The Enneagram

I was working with my coach the other day, a session primarily focused on reflecting on the past year and setting intentions for the year ahead. All in all, it was a year focused on growth and discovery.

One of those discoveries was taking a deeper dive into the Enneagram. The Enneagram is far more than just another personality typing tool. The knowledge and the insights I have gained in learning about the tool and exploring it in my coaching sessions and periods of reflection have been transformative in how I look at my life.

The Enneagram reaffirmed something I’ve always known: I am an Achiever, addicted to achievement. My life has been driven by achievement: striving for good grades, awards, an MBA, passing the CPA exam, pursuing challenging assignments and leadership roles, becoming a partner in a Big 4 Accounting firm, earning my PCC coaching certification, and recently, my Enneagram certification.

As I reflected on the year that was, the Achiever in me started by reviewing the measurables around my practice. Number of clients, hours coached, fees earned, connections made, courses attended, recognition, and certifications achieved—quantifiable results.

I then moved on to the measurables around family and personal life. Balance achieved or not achieved. How I spent my summer, the concerts and shows we attended, my photography trips, and family vacations. How I showed up, and what I enjoyed about each experience. Still some quantifiable measures with an increasing reliance on my heart and gut feel.

Then, the conversation shifted to my relationship with my Creativity. If you’ve read my past blogs and LinkedIn posts, you know that unlocking Creativity is deeply rooted in who I am as a Coach and who I am learning to become as a photographer and person. This is where the measurables are a little trickier to define.

My coach challenged me on that, and I began to dig deeper. My desire to be more of a Creator and assess my progress has long been bumping against my lifelong addiction to achievement—my need for data and measurables. How do I determine if I am improving or becoming more creative? Who or what can I measure myself against? My mentors my cohorts- not fair comparisons because we all have different levels of skills and see the world differently.

Then it hit me when we discussed my photography and the calendar I created for family and friends as a holiday tradition.

Those who receive the calendar are people close to me, non-photographers who are grateful and excited for what I share with them yearly. They tell me it is cool or great or they like it a lot. Their compliments are always appreciated, but I know there’s room for improvement as someone who’s always striving for improvement.

As I thought about it something was very different this year. Several people reached out to tell me how grateful they were to receive the calendar and then talked about my growth as a photographer over the past several years. That was a significant shift, and I’m not going to lie; it made me a little emotional. It was the measurement of the immeasurable! 

As we talked, I arrived at the insight that will set my intention in all aspects of life in the year ahead:

“I will never be done Creating, but I am done trying to Perfect my Creativity.” 

Change does not always happen in the blink of an eye. It is about identifying the changes you want to make, clarifying why they matter to you, and then taking action. The results might not be immediate, and sometimes they’re not obvious, but our growth becomes apparent to others and ourselves over time. It will never happen if we do not set the intention.

What do you want to create for yourself?  What would meaningful change look like for you? It is a process that we each need to own.

Think about it, and then let’s have a conversation.

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