Purpose & The Enneagram
How They Work in the Therapeutic Coaching I Do…
I had the pleasure of going on the If Lost, Start Here podcast recently to speak with the wonderful Claire Fitzsimmons about purpose and the Enneagram, you can find it here! 🤩
The truth is, purpose comes in a million different shapes and sizes. Sometimes the smallest thing in our day can give us just enough of a sense of purpose to get us back on track - arguably that's the most important kind of purpose. I focus on that when I'm working with clients who are rebuilding their mental health.
But for others, for a lot of the clients who come to me, purpose is a stand-in word for something much bigger. It's "Who am I?", "What's missing?", "How do I find fulfilment and why aren't I satisfied with my life?". In these moments of someone's life, what I've found is there's no way of getting someone to the place they're looking for without deep work - without getting them into a state of pure presence. And I can't do that without learning about the ways in which they get distracted in life. What pisses them off, what distracts them, what makes them anxious. This is where the Enneagram becomes vital to my work.
Because from discovering their Enneagram type (which can take a minute...) we start to pay attention to their inner world through this lens. It allows us to track the conversations and feelings happening inside so we can actually tend to them and find our way back to stillness by moving THROUGH the tunnel, rather than avoiding it.
Because on the other side is a really gentle kind of peace. Instead of attempting to psychically amputate parts of themselves they didn't want to look at, there's this integration of self. This wholeness they haven't experienced before - the Self which is a lot more real than the battle between their split inner selves. This is where we begin to really talk about what they want for their lives. From this deeply regulated place. This is where that much more profound conversation of "What do I want for my life?" becomes creative, instead of a fight/flight response.
So purpose... it's not one thing, and for the deeper aspects of this word "purpose" that we use, it can take us on a pretty incredible journey through ourselves, back to wholeness.