Baby you were born this way

Enneagram fours are known as the individualists, artists and romantics.

Since we connect to the world through being different, we have a keen ability to identify what is missing in that world. Our core compulsion is longing for reality to be different than it is.

Like a knight on a quest, we search until we find that thing, and if we can’t, then we’ll just make the damn thing ourselves.

Specialists in this personality assessment claim that this type is driven by the fear of missing out. Fours will say out loud what’s missing because we’re trying to fill a hole inside ourselves. Idealizing what we want as perfect and perpetually distant, we are constantly envying what other people have.

My response to this portrayal is twofold.

First, guilty as charged. It basically sounds like the first thirty years of my life. Just find that one thing that’s missing in your life and then you will finally be whole.

But the second thing is, my disposition doesn’t have to be a life sentence. Just because something identifies me, doesn’t mean it defines me.

Gaga sang you’re beautiful in your way, baby you were born this way.

But then again, people can change, or at the very least, channel, who they are into more productive avenues.

Maisel’s enlightening book on why smart people hurt breaks down our personality into three major categories:

We are born with an original personality, we grow into our formed personality through the experience of living, and retain our available personality, which is the amount of awareness that allows us to make changes, set a meaning making agenda, and not be a slave to our upbringing.

This distinction was revelatory for me. Because it showed me that my spiritual disposition of identifying what’s missing in the world doesn’t have to come from a place of lack or unworthiness. With an awareness of my own changes, and through the work of becoming whole and becoming enough in my own eyes, the romantic inside of me can say out loud what’s missing in a productive way.

Not because the missing piece will complete me, rather, because it can inspire the world with a glimmer of what might be possible. It can highlight areas for meaningful improvement.

It’s one of the reasons friends and colleagues often ask me for feedback on their writing projects. Not because I’m the greatest editor in the world, but because I’m open to the complete possibility of what could be, and can often help them identify what’s missing from their work.

It’s just my natural filter for reviewing things. Here’s what I liked, and here’s what I’d like to see more of.

When channeled properly, my core compulsion can become an act of love.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
How are the different parts of your personality integrated and adopted to what the world needs?