hygge cares, about the enneagram

Each month we focus on different aspects of wellness in our #hyggefam because you can’t be the best in your industry if you’re not feeling the best personally. In April we decided to talk about balance. A healthy life is a balanced life, but that looks drastically different for everyone. Incorporating balance into your life requires knowing yourself pretty darn well, and a lot of our members get to know themselves deeply through the enneagram test.

Read on to see how the fam uses their enneagram number to keep themselves well.

MaryPat

“The enneagram 2 is a helper. I’m very relationship-driven and people oriented. That’s what drives everything I do with SkillPop and everything I do with family and friends. I’m a super big people pleaser and I have a super hard time saying no. In terms of my job, enneagram in general has helped me a ton because I work closely on a daily basis with such a wide range of people. It’s helpful to know for communication purposes. Some people need the “Hey, how you doing, how is your kid, how is that birthday party you went to?” And some people are like, “Just give me a one liner or I’m not going to read your email or respond to you.” It’s helped me with different methods of communication and also not getting offended when everyone doesn’t respond the same. A lot of times my number lands me in a place where I struggle to find balance because I don’t like telling people no. I have to work really hard at knowing that it’s okay to say no and it’s not going to impact how people think of me. For the sake of work/life/friend/having a 4-year-old boundaries and not losing my mind, I really do have to be mindful of if I’m saying yes to something because it’s something I want to be doing, or am I saying yes because I’m worried this person is going to be ticked at me. That’s been a reflective thing I’ve had to work on and will continue to work on for probably the rest of my life.”

Lyn Kim

“It was very helpful for me because I didn’t realize or have a name for why my mind was always busy. Doing multiple tasks at the same time kind of gets me going. It also means that I have a lot of different ideas and I look into the future a lot, which causes me not to be in the present because I’m just thinking about the future and what else I can do. To work better I always have a notebook and if I have a meeting I just write things down. It’s not for memory, it’s more so I can get it out of my brain so I don’t keep on thinking about it, and then I’ll come back to it later. It’s kind of dumping that information somewhere so I can move on, otherwise I just think about it for a while. To find balance, I recently started doing yoga in the morning, which is very hard to do because I’m always thinking. Rather than having my mind full, it helps me be more mindful of where I’m at and being present. They really want you to focus on your body movements and not what’s on your mind. I also love my succulents because I have a hobby of propagating succulents. That’s not a process you can hurry. It’s really helped me with being patient with the process and waiting for them to grow and repotting them when they need to be repotted. You have to go through the process, and the end product is so much better.”

Merle Fisher

“As a type 2, one thing the enneagram test helped me learn about myself is to learn how to better manage my obligations and responsibilities. I don’t like to tell people no, it feels like I’ve let them down. I’d never been able to really figure that out or articulate that for myself until I started learning about the enneagram. It’s so easy for me to forget about my own needs and help others. I’m a graphic designer, and I have discovered that I don’t find any joy in just making pretty things for its own sake. I’m not a good behind the scenes designer who just looks at a list of things that need to be made, makes them, drops them into a folder and calls it a day. I need to be able to have a relational aspect to my work, so understanding why I’m designing, who I”m designing for, being able to present my work to them, even if that’s remotely, I need as much relationship in that process as possible. I really get fueled by the satisfaction of knowing they really liked my work. In design that will change what projects I take. I’ll turn down work projects where that relationship aspect isn’t available. In personal life, it means I need to be a little more conscious about doing things for myself. Coffee is a hobby of mine. Someone has said about the enneagram type 2 that coffee is the perfect hobby. And I love coffee. It’s a way I de-stress, but a the same time I love serving coffee, so it fills two of my needs: it helps me, and I get to help serve someone. I think it’s about keeping in mind I also need to do things for myself and take care of myself.”

• 

Sarah Ann

“I’m the crazy one,” she said with a laugh. “To me, the dominant thing about being a 4 is being very high on emotion. We’re just very sensitive, emotionally charged people. And 4s have a very strong feeling like they’re not quite fitting in complex. That’s been a big thing for me in realizing that I was a 4, I learned no everyone feels that way. I think realizing how much emotion can affect my work has made me create structure in my day so I won’t just be like, “Oh I’m feeling really emotional and anxious,” and then not get anything done. I’m intentional about taking breaks and doing things to help me get outside my head, like have a good conversation with someone or go for a walk, I’ll listen to lots of music that compliments with whatever mood I’m in, and I’ll start my day by journaling or praying or exercising of some sort. Anything that can help me get my emotions out or regulated before I sit down to work so that when I’m ready to work, I’m fully present and not just at the whim of my emotions. I think recognizing not everyone is the way I am has helped. I thought a lot of the things I experience were really normal until learning about different enneagram and realizing how different everyone is. Everyone functions a lot different from how I do. The item I chose to show balance today is my journal because that’s always been a really good outlet. I have a lot going on internally and I have to process that somehow.”

• 

Julia

“If anything I feel what the enneagram does is it calls you out on what you didn’t realize you do. 7s always like to be fulfilled and feel in control, so any project I get bored with or it’s just too hard, I tend to slack off on it because it’s not getting me jazzed. So knowing that’s something I can easily fall into, when I feel myself procrastinating or getting down with a project I’m working on, now I know that’s why and I can either address it and get through it or let it go. This also helps me take on projects from the get go that I know I’m not going to put my all into just because I know myself and I know I do my best work when I’m all in. Personally the ennegram helped me realize why I travel so much and why I’m planning for the next thing constantly, whether that’s what I’m doing tonight and then what I’m going to do tomorrow, and this weekend. 7s love to plan and have something to constantly look forward to, which is also a blessing and a curse because it is great, but it helped me realize I’m doing that without letting myself enjoy the present moment. Under the description for 7s, some of the first few adjectives used are busy and scattered. We’re like squirrels in that we’re always like what’s the next thing I’m going to do, what’s the next fun thing I’m doing. I think something the ennegram has taught me is that a 7 without rest and taking time to recharge can get into a really bad place, and that can happen to me if I don’t make breaks in my work or make breaks in my travel. One thing I do every single day to do this is when I get home go on a walk with my headphones in my ears or sit down and play guitar for 30 minutes because music has always been that constant thing where everything else shuts off, no matter if I’m super stressed or thinking about a project. When I get music in my ears I totally zone out. That’s something that balances me and lets me recharge.”