AHHH THE HOLIDAYS! ARRRG THE HOLIDAYS!
Over the past few months I have had the opportunity to do what is some of my favorite work with the Enneagram: working with staff teams. Specifically I've engaged with a number of church and school district staff teams. I have an affinity for how the Enneagram wisdom can be so helpful to a group of people who is seeking to be healthy in themselves and understanding of others as they lead their constituents, be they a congregation or their faculty, staff, and students.
Whenever I work with teams, however, I always feel a great caution as well because the Enneagram can so easily devolve into simplistic formulas and understandings-unless the people learning about it are very intentional to see it for its wisdom and worth. Specifically, it’s the concern that knowing each other’s numbers can quickly excuse why one does or does not do something and/or put blame on why another does or does not do something, when the real gift is that the Enneagram offers an invitation to curiosity, compassion, and understanding. When we remember in team settings that there are eight other ways to look at any situation besides your own, we are invited to then be curious why others are doing, thinking, and feeling what they are and offer compassion when it is so different from us. The Enneagram invites us to be understanding rather than categorical and judgmental.
What does that have to do with the holidays? Everything!
As you connect with family and friends from both near and far, it is likely that there will be moments where you don't see eye to eye, where circumstances cause relational disconnect and tension. And in our particularly polarizing world with extreme opinions and reactions (and I'm not just referring to political conversations), that can mean a lot of stress on the relational aspects of your time together.
Our hope is that you experience curiosity and compassion in pursuit of understanding rather than falling into excuses for yourself and your reactions or blaming of others because of their reactions. Remember that reactivity in us is our false self: our true self responds; our false self reacts. So when we move towards response, we move toward understanding. We move toward genuinely asking, "I don't see it that way; please tell me more about why you do!" We leave excuses and blaming behind in pursuit of relational connection marked by compassion for another.
May knowing this wisdom of the Enneagram, that people seeing and acting differently than us is just the way they see and is not something we can alter, be a game-changer for us all. And so the Enneagram wisdom affords us the knowledge and opportunity to bridge the relational disconnects that come through curiosity & compassion in pursuit of understanding. When we do that, we express the heart of what the holiday season is all about: we express love.
