Three times three is the same as nine,
and Mark, he sings his song just fine.
Every person does indeed sing their own song in their life. The Enneagram is structured like this short verse: The nine personality structures are divided into three groups with three types each. The three types in each group have this-or-that in common. This chapter describes the three groups, or centers. You'll come across other groups of three in the Enneagram, as spelled out later in this chapter. They lead to ever deeper insights into other aspects of your human self — aspects that I tackle one at a time over the course of this chapter. This inner work helps you peel away your old and battered outer skin just as you would peel off the outer skin of an onion — or, if you'd prefer an image from the Eastern spiritual tradition, this work serves to unveil the true personality within you. With this in mind, this chapter looks at some of the basic points to have under your belt in order to carry out your further studies of the Enneagram as it applies to your own personality.
The Three Little Rules of Behavior
Behavior is clearly visible and can thus be readily observed. But — as you may often hear from other people — a person's behavior is often difficult to interpret, because people act differently in one situation than they do in another. So, behavior depends on the situation. That’s why it isn’t effective to use behavior as an object of self-observation. After all, it changes from situation to situation. This is why the Enneagram is used to explore what the behavior is based on. It’s designed to answer the question, “Why does someone behave in a certain way?” In the Enneagram, that which spurs your behavior is referred to as the unconscious driving force, or underlying motivation. Dr. David Daniels formulated three little rules for determining this driving force or motivation — three rules of thumb you can use when exploring your personality:
The energy that drives behavior flows wherever your attention is directed.
Managing this attention and energy requires the ability to observe yourself.
You can learn self-observation, but it will never become a natural habit.
Recognizing the importance of attentiveness
The word attention probably makes you think of getting attention or paying attention — paying attention to your children or your work, for example. People are more or less conscious of this paying attention or getting attention on this level. It’s important to pay attention to things that mean something to you. Just think about what happens when you don’t pay attention to certain things sufficiently — often, something goes wrong, from the failure of a professional project to problems in a relationship. This is attention in action — be attentive, pay attention, get attention — these are all things people actively do.
The attention I talk about with the Enneagram and in this book refers to the attention inside you — attention at a deeper level. You aren’t conscious of it if you don’t discover it inside yourself. This attention lies on the level of your hidden drivers — your underlying driving forces and motivations. Here you find the things that you subconsciously and automatically direct your attention toward because you consider them important, even if you aren’t aware of the importance you place on them. Exploring this attention and the unconscious goals it focuses on is one of the most important aspects of the Enneagram. One pillar of Enneagram practice is training your attentiveness — also referred to as mindfulness nowadays.
You can’t not direct your attention toward something. Human attention always has a target. People aren’t aware of this — it just happens. The “something” that your attention is directed toward is the object of your attention.
Your attention is always directed toward a single object. Neurobiological research confirms the observations by the monks: In the best-case scenario, you can quickly jump back-and-forth between things so quickly that it looks as though you were directing your attention toward everything at the same time. However, brain research shows that people quickly switch around — you’re always directing your attention toward a single thing at a time.LOVE IS PAYING ATTENTION; PAYING ATTENTION IS LOVEPaying attention is a way of expressing love. If something or someone is important to you — so important that you can call it love — then this something or person will also be the focus of your attention. The love you express for something or someone can be expressed by specifically paying attention in the form of doing something for the object or person. Sometimes, it’s less the activity itself than the way you direct attention to this thing or person. For many people, their own children are certainly the best examples. Studies have shown that a mother can recognize the crying of her own baby among a number of crying children. In the turmoil of a schoolyard, parents immediately find their children. Paying attention consists of truly seeing and truly hearing your child. As a result, the child in turn feels seen and heard. This is love that is expressed in paying attention, and from this attention, you can see the love.With the Enneagram, this is considered the pure attention that arises from persons being connected to themselves and connecting with others from that position of strength. That's attention on a different level — not doing, but being (conscious attention, in other words). Every healthy person can learn to train the conscious self by developing and paying conscious attention. The first step consists of seeing where your attention is unconsciously directed. Recognizing inside yourself which Enneagram type best describes your patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting offers you a foundation from which to observe the unconscious objects of your attention. Those objects designate the place on which you focus your attention — the place that causes each respective type (and person) the most worry.Love is paying attention; paying attention is love.
Your attention automatically wanders from one object to the next. You might have noticed that it seems extremely difficult to keep your attention focused on one object for a prolonged period. As soon as the next object appears, your attention automatically flies toward it. People are distracted — when you keep your attention on one object for a prolonged period, it’s called concentration — and it requires real training. When you can hold an object (a thing or a person) in your thoughts, and maybe even visualize it, it’s called object constancy.
Uncovering your underlying driving forces or unconscious motivations
Energy follows attentiveness
During the Holiday season, the house that belongs to Tina (Type 3) is always the most beautifully decorated one on the street. She gets a lot of compliments for it each year, and it makes her feel good. They give her a good feeling, but, unfortunately, it doesn’t last long. When the praise has settled, Tina immediately gets the urge to concentrate on something else that will also