Now, you might say: “What is wrong with someone enjoying their efforts to decorate a house for Holiday?” Nothing, of course. I'm a fan of Holiday decorations and you might be, too. But here the question is whether it is done freely — just because it brings joy — or whether it’s based on the underlying driving force of the type mechanism. Tina realized that, for her, it’s the latter. She sometimes tells herself to maybe do a little less this year, but she has a hard time limiting herself.
This is just one small example of patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting. These three aspects inside you can’t be separated from each other. At some point, Tina (unconsciously) started to believe that accomplishments are prerequisites for being seen and loved. This is important to her because the praise makes her feel good. Because it makes her feel good, her attention and energy are unconsciously focused on receiving this applause. This is how thinking and feeling influence each other and are implemented in action — in this case, in an activity intended to attract applause.
Many people like to receive praise, but for some people, like Tina, this need plays an overpowering role in their daily lives. Her antennas for applause, so to speak, are constantly in reception mode. This driving force forms the pattern for her thinking, feeling, and acting and gives her life content. The Enneagram knows nine of these driving forces, each of which forms the foundation of a certain automatic pattern.
Recognizing what holds your attention
It’s difficult to start observing yourself when you don’t know what to watch for. Tina discovered her most important underlying driving force after using the Enneagram to observe herself for some time and reflecting on her observations. All at once, several things became clear and visible to her. If this is your first encounter with the Enneagram and you’re reading the book from the beginning, you might not have a clear idea in which of the nine types you will most recognize yourself. (See Chapter 2 for a review.) No worries: I’ll help you take it one step at a time. If your curiosity gets to be too much for you and you want to get a first impression of your type, you can check out on the Internet some of the quick tests for finding out.
TABLE 3-1: Attention and energy
| Attention Is Focused On This | Energy Is In This |
|---|---|
| What isn’t correct isn’t appropriate | Improving, creating order |
| The needs of others | Giving, helping |
| Applause, earning points | Reaching goals, completing tasks, achieving something |
| What's lacking | Comparing yourself with others, longing |
| The expectations of others | Observing from afar, holding back, and barely getting involved |
| Threats, risks, dangers | Being alert, recognizing and avoiding risks |
| What keeps you constrained, what isn't fun | Keeping options and possibilities open, having fun |
| Vulnerable, the seat of power and strength | Being strong and combative, protecting yourself and others |
| Disharmony, competing desires, plans, and points of view | Integrating, merging with others, avoiding and preventing conflicts |
Managing attentiveness and energy
If you don’t see it, you can’t manage it. People don’t want to see the things that they dislike deep inside. This develops into a habit, as a kind of self-protection, and then they actually don’t see these things. They become blind spots. So, the first step toward self-management consists of observing yourself closely despite all this. Everyone can acquire this ability to self-observe. Of course, it’s easier when you have instructions you can rely on. You learn to systematically question yourself with the goal of interpreting your perception. With this questioning, you recognize that you’re observing something, but you ask yourself what is the meaning of what you see? What could it indicate? This systematic questioning is called self-reflection; some people also refer to it as an internal dialogue.
The descriptions of the Enneagram types function as a kind of mirror. They tell you a lot about the unconscious driving forces and their function. When you look into these mirrors, you will recognize certain things in yourself, but others won't necessarily click. Self-reflection helps make the unconscious conscious.
Self-observation — a natural habit?
Examples of natural habits are eating when you’re hungry and sleeping when you’re tired. Other habits that have crept into your life, you find so pleasant that you immediately miss them when you deviate from them. These are rituals like taking the dog for a walk or watching a sports program. Self-observation, however, will never become a habit, no matter how much you benefit from it.
On this topic, Georges (or Gregor) Ivanovitch Gurdjieff, who brought the Enneagram to the West, says that people are like robots. They act purely mechanically and are programmed toward automatic reactions. People are sleeping — that’s how Gurdjieff expressed it. For the most part, humans aren’t aware of themselves, nor of the effect they have on others or the effect of others on them. They mostly lack will and just react. Surviving is a way to react to the environment. Gurdjieff talks about forgetting yourself: Humans even forget their intentions.
Gurdjieff searched for truth all his life, traveling a lot in the process and spending a great deal of time among spiritual groups whose wisdom he explored. The idea of forgetting themselves, their “sleep,” can