Hey friends, this is Jeff. Two years ago, TJ and I went to stick our toe into the world of subtypes, instincts and social energies. We tried our best to come to the topic, not as experts, but as travelers, inviting others to journey into this world with us. After spending a year and a half meditating on the material, learning more, reviewing all the resources and trying to get our own hearts and minds around the topic, we feel that intro still works pretty well. All the big ideas are here and we're proud of this discussion as a launching point for all the stuff we want to say this summer about instincts and beyond. It is, of course, year five. The one change we would make is that we started with a heavy focus on subtypes. And by the end, and still today, we prefer to elevate the idea of instincts and social energies as primary, and we're kind of skeptical on the category of subtypes. This will play out throughout the summer, but over the coming two months, we are going to be walking through these three instincts, interviewing experts, laying out all of our theories for discussion, but really doing a deep dive into these instincts and how they materialize in your life, my life and the world around us. As always, if you're interested in talking shop with us, we meet monthly on Zoom, which you can find the link to all of our stuff at aroundthecircle.org. Do share this episode with those you discuss in your gran with, we're proud of this. Send us your thoughts on Instagram, and as always, we appreciate stars on Spotify, iTunes, and the rest. But dear listener, we, as a personal note, we continue to be immensely grateful for your support and attention. Our deep hope is that these podcasts point you toward happiness, towards well-being. We hope they make you a better person and that your relationships are more rich and fruitful. We continue to record with these hopes firmly in mind, and want you to know we are cheering for you for your strength as you overcome obstacles ahead for your contentment, grace, and maturity through all that life throws your way. So dear listener, on this day, may every good thing be yours. I'm Jeff Cook, and I'm TJ Wilson, and this is Around the Circle. The Enneagram is a map of the human personality. It's a tool for navigating relationships, creates language for what motivates us, and helps us look at the way we look at everything else. Most importantly, the Enneagram is a mirror, because sometimes you need help seeing yourself. My name's Jeff Cook, I'm a philosopher in Greeley, Colorado, and with me is TJ Wilson, businessman, lover of theology, and Enneagram, nature. Hello. Hi, man. That came out a little sing-songy, I'm not exactly sure why I added some vibrato at the end of that. We're talking about things worth singing about. That's what it was. Today is our quick introduction to subtypes, something that we have held off on for quite a while. Our quick introduction to one of the most complicated aspects of the Enneagram. So in doing the research, there's like some folks that start here. Sure. I don't know why, but... The reason they start here is they save the nine types for later and they just focus on the instincts. Huh. Okay. I think it's easier to identify and talk about, and then once you know your instinct, then they start talking about your motive. Sure. So anyway, I thought that was kind of like, yeah, oh, that's a thing. That's a backdoor way to get into this. Yeah, I guess. For those of you who have listened to us for a while, you'll know that we kind of reference it, and the only thing we generally say about subtypes is, hey, wait five years. We just wait five years. So this is a primer at best for those of you who have waited five years. Yep. Love for me just jumping into this material. There's lots here I don't know, and lots to discover. Perhaps one of the reasons you wait five years is it's like you really live in your type for a while, and then you can open a whole new door onto it and give you something really enjoyable, productive, insightful to extend that reading. Yeah. And I think one of the things about the waiting five years, part of that is for me and from my understanding of why this is taught, because you really need to get in touch with your primary motive, and it's really easy to see some of these instincts as different from your primary motive, but you have to see it all through your main type, and yeah, this just complicates that. So if you're hearing these terms for the first time, we're going to be talking about instincts and subtypes. These are kind of some advanced, and we think fairly advanced, any gram wisdom, like all any gram wisdom, it's kind of being discovered right now, and there's some great work out there. Not so good work out there. This podcast isn't looking to be, we're not looking to be the experts here. Right. I suppose what I'm looking to do is say something like, here's the diving board from which TJ and I are diving. Yeah, this is the door through which we're entering when we come to the topic. Yeah. Oftentimes with any gram, just getting some basic language to get your head around what's going on can be really valuable. How do you jump off into this topic, and so that's what we're here to do. Yep. Quick intro to, to subtypes and instincts. Knowing you and me, this quick intro will be somewhere in the two and a half hour range. Oh, I also want to say that a lot of teachers, a lot of branches of any gram study use will assign the same meaning to subtype and instincts, and we'll explain why we don't later. But, but we're talking about the same topic. We're just, you're going to use those two words to mean different things. So stay tuned. Here it is. I suppose. Yeah. Here's, here's where we're going. We're going to talk about three rules of subtyping going to define instincts and subtyping. Why they're different. Gonna talk about some practical uses of this stuff. And one of the things actually we do talk about subtyping sometimes is that your subtype changes. Right. You might discuss that a little bit more in depth than we have in the past. Yeah. Well, the first rule of subtyping is you need to wait five years. I got thoughts on this. Why do you wait five years on this? Well, because like I said a minute ago, the, this subject makes everything else a little bit more complicated. It muddies the water and, and if you don't really have your bearings, if you don't have some basic understanding of, of your type and, and what, what your type does and movements and stuff like that, then you'll get completely lost in a lot of the subtype discussion and you'll make false assumptions and, and like I, I know a lot of people who when they took the test online, the test told them what their subtype was and that is how they identify themselves. And actually they don't know anything about what they're talking about because subtypes are so complicated. So the, the idea of waiting five years for me is about really getting invested and doing some work and really like having this material, having, having anyagram study be something that, that you, that is, is inside you is, is part of you now. So that when this much more complicated thing comes along, you can understand it a little bit better and appropriately apply it. It's like, like you don't study trigonometry in elementary school because you have to learn some basic things first. You don't study trigonometry in middle school typically because you still have a lot of learning that you need to do before you can get to the place where trigonometry even makes sense. I agree, some of the topics like wings, subtypes, even the arrows I think should be left for a few years. The things for me, and this is more because you need to jump into anyagram and find some stuff that really helps you now. And the high side, low side of your number, really living in your number and naming your motive, elevating and talking about your repressed center, talking about your shadow. Those are the places I think really need that first tension. So rule one, wait five years. Second rule is actually what TJ said, adding subtypes makes everything messy. Some of the literature I was reading on this immediately jumps into, there are 27 types if you add subtypes or if you really do it correctly, there's 54 types. Right, wait a minute, I thought you said there were nine types. And now it's messy. So if you wait a bit, then when we start talking about stacking or sequencing, you know, this can make sense. But for now, that might be, yeah, just know that things can get messy if you don't really have a good foundation. Right. My last rule, and I'm curious if this works for you, but I think that subtypes aren't about you. I think if you're actually healthy in your number, knowing your subtype and being able to identify other people's subtypes, because I think you actually can very easily type other people's subtypes if you're aware of this topic or maybe not easily, but it can be a helpful kind of, you know, one sentence question for most people. I think knowing about subtypes really helps you to love people in terms of how they want to be loved. It's about caring for others around you because you understand who you are, and perhaps you understand who they are. As is often said, knowing your type isn't an excuse for bad behavior. And that's especially true, I think, once you get into subtype work. Yeah. Yeah, the way that these instincts sort of push our energies, it affects how we interact with other people. It affects the way our relationships navigate and deal with complications and just being together, and normal regular stuff, and knowing the subtype and how that subtype that instinct interacts with your partner or your business partner or your children or whatever else. That can go a long way to do some good for your relationship. Unless, of course, you're using it to just excuse your bad behavior. I'm self-preserving, so I need to be alone. No, that's not a good way to use this information. But knowing that this is where you're comfortable, and this is where your other is comfortable, and how does that dynamic work? This goes a long way to do a lot of good for knowing how to interact with each other and love each other better. Yep. Yep. Just to give a quick example, some of us really thrive when we're in a big group of people. And say something really awful, awful, awful happens. Inviting a person into the big group of people might be a really healing thing for that person. Right. But there's some of us that really don't thrive in big groups of people, right? Something awful happens. The thing we don't want is to go out with a bunch of people. We want to sit down with just the person we care about for a minute and just talk through the thing that's awful that happened. Right. Those sorts of things, using this in those sorts of ways can be really helpful. And we'll unpack that, but just as a quick and dirty example, that's something that struck me. So, three rules. Second, we got to define some stuff. So, first is instincts, and second is subtyping. These are the two big terms we'll use. You want to take a shot at instincts? Instincts. Yeah. This is how like, think about like animal instincts, like these are subconscious drives. And when we talk about instincts, we're talking about like the energy that we use, the way that we spend our energy trying to get our primary motive. So, like each type has a primary motivation. This is the way that we see the world. This is the thing that we want. And our instincts are about how we get that thing. A lot of folks, I think this comes from chestnut mostly, Beatrice Chestnut, when defining instincts wants to really tie them to evolution and to biology. And she says when trying to get like the primary resources, food, shelter, safety, companionship, all animals want these things because they're about survival. And it's almost like an animal has an intuitive, so human beings have an intuitive way of saying, "I'm going to get survival by finding my place in a larger group." That would be one. A second would be, "I'm going to find survival by bonding with another very strong or capable supportive person. That'd be a second way." Or third is, "Survival is about me, I need to trust myself in the resources that I have." And those three ways of being move into how we become social animals. My social energy is primarily about being in a wider group. My social energy is primarily about me connecting with another person. My social energy is primarily me caring about me. And those are the three instincts as I see them. The names that are generally used are social instinct, sexual instinct, and self-preserving instinct. I think we should stick with those, we can unpack them with other language later. They're pretty well-established, plus you just love alliteration. I do, they're my favorite. He doesn't, that's why. Instincts are going to form our patterns of behavior. How we get what we need most just flows out into how we are as social people. Instincts are kind of the foundation for our social personality. So some of us feel really comfortable in the wider group. Some of us feel most comfortable when we're just with another person. Some of us feel most comfortable when we're taking care of ourselves first and then engaging the world second. And that's how our social self is expressed. And that's part of our personality. And it informs our motive and how we get our motive. And so I love TJ's line there that how your energy is spent, that instincts are about how your energy is spent getting to your motive. And I do want to say that we need to draw a line here. There is some overlap, but we are not talking about introvert and extrovert. That's a different kind of thing. And the easiest way I can think of to understand introvert and extrovert is like this is how you recharge. This is how you gain your energy either by yourself or with other people. Some people, you know, they build a head of steam when they're out and about and some people are ambiverts and that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about how your energy is spent in the best ways to get your motive. So let's talk about these in turn. One of the better illustrations, I've forgotten where I've heard this but it was really excellent was that there's almost like a temperature of people's personality when you engage them. Some people come across as very cool. Some people come across as kind of intense and very hot in your conversations. Some people are just a warmer presence and that lines up with each of these instincts. So for example, those who have a dominant social instinct often come across as very cool. They are understanding and intelligent about their place in the wider group. They're trying to find their places for participation and that allows them to just float above the conversations to offer what they have to offer in very insightful, direct ways when necessary but generally they feel just really good with a bunch of people and that coolness of they walk into the room and they feel comfortable it's a good way to understand those with a dominant social instinct. Different from those with a dominant sexual instinct who often come across as hot. When you have conversations with these sorts of people, it's almost like you are the only thing that matters. Your eyes connect, I don't want to call it just an intensity but there's very much an energy that it's just the two of us, sometimes this sort of person who has a dominant sexual instinct will pull us to the side, want to have that one-on-one conversation, want to go for depth and so the hotness is of that sort and then those who have a self-preserving instinct come across just as warm. They are caring for themselves. You're great, I'm great but their energy is first and foremost about preserving what they have. I think it might be the case that the best way to understand this is to find out other people and find out their dominant subtype and then apply this kind of language to your interactions with them because Jeff is a very understanding the idea of a hot sexual instinct. Understanding the idea of the sexual instinct coming across as hot. If you've ever had an actual conversation with Jeff, it makes sense because it's like he's in it and he wants to solve things and the intensity of the conversation is palpable, it's noticeable whereas there's other people who like it's not that they're cold, it's not that they don't care but it's clear that they care about something other than you and like that coolness of somebody whose instincts are about the group and about how we all fit together and what is my place in it but also my primary motive, I want that to apply to the group that we're a part of. They're not going to single people out, they're not going to be engaged in the way that someone would be if you describe them even warm or hot like this and then the warmness is inviting but not, okay, accepting but not necessarily inviting is like you can come here but I don't care if you do like that the self-protectiveness is like this is someone that it's okay to be around but they're not necessarily expecting there to be an intensity there. One last quick footnote, I'm surprised it lasted this long. When talking about the sexual instinct, this is not about physical sex. This is another way of saying those with a sexual instinct want to bond with another, with the one other so those who are dominant in sexual instinct prefer one-on-one relationships and so those are two other ways this instinct is often talked about it's the bonding instinct or the one-on-one instinct those are interchangeable but yeah we're not talking about sex. It might be about sex but it's not by default about sex, unless of course you ask you know Freud or young then it might be about sex but that's not what we're talking about. So all of us have these instincts and all of us have these instincts, all of us have a social personality, all of us have kind of a preference, a dominant preference for how we want to engage socially. When that is put into anyogram language then it becomes a subtype. So the word subtype is more about saying oh hey this is an interesting idea about how our social energy works, let's fit it into our system. So some people will say I'm a social anyogram nine or I'm a sexual one or I'm a self-preserving seven and that would be a way of saying here's my social energy paired with my motive and so that's the subtype as it were is how your social energy relates to your motive. Got thoughts on just defining subtypes? Yeah I think all of the subtypes like when you add this flavor, when you add this energy and how we spend and how we try to get toward our primary motive especially in a socialized society like we are social creatures and we interact with a wider world in a certain way and so when you add this flavor in it changes things. It makes the expression of that type a little bit different but it's all still like we have to remember that it's all still through our primary motive. Now here's where things get messy. Wait they aren't messy yet? Just for us moving forward I identify as a sexual one. My dominant instinct is the sexual instinct I prefer one-on-one relationships, I prefer intense conversations, I prefer engaging others one at a time even. So if I'm at a party I have a very difficult time in a group of five in engaging that conversation. I much prefer turning to one person having kind of a face-to-face interaction and then moving to the next person and then having a real interaction and then moving and that's just how I socially do best. My wife is a social three. My wife walks into the room very cool, understands how the dynamics of the room work in the wider group and can navigate conversations very quickly without feeling like she has to break off any conversation but letting people know they're cared about, getting what she needs in terms of attention, moving from one person to the other and TJ is a self-preserving nine. When you're a party has your social energy work? It depends a lot on what the party is because there are certain situations where I'm really great in a group and there are other situations where I want to watch but it's all about protecting my own sense of peace. I love being in debates so long as I'm not invested in the outcome. I love being part of a, I like parties so long as I know how to navigate that space. All of the way that I interact with the people is about protecting my own peace and like this space is about me and so when I go to an event it might be the case that I sit back and watch because I don't know anybody, like every single time I go to a staff event with my wife who is a teacher at a high school. I know three other people there and two of them don't ever come to those events so I don't ever interact with, I'm just sort of like following her around and nodding and kind of listening but really I'm just trying to protect my peace because I don't know these people, I don't want to talk about education, I don't know how their jobs work. It's not my space, I'm just there to support my wife and protect my peace. So in all situations like where this self-preservation is dominant it's about protecting my peace and the space around me. In like manner I suppose to circle back when I'm, so my wife also as a teacher when I go to those same sort of parties I'm just looking for somebody who's interesting who wants to talk about depthier things and I will intentionally ask kind of questions and oftentimes people will move on very quickly from me in my depthy question because she's like, "Yeah, that's a party." Come on, man, this is a party. Exactly. I'll ask them about their work and they'll tell me, "Man, I'm at a party. I don't want to talk about work," et cetera. But occasionally I'll find the person who really does want to talk about something intense and I'll be there for 45 minutes there in the corner talking about the thing they're interested in and perhaps how to improve the world, how to improve them. These are things that I get excited about, how to improve their business, how to improve their teaching, whatever needs a little bit of work I'm there for it and that's how my oneness is expressed. Does that make sense? No. I suppose it's the case when my wife on the social front goes to those same parties. She wants to make sure that everybody sees whatever she has brought that is worthy of praise, there's something that has been gifted to that environment. She's going to elevate. She's generally very servant-hearted but is just making the rounds and generally finding those places of greatest attention as it were in those spaces. She is not a wallflower. She also sort of flits around to make sure she hits as many people as possible. It's all going to be surface level. It's all going to be also, I suppose on the social front, an investment in those folks. She is investing in the wider group because sometime in the future things might go badly and they're the ones that she's going to need to rely on for whatever she needs in the spaces and that's how I think a lot of social types work. That's talking about our dominant instinct. Here's the thing, I'm a sexual one, I prefer one-on-one conversations, but I often have to go into social settings with lots of people around a boardroom table or something. There's lots of times where I'm by myself and I need to think about my bank account, my resources and my energy and focus on my life as well. My primary social energy, I would prefer to have those one-on-one relationships, but then I have a secondary and those other two instincts need to find their place in my life as well. This is where things get messy, is that in gram theory, generally it's going to say something like you have a dominant instinct, you have a secondary instinct and you have something that's like a repressed or weak instinct. Riso and Hudson call this the blind spot, Beatrice Chestnut calls this a repressed instinct. My gut here is that it's not repressed, but it's just really weak and however it is one of these places, one of these instincts is lowest. For me, my lowest instinct, the thing I'm least comfortable with is social. Put me around a table with eight people having a conversation and I can't pull somebody to the side to talk to them one-on-one and I generally don't thrive in those spaces. That would be the image. Do you know what you're repressed or blind spot? I don't because I actually have a different theory about this. I think there is a lot of information and again, this is muddy. It's messy because you get this deep into it and then there's like nine people who have thought this hard about it and all of us view it a little bit differently. My theory is less about there being a repressed one. Our good friend Sean Palmer, a friend of the podcast and he's written a handful of books and a couple of them have to do with the Enneagram. In his book, "40 Days on Being a Three," he in the intro, he talks about subtypes being sort of like levels of a house. So I live imagine a three level house. You spend most of your time on the main level because that's where the kitchen and the living room is. This is where you sort of like do your thing but when you need to go to sleep, you go upstairs to where the bedroom is. This isn't where you spend most of your time but that is a very important space where something important happens and when you need to do laundry, you go down to the basement because that's where the laundry room is. Because this isn't where you live, this isn't where you spend most of your time but there is something very important that you have to do and you can only do it in this space. And so for me, I think that it's more like maybe there's a stack but it's more like you have a dominant one and then you use all of them in specific settings. It's like when I'm at work which my job is to create space for other people, I am much more easily drawing on my social instinct because it's not about my piece now, it's about the group's piece. It's about the space that I'm creating for the people that are coming into my business. And when I'm with my spouse and like we're making big decisions, having hard conversations, this is not about my piece, it is about the piece of our relationship and our household. So it's much easier to draw on the sexual energy there when I'm navigating those specific situations. So I really love that metaphor of the house, I think it's a great way to understand how I think about this because I don't think it's a stack, I don't think I have one that's repressed, maybe one that I use less than others but I don't know that it's necessarily to a detriment if that makes sense. I think that's excellent and I think I would go closer to that way of thinking about the relationships of these as well. When you get into Myers-Briggs, another personality typing system, it's going to ask you questions and there's almost going to be levels of intensity, so one of the first is introvert, extrovert. Some of us are really high on the introvert side or really high on the extrovert side. Some of us are kind of more in the middle and it feels to me like our instincts are of that sort. So I like the house image on this front, I kind of live in this space but I can go at these spaces. For me, social environments around the table is like going into the creepy basement with all the spiders. And your laundry room isn't down there, there's nothing down there except for storage. So you don't use that room very often, or maybe the case that some of us kind of even avoid said rooms if as much as we can. So I've used this illustration a handful of times but my wife who is a social three really does not enjoy one-on-one coffee dates, and it's more of a this is an energy suck for the most part with most people. And maybe that's it, the laundry room is a place of real work, you know, or but I think that side room, the side room can be a place of fear, it could be yeah, there's all sorts of stuff. I would say about how the room metaphor works in terms of these instincts. Just a quick footnote, for those who do prefer the stacking or sequencing way of thinking about instincts, this is where the idea of 27 types comes in, or if you have a dominant a secondary and a repressed, if you have the stack, then the way they're arranged would actually create 54 different types. And so if you ever hear a language of 27 types or 54 types, that's where that's coming from. It's how do our instincts kind of find their place. And then I think one of the early adopters was at Narano that wants to say, and then you throw the wings in there and it doubles again, now it's 108, so for me, and I think this is true TJ as well, I don't know that our instincts are our type, it's better to think of them as tools, as rooms that we can utilize. And so to our wings, we haven't done a deep dive into wings, but we see wings as tools and not part of our type. Right. Agreed. Big question then I suppose is not you know you have these elements to your personality, you have a dominant instinct perhaps. How should you think about it, work on it, elevate it? I could actually, I was going to go to the practical use, but this might be a good place to talk about whether or not your instinct changes, your dominant instinct changes. Hmm. Am I wrong? Sure. We can talk about that now. Can you change your dominant instinct? How do you work on it? Can you change it? If you've typed yourself and you say I'm a sexual one, you know, can your subtype change? This is one of the great reasons to not think that your instincts are part of your type. Because if your instincts are part of your type, then of course you wouldn't, your type wouldn't change. Right. Your type is kind of, I suppose in the way that we use the language of type, type is your pre-wiring, this is who you are at your core and through which you engage the world and relationships and everything else. Right. But we have lots of stories of folks who in the midst, generally of tragedies or real hardship find that they have to move from one, they have to make a new room dominant. That's really what happens, isn't it? I was living in the living room for the last 20 years, but now I've really found that now I need to move into the bedroom because, you know, I'm needing to care for a sick person or something. Right. You know, the subtype changes. Right. So the most, you want to tell the Suzanne's story on this one? Yeah, Suzanne Stabile is one of the world's best teachers on all things Enneagram. And she tells a story about, she was teaching in, I'll say, Houston, Austin, some city that's not Dallas, that's four hours away from Dallas. And while she was teaching her daughters were there with her, her husband, who was in Dallas, had a heart attack and like they basically like got her off the stage, they got in the car and started driving. They drove four hours from wherever they were to Dallas and over the course of that drive, her subtype changed. She was a social to and by the time they arrived at the hospital where her husband was, she became, she had become a sexual to and that, you know, that's a thing that matters that they had been married for many, many years. And after that, they had to go to therapy to deal with this to figure out that her subtype had changed and to deal with the ramifications of that because it affected their relationship so significantly like basically she, all of her energy was about getting her primary motivation from her husband now, where it was about getting it from the group before. And, and now she was driving her husband crazy. And so she had to, they had to work on this and learn their new dynamic because over the course of that four hours, her subtype changed. I think the move towards the sexual bonding instinct often will happen with a personal event. If somebody really experiences a change, it's going to be something like that. The person you love most is very sick and you move and maybe suddenly sick or you have a baby. There's a birth of a child requires a new sort of bonding energy, this one-on-one energy that suddenly arises or even a marriage, like you get married and you move across the country. That one-on-one energy is going to be the only place you're going to live to get your motive fulfilled there for it, perhaps. And I can see that being like I'm living in this room now. A different kind of event would be something that pushes us towards self-preservation. And we've talked about this a handful of times that a lot of people we know or people or maybe you yourself move towards self-preservation during COVID, that there's a global event. So this isn't a personal event. This is like all the things are shattering. The world is not a safe place. And so I'm going to move. So my oldest child is convinced that they moved from a sexual subtype to a self-preserving subtype and has routinely used this as an excuse for bad behavior. But let's set that aside for a second. Also, they're a teenager, so that part makes sense. The movement here of really emphasizing with one's social energy, I need to take care of myself first, would make a ton of sense given how COVID affected so many of us. Right. Do you have thoughts? Right. And in general, this is a theory that we actually heard from, again, from Suzanne in the first place. But the idea of something like a global event changing your subtype, it makes sense that everything is different from before to now, like the world has changed. And it makes sense that we would all come out of it changed as well. And when we're put in these kinds of situations where we go to work every day, we see these people all the time, like all of these things happen and they're normal and then all of a sudden we're not going anywhere, we're not seeing people, we're not interacting with people in the same way, our energy, how we spend that energy is probably going to change. It just, like, just logically, it just makes sense that this is how this would happen. Thank you much more about our bodies, our finances, our go ahead and take care of myself first and then through that, take care of my motive. Right. Right. The movement towards social energy also, I think, can come about in very dramatic ways. And the two big illustrations that come to my mind are the beginning of World War II and 9/11. Mm-hmm. True. I mean, a lot of us who were adults at the time ended up having an experience where it was, "Okay, we need to do this together." And it was almost like we were pushed into a common identity. And I see this much more than 9/11, I see it much more with World War II, that it was like, you know, if I was a sexual subtype, I don't need to necessarily have the one-on-one conversation. I need to get part of a team because we're rallying, we need to defeat global fascists and we're all in this together. And so the energy is different, the perspective is different, the thing that's most important and on the hot plate in front of us is we're being put into platoons of people, you know, building things or going to fight or, you know, whatever it is, it's now this very social event. Right. And now I'm living in that room. I'm flying overseas, but I'm flying overseas with these 80 other guys. Right. I see that. It's more the communal event that has that power. I feel that way with when I've experienced local sports teams, I'm a Denver Bronco fan. When the Broncos have win the Super Bowl, when I go to a football game, I'm not there to have a one-on-one conversation with anyone. That's good. You know, I'm there to be part of. I'm wonderful for that. Yeah. Yeah. That's the guy you avoid is he's got two beers in hand who wants to talk to you about the things. No, you're there to have have the big experience with lots of other folks, right? High five, everybody that you can, you know, in section double A, you know, row L or whatever. And that's one of the, that's one of the things that makes the World Cup so fascinating is that like everyone in the world and finally the US is catching up to this, everyone in the world is part taking in the same event. It's the same thing with the Olympics. There is a sense of us-ness that didn't exist two weeks ago, you know, and like thinking about your bringing up the beginning of World War II and 9/11, I have nothing to say about the beginning of World War II because I don't care about history, but, and I wasn't alive then. I remember 9/11, I remember how quickly and easily, not necessarily a good thing, but easily it became all of America versus anyone in a turban like like we just like we became like the whole group became a little bit racist very quickly and like that it was a communal event. And, and it was about protecting us, protecting the group against the them, but there was a really intense communal nature to how that happened. That might be an interesting element to this with, because you can see it both in 9/11 and in the World Cup that there's, there are some hands that go up and say, Oh, wait, you know, human rights abuses right in Qatar, right? Or, whoa, wait, you do realize that, you know, 120 Muslims died in those buildings because that's where they worked and they were, were American citizens and they matter too. Right. I'm not sure how that works in terms of the social instinct. Well, I think this, this ties back into the, the initial question that started this, that launched this particular topic was like how, how do you work on your dominant instinct? Like what, what, what do you do to work on your dominant instinct and I think the most important answer is, is you be aware of it. You be aware of how it changes, how it unconsciously moves you and, and directs your energy. And when a global event happens and now all of a sudden you're, you're redefining what us means, maybe you should focus a little bit about on, on the reality that your subtype might have moved to a social subtype and now you're defining us in a particular way. And, and the way your energy is being spent is about protecting the group. And this is how you defined the group. And maybe that means that you need to become better at defining the group. I suppose, yeah, as you're talking, maybe this is a good way to say, you know, your social energy is going to go up and then notice your motive comes into play. Right. So you're going to be aware of, of conflict and how that can be not a good thing. I heard a strong critique of the, you know, the more racist elements that, that appeared after 9/11, which were clearly there. And I imagine your 9ness, your radar for justice, your mind to keep things together pops up. And, and also to see both sides, to see, to see the perspective of the faithful Muslim who is not a radical, who is being blamed for something that happened without their knowledge or experience. And, and, and now they're, they're all of a sudden part of them. Or affirmation. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and being able to see that perspective, like that, that comes out of, of my primary motive is that I want things to go well. I want things to be peaceful and the social, like now that this thing has happened and it's removed me into a social subtype or a social instincts, I need to redefine what us means to make sure that it includes people who deserve to be included in that. Yeah. When you're part of the big room and, yeah, and, and there's a lot of energy from, from all the, the, the crew that you're part of, you have a place, you have a role in that. Yeah. That's great. I think in terms of does your subtype change is real helpful because what it really is, again, is it the, it's like the energy can shift into those three different spaces based on world events, communal events, personal tragedies. Those can really alter where we really invest a lot of ourselves, right? Or perhaps like for my, myself, I'm an academic, academics end up, you know, you go to school and a school, grad school in particular can be a very isolating experience because you have your topic and you're focused on that topic and you're, you'd like, you're encouraged to become the expert in the world on the thing you're focused on and that'll take two or three years of you and your basement, you know, hammering out the things that you're going to publish on. And then for me, then you get a job, but the job I ended up going into was very communal in nature. So started a church, started organizing a church, started pulling people together. Those are two very different experiences of studying something by myself for a few years and then suddenly being thrust into, in order to thrive, you need to become more social. And you know, it's like saying, hey, you've been in your basement 12 hours a day, now you're going to go run a marathon and it's like, okay, right now, you know, I don't even have shoes. I need to build up some muscles for this sucker. And that's, and that was my experience of doing, you know, some of the work that I was doing is I don't have the social skills that I did have. I think I had much more social skills, like in high school, but in college, I just kind of went away given, because I really got into academics. So building up the muscles. I think this is transitioning here. That seems to be me to be the thing we're talking about is once you understand instincts and subtypes as it were, it's really identifying your strengths, identifying your weaknesses, any grams of tool? Yep. If you want to do work on this, then great, here's work that you can do. Be aware of it and start observing how it affects your life, how it changes, like what settings it changes in, and then start building on things that need work. This is a place I would love your opinion, because on one side, any gram says you want to create some balance, shoring up your weaknesses isn't a bad thing. But my favorite elements of anagram is pushing into your strengths and really identifying your strengths. And just to float this, you'll be familiar with my life, but listeners may not. My transition, vocationally, seems to really play out along these lines of being in a job where I really had to have, in order to succeed, in order to thrive, I needed to have a really strong set of social skills, social intelligence. If my social instinct was built up, that would have been really great. And I find that that's really the place that I'm weakest, even feel occasional anxiety in those spaces. My real strength is the one-on-one sort of relationships, and what has ended up happening for me vocationally is I've moved from two very social jobs to a job where nearly everything I do is one-on-one, and it feels really easy, and I don't feel like I'm working. But I'm actually getting a lot of stuff done. I've had to kick myself a handful of times and saying, "You know what, just because this is easy doesn't mean that it's not work." Because I'm knocking out my work in two or three hours a day, as opposed to before where I was just, "Oh man, I got prepared for it to meet with all these folks and do this thing." And then we're sitting with these people that treat you like crap. So what's the wisdom here between identifying weaknesses, identifying strengths? I think this, when I come to subtypes, I think this is the primary question for me right now. Yeah. Well, I think answering your question specifically, but trying to do it in a broader kind of way, I think it's really important for us all to remember that our type is primary. Our Enneagram number is primary. And for an Enneagram one, all situations are going to be filtered through that primary motivation. And so the fact that you think that you're not working hard enough in what you're doing now is part of your primary motivation. You identify yourself with your work and everything should be moving toward better completion. And there's always something to improve. And if it's easy, then you're probably not doing it right. And that has nothing to do with subtype. That's just oneness. But then you add in this other stuff where your previous work, the social kinds of settings, like the meeting with the teens and all of these other things that were a real struggle for you. And now that those struggles are gone and it just doesn't feel like being aware that your subtype is playing a role in this is really good and also should be something that you can focus on because if you, listener, if you find yourself in a situation like similar to Jeff where like these things changed and now it doesn't feel right, but it should. Part of that may have to do with you're just so used to it being harder than it should be and focusing on that, focusing on the fact that your old vocation required and energy from you that you weren't good at giving. And now you don't have to give that anymore. That doesn't mean what you're doing now is wrong. That actually means what you're doing now is right. And what you were doing before was wrong. Or I didn't play to my natural strengths as I was. Like I would love to be a more socially intelligent person in the midst of the group and lead team meetings and such, it's just not I'm not the person you want to hand the microphone to most of the time in those spaces, right. And being aware of that and this is a good life lesson to know like when you get into scenarios in the future where you are part of the group and there is some kind of leadership on your shoulders, maybe because you know this about yourself, you can hand the leading of that group off to someone else. Because you know that you're not good at that part. Exactly, right? Yeah, I've already mentioned it, but the flip side to that is watching my wife really navigate well, very social settings, but she also is a professor and she has office hours in which she has to meet with students one on one and this one of the places in her job that she really doesn't like, you know. Not that she doesn't like her students. She doesn't like having to meet one on one with them, right. Because that's going to be a second, it's not going to be efficient, it's going to be a lot of their story. It's going to push into places that just isn't her wheelhouse, being able to name that, real valuable. Right. Trying to create one of the things we were just talking about yesterday as I was telling her what we were talking through was that she needs to, you know, meet with 20 students one on one to, you know, to do their counseling like here are the classes that you need to take in order to get a history ed major, right, and she oversees history education. And just saying, if you got five of them in the same room at the same time, would that be more helpful and that was like a click, like, well, of course it would be. Sure. You know, because then she's pushing into her social, her natural social skills and leading the room, as it were, and not having to do the one on one work. Right. And that would just be an example of like, I know who I am and or my strengths are, my weaknesses are or what in just pivoting such that I push into my strengths. I think that was worthwhile. How does that work? So for those of you who don't know, TJ is a very successful leader of a wonderful staff at the coffee shop that he owns. How do you think about your social energy in regarding your staff coming from a self-preservation point? Well, I actually, part of why I have struggled with this topic of instincts or subtypes for so long is because I feel like when I'm at home, I'm self-preservation and when I'm with my staff, I'm sexual and when I'm with the group, I'm social. So it's difficult for me to say that this is an area that I struggle with because I feel like I actually do navigate that pretty naturally well. But there are a lot of times where I avoid it because I would rather not have hard conversations or whatever, like the primary thing for me is about protecting the peace. And so when the thing that I have to do is not going to protect the peace, that's where it becomes a struggle for me. So navigating individual conversations with staff, navigating the creating space for the group, knowing that my primary is self-preservation is to remember that it's my job to lead this group. And they don't have jobs unless I do that work. And so pushing into that, because it's not about me, that's kind of what it comes down to at the end of the day is when I have to push into these more uncomfortable kinds of situations, it's not about me. It's about them. It's about the people that they work with. It's about my customers. It's about whatever else. At the end of the day, it's not about me, and that's what I have to push into. The thing that has really been, and maybe it's just because a lot of us, we probably need to talk at some point about the Enneagram post-COVID as post as you can get. I realize we're not post, but especially for listeners who are not stateside, some countries are really still struggling. A lot of us lost our jobs during COVID or lost our health during COVID, and our really had downtime to regroup, refashion, rethink what's my life going to be about. I don't know if this plays into the quick intro to the subtypes, but I heard a guy talking the other day that pitched a mantra that really hit me and it's relevant here. He said, "It's terrible advice that a lot of folks give to young people that they should follow their passions or follow their bliss." He says, "What you should do is identify the place where you're really talented because the world really needs talented people, and in that sphere, you're going to find all sorts of things that you love." I found that really helpful. For me, trying to regroup of all things, this element of Enneagram has really been what's shown out. The thing I really do well is improve things. I really, really enjoy numbers. I really get into real estate. I really enjoy meeting one-on-one with people. Essentially, the job I had fashioned out for myself, I'm an entrepreneur, and I invest in real estate, and I invest in other entrepreneurs who want to build great things. All I do is come alongside them and talk to them one-on-one and ask them about their businesses and how they're going to be successful and just love the hell out of it. Pushes very much into my oneness, very much into where my instincts, my one-on-one instinct, sexual instinct is strongest. I don't know if that works for others, but in terms of how do you use this material, that's working real well for me. I would love your thoughts on that. Yeah, I think that's... I have very mixed feelings about the follow your bliss teaching as an elder millennial with a toe in Gen X and I'm a nine, so I can see all perspectives and blah, blah, blah. The idea of making sure that you do what you love, I'm just surrounded by people my age and slightly younger that don't make any money because they're refusing to get jobs that they don't like and it's like, "Well, sometimes you've got to do, not every job is perfect. There's lots of things about my work that I hate and also find something that you can do." That's... Anyway, the idea of really focusing in on finding places where you can be successful and not necessarily like, "This work is easy, therefore I'm going to be good at it." Most of us will not thrive well in a place where we never have any kind of challenge. I think this message, this idea of knowing where these instincts push you and move you in and direct to your focus and your energy, that being able to move into spaces where that flow is a little bit more natural, I think will be good. I think it'll help you thrive and succeed and you'll still have scenarios where you have to draw in the other instincts, where you have to... There's just no whole person is going to be able to completely avoid being in social settings and sometimes being in self-preservation settings and sometimes being in one-on-one settings. Like, that's just... That's how living in a society works. That actually, I think finding others that complement your strengths, my wife who's social on one side, you're self-preserving on the other, the self-preservation side, I find all sorts of wisdom for my self-pres friends who have that as a kind of a primary filter through which what advice is given, a lot of urinized conversations, especially around relationships ends up being on this front. Like you need to hold some of that back. I have such a strong tendency just to lavish myself for the sake of others, and that can be in real trouble. On the flip side, I have to meet in front of what the city council to rezone a building here soon. I'm going to be terrible about that. I'm going to have the impulse of telling them how all their systems are just jacked up and have screwed up our whole process. This is nine months overdue. You could just change something in your computer and let us build some great stuff, and that's not going to go well. Kelly and I are spending the next week coaching you, right? No. I'm letting Kelly speak. I don't need to speak. There's some of the people that I'm working with, one-on-one, who I know are social subtypes, are likewise going to be there, and they will speak on behalf of the other people who are occupying that building. I can just sit there and smile and apologize to Dwayne, who I cast out on the other phone. But you're going to pull him to the side when you do that, right? Yes. Yeah, knowing that this is something you have to work on is probably a good thing, and you should probably put yourself in situations where you do have to work on your social instinct. And a really, really important big city council meeting is probably not the place where you should experiment with that because you know that you're not good in those settings. One of the things that I've started to notice with other podcasters is that the podcast themselves are set up around their social instinct. So there's some people who it's their show, and they're the one speaking advice into the microphone. Right. There's some guys, people who do podcasts, I really love who are that person, and the more that I listen to them, I'm like you're entirely, there's a self-presate who I love the hell I have right now. Tim, talking to a microphone. Another set of folks, well it's like it's our podcast, it's two people, bantering about whatever the topic is, lots of intense energy about it, propels the podcast. Look at something like, I mean, some late night shows are that way, so like a Stephen Colbert, I'm going to just talk one-on-one with this person, or you know, but then like Bill Marshow is more of a social, we're getting all these people around the round table. So they can all yell at each other at the same time. Or are the morning shows, like morning shows across the dial on cable and major networks, those are all, they get all the social people together and just the energy is bouncing in that way. Right. The view. Right. Yeah. Those are good, I think those are good examples of like this is how the person in their type, but as you said, you know, it's how your energy is spent getting to your motor. Last thing for me on this, I suppose is the, just to circle back to it is you can use this in order to care for other people. Yeah. Because I think it is easier, I don't think there's anything wrong with naming people's instincts because it's actually, it's not typing people. So it's not like rules, because it's not part of their type as it were. If you know that somebody is that, you know, sexual bonding one-on-one, desiring subtype, then loving them looks like entering those spaces even when that's not your wheelhouse, especially when things are kind of rocky. Right. So you may have a kid who just wants one-on-one attention time and that's not your wheelhouse, but you loving your kid in that space is a big investment. Right. And being aware that this is not your wheelhouse means that you can enter into it intentionally with work and effort and doing the work that is good for someone else. As opposed to just sort of floundering around in a space you don't know what you're doing, the awareness really helps. Understanding that somebody is self-preserving. Is this giving people space across the board? It doesn't matter what your any-gram type is. If you're a self-preserving type, is loving a self-preserving type understanding that they need more space? How does that work? Not necessarily. I think it's knowing that self-preserving types are thinking about their own comfort first, thinking about their own, like how their thing affects them first, like that's... It's not necessarily that the people who are self-preservation dominant want to be alone, it's that their energy is spent on themselves first, and even in group settings, in one-on-one conversations, in all of those spaces where other things happen and other instincts sort of thrive, the self-preservation types are thinking about their energy is directed toward themselves first, and so knowing that about us, it makes it easier to understand why we behave the way that we do in some places. It might be the case that a lot of self-preservation types are wallflowers, but that's... I don't know that that's because of self-preservation, I think it's because of other things. Just knowing that that's where the energy goes first is that's the thing that we need to know. Knowing that loving self-preserving folks ends up having to do with ensuring that they have what they need, the resources that they need, as you were saying, the comforts they need, what is it that is most important to this person that they generally are just very aware of? Right. Right. And if I am a high-level self-preservation dominant, I don't really spend much time in the other two. That's how I am and how I navigate the world, then people who love me need to make sure that those things that I'm aiming for are taken care of so that I can spend the energy elsewhere. Yeah. So if it's about peace, my partner, I think, is a self-preservation six, and so she is mainly thinking about her own safety most of the time, that's how her energy is spent on her safety, her security. And if she does not feel comfortable, if she does not feel like she knows what's going on and can navigate and make decisions, then it affects everyone else. It makes it harder for her to spend good energy on our family, on our finances, on whatever else needs to be done, because I need her energy. I need her thinking about all of the things that are going to break, because I don't think about those things. But if she's only thinking about herself, then she's not putting that energy into the other places. So I can help her by providing some of that stuff for her so that she can put that energy elsewhere. On the flip side, if you have a social loved one, I imagine granting, even entering yourself into spaces where it's not just you and them, but it's where we're going to hang out with the crew, maximizing opportunities to enjoy lots of people can be incredibly valuable. Mm-hmm. Well, I think even coming into-- so part of what-- we keep talking about how this is so messy and complicated. And I think one of the really significant parts of the social instinct is so much about the group and my place in the group, but also bringing that primary motivation to the group. Defining the group is different. So the social energy can be spent on a whole crowd of people. It can also be spent on just our nuclear family. And knowing-- so as someone who, like you with your social three spouse, so much of how her energy is spent is not specifically about being social, but it's-- and it's not necessarily about making Kelly cook look great. It's about our family's perception, the way that people perceive our family because the social energy is pointed at the us. So as someone who loves that person, knowing that when they're doing things like being really picky about how the house looks or how you dress or whatever, all of these things that could come out of a social type, pointing their energy at their family, it could sound like they're just being mean and controlling. But it could also be about that energy is specifically about the family and the success of that family. So again, with Kelly as an example, knowing that some of her parenting decisions, some of the ways that she interacts with other people, so much about her life as a cook, as a member of your family, is about how your family looks. It's about the success of your family. Not just about her, about the whole family. Yeah, big investment can be the three smelly boys clean up and being show-offable in social spaces. Yep. So by the way, all of this, I don't mean to just talk about myself, my family, my work and all the rest. Obviously, I'm coming to the subtype conversation from a point of, again, just jumping into it for the first time. If I had more wisdom around the circle, I would have given it to you. But this would be a lot of times is how we learn. This is the narrative tradition in Enneagram. You hear people's stories, how they're internalizing this stuff, and it's like, "Oh, okay. This is how it works for a social five or a sexual seven and finding your anchor that can be very valuable." On the other side of this is being self-aware, so starting with sexual subtypes, being self-aware that you come across hot can be incredibly valuable. I can kill people with one-on-one energy. Yeah. I just can't. I can talk with one person for four hours if there's the topic that I really enjoy. If I don't know that I'm dragging people who might not have that same energy into a four-hour conversation, it's super important for me to know. Everything with moderation, balance, just whole things loosely. I assume that it's the same, however, for social subtypes and self-protective self-preserving subtypes. You brought up the example earlier of Kelly not being able to meet one-on-one, that is a real struggle for her, and knowing that about herself, like any type of social person who struggles with the sexual aspect, you might have to have one-on-one meetings with people sometimes, and knowing about that and going into those settings, can you hand that work off to another person, or can you corral your energy to give the best that you have in this scenario, knowing that about yourself, this is something that you're going to have to enter into sometimes. Or I mean, I suppose, I can imagine a social subtype who has people over to their house five times a week, and others in their family are just like, "Seriously, I can't give this much energy out." Or the expectation, they're a social subtype, and they long to be with everybody at the bar every other night, but they're finding the balance yet. There is an excessive point to our instincts. But the self-preservation, only thinking about themselves first, sometimes gets them in trouble, because they're part of a group, and they need to be thinking about the group as a parent, and as a spouse, I have to think about the family, and maybe that means I redefine who me is. Maybe I fold my family into that, so that the energy is not going necessarily toward their relationship with the family, or even thinking about the family as a group. But in order for me to be safe, I have to protect them. That might be work that I have to do in order to make sure that I'm being the best for them is remembering the excess that can come out of self-preservation. The selfishness that that can look like to everybody else, we have a friend who we'll call Joe, and Joe takes care of Joe, and we all know Joe takes care of Joe, and that can be. It's not always negative. Having self-preserving instincts can really be a benefit to your family at some levels, or to your business, or to your shop. TJ is one of the few coffee shops I imagine that survived in our town that wasn't owned by a green monstrosity. Because you have strong understanding about holding down the fort and the rest. Anyway, those two elements, I think how do I love people in their instinct, and how do I understand my own instinct, not bulging, not blowing up into excess? That strikes me as really helpful. Getting in moderation. That's the only wisdom I have on jumping into subtypes and instincts. You're getting more instinctual, typical insights. I think that one thing that should be known, and the very end of this conversation may not be the best place for it, but here we are, and it's too late for me to just put this in the beginning, because I can't travel through time. But I think this is also really good wisdom for the Enneagram in general, that this aspect, while there is a lot of good things that can come out of it, the fact that it makes everything so messy might be too much for some people, and there's nothing wrong with that. If all of this, if you listen to this whole thing and you're like, "I don't care about any of that," that's fine, put it on a shelf, and don't worry about it. You might come back to it someday when it actually does draw you in, and it becomes something that you want to look into. And if you don't... Also, you're a masochist. You listen to this whole thing, and then you're like, "Right, seriously." But I think this is one specific aspect of the Enneagram that I don't think needs the kind of attention, or even necessarily offers the kind of value that other things like Stan's work does. Right. However, pick up subtypes again, I think that's fine, because I think that focusing on your primary type and even your intelligent centers, I think that's way more valuable and useful, and there's a lot more work to be done there, where subtypes makes everything messy, and it can do a lot of good, but it also might just make things harder, and I think if you don't want to, that's totally fine. We in fact have a podcast series, which is convenient to find now on exactly the steps that you should take when doing your Enneagram journey to steal somebody else's phrase. We have a podcast now called Start Here. TJ and I just put three series that we think are fantastic for people who are just jumping in to Enneagram. So, if you have friends who don't know their type, but want to kind of jump in with you, our podcast is set up to be handed off. So, if you just look up Start Here on the Spotify or iTunes, you can obviously share that with friends. First episode says this had the podcast work. Second episode is, let's find your type, and then it unfolds kind of like a book, but the last seven episodes are our seven steps of how you should grow in your Enneagram knowledge. And the things that we really think is the most valuable, and I can occur with TJ the subtypes I don't think. I think it's fun. It's like wings. Yes. It's some of the stuff that may have some relevance, but turn to some of the other bigger stuff first. Yep. So, you know what else is going on? What? 2023. We're going to be having our online gatherings, which you'll know about. Yeah. We're going to move those to just once a month so they feel a little bit more special, have a little bit more energy. You can register at aroundthecircle.org. Just click on events. You'll see a place to click on and register if you want to join us. Generally, 15 to 25 people show up, and we talk about, I think it's the case that through 2023, we're going to start out talking about relationships. You might just stick there, so agree. I consistently am finding that that has a ton of energy in that space of talking about the relationships that we have, where we struggle, where things are successful, and different elements of the Enneagram and the wisdom it has for our relationships, but speaking of events, physical events, you and I, it's crunch time now. It's coming. February 4th. Oh my gosh, it's so soon. February 4th, we have our annual one-day conference in Colorado. If you have any interest in incoming, that's also at aroundthecircle.org, and just click on events, and you'll see the links to all of that. This year, we're going to be talking about stress and security, and TJ and I have been saving up for many, many months, all this fantastic gold, going to bring the pain. Yeah. I'm really excited about that. It's also the case if our podcast feed is kind of thin in January, it's because we're scrambling. Yeah, it's because we have prep work to do. As always, the intro music here is by the collection and the great. Brian Clackston is throwing down the jazz at the end, and if you love this podcast, one of the best things you can do is give us some stars on the iTunes, on Spotify, helps people find the podcast, and I suppose the best thing you could do is you could support us on Patreon. There's a handful, we've got like 13 people there, still plugging, giving us some support on Patreon, who are, y'all are champs. We haven't even given anything out for free. Actually, no, I take this back. If you would like free tickets to our February event, if you sponsor us on Patreon, I'll get you some free tickets. There you go. You're one of the 12 people that actually listened to the outro to the yen. You deserve free tickets to our Colorado event. That's what I got. You got anything else? DJ? I got nothing, man. It's DJ Wilson. He's officially awesome. I'm Jeff Keck. Who you aren't? Isn't interesting. Be who you are, let's set the world apart. [music] [music] [music] (gentle music) [BLANK_AUDIO]
