Beatrice Chestnut - Type 7 Enneagram Panel

[Music] this is the seventh last but not least and we have Garth and Kelly and sandy and Charlotte's and Charlotte has recently had knee surgery and so she's very kindly to be on the panel anyway even though she has some knee discomfort so she may need to stand up and walk around a little bit so if that happens just know that that's normal okay so I'll talk a little bit about 7:00 and then we'll open up to our experts so type 7 the last type of the head triad this is again part of the fear triad however most sevens usually say they don't really relate to feeling fearful they tend to focus very much on the positive they tend to be very optimistic and enthusiastic and the only time you they might resonate with fear is that sometimes sevens will say they do have a fear of being trapped in something unpleasant being trapped in an emotional feeling that's like discomfort or anxiety or boredom even and so they will tend to especially unconsciously move toward pleasure and positive things to think about and positive emotions and away from pain now again my I have a I have a sexual 7 friend who always reminds me to to make sure to say that that's very unconscious most 7s it's kind of a blind spot that they're actually moving away from something it more just feels like they're just moving towards the the looking at the bright side or seeing the silver lining or just that they're seeing what's really out there that that is really positive but there is a fear of being that if they let in an uncomfortable emotion if they go there a little bit they'll be in it for out and it'll be hard for them to get out so that's more of the fear that that they wrote that they sometimes relate to sevens generally their mental types and their mental ability is to really that they have a lot of flexibility mentally they can skip from one idea to another very quickly they have very quick minds and they are very good at seeing connections between things that other people may see as dissimilar but they find kin interesting connections between things and so their minds are sometimes what's sometimes called synthesizing Minds or monkey Minds and that they're moving from things were eight very quickly to another thing very quickly another seven friend of mine often says that they have bright shiny object syndrome so there's like hey looking for the next bright shiny object that's in their field of vision the the passion here is gluttony and this is for a little bit of taste of everything that looks interesting or fun or feels good or is pleasurable and the three subtypes are different in that they express a gluttony for three different kinds of experiences self-preservation sevens tend to be very practical and they tend to be good at getting their needs met sometimes through a network of friends and alliances Naranjo says they're good at creating a good mafia where they can kind of get their needs met through people that they know and people that are connected to self-preservation sevens are very pleasure-loving they're very good at creating opportunities for themselves and just generally making things happen through kind of practic bandage things and making things happen through pratt being practical and pragmatic the sexual seven is very opposite to that they're more instead of being more sort of practical grounded in reality they tend to be more idealistic more imaginative it's more like heavenly things of the higher realm and they're probably the most optimistic and see things almost so positively it's like seeing the world through rose-colored glasses or through the optimism of someone who's in love and it said love is blind so sexual sevens can be a little bit suggestible as and suggestibility is the title which means easy to hypnotize and sometimes a little bit naive about what's really happening because they're so focused on the most positive outcome or what's really good and whatever is happening and they can live a little more in their imagination of what's good rather than in what's maybe really happening in the moment and of course going into the imagination is an unconscious way of moving into the future or into their positive visions of what could be and an unconscious way of potentially avoiding what might be happening in the moment that doesn't feel so good or is a little bit more challenging I would say the social 7 is different again it's a very interesting type social 7s it says if they sense in gluttony a little bit of a tendency to want more for themselves or a self-interest and excessive self-interest and they decide to go against it by being for other people so a social 7 is the 7 that actually can look like a 2 because they tend to be very service oriented and they tend to move toward jobs that are concerned with the alleviation of pain so you find them in as doctors and nurses and chaplains and hospice workers people who almost have an ideal of service and the word is sacrifice and sacrificing their own self-interest for a higher ideal so it's the person who wants to take the biggest piece of cake but decides to take the smallest piece of cake so they can give the other cake to other people so it's an interesting type so I like to highlight it because sometimes it's the counter type and sometimes the counter types aren't well known among people who maybe have just heard about the nine types and don't know this approach to this subtypes so other things to say about 7 7 sometimes report having a happy childhood whether or not it actually was and they often remember things a little bit more positively than it may have happened but again this is a very it says actually I think comes in handy a lot work settings and in relationships because I think there's a real strength in seeing what's positive in a situation or in a person in highlighting the positive data now of course they can get in trouble when they avoid the next seeing the negative data but if there is something very positive and uplifting in that sevens often want to keep the mood up and they want things to be better for everybody and so there often is a very positive intention behind their positive thinking and they tend to be very good at generating ideas and brainstorming and being visionaries and innovative out-of-the-box thinkers they also tend to be very futuristic or future oriented and seeing having clear visions of how something could be in the future okay so let's leave it there and we'll turn to the real experts to talk a little bit about type seven so I'm wondering if it would be a good idea to start all the way over with you Charlotte just to allow you to talk in case you need to take care of your knee but I'd love to hear how you relate to seven and how you found yourself as a seven and how you see this type playing out for you in your life okay well it's very interesting because I had done a number of Enneagram workshops probably I don't know maybe in in the 90s and every time I went to one I mean it would be a full weekend and I just I thought I was every one of the nine types it was drove me crazy I could just relate to everyone I said there's how can I possibly use this because I I do work a lot with myers-briggs and do a lot of other instruments and I do executive coaching and team-building and so I said how can I possibly you ever use this with a client when I don't know who I am how can I possibly help somebody else know who they are and then a mutual friend of ours suggested that I go to the integrative Enneagram workshop get certified in an instrument from South Africa and I just rolled my eyes and I said really you know not another one blah blah and I went and it was fabulous it was like the first time I got the report I read this thing and I think what really made me realize that I was a seven was the part about fear and anxiety being the motivator that was like out of all of them I thought no it's not anger you know it's not the esteem one no it's definitely fear and anxiety from the time I was a small child I was just so fearful growing up I really was and I you what I did with it is I went to spirituality from a very young age I used to just pray every night and my prayers were don't let there be a fire in the home don't let there be a world war don't let there burglars come in I mean I had it covered with my prayers at night I was just so filled with fear so that was a part of me but the other part of me was this whole imaginative world that I could create that I remember wanting a piano and creating a keyboard on the chest of drawers and my in my bedroom and playing for a long time like playing piano on this little fake keyboard you know so and having imaginary friends and and just really being able to go outside with my friends and create these scenarios we create plays and I'd be busy all the time and I'd be totally up in this other fantasy world that when I realized now was just what was really creating happiness for me because there was some problems in my home with alcohol and so it was a loving family but it's tough you know really tough issues at home so I think my imagination was just a great way of escaping this sort of tendency to be anxious and fearful and real issues that I had in my home with me particularly my father so yeah I would say that was yeah you hear that from sevens talk we'll talk about the way they coped with fear was to kind of escape into their imagination where they can sort of create the experience they'd rather be having almost or be with something more pleasant in their mind as a way of coping with was what wasn't so pleasant and so it becomes a habit right and then I really saw it in my career the whole thing I mean the words that come to mind that resonated for me when I did this this instrument the word possibility and I love the word you just have to say possibility to man I'm your friend like I'm gonna go there with you possibility is just so cool for me and fun you know fun whenever I'm doing a workshop one of the goals I have in a flipchart is fun maybe work fun fine well yes and I have a quick story about that which is so funny because I was an HR director in a bank for a while on Cape Cod and when I left I was there for seven or eight years and I used to make our managers do these really fun team building things I do training with them once a month and make them do all sorts of weird stuff and when I left they have hired a photographer to go up to the top of a balcony of the bank and they made their bodies say f-u-n was my prep my going-away present was because I always wanted us to have at work was was we had to have fun if we didn't have fun forget it so and then you know changing jobs the whole at freedom was the third word so possibility it's fun freedom and so don't fence me in I mean it's just you know and I've been divorced for a number of years and I think you know that is an issue I think for me is that I just don't want to be fenced in it's you know I don't have a problem with commitment but I don't want to be fenced in so yeah so don't fence me in and jobs either and so I ended up going out on my own in the 90s and having my own consulting business which I've had for almost 30 years I'm some I call it semi-retired now but I'm pretty much on my way out but yeah for about 30 years so just doing my own thing being my own boss no limits yes no yeah so really yeah yeah thanks for highlighting that that's really important that sevens are very sensitive to their freedom being restricted by other from the outside and losing options yeah and so I think it's very important that you highlight that yeah that's really clear okay thank you mm-hmm sandy how does it what does this look like for you how did you come to seven and how does that play out I started studying the anagram probably in the 90s as well and I was reading Helen Palmer's book her first book and as I was going similar to you I was like oh I think I'm this so I think I'm at oh I thought I was a - because I'm a giver and relationships I thought I was a for cuz I in relationships I always was like the push-pull trying to seek the unattainable but when I landed at 7 and I read it I was like embarrassed thinking oh my god they're writing about me I mean it just hit me it just hit me and fear was something I never thought I was a fearful person never until I started studying the anagram and realizing how fearful I was and how reframing everything tried to make everything positive and anyway that's kind of how I came about it and do you also relate to this part about not being limited from the outside oh yeah yeah I don't like to be limited I don't I don't have so much an issue with commitment I've married 13 years happily but but I don't like to be like in my job I like freedom I like flexibility flexibility is really important to me flexibility fun is key but the job I have now that's one of the company's values this fun so it that worked out well yes I'm trying to think of what else and by the way I think it's a myth that sevens can't commit I think that's a real misconception because I find that most seven sevens I know I mean they may be really thoughtful before they commit to something you know like they make sure but once they commit you know like several of my good seven friends are been married a long time very committed commit to jobs I mean I think I think that's a myth so I'm glad that you both kind of said you don't have a problem committing because I kind of want to highlight that as something that I think it's a stereotype of sevens and not necessarily really true what one of my challenges is as you mentioned earlier hanging out with those emotions that are challenging like sadness or you know really challenging times and that's been you know somebody a friend who has a problem and they continue to have this problem they continue that and I I'm there and I want to help and I want to be supportive and then nothing changes and then I get frustrated and then I don't I'm you know I'm tired of that it's like you know move on already and I'm you know I try to be you know not so judgmental about it but it that what do you think it is about those feelings or emotional experiences that that's hard for a seven for you well one I used to say the same thing like fear of going there is the this I'm a bit out to either let myself go there to feel if I felt everything that I truly felt like I can cry at a commercial as stupid commercial then I'll start crying about all the ills of the world and so I don't want to let myself get there yeah I don't know I just feel like it would be never-ending it feels like it'd be never-ending and yet I do have those moments when I can let my guard down and really get into my feelings and have a good cry it's it's really refreshing and it's cleansing and it's it kind of lifts a weight up you know and but it's so hard to get there yes yes yes and sometimes life takes us there right I mean things happen and I find that just like I think it's unfortunate that people will say if you're a for you if you're if you're happy you can't be a four it's similar for seven some sevens have gone through some tough stuff and it doesn't mean they can't do it it just means they're sort of sort of first level response can be like just sort of reframing or something right and I've had friends who have you know challenged me when they've gone through hard times feeling like I wasn't there for them and that's been hard for me too to hear and pay attention to that and hopefully a lesson for me for going forward to be better at that you know great thing right and can you give us an example of reframing because I think that's a it's both a seven gift but it can also be a problem can you give us an example of how that might happen or how you've done that I do do it I do it a lot but a specific example um-huh I can't think of a specific but it's that maybe something about how it happened generally like if it's a pot if it's a negative thing I want to I want to think the best case scenario well I'm thinking about something that's going on right now on TV I don't know if you all are heard about Jessie Smollett yeah yeah so I watch Empire I love his character on the show and when this thing first happened to him I was like felt so bad for him you know like all this stuff and now the twist that's going around like I I don't want to believe it not wanting I want to keep thinking no you want to keep thinking was really about that that he didn't he didn't create that hmm so that's kind of a boy I think it's I think it's actually a good example because I think a lot of sevens do that the people in their lives like my friend who's a sexual 7 says that sometimes her friends will say to her look I'm not as awesome as you think I am you know that there's a real but if it again I think it could be a beautiful trait of a servant of like really seeing the good in us yeah yeah yeah and I was talking about that with a friend at work a co-worker and she's like he's crazy I'm like you know I wanted to defend him maybe he is but you know anyway so yeah and then the flip side of that is not seeing the reality you know and so always making everything positive well everything is not positive it you know what is what is true what is real so okay thank you so Kelly how did you discover you were a seven and how does this play out for you I had dated the sky' years ago and and I didn't know anything about the Enneagram at the time and he just looked at me one day and he was you're a seven I'm like what is a seven and I did just kind of set it aside and I didn't think much about it for years and years and years and then I became a myers-briggs junkie and I studied that for a really long time and I got really proficient at it and I could type anybody talking to them for half a minute and I would know when they were and so then I had a friend invite me to a woman locally who does a lot of Enneagram teaching to one of her panels and I sat up there and I was listening to everybody I was like I love this stuff this is like my new area of study and I want to start learning so I joined a couple of her groups and I've only been learning this for about a year and a half so I'm fairly new to it and when I heard the 7s on her panel talking I knew clearly what this guy years ago said you're seven and I knew what he meant and it's just for me I'm even when I was really little sort of like what you're saying about having this fantasy life and same kind of thing I had these like imaginary little friends and I would get aggravated with my parents over something and I remember my sister and I had these like imaginary friends and we'd sit and talk to them and we talked about our anger towards our parents and we talked about all these things but it was like our real little world that we could create that was a safe place for us to go and and then as I kept growing more and learning more and now that I look back on different parts of my life I see how jobs like I I can't tell you how many jobs I've had and how many roommates I've had and how many boyfriends I've had and it's like there's always one that's better and there's always a job that's more fun and when the job the person on the five panel that said that he didn't understand the definition of boring I was like really like it's such a profound word for me because the minute I feel any sense of boredom I'm like oh it's time to do something different it's time to get a new job it's time to get a new boyfriend it's you know and my current boyfriend is in this room right now just so you know [Laughter] it's always the sense of adventure you know it's it's always a sense of wanting to have more fun and and do things that are more exciting and like for instance we went on a trip around the country in an RV for for five weeks over the summer and you know then we came back to reality and I was like within the next week I was like when is our next trip and where are we going and what's the next thing and and not really wanting to get back into the reality of my life which is which is oh you you have to work and you have to you know have a job and you have to do these things and it's to me it's just always been about so much fun and then about four months ago I hit a very interesting point in my life where I had my back was completely out and it's the first time in my life I've ever had physical pain and I literally for two and a half months was on my back and standing and on my back and standing and I couldn't move and I couldn't walk and I'm a big yoga teacher I'm a yoga therapist and I couldn't do anything with my body and that was my way to get through everything I would always escape through my hot yoga and my movement and my walking and running and hiking and when I couldn't do this anymore and I was literally flat on my back I was kicking and screaming and miserable and trying to be graceful but I I wasn't doing it very well and and then I started realizing the real value of going in to those dark places and going into the pain and seeing what is behind the pain and where it comes from and it's been it's been a real teaching tool you know it's only been a few weeks that I've actually been sitting in a chair so it's it's really been humbling and and now that I can actually experience life again I I know that it's important for me to actually go to those places and yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah it's really important for sevens when they can do that work and it's very precious you know that when they allow themselves and it sounds like you learned through experience that it didn't last forever right but I thought it was gonna last forever yes and I put all those scenarios in my head like what if I never walk again and what if I can only stand up and what if I can't work and what if I can't have fun and what if I can't sit in the RV and what if I can't go out to a restaurant and I can't go for it like it this was constant going on in my head so it yeah they're real anxiety about the loss of free totally told what if this is forever and it's interesting my teaching partner Ronnie o says that actually sevens are the most pessimistic type because they think if they let this pain in it'll last forever and that's a real pessimistic point of view and so I want to highlight again it's like it sounds like you had an experience that it didn't last forever and so I think making sure that you may notice that you know and that sevens can kind of reassure themselves around you know it won't last forever even though I like I fear it will you know yeah and now I feel like I just want a key I want to just do so many things now because I haven't been able to you know and I just and so someone said you want to be on a panel and I said yes possibilities are again open to you yeah yeah yeah yeah and do you do reframing like do you naturally reframe negatives into positives yeah yes much like if a friend will call me up and tell me about like a hard day she's having or she's doing a this friend who's doing this remodel on her house right now and she's doing a kitchen project and every time she calls me up she's telling me about oh it's the tide to go get the tile the tile isn't the right color and it's not matching the countertop and finally one day I said to her I was like you're having a brand new kitchen put in your place or buy a brand new bathroom like how exciting is this I love the tile it's so beautiful and like and just trying to get her to look on the positive side of what she's experiencing is such a negative thing I think I do that often with people because I just was like you were saying too like when people start telling us all these negative things and I and perhaps also there's a fear of not wanting to get into that negative space with them and so wanting to speak positively so that they can get into a positive space so I don't go down with them right right yeah yeah yeah I want to pull you out but it's also about me right yes yeah that's great okay thank you so Garth how have you have you dissin eyes that you're a seven and what does this look like for you how do you relate to these patterns yeah I don't have as probably as much just experience with the Enneagram as many of you do but I've been around it and conversations about it and just sort of absorbed it through osmosis through so many friendships over the years and I remember taking a test maybe 10 years ago 12 years ago and I just instantly recognized myself that wasn't any any thing like many of you have spoken about you know gosh my this am i that am i this it was very very clear to me I recognized money my nature when I was one of the most probably influential experiences that I've had in my life happened when I was in the fifth grade a student teacher came in to class and she was with us for some time and she had us for a week or so put our heads down on the desk and she'd put on classical music and have us imagine just just what comes in your mind when you listen to this music and then afterwards we wrote and you know this wonderful extraordinary world opened up I was already a reader but now I didn't even have to have words there was just the music in my own imagination was off on these wonderful flights and it was so it was so tremendous that that years later when I got into education myself in my early 20s well even before that I started telling stories when I was in my maybe 17 18 years old as a camp counselor and saw how children responded his stories and I realized how powerful story was for imagination then in my early 20s I started making guided imagery recordings CDs of teaching environmental education through you know be a swan and go on a swan migration feel the wind across your face and feel that the wind and your feathers and feel your feet touching down on the ice-cold water you know and then and their stars and the water just this huge imaginative world was enormous so and I did a lot of that and became a professional storyteller actually and for 10 years I spent my life in the world of the imagination which was vast I could I routinely would lay down on a couch and be completely motionless for two hours and get an enormous amount of work done I knew I could walk through you know all the different elements in my imagination and my movements my facial expressions my voice all the details of the story all of that completely inwardly so the imagination was really really important to me and another strong element of my my nature from a very early age was was this sort of mystical orientation I was very attracted to ideas and particularly idealistic ideas expansive ideas gosh I think it was 12 when our boys got scout troop went on this big big hike and we took the wrong trail and it was my first big hike I'd only been in scout for a few months and back in those days there weren't light equipment and so I had like 50 pounds on my twelve-year-old back and we ended up climbing up this huge mountain after going around in a circle and by the time we got to the top you know boys were just falling down to weeping you know with the exhaustion and I got to the top and had a mountaintop experience I just felt God everywhere you know I looked at it with the valleys and over the mountain and there was God everywhere and that became a touchstone for me I looked for that you know ever after that so by the time I was in high school I was reading Emerson the whole idea of football games and proms it was just like you know no interest whatsoever and very much expansive in my in my orientation so but the family was in my early 20s I was a monk and a yoga community and meditating a lot and the downside of it was I didn't I'm definitely not the practical subtypes I was like 50 before I decided to check how much money I had in my bank account [Laughter] so you know the whole idea of career planning financial planning you know I could I spreadsheets just completely foreign to my nature and I've had to force myself into that you know in in later years adventure I've loved I've loved adventure I was always in trees when I was a boy and later on I was in rivers and I could swim in big currents you know I didn't care if I got sucked into the water it would let me up it was 30 seconds a minute it would let me up and I would just relish the feeling of being being turned in the in the currents I remember in Hawaii I was in this Sun with the the Seven Sacred Pools on Maui and I was down there washing back and forth with a tight with the tidal currents coming in out and people were screaming at me get out of there you're gonna be a wonderful time this is fantastic so that was very much my nature you know even doing borderline dangerous things definitely the grand adventure exhausting cuz it put me also in touch with what was beyond me you know these big these big powers of nature the wind and the water and the tides and that all of that expansive kind of stuff was extremely you know right comfortable to me and we just heard from the sixes and one might experience those things and feel afraid but it sounds like that wasn't your experience at all it was this expanded consciousness or this very positive experience yeah yeah yeah and what about do you ever have you ever experienced this sort of focus on the positive as moving away from pain or what how has it been in your life when things have been difficult has it been what's that been like well I have to speak in the past tense there because I do remember you know when I was in my twenties I didn't have much patience for the ordinary and I have patience for ordinary people the idea of living in a house in a neighborhood was just ridiculous and you know I discounted people who did ordinary things you know if you were an electrician or or a gardener or a carpenter I just completely discounted it because it didn't have any value was there a sense that it was boring a little bit like literally was boring exactly it was not exciting in yeah and that was also true of the emotional world to answer your question so when things when difficulties came up or people complained or I had I had problems I didn't have any patience for it we just you know kind of get myself out of it as quickly as I could with more you know visionary expansive ideas but over the years of course life happens and difficulties happen and I had my share certainly and so I you know gotten extremely comfortable with with the dark side of things with the shadows and learned the the enormous value that's there and the gift of these experiences their life experience you through life learn to navigate exactly yeah and what about our use also sensitive to where having your freedom limited yeah very much so and and I run my own business I like my own hours I'd like to be able to choose you know what days I have free what weeks I have free I like to be able to make those decisions on the on as I go along you know I'm very flexible and I've had my freedom limited in quite a few ways in my life and I have not liked it at all but it's been a it's been a lot of source of growth for me and the way it's been a source of growth is probably you know might be looked at by many people as a fantasy I just go inward you know I go inward and to into what I feel is my spiritual freedom and that that helps me a tremendous amount mm-hmm yeah and I think hearing a theme that that spirituality is sort of part of a part of the way to negotiate this the difficulty and and how that is as a support yeah beautiful thank you sure okay so now maybe starting with Charlotte again we'd love to hear about you know what how you've used insights around being a seven for growth and also if you want to add anything about your subtype if you know it yeah okay so so my subtype is I'm a self press and one of the things that I didn't mention that I think is really important is career wise in 1981 I discovered the creative problem-solving Institute in Buffalo New York and a friend said you should go out there explore it I had been a teacher I went out there and it was like I walked into my world because it was all learning the Osborn Pines creative problem-solving process we learned and all about creativity so it's a week-long workshop in Buffalo with about a thousand people from around the world there to learn about creativity and I just went oh my god what is this so I went back home and then put got a leave from my teaching job and decided to go into business it was when I totally changed my career I used it was like a springboard of this problem-solving process I used it as a springboard to launch myself into another career because what everyone was doing facilitating this process I said that's what I'm going to be doing I want to do that so I kind of then planned my career and this kind of ties back to the self press because a self press seven from what I understand were pretty more practical and than some of the other sevens I think I was very practical and laying out oh my god this is what I want to do when I grow up and here are the steps that I'm gonna need to do it and I actually used the problem solving process to create a vision for myself and this plan which I've now incorporated into a process that I call future escaping that I use Wow it's so perfect it really is just it's not rocket science it sounds like it is it really is it it's just looking at what's working what's not working and visioning what you want and coming up with a plan to get there so I created this future scaping process I used it on myself I went through everything and that's how I eventually by 94 got into my own business so you kind of reinvented yourself I totally did yeah I had to go back and get a degree in business and I had been in education and so very practical you know and that's my self press coming out I've taken care of myself pretty well I really have you know I've been a single mom and raised my kids and so the commitment thing to your point very committed to the things that I care about very very committed and and follow-through and and I think I'm pretty responsible right right you know so so I know sevens are given a bad rap because of that but I don't relate to that at all because I've totally been on my own in all these years and made it work so and I like how your story brings together a lot of different things about sevens which they're sevens tend to relate to being problem solvers yeah and being creative problems yes right like being able to imagine a lot of different things and play with a lot of different scenarios and their heads and almost enjoy the process of problem solving and the reframing because when I'm working with a client you know all of a sudden they're working on this and I'll see the connection over here with what they could be doing right and I offer it and then I go yeah so I think maybe being able to see connections that I might not have seen and the other thing about the self press is the gluttony piece about networking and when I read that it was embarrassing to me because I realize how I do that and when I moved I moved from New England to come out here because my daughter had a baby Charlotte so I realized gotta go so I moved to the California to be you know closer to my family and it men I really had to start my business over again and I was 65 and so I I started networking and I called it I had a book I still have it it's called the networking machine and I every person I met at any breakfast I had this whole list I still have this thing I don't feel like I need to give it to somebody because I don't want to throw it away but it's just got everybody I knew how I met them you know so I could because and that's how I develop my business on the west coast this networking machine but with the gluttony in the gluttony about creating the networks so that I would feel safe and secure and that's what I was doing I was creating all these people of my life that might bring me income needs right through the network and also software sevens are so good at creating opportunities for themselves yeah right and we even met through we have a mutual friend through a self Pro 7 who did a similar thing it totally reinvented her career right and did it really well like you know we practically like was like didn't really like was really interested in the Enneagram didn't know much about it learned about it and just created this really successful business she's amazed and it's another example I think of what self preservation sevens can be very good at like envisioning it making it happen how can i network to get the need that and self preservation sevens are the seven who tend to be a little bit more in touch with fear and anxiety yeah cuz I definitely most self-preservation sevens I talked to they they they are the ones that that are more conscious of it and anyway where there's other sevens must say they don't really experience it very much at all or only when they've had like a life circumstance the development just to add to you know yeah that was part of your question it was it's really through meditation I mean it's going to the five so taking a Vision Quest going to the desert you know allowing yourself to go deeper into DDS metal yourself yeah to go deeper into myself is really been key and nature nature does it for me so I you know just hikes walks in nature to be close to God you know it's just yeah get in touch with that some beer with peace about slowing down because I'm gonna be very fast-paced yeah they think very quickly and they can move and I once knew a seven and he talked so quickly I could barely keep up with them and but it sounds like that's part of this is like slowing down and sort of allowing yourself to sink into your own experience yeah yeah and that that sounds like what you're describing and certainly spirituality is not an avenue that you can help that a lot yeah okay thank you so sandy anything you want to say about your subtype and also what's helped you to grow and develop I think I lean towards the self press in terms of just taking care of myself I I love it when my frigerators filled with food I always carry my water bottle with me I you know just always just taking care of that that comes down do you relate to being practical as well yeah I think so I think so and I and I think I'm more in touch with my fear and my anxiety and I and I don't know if this ties in to be more on the six wings I you know like I don't know if you're gonna get to this question later but in terms of the wings I'm probably lean more on the six side I was relating a lot to the six panel but can definitely tap into they when I see some injustice but that fear and anxiety being practical I've got a four oh I've been saving money efore I'm concerned about security in my retirement we'll have enough you know that kind of thing networking I've knock on wood I've been so successful I've had a lot of jobs but it's by I'm through networking people who I know I've had jobs where they created a job for me to come in with there wasn't a job there so yeah that's helped and I also have some social in me as well yeah I've been actively involved with organizations you know I guess in reading about here like with the gluttony is like the sacrifice of my own time to give back to an organization obviously think about that with me because we've been involved in the same organization I know you've given a lot of your time yes yes yes yep so yeah what about growth and helped you to grow in light of the seven yeah something that I continue to try to do and because I'm so much in my head is really to drop down and get into my body meditate which is hard to do but I I continue to try and I will continue to try being physical being outdoors definitely Ronnie beam in my body doing body things like running or riding my bike or just skiing or something outdoors it helps a lot walking in nature peace quiet music mm-hmm things that help me to calm down or rather slow down I should say not calm but slow down hmm and mm-hmm yeah getting out of your head getting out of my head yeah and what's helped you in terms of being more with your feelings or discomfort or anxiety is there anything that you've done that's allowed that to become easier over time I think stopping and breathing and before reacting or when I'm feeling a reaction coming up just kind of trying to get my observer enacted to see that oh I'm having a reaction I really feel like to slow the whole thing down also touch you know get more in touch with my gut what's my intuition telling me about something so just trying to pay more attention to that mm-hmm great great thank you Kelly you I think you said you're one to want or sex you know sometime yeah one to one I'm not so much sure about speaking to it I know that has a lot to do with like um just not living in reality so much and always yeah I have this this whiteboard where I have like all these different ideas on it and they're all ideas in my mind they're all multi-million dollar businesses but the thing is I'll start one of them or I'll start talking about one and then like a month or two later I'm like that there's something else that comes up that's more exciting and then I'll have another idea for a business and then you know and then and I want someone to come along with me and help me with the business because I have too many ideas and I need somebody who's a little bit stronger at business to kind of help me I put it together and as I'm not so much the sexual part I'm not so much how to speak to it so much yeah yeah and and then I think there is I think for me the subtype is often even more important although the sexual piece can be part of it but I think part of it is that there's almost like a drive to see things as super in a super positive way like kind of like what you're already saying you know and I've also heard that like for instance when people work with other people they can see what the positive for them even more than the person themselves can see it for them so being able to envision positive possibilities for other people as well as yourself yeah yeah and that's true too I had a client who for about a year who was in a wheelchair and she she was limited she had a stroke and and it was it was a really a really cool situation for me because I got to take her out and do whatever I thought was fun and so she where she thought she might be Limited and this and like she she she couldn't really stand but she loved to play golf so I remember taking her to a golf course one day and just trying to give her a little bit of confidence you know we went to play putt-putt golf and so whatever she thought might be a limitation I would help her to see that perhaps it wasn't a limitation for her and and that was just a really that was a really exciting part for me with her and then also I relate a little bit with the social part too because I've done a lot of different volunteer work and volunteered with different organizations and given so much of my time and in an ideal world that's what I would do I would start philanthropic organizations and do volunteer work for the rest of my life because I love that so much and giving back and it takes a lot of time to do that so yeah and so what if you how have you used these insights about being a seven to grow and you're you know in terms of your own development yeah one of one of the guys in my India Graham class that I go to he's a five and the other day I texted him and I said I would love to spend a day in the life of you and he was like what and so I wanted just to hang out with him for a day to see like what his quiet world was like it which I've learned it's not so quiet so for me it's just actually learning it's going to at a seven night silent retreat and getting really quiet and I really love to talk and my I told some friends that I was gonna go do that and they were like what you're gonna go be quiet for a week and but really it's getting into those quiet spaces and getting into myself and like you were saying more into my body and recognizing when stress is coming in and where it's hitting me and where I'm feeling it in my body to be able to really breathe into it and to get to get calm and quiet in nature is a great place and meditation I've done meditation on and off you know when I do it for a month straight I feel totally different and then the next month there'll be way too many events to meditate so then I'll have to get back into it again I don't have to keep bringing myself back to this quiet place and I know that that's where my growth is and that's where the learning is for me is in in the quiet space is out in nature and just learning to still the mind and feel into the body mm-hmm yeah beautiful that's well put I I know that it's funny sometimes when people are in the Enneagram and they learn about the seven it's like the type people want to be like I want to be a seven they're having all the fun but I know that part of what seven sometimes say is that it's also one of the downsides can be having a difficult conversation or having a conflict with someone can it can you speak to maybe what how that's been for you has when you get into the tough stuff in relationship how do you experience that and I mean what have you done around that well since I'm dating a nine and we've neither one of us like conflict too much and I yeah I I don't mind bringing it up I don't mind bringing up a topic or something that's that's challenging but actually like following through and and getting into the depth of conversation sometimes I I find myself like well I want to pull more things out of him for sure and and then yet I I think that I'm this very vulnerable person and then I can open up and share really everything that's going on inside of me but I've learned that I'm actually that's learning for me too so so it's not it's not been that easy to deal with conflict and and also like in in areas of like friendships you know I I have a specific friend that I'm thinking of who well we'll just she'll chill challenge me or she'll judge me for something because I am I'm too excited about something or I'm too this or I'm not focused enough or whatever and I and it's what I do oftentimes is I shut down and I'll just shut down and just retreat and just like pretend that it's that it's going to go away so then I that way I don't have to talk about it I don't have to face it and then eventually it will come up and all and we'll kind of tip it sometimes it's tiptoeing around things I noticed that I do that and not being completely direct in a conflict mm-hmm and I know that sevens I've heard from sevens that they can actually be more self-critical than we think they are like we because they always look like they're okay we think that they're not beating themselves up but I think it's is it true that sevens can really be very self-critical and it can take criticism to heart totally yeah yeah I I noticed that I can react to criticism like really quickly and I have to stop myself and take a breath and actually pause before I'm gonna respond to something when I feel like I am being criticized and often times I remember even growing up like my parents would say something to me and I'd get upset or I'd be angry and they would say we're we're just talking to you we're not we're not criticizing you we're not telling you that anything is wrong or that you're bad or that you're this but I was so sensitive that I would oftentimes take things that way and and I do I beat myself up a lot I didn't it's funny because I didn't really realize it until this current relationship that I'm in now how much I beat myself up and how not gentle with myself I am and how I'm always it's like I'm list this internal perfectionist but there's an it's never perfect enough and I don't and on and it will never be perfect enough so I can keep trying and keep doing and keep doing but it's like that the doing isn't gonna get it more perfect actually stopping and slowing down is gonna make it so it's a little bit easier right really well said yeah thank you thanks yeah I can relate to that yeah very much the the the sense of of the ideal is so beautiful of how a person might be how I might be how I should be in and I think that after all of this work and all these years of trying to be you know that I'm gonna get hugely disappointed when I get sometimes feedback that tells me that I'm not there and so sometimes it really it's deeply and might take a day or two or three or a week or two or three mile through yeah Wow yeah yeah and so you've touched on this a little bit about what you've done to grow but what other things do you think in terms of this path in terms of being very positive and expansive but also having to deal wearn to deal with some of the difficulties what what lessons have you learned or how have you coped with that kind of thing yeah well did you want me to talk about subtype as well oh sure yeah yeah I'm sorry yes sure so I think you got the idea that I'm pretty much the one-on-one sexual subtype for sure and that was that was certainly very true when I was younger I could relate a great deal to what you you all said about about having an idea of visioning it out really clearly making it happen seeing what needed to happen putting out the energy making it happen enough I've created like three careers you know that we're all unusual and and unique that I just sort of created out of thin air and made them all work so I feel like I have that that what's it called self-preservation yeah quality very strongly yeah on the social side on this there's elements I've been involved in organizations I tend to be very committed we're celebrating our 20th anniversary a couple of weeks from now and and I've been very strongly committed to to my own projects to organizations I've been involved in so yeah just to put a little more weight on you're in favor of sevens yes not flavour so in terms of balance for me the need was to just be grounded I tended as I said earlier to discount so much the ordinary you know the mundane parts of life the the the things that need to be done to just move forward and not only move forward but to build solidly you know I didn't I didn't have much of a concept of that when I was young so these last 12 years have been running a landscaping business which is pretty grounded and four sometimes five employees and who need to be scheduled and directed and I have 40 clients that need to be taken care of with great detail because you near it never hear about all the good things that you do you hear about the things that don't get done things that weren't done Ryan have to be hugely detail-oriented none of that came naturally to me and and so I'm learning to discipline myself to take joy in these mundane things was very very important so that's been a really good balance for for my imaginative flighty expensive seven kind of qualities yeah right balancing that out by getting more focus getting more grounded yeah yeah sometimes said that sevens love the idea stage but implementing their plans is harder oh yeah it's excruciating to have to go through all that especially the billing yeah it's so funny one time I did a panel of sevens and they all agreed in the biggest to the highest degree that they all disliked paperwork yeah absolutely yeah billing yeah and also I want to say that you know I've come to really have really come to on or deeply the ordinary and ordinary people and and that's been that's been a real liberation for me yeah are you okay being bored now it's it's impossible to be bored everything's beautiful everything's beautiful my sister said about me she gets very irritated because she's afraid she's rather rational and scientific and and she says you rolling her eyes she says I have an epiphany Epiphany yeah yeah I have to control myself because for the first like the first three dead three or four decades of my life I believe that the way I was was the way everybody should be and I was dedicated to helping everybody see the glory of everything and the beauty of everything and you know the wonder of everything and and then I learned slowly that people got a little irritated by that's really it's great anything you also you want to say about the growth process or you know anything about any of that um I know in terms of I guess I touched on it earlier in terms of dealing with with difficulties and negative emotions and other people's negative emotions and and and hard conversations I feel like I've fun yeah I avoided that a lot in earlier years and now I really honor that and I've gotten quite good at it mmm yeah mm-hmm how have you learned how did you learn to get better at it well being forced to face my own negative sides my shadows which I tried you know really to avoid I tried every possible way to avoid those shadows for it for years and then and then being forced up against against them really forced me to look and to work and to drop down and and so I got into the work actually I mean I've been involved with an organization called the mankind project now for years that works a great deal with with shadow and helping men to understand and work with our shadows in a in a positive way in the interest of avoiding violence and depression and everything else that goes along with it it's great work yeah mm-hmm good okay so I want to just say a little bit you can hold on to that seventh this a little bit about the arrow movements because I think they're especially interesting with seven we've touched on it a little bit Charlotte mentioned five but so sevens they're going against the arrow they go to five and five is five is a place where they can exactly like they've been saying I think in many different beautiful ways go inside go deeper into their own experience sink into areas of knowledge or area of work that they may be working in sometimes sevens that relate to the phrase jack of all trades master of none so here they get more deeply into developing more expertise and their skill in a deeper way knowing more being more internal quieter slowing down going like when they talked about going into nature I think all of these might be going into a five space coming out of the world and more deeply into themselves and thinking more deeply about things and then that gives them more grounding inside themselves to make the more difficult trip two one one is sometimes called the stress point but I think it's actually the point of spiritual growth as well and of course spiritual growth is stressful so it makes sense that that's harder or more challenging but sevens when they go to one it's a little bit it's like well what they've been talking about already really clearly which is needing to get more grounded more grounded in the body learning to implement their I idealistic ideas and the possibilities they envision in reality learning what are the steps that are needed to take to get more grounded and more practical ones are very good at creating processes and making things happen through a step by step routine or rule-bound way and so it helps 7-s learn to be more self disciplined learning to bring their visions into reality in a more grounded way and learning to be more in their body and more in to exactly like Garth was just saying balancing out that the ability to be very mental and envision and imagine in such beautiful big ways but then learning to balance that out by being more in the body and more in the world and more in a step-by-step process of implementing things or making things happen in that way I've been building business systems for the last two or three years anathema to a seven so to me at least so so that's been an achievement that you've been doing lately that wouldn't have been wouldn't have come so naturally to you exactly I think that one stuff is stuff that doesn't come so naturally to sevens it can feel more tedious and boring and not as fun and yeah when they're able to really do that it's a it's a really nice way to balance out what they tend to be so good at in terms of innovative thinking and positive visions yes please yeah add something so I just wanted to add a dark side of the seven going to the one yeah so when I when I'm really stressed out like I notice it if I'm putting on some big training program or workshop and I get there anally early and I'm totally in a1 mode I mean I am making sure every eye is that at every T people who work with me you know just think I'm a different what if they don't know any a grant and the Enneagram they think of myers-briggs you know they think that I'm like you know just stj you know because I am I just turn into this crazy lady and just making sure everything is perfect you know and then once and it's funny because if I work with somebody who's like that then I can relax and be myself and self and have fun interests so it's really better if I work with somebody who's opposite from me yes who takes that role and I remember that I worked with this one fellow who was very STJ and he ESTJ and he always had his watch on he was just anal about the time and it was so great working with them because I could throw my watch off and like relax and laugh and have fun otherwise I would have taken that role interesting so I really noticed that when I'm stressed yeah you know how really crazy I get and I have to breathe and try to go to the five and meditate and do all these things to come back to yes and you find that we can slide to both airline points in an unconscious way yeah where we often act out sort of the lower tendencies yes I you know and so that's one way that the arrows make sense is that they're places almost like release valves where we can go under certain circumstances and it's a great example of seven going to one in and under those circumstances but then there are also developmental opportunities so we can also use them as ways to balance ourselves out and a bigger way to to be more than than just our personality yeah and to be successful with my business yeah this is the good part yeah right right right which again if you look if you know seven and one at this point you can see how they're really good balancing points similar when ones go to seven it's really freeing for them to be able to have more fun and be lighter and more relaxed and just go with the flow and be spontaneous yeah the way healthy sevens are yeah yeah great anyone else want to comment to those move it make a comment around those movements to five and one yeah very very similar when I'm stressed at work the highs and the lows of being in one eye the not so positive part is I get extremely critical and judgmental and of my son we talked about touched on this earlier about sevens being self criticizing and I can beat myself up like crazy but other people too and very like rigid um so that's not that's the not pretty side but the positive side is that with that monkey mind it helps to get me grounded it helps to so I work with a lot of paper I'm contracts on my contracts negotiator so um and I've got a lot of projects so it helps me to get focused I can get into my projects or my contracts and really be productive be much more productive mm-hmm so and be you know with my mind and be spot-on with kind of kind of blend that sort of sharp mind with sort of more sort of discipline around getting things done and doing some things in a particular way yeah so that's um so I do I appreciate that part of the one and then with the five yeah exactly that it's it's it's locking myself up in my house just I can get lost in my house and and away from the outside world away from all the social activities allows me to go in and to just be with me and it's funny one time I was going through a period of where oh really but you know what's that word respect you know thinking about things reflective thank you yeah a retrospective period and I was talking to a friend on the phone and he said to me something like you know you're being really stingy and I thought wow isn't that interesting for the five with avarice of my time and not wanting to do all this but it didn't bother me because I it just it felt like what I needed to have been more of a balancing out of being too much out there feeling too giving too much right mm-hmm right right right so that that's been my experience okay mine's very similar not a whole lot to add but definitely very critical and judgmental under stress especially with people close to me and just lashing out and now I catch myself more when I'm doing it and trying to take a step back but it's still like that you know it's like the the jury's already heard the information so you can't really take it back and so I had a boyfriend say that to me one time he said something to her I said nevermind nevermind he goes you can't take it back you've already said it the juries are you know like okay sorry you can't unsay that exactly yeah very very critical and and thinking that everybody should do things the way that I would do them and thinking that everyone thinks the same way that I do and then when they don't it's like I'm like surprised and shocked and the reality of it is is like it's really great that we all don't think alike yeah and then for for the the five side for me it's really learning how to say no I mean last night there were lots of different things I could do I had a few different invites and I said you know I'm gonna actually take a bath and read in Enneagram book so it was like that was that was just little things like that just the saying then no when I have first so many years been yes to everything and fit so many things in in a day that the average person would go how could you even possibly do that and now I realize the value in the in the nose and saying no and slowing down mm-hmm beautiful okay thanks anything you want to add or you kind of already spoke to that about the no it's just the last couple years beginning to realize how wonderful it is to just go into my own space and not have to respond to everything and everybody all the time because everyone sees us as this fun we're fun beings of light and we always have we know where the party is and we know where the gatherings are and we know where you know and and even though we do we forget that sometimes not going to that party is actually a really good thing mmm mmm vibing out inside the house can be a good balancing point for you yeah okay thank you so much Michael is there any comment or question you had for the panel well first of all I just think it's all the panels today have been extraordinary but listening to the sixes in the 7s has been amazing and I appreciate sevens a lot I learned some things today I didn't know sevenths were so sensitive to criticism I didn't know that that how you struggled with that and the other thing I've just been learning I'm more aware of today is how real the growth trajectories are for all of us you know that we start with these patterns and then just listening to you all talk about how you've grown is very powerful so I think what I'm sensing right now which goes into the question period that we'll have and then the final time with Beatrice is just the growth that is taking place in me by the experience of these three days together and listening to all of these things I think partly because because I am so comfortable with being a social / section well five and enjoying the space so much and then I listen to the types that struggle more with growth and I think to myself somehow your struggles inspire me to go beyond my comfort and and more consciously explore where the growth trajectories are from you something like that but I just have a deep sense of how how extraordinary these three days of panels have been both in deepening my sense of Enneagram but also just in our our individual and collective movement that just feels to me like there's something going on here I mean common wheels a place you know given that Arlene Osmond and I Arlene because here have done 200 would you raise your hand early arlene coordinates the cancer help program and so we've done 205 week-long retreats and those retreats tend to be extremely powerful and transformational so this is a place where these kinds of experiences happen and I just experienced in some quiet way that happening with the community of us that have gone through this that there's movement taking place in us as a result of doing this together I mean one of our friends Francis Weller has a great line I forget who he takes it from but he says this work is the solitary journey that you cannot do alone this is the solitude work that you cannot kneel along and I feel that about what's happening here that this is the solitary work but we can't do it alone and when we create this kind of energetic body it intensifies our collective ability to do the solitary work by coming together to do it something like that thank you who said that excuse me well Francis Weller who co-leads the cancer help program is the person who uses the quote ralindi but he he borrowed it from someone if it comes to me I'll let you know but it fits with the Enneagram because kerchief said alone one man can do nothing like we need to do this by definition in groups in collectively its collective work yeah so questions for the sevens yes question for you Enneagram understand the patterns I know Dan arrow is going to vote the heart and head and in most systems of growth I've heard about you sort of integrate the mind the body the heart but with the heart and the head types two of them don't integrate to the other side yeah I mean I think it's true that all of us need to incorporate body mind and spirit and you know we all need to get into all three centers I think that's just sort of a basic idea behind the Enneagram but I do think there there are specific types that that the arrow lines are more about balancing and antidotes and sometimes it said that for instance so for for instance doesn't for goes to two and one and so sometimes it said that fours head type is actually seven because there's an invisible line between four and seven but you can also think about it as forest going to one and then seven but but I'm not exactly sure why the why all the why behind it but but I know that first and foremost those are balancing points but yes and at the same time we all need to integrate all three centres and apparently there was a comment beneath one of the videos that they posted that I'm someone was saying I'm a five and not a two and I took that as a big compliment because I think I think I am pretty mental for a two you know so I think there's also hidden ways that these things show up but I'm not exactly sure of a complete answer for your definition but that observation is on point for sure that not every type goes to sort of a head type to other centers yeah yeah other questions for Simmons yes well we have two people do talked about physical injuries or physical impairments recently and I'm curious how that when you're innocent brought down physically and you can't be out there and I'm just curious about that experience is that experience different for a seven that it is for somebody else anything either of you want to say about anyone want to say about sort of visiting physically limited given the difficulty with limitation yeah Charlotte so I actually had a couple sort of different experiences with this because one is I suddenly got Gyan beret which was very very serious where all of a sudden I started getting paralyzed and legs Wow yeah it was just it came out very suddenly fortunately within three months I was I was a miracle person that just was healed from it but it was I was in such denial the week that I was getting it I'm telling you it was really weird and I remember my sister researching cuz I started having these symptoms and she was saying I think you have Guillen Brae and I wrote back there is no way I have that like I just got this like strong like oh eight and your energy you know like are you kidding me no way would I have that like total denial and then you know and then I when they took me to intensive care and he said I'm admitting you I said no like are you kidding me you know it it was so when I looked back I was in complete denial like almost the whole first part of it people say you're really sick and no way I'm sorry I don't do I don't do serious sickness maybe a knee surgery or something that no I don't do serious so that was interesting and I realized in retrospect that was my seven like just trying to protect me from how scary it was like I look back now and get scared but so that was one thing but then to Kathleen's questions I mean we're friends so she knows that I've been struggling with I am so active with biking and being out in nature and I've been going crazy with just being in the house and there's only so much reading I want to do and I'm not one to watch TV so I've been begging people to come over and visit me come over and visit me because I was able to drive after two weeks and I got really excited I've had all I can drive but then I realized no you're all dressed up you have nowhere to go you can't do anything you know I can't go hiking I can go for a drive I can go to Trader Joe's but so yeah it's not easy it's frustrating so I'll just share one thing I was training for a triathlon and I tripped and fell and broke my finger and had to have surgery and I had this big thing I had to wear and I had I couldn't do the travel and I couldn't do my training and so for two months I just went into this depression now it was a depression for me because I wasn't getting that adrenaline that I was getting from all the exercise that I had been doing I couldn't go and do all the things I mean just in every way I just was depressed for two months and yeah that gonna happen yeah yeah it was passed it along the line cuz think we all have the story yeah yeah I totally can relate to both of you guys with the with not being just being grounded at home and I don't know your question about is it different than other types the pain.i that's a good question I don't know I think that denial may be one piece of it or that it's a big deal that it really is hard to be limited in that physical way and so I think denial and depression I think these are it makes sense you know in terms of it's really hard as a 7 to experience something like that yeah I mean I know even with my own back pain I after that like going around and around with the insurance company and they finally denied my MRI and at that point I was still not mobile and I said you know what I'm taking my health into my own hands forget about it and so I started doing tons of research and I was like okay so and then I started looking at the worst possible scenario so like okay if I have herniated discs and I'm gonna have to have surgery and oh my god you know and I just but I realized that I needed to get moving even if I didn't feel like I could move I needed to try and move and the more I took my health into my own hands and it was just great and probably the best thing that happened to me during the whole being down was I have a friend that's really into Enneagram and since I was pretty new at it and she left ten Enneagram books on her doorstep for me oh so I just got to read and read and read and read until I couldn't read anymore but but that whole the depression is real like it's it's really real when you're used to being super active and super busy and to be down like that it's like yeah when you wonder if it's gonna end and when it does and it starts to subside like you had the freedom to drive and like you you know is like right it's like God's wonderful yeah I get it totally get him you know one thing I haven't sort of fully heard said about sevens I have a friend who's a very evolved spiritual sermon and he is so positive about everyone and everything and he always and it doesn't come across as fake in any way it's just like this deep spiritual sense you know that the beautiful quote and all will be well and all manner of things will be well and what was coming up in me when some of you were talking about the know is that psychologically denial gets a lot of bad press which isn't necessarily deserved that denial in illness or in difficult situations can actually be a tremendously positive force and you just think about you know Garth was talking about I think was God talking about teaches somebody was talking about teaching imagery yeah there there are I mean it can be done badly it can be turned into a you know just sort of a new-age stereotype of positive thinking will get you there but it's also true that done well that positive thinking and imagery and denial and all these ways of can in fact be profoundly beneficial so it just seems to me that one of the high the truest high sides of seven is that it is a guide to that spiritual reality physical reality social and emotional reality that bringing this affirmation into the world can move the ark and the right direction [Music] year and a half ago I had a really horrendous shoulder accident plunging over an embankment on my bicycle mmm and just tore it all up and it took a year and a half to get better at first I I thought okay um this I've never had anything like this before how am I gonna respond to this and I thought well I guess I just better decide them old now this is this is my rite of passage into my later years and I won't ride my bike anymore and I'll just be more studious and take the quiet time I've been wanting and so on but something in me my seven nature you know that adventurous nature I you know people said are you driving and of course I'm driving and and you know the whole ten ten o'clock two o'clock on the driving I've never done that you know I Drive with my knees it doesn't matter if one arms goes right with both arms gone so I was driving right away and then I went you know like two weeks after the accident I was at a mankind project weekend and they gave me you know supervising the cleanup is one of my is one of my duties and I couldn't stand everybody everybody else working so I was like mopping with one hand you know well the other arm was in a sling and so there's this force inside of inside of me perhaps is a seven that is you know that's just so life-affirming and adventurous and wanting to wanting to do so then I thought okay well I'm gonna get back on my bicycle but I won't ride on the trails anymore I'll just write on the safe fire roads I couldn't I was back on the very same trail that I injured myself one you know I'm almost like the third ride I was back on that trail but just a little more carefully this time so there's something you know this this is a possible relationship do their own thing and spread their wings and I'm just wondering for those of us who are in close relationship to sevens how can we give you the space to spread your wings good question how can they how can we be in a relationship with you and give you space but at the same time you know have a good relationship and be in contact I would say the big part is communication like being in communication with us letting us know what your needs are so that we we because we want we want to honor your needs and we also want to honor our own needs for space but if you let us know you know we have this desire to be close to you how are you feeling about it and let us be a part of the process I think for me that would be really helpful yeah anyone else I think entering into the adventurous spirit is really important I'm in relationship with the six and so almost anything and I suggest the immediate answer is no it doesn't doesn't tend towards you know the cultivating you know a lot of yeah what you want so being able to enter into the adventurous spirit and go along with that is really helpful being positive yeah mm-hmm anyone else women okay they want to say something about your successful 13-year relationship we can I think because we met later in life mmm so we're both very independent so he gives me a lot of space I give him a lot of space we often take separate trips not necessarily I mean usually family-oriented I mean we'll do vacations together but and I think we both really relish and having that time alone or to ourselves and we don't we give that to each other it's it's not a problem and so that's worked very well for us in terms of friends friendships I'm not sure if you're talking about romantic or just in general friends yeah yeah yeah close relationships um communication yes is key adventure I kind of agree it's something adventurous for me if it's too sticky that that can be an issue for me if I feel they're too needy or too sticky sticky being kind of the person's needy needing things of you and so you know at first I want to say you know give us you know if we make a date or something to give time but I also like spontaneity I like hey can you meet for breakfast this morning sometimes that's the best thing because it's I don't have a plan and yeah I'm free and that sounds great so I think just what I would add is just about constant negativity I mean that's something if whether it be like putting out an offer and having the person constantly saying I don't think so I'm cleaning my sock drawer today you know it's like you know so people in my relationships it's people who say yes you know people who say yes to an offer people who offer back so the reciprocity the and the positivity I mean and I could relate with having friends call and I I will spend time helping problem-solve and I love that I love being and I think closeness I don't know about the closest is really important to me I mean intimacy and my friendships are just something I so highly value so it's not about that kind of space it's more about you know don't fence me in with your negativity or saying no to the offers that kind of thing that that's infringing upon my space yeah but it's not the closeness or the caring yeah you like closest yeah okay yeah okay any other questions looks like we might be finished okay thank you very much sevens [Applause] you [Music] you

Channel: NewSchoolCommonweal

Views: 35,132

Rating: 4.8781724 out of 5

Keywords: TNS, Enneagram, archetype, psychology, archetypal, personality, Beatrice, Chestnut, Palmer, Helen, Gurdjieff, Lerner, Michael, HR, organizations, 5 type, 6 type, 7 type

Id: cl_fHZZhjJA

Length: 91min 32sec (5492 seconds)

Published: Wed May 01 2019