big Five identify your strong and weak traits and the Enneagram models the core fears and desires of your personality structure, identifying why you are the way you are at a very deep and insightful level.
The core structure of the Enneagram is a system of 9 different personality types, each of which possess a distinctly different way of interacting with the world.
The modern Enneagram’s origins stem from Oscar Ichazo's Arica mystery school in South America in the 1970’s. Then a number of his senior students and their followers decided to disseminate the teachings more widely in the decades that followed.
The Enneagram has continued to evolve by the work of many great scholar-practitioners in the years since and has become by some measures the world’s new most popular personality typing system. Its popularity can be attributed to its potent descriptions and prescriptions for how people work — often likened to discovering a hidden self-manual — that unlocks untold self-discovery, personal transformation and relational mastery.