Enneagram Self Development

How the Enneagram can be used for personal growth and self-improvement

DJ Wayne Sun Mar 26 2023

If you’ve been exploring the world of self-help and personal development, chances are you’ve come across the Enneagram. It offers a unique perspective on our strengths, weaknesses, and inner motivations, allowing us to deepen our self-awareness and make positive changes in our lives.

However lessons learned through self-help can be healing and inspiring, but they can also make us feel like we’re failing. It’s important to remember that developing self-awareness is a potentially endless pursuit. There will be good days and bad days, but there is no finish line. The Enneagram can be used as a tool to support you on your journey, helping you navigate the ups and downs with greater clarity and compassion.

At its core, the Enneagram is a system of nine interconnected personality types, each with its own unique strengths and challenges. While it’s not necessary to know every detail about each type, having a basic understanding of the system can be helpful in applying it to your own life.

The Enneagram can be used in many ways, but one of its most powerful applications is as a tool for personal growth and self-improvement. Here are just a few ways the Enneagram can support you in your journey:

Starting Conversations and Connecting with Others

The Enneagram offers a shared language and framework for understanding ourselves and others. By exploring your type and learning about the other types, you can gain a deeper appreciation for the diversity of human experience. You may also find it easier to connect with others and start meaningful conversations about personal growth and self-improvement. Checkout this blog for specific tips on communicating with different enneagram types.

Making Sense of Yourself and Others

Have you ever struggled to understand why you do the things you do? Or felt frustrated by someone else’s behavior? The Enneagram can help you make sense of these patterns by shedding light on your inner motivations and those of others. By understanding your type and the types of those around you, you can cultivate greater empathy and compassion in your relationships.

Practical Applications for Decision-Making

The Enneagram isn’t just a theoretical framework - it can be used practically to help you make good decisions and prevent yourself from falling into bad patterns. By understanding your type’s strengths and challenges, you can make choices that align with your values and avoid behaviors that lead to negative consequences.

Recognizing when you are stressed and doing well

Each Enneagram type has a unique set of stress and comfort numbers, which can provide valuable insight into how we behave and react under different circumstances. By understanding our own stress and comfort numbers, we can become more aware of our patterns and tendencies, and work to break free from them.

Develop emotional awareness

Another way the Enneagram can help us is by providing greater emotional awareness. The Enneagram identifies three core emotions - anger, fear, and shame - and each type has a unique relationship with these emotions. By exploring our own type’s relationship with these emotions, we can develop greater emotional intelligence and awareness, and learn to better manage our emotions.

Recognize underlying goals and fears

The Enneagram can also help us recognize our own goals and fears, as well as those of others. By understanding our own type’s goals and fears, we can develop greater self-awareness and work towards our own personal growth. Similarly, by understanding the goals and fears of others, we can become more empathetic and understanding in our relationships.

In using the Enneagram as a tool for personal growth and self-improvement, it’s important to remember that everyone’s journey is unique. You should take what you need from the Enneagram and use it in a way that supports your own growth and wellbeing. Remember that this is a journey without a finish line.


Join our waitlist!

9takes is a place for exploration and shared learning, where we delve into the nuances of personality types and discuss different perspectives. If you're fascinated by the world of the Enneagram you are warmly invited join our waitlist.