The Enneagram is a diagram with nine different personality types which relate to each other. This is what really makes it interesting to me: each personality type identifies the typical personality traits and strengths, but it also adds the negative side as well. Each type has a vice, temptation, weakness, and stress point. After doing my test i discovered I am a two: the helper. And it totally fits me as well, the problem is, i can see the negative points within me as well. One of the bigger weaknesses of a two is that I am constantly looking outward to help others that I do not seek to help myself. That is, I hide from my own self-examination by putting other people's problems before my own. For me the lack of self-examination is not the only problem, when I do find problems within myself, I honestly struggle with changing myself.
Great Mark, why the heck are you blogging this then? Because finding my problems and working to fix them is my primary motivation of blogging. But that is pretty damn boring Mark, who wants to read that? Probably no one, but writing about it helps me understand me better, and maybe other people who want to get to now me better. My first plan of action is to be less private.
The other class exercise which struck me (and relates to this) was when the Professor asked each student to write down ten events in our lifetime which defines us and made us who we are today. This was really good for me to think about but I never really delved into it further.
Back when I was fresh out of college I was frequently depressed about myself and a generally negative person who was mad at everyone else in the world. I kept looking back at my past and using it as an excuse to feel sorry for myself. I was hung up on some negative things which affected me. One day I realized I was a pretty decent person, not perfect by any means but sort of well rounded. Then I thought about my past and realized I just needed to get over it. My past is what made me who I was, and I liked who I was so why should I let the past effect me in a negative way? Why should I be hung up on that crap and be a negative person who was angry all the time? I couldn't come up with a good answer and that day I went through a major change in personality, leaving behind the negativity and looking to make a positive change for the future. "My past made me who I am today, so why should I be mad about it?" was my new motto in life.
So all that to say that my first blogging series is going to be about my history. I am going to examine the top ten events in my life, positive and negative, and how they molded my personality to what it is today. Along the way, I am also going to examine how I want to change and how I am going to do it.
PS - I also changed the name of the blog again today to "I am Mine". This has been the third time in the past week that I have changed it. Why "I am Mine"? I felt i needed to change the name and the song "I am Mine" by Eddie Vedder happened to be playing and it sounded pretty good. I'm sure I will change it again but that is where it stands today.
1 comment:
Hi Mark! Thanks for sharing! Isn't the enneagram fascinating? I am a 3 (performer). I learned a lot about myself going through that exercise!
Hope you and the family are doing well!
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