Do you consider yourself resilient and what does that mean to you? In this podcast, Resilient Entrepreneurs with Two Four One, we chat with business owners about what resilience means to them as they share their inspiring stories and life lessons.
What we've learned running our own business, is you're never alone even when it feels like it. So tune in anytime to this podcast. We're always here for you celebrating resilient entrepreneurs just like you. We're Laura and Vicki from Two Four One - a marketing company for early stage business owners who want to launch, grow and be resilient.
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Tracy, welcome to Resilient Entrepreneurs.
Thank you so much. It's such a delight to be here.
Oh, look, this is the podcast where we get to talk about the ups and downs of being in business, and discovering the cool things that other business owners do to get through or around or up and over, any of the hurdles and challenges that we overcome in business. So it's a real treat to have you on the episode because I know you're gonna have so much good advice.
Thank you.
Yeah, the more episodes we record, the more we realise that everyone has some adversity in life, it might be trauma, it might be grief. So, or just sometimes that crazy stuff that happens in business that feels really challenging at the time.
Yes, yes. Yeah, absolutely.
Okay, I guess the key is just how to overcome it, how to find the gift in the pain and use it to our benefit so that we can be better than we already are, so we’re looking to just dive into that today. So just for background, Tracy, you’re a relationship and personality psychologist.
Yes.
You teach and use Enneagram as a tool to help people through difficult situations. Tell us, how did you get into that? And maybe more importantly, why?
Yeah, sure, my pleasure. So I did psychology later in life in my 30s and started off in child protection in a range of jobs and then about 18 years ago, I came across the Enneagram and found it was the most profound, incisive tool to help people understand their inner world. So it was really useful for me to understand my inner world and why might, why I had the response to my family of origin that I did, why my mum and dad were as they were, why my future husband, the differences between us and it was so profoundly useful. I got really involved in it and trained extensively in the Enneagram here in Australia and overseas in America, presented at the conference, started a Ph. D around that and then put that on hold for a lot of good reasons. And then just had a bit of a dip and then really had to think about what do I want to do. And I'd been in private practice for about 15 years and using the Enneagram and I thought I just want to… I want to found my own business where it's just using the Enneagram but developed into a really comprehensive method that helps future-proof relationships.
And so I'm really passionate about that and I think the method is working and so I've been, I founded the Insight Agency about four years ago and have been developing and testing this method called Couple DNA Method or it could be called Relationship DNA Method, a mother and daughter or you and anybody else. To help you, to help two people really deeply understand themselves and the other person because we misjudge and we misunderstand. And most, many separations are not irreconcilable differences, they’re misunderstood differences and I want to stop those misunderstandings.
I am so intrigued already, I'm one of those type of people, I love to do the tests, personality tests, I love anything to dig deeper into who I am and I've always been fascinated about that. But tell us a little bit more about what Enneagram is? For somebody who has never heard of it before. What is that?
Yes, absolutely. So if you look it up, it looks like it's a personality tool. But it's so much more than that. It's really a psychological and spiritual tool for personal transformation and I don't use that word transformation lightly. I mean, it really, after 20 years of using it really does transform people's view of themselves and others in such a helpful way. But it describes nine life strategies, or you could call them personality types, I refer to them as Daniel Siegel does, who's a neuropsychiatrist, as Personality Development Pathways. So each of us across the world, we've done millions, thousands, probably millions of interviews with people all around the world and these nine Personality Development Pathways, or PDPs, exist universally. So we fall into one of these pathways and it describes that inner world. If all of us in the world knew what our personalities were, we would realise that we're more similar across the world. You know, somebody that has the 2 Personality Development Pathway in China is so similar to somebody in Syria or somebody in Japan or somebody here. It's a beautiful tool for recognising the sameness under the different strategies that we use to feel okay in the world. So nine different ways to feel safe and okay and loved in the world, really. But they're often taught us personality types but it is more than that and it's not about categorising or putting people in a box, it's saying, Wow, do you realise there's actually a developmental pathway that drives you, that's unconscious that you probably didn't know, most people don't know, and once you know it, it's so revealing and your life makes sense and it's such a human need for our lives to make sense. And when that makes sense, we can just, things in us can settle a little bit. And then of course, there's the invitation for growth. So it's not just saying, so this is your developmental pathway, this is it. It explains from temperament right through to adulthood, why you have the developmental pathway you do; lots of science behind this now, and I care deeply about that too and a growth path of these are the things that.. this is your superpower and this is your gift and we will have one or a few of those. And also, this is the challenge and this is the area to work on. And for all of us, it's about presence, really. Can we all be more present, more conscious.
Yeah, I could see that could be really useful for people who are searching for a purpose, searching for an understanding of their business, you know what they're going to do within their business. Because when you lead, we know that when you lead your business with purpose, it tends to be more impactful and more successful over the long haul. So is it also a way that people can, when they learn this about themselves, is it useful for how they then move on to create their purpose? And to move forward in that? Is it useful?
Absolutely, because it describes in the most spiritual way, it actually describes the barriers to love and to God, whenever people think of as God, but it actually is the things that get in the way of us being our best selves. So each of the personalities believe, have core beliefs around ‘I have to be like this in the world to be okay’. And they're driven by that and so the ego - nine ego states - are constantly telling us, “Don't be like that”, “be like that”, “don't say that.” Just worries and constantly giving us messages of how to be, and often the messages are really unhelpful. They're not self compassionate, they're not compassionate. And they get us into trouble, they’re automatic behavioural strategies that get us into trouble.
So when we know our primary ego’s way, and we can take the best of that, and say, Yes, this is really important to me and these are the areas I have to work on, it just really helps you to have clarity, I think around, well around purpose, yes, around purpose.
So maybe a good example is, it's used extensively by the Enneagram Prison Project, which I'm on their advisory board and I care deeply about. So it's used in some of the most hardened prisons in America, where very experienced Enneagram teachers go in and run a program and those that are incarcerated, when they come out, the recidivism rates dropped from something like 75% to 5%. Because they have discovered why they did what they did and put that all together in a way that they can see the best in themselves yet again, they understand why they did what they did, and they can find a new purpose and then they're coming out now and teaching the Enneagram and going back into prisons.
And of course, the Enneagram is used in leadership extensively.
That's fascinating. And what incredible results! For those percentages, to reduce recidivism and wow, yes, that's really staggering Tracy. There's the whole nurture and nature conversation that happens and I can't help but wonder, how much of the nurture factors into this? How can there only be nine types and we all grew up through such different backgrounds and I guess there's probably multiple questions in this, but a lot of the time, we'll say, “Well, I'm like this, because that happened to me as a child,” and then we get to choose well, do we want that to be our future as well as adults? Or are we willing to work with it and not let it hinder us for the rest of our life? That's one way of addressing psychology and issues but this sounds quite deeper.
It is, it is Vicki, and there's a brain study group in America that's led by some of the world's best Enneagram teachers and some scientists and Daniel Siegel, who's a neuropsychiatrist and is all about attachment and how we grow up and how personality is formed to some degree. And this group like myself, we're looking at how do we explain temperament, like when we're born and temperament through the personality? Where does personality come from? And so I think those of us in the Enneagram world would all agree that we.. it's not like we're born with the Enneagram pathway but we're certainly born with a temperament and so a lot of that temperament that we're born with, has to do with whether we're more extroverted or introverted, whether we're more forward moving or moving away, whether we're more high energy or low energy and also, importantly, we have three centres of intelligence. So head, heart and gut - ways of taking information in from the world. And it seems to be that even little ones, there are studies that have been done on one and two year olds, we can see that we seem to very quickly lead with one over the other. So you put that bit of information together and then that starts to lead you on a trajectory or Personal Development Pathway of…so if you are a little one that's born, leading with emotional intelligence and is extroverted and is forward moving and has high energy, you're likely to form a Developmental Pathway that's about ‘connection is my core motivation and I'm going to do everything I can to keep relationships and be helpful, giving and serving. And so to do that, I need to push my own needs down and just focus on yours’, which is beautiful. And it's all about love but they leave themselves out.
You've just described my daughter to a tee, like every one - I was yep, yep. She's only nine, she's only nine. She doesn’t have relationships like that yet but it'll be interesting to keep that in mind, to make sure.
Yeah and Laura, my girl has as well, we've known she has the 2 Pattern since she was two. And we've watched that develop and how that works and I've had the privilege now of doing this for 20 years of watching children grow up and watching the difference in their behaviours and what they care about and how they respond to things. And incredible, I mean, they often don't, it's harder to work out the personality until they're maybe in their early teens, but still sometimes you can see it when they're little. It's amazing.
Wow! I guess there's positive and negative side effects of each of those ego lines. So the positive is that you're a giver and you're caring and you may even become a carer, or a nurse, for instance. But then I guess there's a downside of never putting yourself first and maybe even becoming codependent because you need other people to make you feel useful, I don’t know.
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And it's interesting that because the core beliefs are so strong and they're formed early and somewhere in the conditioning, which is what you were getting at in terms of nurture, somewhere in that conditioning that somehow gets cemented. And so depending on say, with that little girl with the 2 Developmental Pathway, if she's really rewarded for that helpfulness, then that conditioning will impact on the 2 Pathway, it doesn't create it but it impacts on it. If all of her helpfulness doesn't work and her life strategies, the best of what she knows to do are not appreciated, not appreciated over time, you're going to see some really significant mental health problems. So it's really predictive as well.
Also important for parents, then to understand how to react to certain situations
And if they've got a little child that's a 2.. has the 2 Pathway and then the 8 Pathway which is all about, ‘it's my way or the highway’ and they might not understand each other and they might not understand those two children and so when you look through the lens of this, it's incredibly helpful. So at some point, I really want to do the couple work but I will take it into later High Schools and then eventually the Prep because I think there's some work we need to do here in terms of people understanding, just differences in a beautiful simple way to honour them, difference is beautiful, difference is the attraction, that needs to be honoured.
Yeah. And it's funny, you talked about in schools where teens, their driver is to be in the community of their friend group, right. And it's really important that everybody likes me and we're all the same and they amalgamate into the same kind of person with the same kind of clothes and backpacks and hairstyles. You know what I mean to be very inclusive in that, but yet if teenagers can get the message that they're all unique and their way is just their way, and this is their superpower within that, that they can grow up to, I think that's powerful change that can happen in the most crucial time in life where they're just starting to learn who they are and what they want to do with the rest of their life.
Yeah. Oh, absolutely. And I've had.. I've worked with a lot of couples and often they'll say, “This is so great. I want to bring my teenagers” and so then I see the teenager, not that I normally work with teenagers anymore, and I see the teenagers and we work out their pattern. There's one lovely young boy that I worked with that I thought initially he might have had the 6th Pathway which is sort of looking for where things can go wrong in life and overly predicting a threat, and it turned out he didn't, he had the 4 Pathway which is all about authenticity and wanting to be unique and lots of intelligence behind that. And if I'm different in some way, then people want to connect with me because I'm not just like everybody else. And so for him as a 16 year old boy to learn he had the 4 Pathway meant that he.. because part of the 4 ego will say, Stand back, stand back, just wait for people to come to you and people come to you then that proves that they want to connect with you. And so of course, then what happens is that the person with a 4 Pathway looks like they're aloof and they look like they're not wanting to connect. And he hadn't realised, he absolutely immediately said, “I do that all the time!”. So inviting him to step forward, even though it was scary and it's uncomfortable, it feels counterintuitive, can he step forward? And he's been doing lots more of that and making lots more friends, and again, finding his purpose - he's doing music because he's got, he's all about depth. It's just gorgeous. So lovely. And using his superpower, which is give him anything, and he'll find the depth in it and he leads with his heart. So three of the Personalities lead with their head, three lead with their heart, and three lead with gut intelligence, but yeah, different primary motivation for each centre.
How would you apply this to business? I mean, we, our audiences, a lot of solopreneurs people who are working on their own but still obviously working in the community with clients and other partners and vendors. So how.. I can only imagine that this helps to build resilience in some way.
Yes, yeah. And it's interesting, because.. maybe to answer the invitation to talk about resilience, and then maybe answer the question about using it in organisations if that's alright Vicki. Because it's used in organisations all over the world and I've used it a bit in organisations here, my great passion is personal relationships. But I think in terms of resilience, I think it's about the capacity to.. well, a lot of everything comes back to being able to be present but to be able to be self aware, and be self compassionate, and to be able to self regulate, I think those three things are really powerful and I think if we can do that, then we'll be resilient.
And I love, I don't know, if you've heard of wonderful Michael Singer, who's a spiritual teacher and I'm just listening to his podcast all the time, he's fabulous and he says it's about getting the ego out of the way or as I would talk about and he says that really spirituality is about can you handle it? And for me, that's what resilience is. Can you handle it? There's a lot of traffic and you're running late, can you handle it? Can you handle it? Can you be okay? And I think if we have self awareness and we know what the ego’s driving us, we can have a little chat when we say, “Thank you very much but that's not very helpful right now.” And you can bring self compassion and you can regulate your nervous system, for me, that’s resilient.
And so then maybe bringing that into organisations, I think it's still about, Can we be all more self aware? Because we do, there's so much reactivity in the world which distresses me to see that, so much automatic reactivity and people struggling to even understand what's going on in them, let alone to understand that, let alone to then make sense of it, and then be able to regulate it. And so I think, for people in organisations, for the business owners to be able to do that for themselves is profoundly important. And then to be able to help their clients do that or leaders, if they’re executive coaches but for the leaders to do that, and then be mentors to other people in that because we co-regulate each other - our nervous systems, if we can co-regulate each other it’d be a really great world rather than setting each other off. That's probably a long answer.
No, but it's understanding, right? It's understanding each other a little bit better. And often, most arguments, issues arise because of misunderstanding.
Yes, yes, absolutely. And I've been working with couples married 10, 20, 30 years and they come in and then once they work out their two Developmental Pathways and I draw it all up on the board and it makes sense and we look at their primary needs and their core wounds and vulnerabilities. And we piece all that together with their Pathways, they'll say, “Oh, my God,” and you know, I'll be able to help them learn that no wonder your wife was doing this and no wonder the other person was doing that. So it brings in a no wonder rather than a blame in a way that most couples have said to me, we’ve been misunderstanding each other for a decade. Why didn't we know this when we were younger and it's quite heartbreaking. And the work I'm doing is to try and bring it pre-marriage, bring it earlier because that's what everybody is asking for. But people, when they're in love and in those early days, they don't realise what they maybe needed and they don't want it, they just think this is the way it's going to be. And that stresses happen and maybe children come along, and that their self awareness is utterly important.
It sounds like, when you get a car licence, you have to do the test before you get your licence. Can we not make this the test before you get your marriage licence, like, you’ve got to do this first so you understand each other and then you can get married!
It's just good. It's just sensible. And it's good psychology. And we have no education in relationship. None in.. maybe not none, but little in schools and I really think it can start with little preppys. Just talking about feelings and needs and the other person's needs or how you feel feelings and needs in your body and really starting to bring that into the curriculum. Because really conflict, all conflict has to do with poorly expressed needs. It's the strategies that we're using to meet our needs and the strategies of one person clashes with the other person's needs. And we can cut through that really quickly when we know the Personality Development Pathways of two people and we know their primary needs. Just really can and their core wounds, we all have wounds and to know that, it's so predictive and predict where the rub will be and prevent them. Or at least , when the rubs come up, we can be healing agents for one another rather than step on each other's wounds. But actually, oh I get why that's so important to you and I know what you need, we've talked about this and I know that it's not a hug you need right now, it's verbal reassurance, or it's space, or it's, it's you're predicting, and you know what each other's needs and you're healing each other.
Yeah, yeah, that's profound that is, so… It makes another good argument for the more need for more mental health, just general is society we go to see our doctor, whenever we have anything that goes wrong with us - how many of us get to go and see a therapist when there's a trauma that needs to be healed. And more of this is just needed generally, I'm a big strong believer in it and hope to see much more of it in the future so that we can start healing these things and understanding each other and just understanding ourselves. I'm having this problem. I'm expressing it this way because of this deep wound that I haven't dealt with. Deal with the wound and resolve the problem. Yeah, it is. But it's just that lack of understanding. So how are we going to get more of this out there?
I'm really passionate about it. I was saying to Vicki because I'm stuck in the 1970s and all my business is word of mouth but I'm trying.. I'm about to train therapists in the Enneagram because they're slowly - I did the PhD because I wanted to show its clinical efficacy and put that on hold for a number of reasons - but they're starting, a lot of psychologists come to me - how do I train in this? So it's such a delight because I think it's the missing piece in relationship work and sometimes, possibly in some therapeutic work because when therapists understand themselves deeply, it helps even more so to understand where there might be transference. It brings even more compassion and it brings understanding more quickly.
I can have somebody come into the room and because I've done about two and a half thousand personality interviews, I quickly get people's energy. So I'll often just know their personality just by looking at them and their energy, I go by energy and eye contact and language and a whole range of things that gets codified. But yeah, so it's mostly looking for their superpower. I think my thing is I can see value in people, I love that, that's my passion and I want people to see their own value and what their partners to see their value and see the best in them.
I think you rise to that, don't you? When someone does see your value, I think you rise to that as well because you want to see yourself in somebody else's eyes, I think that's really cool.
So should we do it, Laura? Should we try it? Should we put Tracy in the hot seat and have her call our number?
You know I want to know, I want to know so bad.
I can see it. What do you think Tracy? Are you up for it?
Can I ask you a couple of questions?
I’m open like a book!
And that's telling as well, that's good. Everything’s telling! And I mean that with the deepest respect, I never want to sound like it's stereotyping because it's not and that would be an unethical use of it.
It would be a circus act.
And oh, please don't. Yeah, absolutely. For everybody listening, it's not about oh, you're a 2, you’re a 7, it's please can we do this with ‘oh no wonder that was important to you. I get it. I know what you said might have been upsetting, but wow, I get it’.
And so the way that people often find out their personality is through an online test and some of those are pretty good like Russ Hudson's and Jerry Wagner's and Beatrice Chestnut. But all of the online tests and these wonderful authors and teachers I know would say, you're still blind to your own stuff. And so you can answer it but there's blind spots and the self report surveys are really limited and so we've been teaching for probably the last 40 years starting from America but a gold as gold standard as you can get in something like this, but an interview process where we ask a set number of questions, usually, they're pretty similar between all Enneagram teachers that ask questions related to each of the nine patterns. And it's fascinating because I've done so many, about 2,500, there is a pattern in the way people answer, it's amazing. And so one of the personalities use and I won't say, it might be Vicki’s but there's certain language that people use and you look for that. So even it used to be an hour-long interview process would do, but now I can usually do it in just 10-15 minutes, just to make sure. So I'll ask you a couple of questions each if you like,
Sure.
Exactly.
Make a guess. So Vicki for you. How important is freedom to you?
It's important.
How important?
Like 1 to 10 you mean? A scale of 1 to 10?
Yeah and what it means you?
Just did that, I felt that you just did that, then. It's all data collection. So freedom for me, I would say, You know what I consider freedom I need to feel free. I’d say it’s up there. I'd say eight or nine.
Yeah. And what's it like if you feel limited or trapped in some way?
Trapped. Yeah, that's a word that's come up in my life a lot. So it's suffocating and I feel like a caged animal and I will do whatever it takes to find another way. I make change, I like change because that way I can manage my outcomes.
Yeah. And I imagined that you're very visionary. Maybe happy for other people to do maybe some more of the detail things sometimes but I bet you're very visionary and can synthesise information very quickly.
I think so. Yeah.
And can see the big picture. And care about fun.
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
And need to keep your mind stimulated and keep things being interesting and variety.
You've got me! You've got me! What's the number?!
I know and I’m like, yup yup yup!
Because you work together so you know, and again it’s an energy. And so I’d look at the 7 Developmental Pathway Vicki. And the superpower of the 7 is that they come into this world and they're a breath of fresh air. They're the spark of awe and joy, they see awe in the world, they love to travel. Do you love to travel?
Oh, yeah. I love to travel.
I love to travel and love nature.
Yes, nature.
And we could all say we love travel and love nature. But there is a certain way that 7 answers questions. It feeds you. And for the seven personality, Don't box me and don't limit me. Don't just give me one choice. Life is a spectrum of possibilities and I want a bit of this and a bit of that and it's a wonderful energy. It's creative. It's bright. It's positive. It's optimistic.
Hey, thanks!
I think that’s where you're sitting. So you can have a little read.
And then, Laura, for you. And so one of the things, I think, Vicki, you probably lead with cognitive, well, if it's the 7th Pathway, you lead with cognitive intelligence so it's this capacity to be strategic and logical and rational. Vicki.
I think you are Laura, I think you probably lead with your heart and yeah and so there's three different ways. So the core motivation for people like.. so for Vicki it’s security but security looks like, Don't box me and keep the variety, keep the fun happening, I feel secure in that way.
For you, Laura, I think it's more about connection. Connections, the core motive motivation and it's whether it's connecting via being helpful and giving and serving although you recognise that in your daughter, whether that's a pattern in you, or whether it's about achieving and if I'm achieving and I feel really competent and I have got goals and I'm reaching the goals and I feel like I'm doing well in life and my relationships are important as well. It may be the 3 Pathway.
Yeah. I’m nodding to all of that.
Yeah, yeah, yes, that's just the questions to work out 2, 3 or 4. But the 4 Pathway, and I got a little bit of a hit of that earlier with you but authenticity is the big thing for the 4’s that we're all unique. And you said that about if the Enneagram was all over the world. So there's a difference there between 2’s, 3’s and 4’s, the 2 is usually very positive and forward moving, the 3 can be when they're not so conscious., it's more rushing, rushing to the goals, getting things done, ticking off the things on the list, it feels so great and the 4 is more about knowing that they're different and depth. I want deep conversations, don't give me small talk. I want deep conversations. And I see beauty, I love beauty, whether it's a sunset and so my mood can go up with that and then my mood can go down depending.
Most definitely, I'm an artist so yeah, absolutely. Everything is art in nature. Ye, sunsets. Yes, yes.
The 4 Pathway is often referred to as the artist. Isn't that amazing? Or the romantic? The other thing that I love to say, you’re business partners is that one of the, and not that, please know that it's not about any personality is better with any other one, absolutely not - two good people with good hearts together. But I so frequently see the 4 and 7 pattern, the 4 and 7 together. And it's a great combination in business or romantic relationships, any combination is, but what you have is the 7 usually as the point of lightness and fun and visionary and optimistic and 4 is the depth, let's make this deeper. And so it's a lovely, a lovely synergy.
Yeah, I think that we complement each other extremely well as business partners. Yeah, from day one, we recognised that we were very well matched. The best relationship I've ever been in!
And that's of course not to say, of course, Vicki, you can do depth and of course, Laura, you can do fun and enjoyment. But that said it's knowing the Development Pathway and then becoming more, becoming more of who you actually already are. So we've got all nine in us. We just overly doing one pathway, when we identify it we become more flexible. And so the 7 can learn to sit a bit more in suffering maybe which is hard, because pain is not fun. And the 4 can learn sometimes to be light, light, and see so much meaning in mundane moments. So it's a growth path.
And what's the superpower of 4 Tracy?
So the superpower of the 4 is that they can sit in people’s suffering. So an end of life nurse or in a critical situation, the 4 can sit in it, they can hold space. I've got a fireplace in my agency, I often put my hand against the fireplace and just say the 4 can keep their hand there and they're okay with it. Most other personalities are keeping their hand out here, who wants to get too close to it, but the 4 can do that because there's depth in that, there's meaning in that. So the 4 brings, looks for depth and meaning in everything. So any conversation, and if there's not depth and meaning in something they don’t want to be there, you really say you can bring depth. So one of my closest dear friends has the 4 Pattern, we don’t just say a 4, has the 4 Pattern, and I can give her any of my work and she'll extract more depth from it. I just say that's amazing, so it's a superpower in terms of seeing beauty. But sometimes for the 4 it's about them seeing that in themselves, not just outside themselves.
I'll tell you it's hard to network as a 4 because it's that superficial conversation, the getting to know you, I don't, I don't like that. I don't enjoy that at all.
No you don't and Vicki would probably be comfortable with that and brilliant at that. So again, it's usually like the 7 Personality, it's charming and it can move in the crowds. It has great stories, tells stories and it’s good to know about yourself, Laura. That's a growth edge. And yeah, but it's beautiful that you bring depth to all of us, you both have a gift to the world. Awe and joy and depth. How lovely.
Yeah, and I think that's why I've fallen in love with podcasting so much because it is deep conversations, interesting conversations with interesting people like you and I love it. Like, I could do this for the rest of my life and nothing else and I'm so happy.
Shall we do that partner? I'm good with that.
Yeah probably. I'm not stopping anytime soon.
It's great, incredible. One question that we often ask podcast guests is about failure and failure mindset. Do you have a view on that?
It's an interesting question for me. So I have the 3 Developmental Pathway and I've known that, I worked with that for 17 years, I'm still a work in progress - you teach what you need to learn. But the 3, if you read about the 3 Personality, the 3 ego is all about present as competent, present as successful, it's all about presentation, chase the goals and never fail and so there's a great fear in the 3 Personality about failure, like a really huge fear - they can go into a panic about it. It's been my work and to define for myself what success means, I guess and I think that's what helps me with failure. Because I've thought a bit about failure and I think the best way for me to talk about this in terms of what success would mean to me and it's not - the word success resonates for a lot of 3’s - it's never really resonated for me. It's always felt a bit superficial in some way but I think success for me would be, at my funeral, if everybody spoke about me in a way that I was, that I had been in their life, I'd been present, I had made them feel good about themselves when I was around them, and that, I had the self-regulate, and that I was a loving force, and that was authentic.
And so the growth path for the 3 is about being authentic. So in the hurry, the core belief is about ‘never fail, hurry to the goal’, and the core motivation is connection. So if I'm succinct, the core belief is ‘if I'm successful, I'll connect’. But of course, it doesn't work like that. You're so busy racing for the goal that you're not present to those that you love, you get impatient because they’re not as efficient as you. So my work has been to slow that all right down, pace myself, which I do pretty well, these days at 58, I have to, but I pace myself really well I think, and yeah, I care deeply about becoming more conscious and being present. I'd like to see more of that in the world. And so the word failure doesn't resonate as much for me anymore, failure for me I suppose is, like yesterday morning I could feel myself getting impatient in the traffic, and Michael Singer, can you handle it? It's still always having to work with it. But the 3’ness is still there in me but it's important?
It's a great mindset. So any advice for people? I can only imagine the advice will be “learn your Enneagram path and work with it.” But, what is.. what is a person to do? If they're in business, and they feel like they may be on a slippery slope, where things aren't going the way they'd planned and they're looking to build a bit of resilience. And what can you share with someone in that situation if they were just looking to pick themselves back up and get back on track?
Yeah, that's a really wonderful question. It's a really important question and I've had a couple of clients that have come to me, beautiful clients that have, in their own mind failed in business and have wondered about how to get back on track and have just lost all confidence. And so with them, I had worked, because it's what I do, I had helped them work out which Developmental Pathway they had which is working out. Understanding why they had the struggles that they had, so in terms of making sense of that was really important and maybe making sense of relationships with business partners or clients along the way, that was really helpful for them. And then I guess, to understand that they do have a superpower and what that is and how can they do the work coming up, whether it's staying the same business or changing in a way that really aligns with who they are - and who they are is not the Developmental Pathway, who they are is just everything the whole universe inside each of us. But to bring it down it's certainly all nine pathways and sometimes we need to take on the strength of an 8 and say, “No, I don't like it. Don't do that.” That's kind of the 8 Path or to be leaning in and generous like the 2, or to make things in light, like the 7 can do. So they're all nine ways of being able to manage life. And so I think knowing that you actually have all those resources in you and can you use more of those resources? And know what your superpower is. And know that your ego is probably giving you a really hard time and can we have a bit of a chat to that. I still take mine out for coffee, my 3 ego that says, ‘you're not writing your book fast enough’. And I say, ‘I just want to stare at the wall, I just want to do yoga’, it's just, it's talking to it sometimes, and I just help people, I think to do that, and, and it's very loving, and it's very compassionate and helping them to be more self compassionate.Yeah, we all need more of that.
Yes, yes, we do. Yes, we do. We're often so tough on ourselves so hard on ourselves. When we don't meet the expectations we set for ourselves or something like a pandemic comes and throws everything out the window, and, and we have to shift and move and pivot and change and we often just are the hardest on ourselves and why aren’t I successful yet? And why haven't I become a millionaire, I'm putting in all these hours yet. And we have all these things that I think are very normal. But we can be a little bit more self compassionate, I think the world would be a much nicer place, we'd all be a little happier, a little more relaxed and perhaps get more done. Not spinning in the negativity, right?
That's it, there's more ease. It's not about the 3 way of efforting your way through. That's been a hard learning for me. Can I fall back in the arms of the angels? Can I let grace move through me and if I'm efforting so hard, if all of us are efforting so hard, sometimes we just need to go for a swim or do something to let flow and let, I don't talk about God spiritually, but grace of God or grace, move through us. Just give ourselves space for that. And to know it's our ego with its illusionary core beliefs that are driving a lot of what's happening. If you know that voice, you can, there's a higher part of us that can talk back to that and maybe come up with some wisdom that's needed at the time.
Yeah, exactly. We should all listen, come a little stiller, a little quieter. Listen to ourselves, learn more about ourselves and each other in our relationships, whether that be a business relationship, or personal relationship. I really appreciate you, especially you going into Vicki and I. It was so awesome. It's really nice to learn a little bit more. I kind of knew everything. You were just nailing it. I was like that's Vicki absolutely. So yeah, it really was fun. Really enjoyed having you on the podcast. Thank you so much for such a fabulous conversation. And we know that you're writing a book. So look out for a book from Tracy Baker-Lawrence soon and we will shout that out, perhaps we'll have to have you back on again after you've launched it and we'll have another conversation. How's that sound?
That's lovely. I love that Laura. Thank you.
Thanks, Tracy. This has been great
It’s lovely. Thank you so much for having me. Take care!
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