Enneagram Series Type 7: Enthusiastic Visionary

[Music] hello everyone welcome my name is hayden lee master certified executive life and leadership coach and welcome to our enneagram series it's been awesome meeting all of our panelists from all the different types and i'm so excited to meet my enneagram 7 friends today before we do that i want to remind everyone what the enneagram is you know i like to uh call the enneagram a system of self-awareness um and a system of motivation and really a system of self-liberation because what the enneagram does it it helps us not it doesn't put us in a box it actually helps us expand our box and helps us realize the box we put ourselves in by tending to have default thinking patterns feeling patterns and acting patterns that may actually limit us from being our best self and being our whole authentic selves and the enneagram remember is all about motivation it's not about behavior it goes to the the bottom of the iceberg to help us understand why we do what we do and also help us understand why other people do what they do so without further ado let's meet our fabulous enneagram seven types today enneagram seven which is often nicknamed the enthusiastic visionary or sometimes the optimist the motivation for the seven is to experience it all and to avoid boredom or pain so i would love to go around and meet our enneagram sevens today if you could just introduce yourselves with your name where you're from and a sentence or two about what you do so who would like to start i'll start i can't believe it took it it took us all that long to jump in oh my god four quiet sevens when does that happen it's so polite um a sunday i'm blaming it on sunday yes oh mercy hey hayden and everybody i am sarah albritton uh i am an executive coach and a budding intuitive mentor i am from winston-salem north carolina and um apparently i've been a seven all my life and i'm happy to be here yeah thank you sarah shelley yes i'm gonna keep um muting when i'm not talking because we've got some some over enthusiastic i think we have some enthusiastic visionary dogs across the street they're quite they're quite eager to get in on the conversation so i'm shelley paxton i am in chicago and um i am a speaker writer um well speaker author and coach as well i call myself a rebel soul a liberator of souls and an author of a book called soul battle a corporate rebel's guide to finding your best life nice thank you shelly i'm sorry sorry liberator of how many souls a billion well not yet but we're on a path yeah you may have surpassed it already you just don't know that's true i love you so much all right i'll chime in um my name is david taylor klaus normally connecting in from atlanta right now i'm on a location up in north georgia um the work that i do is best described is reintroducing successful entrepreneurs and senior executives to their families i do that through a mix of one-to-one coaching for the leader and coaching for the teams they lead and uh i got a hint to enneagram a long time ago from somebody who had no idea what they're doing and just said take this little online test so i knew that i was a seven but until i sat with hayden for however long we did i had no idea what that really meant and so like sarah been a seven all my life and it's uh been instrumental in charting the course of what i am and what i do nice cool thank you david wendy i'm i'm working off mute and getting somewhere where it's not super noisy um my name is wendy sorello um yeah i've been a seven all my life as well um i'm in san diego california and i am a curator of magical experiences so i um a little bit of a glorified event planner uh primarily for transformational events and leaders nice wonderful thank you wendy and welcome everyone and i heard you all already allude a little bit to i was always a seven and yes the belief of the enneagram is that you were born a seven and you will die a seven it is part of who you are and there's always you know sometimes there's a debate between nature versus nurture so the nature of it is we are born our type and the nurture of it is depending on our life experiences and our upbringing is how our behavior manifests itself so as a seven whose motivation is to experience everything avoid boredom avoid pain you know your life experiences um maybe you know affect your behavior and how that how that shows up so yeah also i want to make the point that the enneagram is not static you know the more you know your core type the more you can use it as a system as a road map to be able to use your wings and your lines of development which we'll use today so that's why i love it the enneagram so much because it is about developing into your best self it's not just simply a typing tool like you know this is what you are it's really used to expand and in reality all the types are in us and we want to learn how to you know be the best of our type in order to incorporate all the other types inside of us to be truly our best self so my first question to kick off the discussion is when i when you first received your results what were your first reactions reading through it i'll go i know we're all like not eager and eager um so i i a lot of it was not surprising um but it's it was a lot of it was not surprising but the part that i i didn't like was that i overestimate my abilities that was the one part i was like oh oops g-rated that was the one part that i overestimate my abilities that i kind of knew was true but had never really been confronted with it like that um and i mean for me it was fun to read it was fun to read i i loved it and there were some parts of me that i was like ooh ow yeah what part was that well go ahead david well like wendy i had i had some cringe-worthy cringy responses to it when it hit you know the vice is gluttony i was like oh that that that just shone a light on things that kind of avoiding the i would avoid being aware of and it was very helpful in illuminating patterns and it gave me another way to see where i you know on one hand it's the instant expert and on the other hand it's wow i want to dive into everything and dive deep and it was where am i balancing those two and where does it serve and where does it definitely not serve so i had a very cringy response to pieces this i david i love that you brought this up because i was just talking to sarah about this yesterday that bit i remember hayden when you first were telling me that our virtue is sobriety and our vice is gluttony and i was just like oh like it just landed so deeply and i know i've enjoyed a cocktail with most of you on this know all of you on this call and uh yeah so there and i know it just doesn't mean drinking but like gluttony in life and that hedonism and that indulgence and i can totally see that pattern in my life and i can also see the role of sobriety in my life so that was that was one that hit me really hard the the other one hayden i don't know if you remember this but we were we were doing the deep dive into this together i believe early on when i was writing the book it was either early on or right in the middle and i was struggling and the thing that felt a bit liberating to me was just really understanding that it's hard for us as sevens to see through these long-term projects and to sit still with something for a very long period of time and so the book was just like it was exhausting me to just know i had to keep coming and sitting in front of this computer day after day and showing up and i was like when is this going to be done like that whole boredom i'm ready to move on thing was very real no and that would be done it's another big piece because it i can get fixated on a piece you know the the saying is that you know kindergarten teachers will say every kid's an artist you just have to know when to take away the paper right because knowing when something's done i'm not good at that i will over i will continue to tweak and continue to tweak and continue to tweak and that's one of the things that i have to ratchet back from and like shelly going through the book process there was a lot of how long before i actually said it was done was really done so um in another earlier life um i was a well am still a myers-briggs expert so um in reading through all this i was like yep yep and my preferences on myers-briggs or entp and i don't know if anybody else has done that here if anyone else resonates with that as well um so so from a oh i can imagine some people who've never done any of this work reading this would be how did you get in my head and have you been paying rent and you know who are you people and how did you get there um having done this work all my life i didn't have that experience but what was really kind of cool for me at at this age is um realizing oh yeah that used to be true oh yeah you know or oh i i learned to do that like the self-talk i deserve what i i deserve what i want that's a learned thing for me um and the whole gluttony piece just really shelly based on what you just said realizing in the last gasp of my first marriage we were having people over to our house five nights a week and it was like how many different ways can i run from and i thought we were just having a good time you know but how many different ways can i run from the reality of you know a nice guy but just a dead relationship from a romantic romantic sense so um it was it was really fun to kind of read through and think hey no really i don't i don't well and and come to terms with myself and and get get a little uh a little squidgy about it from time to time nice thank you sarah what i'm already realizing talking to these magnificent sevens is everyone in this group you know is passionate about personal development and professional development so so already i can see that there's a higher level of integration you know with this group than maybe a an average group of sevens what integration means in the enneagram world is the ability to be able to use your self-awareness and use all parts of you like sarah was saying is like maybe in a younger version of herself in her early 20s it would have been different than she is now as a seven but i love that we're already diving in to some of the darker parts of the seven because usually sevens avoid boredom avoid pain and reframe expert reframers right but as sarah was saying like this throwing these parties every night you know now she can see that maybe he was avoiding something that was right in front of her face right maybe the word relationship wasn't working but let's keep on throwing parties you know maybe that will that will help so tell us all about this this um we call them this the feeling of the seven is sometimes being uncomfortable with pain or discomfort so then they'll reframe it to make themselves feel better or rationalize it to make them feel better and distract themselves so shelley how's that land for you oh my god i built a whole career on it 26 years in the corporate world and i was like okay well if i've got to tough it out in this thing that doesn't really give me my freedom right and freedom is the core of who we are as sevens then i'm gonna make it as fun as possible i'm gonna make this career trajectory and adventure and so i moved over to istanbul turkey and stayed there for four years and then went and lived in new york city and then you know went over to shanghai china i literally used my career as a round the world ticket and and worked for some of the most incredible brands that rode motorcycles around the world on harley-davidson which i happen to have one of my t-shirts on today so it's interesting that was it for me and i realized that was my way of totally and completely not getting to the root of the issue and just saying well then i'm gonna create if this is where i should be because i was using the should word a lot then i'm gonna make this as fun as possible and so yeah story of my career up until four years ago i love that yeah for me highlight though of course fun adventure and spontaneity are all part of the seven and to find the fun and spontaneity even in parts of life that are not working but to make it fun instead of head-on directly addressing the issue now go ahead dtk yeah and and for me it was exhausting my team i i was building a company through the lens of what i thought was expected in other words i was shooting like as shelly was describing but instead of moving all over the planet i would come up with these new initiatives and new ideas and things we could do for the company it's like i would come back from my monthly peer group meeting and it was amazing how everybody in the office was sick for the next two days it was just they were exhausted with all the ideas that i was bringing to keep it fresh and alive for me to put that lipstick on that pig and try to make it something engaging for me and i was wearing them out completely but i was entertained yeah what about you wendy sarah i love i was thinking about that same metaphor putting lipstick on the pig you know the sevens are great at having that pig being so pretty and so much lipstick and glitter and eye shadow yet it's still that big so yeah wendy well i think it's it's it's also my a 100 putting lipstick on a pig great at it um and for me it was more like i was i fooled myself as much as i fooled everybody else i was great at convincing myself it was great and it was fun and it was working and it was um exactly what i wanted and so i think that was the i was my own biggest saboteur or not saboteur like fool like i just i fooled i convinced myself and it was way more comfortable to um be in denial and have a great like all fun again like lots and lots going on then to like really sink into the reality of like oh wow this is bad so and on the mother my truth is also i never like it had to get it had to it got so bad out of my own control like i never pulled the trigger i was committed to it being good and fun and pretty and uh you know so until i you know until i couldn't anymore so that was the old as before i won't do that again i think yeah so so dark side bright side um when i did decide to leave my marriage um my son who was 15 at the time a couple years later we were walking and he said you know i never thought i'd be glad that you and dad split up i was like okay and he said but here's the thing when you decided to get real he said we were in danger of becoming the perfect family and that's how we put it we were in danger of becoming the perfect family and i think that's the lipstick on the pig side of it and he said you know um when you decided to get real you made room for the rest of us to get real and i don't know that we'll ever be able to thank you for that so so you know bright side dark side of of all that now there is a flexibility and a fluidity that comes with things too as i'm telling the story i'm thinking maybe this should have been my first sign when at my at my wedding one of the bridesmaids comes up i mean we're all dressed we're across the street from the church we're ready to rock and roll and one of the bridesmaids comes up and says we're short a bouquet and i'm like wait what we're short of a k about that time a groomsman comes up we're short of boutonniere and like that i took apart i took away another bouquet made single stems for the maiden matron of honor to carry fixed a boutonniere was like go go go and and it looked beautiful and for years that became de rigueur at the weddings in northern virginia to have single stem flowers held by the maiden matron of honor so yeah it was a lipstick on a pig but it turned out to be pretty good oh my god sarah i love the reframe that you just did in front of our faces yep like uh like i love it there was the reframe it started with the story of a bad marriage it ended up into how you set the trend for wedding flowers well which is which is awesome it is definitely we saw ladies and gentlemen we saw before our eyes the gift of the seven to start you know to take a bad situation and make it into something positive which i think is a great gift right but it can become the blind spot too and it become the blind spot of the seven like the expert reframer the expert rash able to rationalize oh look we got delayed in the picture you know able to um rationalize negative emotions and negative feelings but when it ends up being a blind spot it could it could leave sevens incomplete or not whole because they're just focusing on the positive they're just you know they're avoiding that negative emotion avoiding that you know screaming elephant in the room so sarah might be really good we might be really good at putting a veneer on things but we know that it's just a veneer exactly that's a lot that's a draining energy yeah yeah i used to say can i just jump in i used to say that i literally i think only five years ago woke up to this idea that success and fulfillment are not mutually exclusive and i put lipstick on that pig for 26 years probably longer than that until i finally listened to myself had this nightmare that was ripping me out of my sleep and forced me to reconcile with the fact that i was completing completely out of alignment with my truth yeah and those were some dark days and i became an entrepreneur at 28. i i was like done with maybe it was i don't know anyway somewhere in there i was i was done with you know organizational life yeah i think i mean that's like i said great insight you know from all of you all of us are in that space already of development but you know i think all of you are recognizing this the sevens who are awesome by the way right so fun spontaneous adventurous but there's that keeping yourselves busy to distract you from the truth right which is the hard truth yeah shelley wanted to add something no that that i i have said busyness has been one of my biggest addictions to kik honestly i think busyness is how i kept myself numb and how i kept you know that was my lipstick for a long time yeah and it's funny how you use the word num because it does make me think of the vice and the virtue right um you know the vice of the seven is gluttony which could be gluttony of experiences gluttony of making connections you know just excess you know just piling things on whereas the vice is sobriety and not necessarily sober from drugs and alcohol but the probability of being woke like clear-headed awake honest with oneself seeing things clearly and shelly sing her her addictedness was being busy because it kept her numb just like alcohol does to one right it keeps you numb from seeing the sober truth right and the combination of the two was awesome addicted to busyness and addicted to cocktails yes that could be fun your next book title shelly the busy drunk yes that's so good i love it well traveling the world how to write a book yeah i was saying traveling the world being busy um in your corporate career but hitting up every hotel bar i mean that sounds fun i want to hit up i can have cocktails in hong kong and singapore and london yeah anyway so something i also want to talk about though is you know the enneagram um it has three centers there's an action center a feeling center and a thinking center so the action center is types eight nine and one and they tend to struggle something with um anger and then types two three and four is the feeling center and they have some sort of like struggle with sadness or shame and self-worth and types five six and seven sit in the um thinking center and they struggle with uh fear and so how does that land with you i i like i said i think sevens are very positive and optimistic and one night i one not might not see that there's that underlying fear of of something and one that and one might not think that the seven is in the thinking center because they often are very busy but seven's minds are very active like imagination creativity their minds are always thinking of the next step ahead and it stems from fear some sort of relationship with fear how does that all end with you well i was surprised that it was a thinking like that was the primary place until you explain it like that like right because i feel like i feel things like i feel like i really feel things and i also am i mean there is a huge bias for action right like there's a there's there's the doing doing doing um but when so when you explain it like that it actually all does come from you know this very busy very active very imaginative very creative thing going on up here it just man it feels like i'm manifest in the world not in here if that makes sense actually let me add that it does make sense because i do want to make a distinction seven this the type seven comes from the thinking center place but as individuals the thinking center might not be your highest center of expression right because i think a few of you are feeling center forward but you you still the the seven type comes from the thinking center so so you may lead with feelings i know for a fact dtk's thinking center is higher than his other centers but there but the sevenness is from the feeling of fear in some way if they're missing out fear of being trapped fear of um being controlled so because that fear is there and then you and an independent of that fear you could be high action center high feeling center or high thinking center so that's independent of the fact that seven comes from that fear place does that make sense that that i struggle with as well because i'm super high on the feeling action and thinking and and i i get the fear as a construct and and when i feel fear i don't feel it in my body i feel it here i vibrate it's just it's super uncomfortable but everything i do leads from that feeling center and so it was uncomfortable looking at that it makes sense but hearing the description of the fear coming from here as you described it makes a lot of sense now yeah that was super helpful yeah i like that too i i think i was confused i was just looking at mine and i am also like highest in terms of feeling and then action and then thinking so i think dtk same thing right and i didn't totally understand that until just now and and honestly the other thing that just came to me hayden is you offered up that really powerful description is i think for the longest time i had a fear of one being honest with myself and certainly a fear of others seeing my true self a fear of showing or sharing what was really going on inside so i kind of had this perfectly polished armored up exterior and a fear of me even understanding it let alone sharing it which is why i kind of wrote the really raw and vulnerable book i did because that's the journey i've been on so now i kind of understand it better that really hits something remarkable about enneagram and i know this isn't necessarily a commercial frannogram but each time that we've had a conversation about it uh and i imagine for people each of you has been in this panel and every time i've gone back to read through more or to read some of the books that aiden's recommended um this just goes deeper and deeper and deeper the rabbit hole is super deep and i learned something more about it or connect with something more about it each time i go through it um and okay so as a seven with the instant expert syndrome yeah that's that's kind of frustrating about this you know i want to know it but then every time i go back in there's more so that's been a fascinating experience as i digest this yeah so this whole fear thing um i struggle uh struggle's not the right word um i'm playing with it i guess there's my lipstick um and i think one of my so two two big fears one is the whole missing out thing that i guess is almost a caricature of seven and it's not i mean sometimes it's missing out on the fun sometimes it's missing out on connection [Music] and sometimes it's like missing out on some superlative being being my best being the best figuring it out just be being out front whatever all that is but shelley as i was listening to you again i was thinking back around one of my biggest struggles i i landed in the process of of this divorce and this is ancient history but um i landed at a seven day silent retreat by accident i didn't know that's what that's what it was but what i got really up close with really fast was i was afraid of what i would hear i i and and and if i heard what i was pretty sure i would hear how am i going to dismantle the shiny armor of air quote the perfect family as my son described it because i had the world bought in on this lifestyle and the whole thing and so yeah so that was that was a deep fear i really learned a lot from that whole experience and as a coach it made me able to spot other people who are faking too yeah helps you hone your intuition i think you may have all heard me share this story before but you know there's been there was that um psychology experiment right where people can get to choose to sit in silence for 15 minutes with their thoughts or or or they can get a cash prize so it's literally just sit there in silence with their thoughts think about their life or they get after 15 minutes if they succeed in that they get a cash prize the only action they can do is they can push a lever that will electron electrically shock them you know it's a and um the majority of people push the lever the majority of people could not sit in silence with their own thoughts for 15 minutes they'd rather push the lever sacrifice the money prize as a little bit of what sarah was saying is that you know she went to the silent retreat and she that the fear was god what am i really going to uncover what am i really going to you know see in myself and that's very scary and i and i want to say uh remember five six and sevens live in the um come from the thinking center right which is different which is separate than whether or not they show up in thinking or not right we uncovered that but the five six and seven's relationship with the fear and relationship with how they think shows up differently the fives thinking and fear energy is inward right think of the fives we know the five is very introspective very great at being quiet very great at taking it all in internally the sixes relationship with fear and thinking is we call it confused or contradictory it's in and out right because i fear is do i want to do it or do i not do i trust this person or do not like am i afraid or am i not the seven's relationship with thinking it's external right it's not taking time to think in here it's like well these are the things i want to do what about this possibility what about this i want to do this i want to do this future thinking future forward so that's really fascinating too that five six and sevens have some relationship with fear and their thinking but it's in a different way like the sevens may not even know there's a fear there but this idea of thinking about what's next thinking about what's possible it is a fear of reflecting on what's happening in the present to be honest with oneself as to what is happening now i don't want to think about it so i'm going to think about what's next yeah dtk so what we sued ourselves with action or sue yes yes you soothe yourself with action which is like um the glory where so the vice is a fixation that we tend to get into and fixation means a default way of thinking acting and behaving that prevents you from being your whole self right so soothing yourself with action um as dtk said um you know seven sometimes can be notorious for uh having breath of knowledge not depth of knowledge right so it's like all right let me try the next thing let me take this course let me take this seminar let me read this book and then oftentimes you may have many books that may be unfinished on your nightstand because you want to just you know try lots of different things um and i love how you said soothe and that's coming from a little bit of um the feeling center right because you're a feeling center person i mean that word soothe is a very emotive word right did you want to say something shelley no i was just mining my giant stack of books that are half red i was totally relating to that point because i i get i mean this is the quintessential seven i get bored really easily i want to move on to the next thing or the new thing or the shiny thing or i still find myself doing that on a regular basis so and i'm a voracious reader and i realize like it's like this again was the challenge of me writing a book i was like is it done yet is it done yet is it done yet like i just i have a hard time sitting still with something for that long voracious starter hmm yeah and the really sucky follow through yeah i have an instant expert story before the before the days of internet i had a a gig it was one of my first sort of corporate gigs and it was on strategic planning or something and i can't remember how they found me and my business partner at the time but they did and it was i was kind of out of my depth and i was had dropped my son off at montessori and i was had turned on the radio and it was part way through an interview with an author on a book on strategic planning so i like pull over in the parking lot and i'm scratching down notes and stuff we didn't have cell phones then scratching down notes and everything and so i get home and i call my business partner i'm like okay i've got the two-day workshop planned here's what we're gonna do bam bam bam bam he's like wow that's great and you know i found that found the author and and so fast forward a couple months we were doing the workshop and i stood up and did my piece and i come back and there's a note from my business partner it says well done it's almost as if you read the book be honest here sevens how many of you actually read your enneagram report from beginning to end oh every page last night yeah [Laughter] well i'll be honest not in the first sitting i came back and played with it several times yeah if i chunked it out but i'll admit that i also like i pulled my print out again this morning and i was like oh [Laughter] i probably haven't actually spent enough time with it because i even started circling things i'm like oh i didn't remember that okay this is interesting i'm like jesus shelley like oh there's exercises in there uh-huh what she said well with something that's actually really even more interesting as ctk was saying you know the more you learn about enneagram the more layers and layers there is and another layer is there's actually different types of seven in this room right because in reality there's actually 27 enneagram types because within each core type there's three instincts and within the ins so your core type which all of your seven matched with your instinct becomes your subtype so so each of the nine types has is one has a dominant instinct so the three instincts are self preservation one to one and social and what that means is the self-preservation instinct is this idea of you know looking after one's needs first right one's own material safety physical safety you know pretty good with boundaries the one-to-one is having intense relationships with certain people having intense experiences and really really loving to connect with certain folks the social seven or the social instinct is about belonging to the group being aware of social hierarchy and being able to navigate around a group so we don't have any social sevens in in this group right now and the so and the social seven is a counter type the counter type is the one type is which is acts differently than the other types yeah this is another nuance of the enneagram so each of the nine types has a counter type so the social seven is the counter type because the social seven is about sacrifice so the motivation stays the the same between all three types but the social seven acts the least like the other types because he or she is about sacrificing for the group and still wanting to experience it all still avoiding pain and discomfort but the social seven's way of avoiding pain and discomfort is focusing on the group doing what's good for the group and the one to one sevens we have three of you know shelley sarah and dtk is the one to one seven the one to one seven tends to be the most romantic of the sevens like really great at wearing rose-colored glasses really great at the reframe really imaginative and they escape pain and boredom by escaping into their imagination really dreaming about what's possible and wendy is the self-preservation seven remember the motivation of wanting to experience it all is still the same but wendy has a self-preservation seven might have a little bit better boundaries than the other sevens right in order like seven wendy being able to attune to her own needs being able to you know um focus on her her own needs but however as a self-preservation seven her own needs are about experiencing it all so she is not afraid to be like well i'm gonna do this you know that by gluttony still can happen for a self-preservation seven to pile it on with things she wants to do but it comes from her place of taking care of herself whereas a one-to-one seven the roman the mullens who romanticize with the rose-colored glasses they still want to experience everything but they also really want to connect with certain people and experience that experience with shared experience is a lot more important um so how does that all land with you that we have the self-preservation let me go to wendy first when you heard about that self-preservation instinct how does that land with you well again like on the surface i was surprised i got on the surface like at the service level i'm like oh i'm a social like but i wouldn't say i was counter i'd just say i just want more people all the time like let's just do people um and then that need for connection i was actually really surprised to be a self-preservation except for like if i don't i get immobilized when i don't feel a certain level of security it it did i mean pick your pick your lane of what security means in any given moment but like i can't like there's a financial security piece where if i don't have it i can't be creative i just want to all my energy goes to get to that like ground zero of then being able to move same thing in social settings like i mean i can work a room but if i don't feel safe in a room like i'm out you know like i'm out so it's i'm like oh it is all about me well it is and i love how you said mature um material financial security is important to you and the fact that it's that security is important that's self-preservation right and i want to make the distinction the social instinct does not mean extroverted and social it means the ability to know about social hierarchy right uh have an instinct of belonging and know who's who in a room so with that said uh wendy you're all very social you're all very sociable but it's interesting how wendy you even said you know how to work a room because one of the things that the self-preservation 7 is able to do is know who to build alliances with to fulfill your needs yeah right because it is all about you it's like knowing who to network with it's so bad to give you it's not all so bad i mean feel good but it is but it's true yeah it's not about good or bad it's about think about the biological instincts of survival that's what it where it comes from we all need to one look out for our own needs to find partners to mate with to you know have a guarantee of the evolution of your species and three we also need to know how to get along with the group so that's where it comes from and we all have the instincts in us but it's just that we typed um we tend to have a dominant instinct so it's just fascinating that we're all sevens but there's the nuance of your instinct has you show up all a little in a different way yeah so what about our one to one sevens how's that lamb with you that creativity imagination romanticizing wanting to connect with certain people have shared experiences yeah dtk yes it fits and so i i looked at these types of the beginning and i was surprised that that i wasn't a subtype social um because that felt like more felt to me more the way i look at the world but it's you know as you describe it today and it's trying to try to deconstruct it as you go um it makes sense that intense bonds and loyalty almost to a fault and the always moving towards the more intense relationship and the relation in relationship style um you know it sort of matches that whole stimulation seeking side and yet it was still a surprise i have to say i wasn't surprised at all to be a one-to-one this is this is a piece of the original debrief that i didn't remember and so when i was reading this again i was like oh yeah that fits because had you asked me outside of this like how would you characterize your engagements i would always say i seek relationships on all levels with depth and intensity one thousand percent and so i when i was rereading that i'm like oh boom yeah like that's one that just feels like fits like a glove yeah that that fits for me too and and at this point in my life i would say that i am open to lots of ideas and open to hearing about a lot of different things that the gullible piece has uh has had its learning over the years so i don't i don't feel as gullible and i forbid anyone to call me a pollyanna anymore i used to call myself a pollyanna and had a really really knocked down drag out with somebody who i used to trust about it and that was the insult from his perspective that he threw at me and i looked at that situation and what the issue was and thought no this is not about me being a pollyanna this is about me living my values and you know you living in fear me living in abundance and that is i i i refuse that label from here forward am i open-minded yes am i engaged with a lot of ideas yes i will talk about a lot of ideas with anybody i i do i no longer maybe it's a choosing but i no longer choose to see myself as gullible yeah thank you sarah i mean well with life experience right once again with you know the experience but yes you know the sometimes a blind spot for sevens is you know could be you know saying yes and wanting all this experience you know and maybe not being as discerning as they could be you know to choosing what experiences you're involved in um two things so something else i wanted to say is the one-to-one type one-to-one subtype you know the seven tends to communicate uh through um like stories and pictures you know which sarah's already told us like a couple stories today and i love it like you know absolutely sevens love to you know communicate through you know their imagination and creativity and two i'm curious now you know with sarah talking about rejecting the pollyanna stereotype is um i heard this on in my enneagram class from another seven how he had a fear how sometimes as a seven that he may be viewed as lack of substance or as you know because i'm so fun and positive all the time like a you know a lack of um depth does that ever come up for you all like you know that lack of substance or seen as someone maybe flighty or lack of substance yeah sarah yeah it certainly used to and um and it it can raise its head from time to time but but that is a particular area over the last three or four years that i've done significant deep work on to to release that nice well as a i think as very early on i worked overtime to prove or to show that i was like intelligent and um i mean grounded would be the wrong i don't think it worked over time to show that i was grounded but i had i really wanted to prove that i was smart and that i could hold my own and that i you know and and so i guess yeah i i mean i've left i think being 50 you let a little bit of that like okay like buy in or don't but um but it showed up really early for me like i will prove to you i will be the smart one i will be you know again hold my own and have the intelligent conversation whether i really lit me up or not like you know like it wasn't the funnest thing to do but very committed very young dtk i saw you nod your head earlier when i you said that resonated with you too um yeah it did um again it was another piece that began to settle as i've gone deeper into this shelley anything to add about that fear not you know not being of substance or not taken seriously yeah what's been interesting for me kind of like sarah i've done a lot of work on this over the past like four years since i walked away from harley i've been on this sabbatical and what's been interesting to realize and i didn't even see this until just now is i always thought that i was like that people were seeing my depth i thought it was working really hard to show that there was more there and i was like i was just the sandwich board of my titles and all of this shiny armor and i think i thought i was doing it but i couldn't have been doing it because i wasn't being honest with myself so i wasn't even aware of that depth to bring it forward and now i'm only realizing that people see that now because it's what i lead with and it took a lot of work to get to that place so yeah i'm guessing there was a lot of fear around that but i think i was fooling myself again like we've been talking about another example of how it's like oh no no people get it like i'm deep i'm this i'm that and it's like no how could they have known that i wasn't even honest with myself that i have a i feels like an important question around that because i think like i was one of those people that didn't really uh like i i mean i think i didn't really do like deep friendships as a young person even good lord into my 30s as particularly with women and and definitely not in my first marriage and so it's like oh wait like is is it like our is it like the i mean inherently i don't know like do we have to like a bigger learning curve to attain that ability to go deep and to feel deeply and to be in deep relationships as seven like it has like a propensity to we're going to hold it off until we learn and are motivated to like go there or is that just my experiences consciously want it like right well the fact that you're asking this question is already a good reflection that you know you're that's the first step is awareness right because i think you know unhealthy sevens who may be in that blind spot not even being aware that they don't have deep relationships because they're not even aware that and there's two layers to death two types of death depth too there's depth of knowledge externally but there's also depth of knowing oneself so when the sevens don't have depth of no depth of knowing oneself they may not even realize that they have superficial relationships with friends they might not even know because they're going through the motions but it's fun you know and they're distracted by the fun and positivity like let's go out to happy hour every night with my friends and this is life but is that really deep friendship you know um but is that a seven thing like that flavor of i mean it has definitely been it was my experience like for a long time and i it was a a steep laborious learning curve to like first of all be aware that sucks and then to like and realize there's not you know there's very little and then to like build back up felt i mean like a lot of work i'm wondering if that's a seven flavor or is that just like life oh well i mean i think it could be a seven flavor i mean i don't wanna like you know you know stereotype but if we were to kind of uh label uh typical behaviors that could be a more seven than a four for example because the four's motivation is all about deep intense authentic relationships so force on a quest to have a deep and meaningful friendships whereas a sevens uh default isn't a quest for deep meaningful relationships it's you know more about experiencing lots of different fun things and finding people to do those things with you know but like i said with the work every type has the capability to be amazing leaders that have the ability to have amazing deep relationships well but but with that said wendy i think it's a good segue in to our last well you had a question sarah yeah this is gonna say you know the nature nurture example so as a seven i grew up on a 500 acre farmer in the middle of nowhere and and so i i think that was formative in terms of my even as a seven my capacity to be with myself and to be with i had one one friend from church who also went to the elementary school that was 40 minutes away you know and so and she's much quieter much more contemplative she's now an artist and i and i'm looking back due to this due to this conversation thinking wow that was probably pretty formative for me to have the experience early even as a seven of of going deep in order to have any connection at all yeah that's a great insight and i can imagine being a youngster without you know living in the middle of nowhere your imagination even comes into play even more right because as a one to one seven you have such vivid active imaginations and being a little girl without like lots of distraction and you know you might have to use your imagination even more than if you lived in this bustling animals yeah well back oh i could totally see little sarah you know making up for little games with her stuffed animals that's so cute um well the last thing i want to go over is the lines of development so with the seven there's two lines of development there's line to the one and the line to the five right and these lines are where you can develop into the best of the seven and the best of your type so the five is the quiet specialist right so the in the the five is the one who looks at depth of knowledge right and being really deep with introspection right very inward facing very inward looking right the fives motivation is to understand so kind of taking time you know like wendy was saying like she didn't really you know take time to think about oh a lot of my friendships aren't that deep but a five would you know kind of really looking at things in an objective way like to really analyze things hmm how are my relationships like you know as a five they may very much rate it on a scale of one to ten how deep are my relationships like a five is very good at that to be able to um be a compartmentalized like you know they're taking their emotions out of seeing things so that's one line is seven to five the other line is seven to one where one is the perfectionist to be able to have discipline and focus and structure and follow through which may be scary for a seven because a one is all about limits is all about boundaries and all about you know following through high attention to detail high follow through but here's another nuance though so both of those lines are important to help you step into your one and to step into your five but there's this idea of stretch and release which is another nuance of the enneagram so what does that mean so like i said stepping into one and stepping into your five or great development for sevens but there's also this notion of the release line is when you are in high strain and there's a lot going on in your life high stress high strain you actually might need to release to the five which is releasing stress releasing strain so it's like actively and intentionally stepping into your thigh for quiet time and a reflection to reach that equilibrium of feeling like all right i feel like myself again then you can stretch into your one which is really finish that project really show structure and discipline but if you're really high strain and stress in your life and you don't release into that five energy to just have quiet time and to think deeply by yourself you won't even be able to stretch to your best one does that kind of make sense is i think sometimes it's like you know all of you as a seven intuitively you know oh i know i need to follow through i need to stretch to my one but if you're a place in your life where you're just so much is bottled up you can't even you won't even be able to do it unless you go to your five first yeah dtk when we went through this uh one of the things i noticed on uh the section right before there's a report is i'm in high strain right and so what struck out for me in the five release was this piece this is the point of slowing down enough to get involved with things in depth release happens when you internalize your experiences and and that one that one landed hard it was like the last thing we talked about um but that's a piece that i really took and i think shelley we even talked about this the last stage is the book the part where it feels like you're at the baton death march of detail and that was the only way to get through it was to pause and choose intentionally choose to be still and be with it um it's the only way i got through and that was because of this awareness um so i i keep this piece the report in front of me potentially particularly the release to the five not the stretch to the one um so that that's been super helpful as things get complicated um i didn't play with the stretch as much well and i and also sometimes the release comes a lot a little easier right as ctk is saying it's like that's why it's called the releases there's a sigh almost of taking that time to relax taking that time to really think deeply but there comes to a point where you do need to stretch to the one to provoke deeper change and to really grow yeah shelly well to come full circle this is to you know exactly what you and i talked about this is the thing that stood out to me the most because i was in the midst of book writing and i remember talking about the one in particular and really i love dtk that you said that it's like because i was just like oh my god i don't even know where to find a perfectionist inside of me like i just don't know like i just keep rolling with it and making up and all the things and but i really i really did get it and i think it was that acknowledgement that it's okay to go to this five like because i was feeling so stressed and so strained about writing and the deadline that was looming and all the things and it was just like permission to just sit and relax and do something that fueled my soul be quiet and then get back in and really set those goals those deadlines those those boundaries to you know once i'm a little bit more refueled it was a good reminder and i honestly felt like i needed the permission because to go to the one right away felt like complete overwhelm to me so i like how those two play off of each other yeah dtk you get the slingshot by going to five you can slingshot to the one maybe that's what i try next yep yep the five also another metaphor is the five kind of helps you refill your cup in order to be able to stretch and do the harder work right about that it's the sole fuel yeah i i would say that the work with my intuitive coach and the work that i find myself now doing with new clients is around getting living in the five space more comfortably and and honoring and acknowledging soul information and soul language that you can only get to when you've had a chance to be quiet and is it awful that i feel like i've hired a one to do the one it feels like progress actually because i now see the reason that i am able now to work with my i call her my administrative angel is because rather than hate all that stuff i have recognized the importance of it and and really value and allow her to take over that part of of life am i avoiding a developmental experience no not not at all actually i mean i think that's well here's two things uh we we don't want to we don't use the enneagram just on the sole basis of hiring we don't want to do that because it's about motivation not behavior you know so because um no i mean hr no idea she's the one i just know that that's okay she serves for me but but in the sense of yeah i mean ones love administrative tasks you know they love that attention to detail but but with that said yes it's sometimes it's good to outsource you know things that you don't like to do but on the same token there's great stretches in your one in order for the freedom that you seek to see because that's the thing too as i think sevens love freedom and the true key to freedom in many aspects is follow-through it's finishing which which you set to to do will actually set you free like the the the boundaries and limitations that you avoid are actually the ones that will actually help you grow and give you freedom yeah yeah because you know if i mean shelley and any dtk with your books you know being completed you're free rather than thinking about being trapped by that book if you didn't finish it like imagine that like not finishing it is even more trapping than sitting down to actually finish it yeah that's that's really really helpful yeah wendy anything to add about the the lines of one to five one and five yeah well i feel like i mean i'm just i'm like looking at this it's so fascinating how like where everybody's lines go you know all the different enneagrams some of them go right next to each other and um like i feel like i am at a place where i definitely i mean i definitely need to stretch more into both um but not because i'm under like i don't feel like i'm in a pressure cooker and i actually think i'll be even better if i just do it without the like urgency um and like the necessity i think it'll be even well it'll be amazing like i'm like oh really truly it's not the one that i mean definitely that's a stretch but it's the five that's the biggest challenge for me and it's not that i don't have time i just don't carve out the five time and there doesn't need to be urgency i that's the thing it's like it's like i'm here you know the book felt like i'm like that those guys it's like urgent i'm like yeah but wow what if i did it without being urgent wouldn't that be amazing so that when i did get urgent it was maybe a little easier but yeah cool well and one of the things that that i know is true for me is and i was reminded reading this and i think my kids would tell you too is i don't care about details until i care about details and when i start caring about oops you muted you your last sentence was muted so i don't care about details until i care about them and when i care about them they better be right her heads are going to roll i mean it's just a gift to a client in canada and got a note and you know and paid good money to do it got a note saying hey did you ship me something like yes okay well it's at the border and i now have to pay import fees and i'm like wait what you know i took myself all the way to the ups store i found your address i shipped it i put a card in it and i was just out of my mind it's like so and then i read this report an hour later i thought okay that's that's what that is well on that note you know we're gonna start wrapping things up but that's a great story because obviously with our lines to one and five we want to be the best of the one and five right we don't want to scoop up some of the worst behaviors of of those types because you're right the one remember the one sits in the um anger center right so one's in an unhealthy level if things don't go as planned if if people don't meet their high standards as sarah says heads can roll right so we do whatever that is well i really made everybody explain so much didn't even get in we even didn't well we also didn't even get into wings remember because sevens have an eight wing and the eighth waiting is the controller and also the eight wing sits in the anger center and the eight wing when things don't go his or her way heads can roll two so while though although sevens are rosy and not positive and optimistic there are ways to get sevens to bring out the you know bring out the claws so yeah i am optimistic that they will feel pain absolutely and understand why yes but with that said this has been lovely you know i i this has been so much fun and so i want to go around you know one last time what what are your final things what do you want people to what do you know about being a seven or what do you want to say why you love being a seven or what is your final seven seven sentence that you would love to share with the world and want you people to know what you want others maybe to know about the true essence of a seven who would like to go so what comes up for me as you asked this is the download it's lean in and enjoy the rabbit holes deep and it's fantastic nice love it thank you i have to say like i love being a seven because life is an adventure it's a journey like i'm not on a place getting to a destination i'm truly on the journey and i like all the little detours because they've brought me to where i am today so it feels good makes me happy and i like to do it with a glass of wine too and that's so seven yeah cool thank you shelley yeah i um honestly i read the report i'm like well who wouldn't want to be like this so so and i guess i'm just fortunate enough to hang out with people who who kind of like the spontaneity and the adventure and the the i don't know the joy breeze of it all it's it's it's cool come to the seventh side we have wine and good food and chocolate we are a party it is i mean more is more right yeah i i'm like my seventh statement i i mean uh oh like welcome to the party like just like let's just like welcome in let's have some fun and um yeah like just yeah yeah what they all said welcome to the party one of my sayings for years has been you're gonna be laughing about this in five years you might as well get started now yeah oh i may love that i'll be borrowing that one that was brilliant cool well i i as i i want y'all to know my secondary type is seven so my first type is an enneagram three which is you know the motivation to be the best but then i have a high seven two which is experience everything and have fun so i'm seeing the world as well why not be the best at having fun right so i i got that in me too so i i'm in good company right i'm competitive to have the most fun i'm competitive they have the best experiences so and last sarah was saying what i've read by eddie graham three i'm like who wouldn't want to be the best you know so be the best at having fun why not right cool well thank you everyone this was awesome and thank you viewers i know um i just want to encourage everyone if you're watching this on youtube subscribe to this youtube channel and you can visit more of my work at haydenlee.com that's h-a-y-d-e-n-l-e-e.com and thank you seven panelists this is very fun go out there have fun and experience it all and we will see you all next time thank you everyone you

Channel: Hayden Lee Coaching

Views: 278

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Enneagram, coaching, enneagram7, Life Coaching, Master Coach, Executive Coach

Id: tbUE2ar1_Bs

Length: 66min 47sec (4007 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 08 2020