My Personal Growth After Understanding More About My Personality
Here is the mantra that I found to speak out to me most while reading my results report when I took the Enneagram test
The mantra that I found to speak out to me most while reading my results report when I took the Enneagram test was:
“I am important and what I want matters”
Learning more about myself during my first initial reactions to learning more about my personality type and how much it aligned with me was incredible.
To refresh, I scored as a Type Nine on the Enneagram test, otherwise known as the “Peacemaker”. This graphic was what has helped me learn more about the growth I can come to accomplish personally and where my personality leans towards other types when I am mentally healthy or unhealthy.
More In-Depth in My Personality:
To refresh, you can find a lot more details about the details of my personality and my results from my previous article here (also published in Clear Yo Mind):
To recap, I am a type “nine” and I tend to ignore my own wishes and am always “going with the flow”. I tend to ignore my own feelings and opinions for the sake of others in attempts to avoid conflict. This can be dangerous since I tend to discredit a lot of my own beliefs and can be insecure about my wants and desires for my own life.
I lean towards a type 3, the “achiever”, when I’m more unhealthy and a type 6, the “loyalist” when I am healthy. The definitions of healthy and unhealthy mostly lie mentally for me as when I’m feeling more anxious or sad, I tend to shut people out, close myself off from a lot of the people I am close to in my life and more. I tend to rely on my success in certain things in order to equate my “worthiness” in other relationships and various aspects of my life. When I’m feeling more happy and significantly less nervous or anxious, I am more eager to reach out to people, am capable of being more “extroverted” and can be more assertive with my own beliefs and ideas. I am much more loyal with my relationships and friendships and feel much more prepared to take on the world and all the adventures it has provided me in my ripe 22 years of life. But, there is a lot of personal growth that I need to do in order to achieve a “healthy” mentality consistently.
Growth Tasks for Myself (and other Type Nines):
1. Practice tuning in to my preferences, likes and dislikes.
I am learning how to do this, especially since learning more about my personality. I have noticed myself feeling more frustrated when it seems like I have been walked all over in different circumstances. But, I know that the feeling is mostly my responsibility. So instead of focusing on the idea that I am perceiving due to my lack of speaking up, I am choosing to focus on how I can voice my opinions when I am feeling any type of way that may be different from other people I am around. I not only owe it to myself, but to other people when I’m not feeling particularly heard and when I inevitably shut them out. That hurts people.
2. Do simple things that bring pleasure
I have found that writing has been alleviating stress and helping me feel more connected to myself. I feel like improving my relationship with myself and my likes and dislikes go hand-in-hand with this goal. I am a huge fan of routines and self-care, so I will definitely be implementing that more into my life when I am feeling more disconnected from myself. Other simple things I have enjoyed is going for walks outside and petting my dog. Slowing down in my fast-paced life has been crucial for my self-growth journey.
3. Express an opinion
This is something that takes a lot of preparation on my part. I have mostly found that writing out my feelings and a mini-script is mostly helpful when it comes to expressing my opinions. Putting my thoughts down on paper or typing them out has been a huge stress relief for me. Learning how to communicate my thoughts and feelings to myself has been crucial in helping me learn how to express my ideas openly to the rest of the world. Usually after expressing an opinion that I have been holding on to for much too long, I celebrate by shredding my original thoughts so that they no longer fester and live without paying rent in my mind.
4. Take a moment to consider participation before agreeing. Think before saying “yes”.
A solid bad habit that I started while in college was saying “yes” to basically everything. I swear when I attended the Fall Activities Fair during my first year in college, I nearly stopped by at every single booth and signed up for an email list for every activity. My email was exploding in the weeks and months to come.
Considering I was already a college athlete at the time and starting swim practices, I don’t really know what I was thinking. In a short four years, I was involved in nearly 4 extracurricular activities outside my involvement as a Varsity college athlete, had a position on the Executive Board for at least two of these activities, studied as a double major in both Neuroscience and Spanish and did multiple research projects (and presentations) with the Psychology Department at Luther College. (Go Norse!)
Ironically, I haven’t really started working on this particular goal of mine for my personal growth. But, I’m sure that as I begin graduate school in the coming months, I will have to remind myself to think before over-committing myself again.
5. Consider that avoiding conflict only causes more conflict in the long run.
I plead guilty for doing this. I could possibly win an Olympic Gold Medal in avoiding conflicts, or at least attempting to. Since reading this tip in my results report, my mind blew. I would have to say that I identify with acting like a volcano waiting to erupt after trying to bottle up my emotions for what feels like an eternity. I explode, and I don’t want anyone to be near me when I feel like I’m on the verge of an explosion.
6. Challenge self to take action.
Challenging myself to stand up for myself or tell someone what I want or an idea of mine is terrifying. I hate being responsible for making decisions because I don’t want anything I decide to upset anyone (even something as simple as where to go out for dinner). I am learning how to do this now with making decisions for where I would like to attend graduate school and where I would be potentially moving as well. Challenging myself to take action and touring some graduate programs has allowed me to feel more in control of my decisions when it comes to making strides towards my future.
7. Choose relationships carefully, and evaluate how the people in your life make you feel.
I’m lucky that I don’t have to cut off any of my existing friendships in order to take things in. But, there are some relationships that I have to careful in. There are relationships that I have that require a little more for me to “give” in order to maintain them. And that’s ok. But, I’m learning that in virtually all my relationships, there are opportunities that I need to ask for things. Learning this has been crucially important, because there are plenty of relationships of mine that would be just as easy to walk away from without feeling hurt. As my therapist once told me, “if your friends are unwilling to give what you ask of them, what’s the point?” This, at first, was a really sharp thought in my mind. It was a painful realization, but it made perfect sense. The fear of asking for what I want, or perhaps deserve, in other relationships has nearly destroyed some relationships I have.
As I continue growing on a much more personal level, I vow to keep advocating for myself and speaking up about my original thoughts and ideas. It’s only going to help me in the long run.
And of course, I’m going to keep repeating the phrase:
“I’m important, and what I want matters.”
And I think you might find some value in this statement too.
