Life as a Nine

The enneagram is a complex personality test that in recent years has become very popular. There are nine personality types, one through nine. Each type has distinct attributes and core fears and desires. Each number type has two wings, the number above and the number below. Everyone has a main type, but also some attributes of their wings. Most people lean on one wing more than the other, but you can...

Another element to the enneagram is the deadly sins. Each type has a deadly sin. The sins include all the deadly sins in: pride, envy, wrath, gluttony, lust, sloth, and greed, with an addition of sloth and deceit. The enneagram nine’s deadly sin is sloth. Similar to the animal, nines struggle to get moving and have trouble doing things in a timely manner, but it is deeper than just being slow...

In addition to the nines habit of merging their opinions with others, nines will go as far as merge their personalities with people around them. For as long as I can remember, my handwriting changed from assignment to assignment, sentence to sentence, word to word and even letter to letter. Sometimes I was trying to copy my friends handwriting and sometimes I was just trying to avoid my ugly handwriti...

The triads divide the nine numbers into three groups of three to describe the way each type makes decisions and the emotion that is tied to it. Numbers 8, 9 and 1 fall in the gut and anger triad, 2, 3, and 4 in the heart and shame triad and 5, 6 and 7 in the head and fear triad.  Nine’s fall in the center of the gut triad, meaning when it comes down to it, peacemakers will follow their intuit...

Nines have an innate tendency to remain calm and keep the peace, but oftentimes that is the opposite of what is going on in their head. Most days I go through life projecting a face of peace while my brain is a jumble of anxieties and insecurities. There is so much more going on in my brain than what others can see. In my brain I am far from calm, but somehow I manage to present myself as calm.  ...

Living in the brain as a nine can be confusing, especially before you know you're a nine. On the surfaces, it looks like nines are simply seeing both sides, but they are really just struggling to find their opinion.  Nines struggle with what is called self forgetting; meaning they often lose their own opinions and personality in other people's opinions and personality. Enneagram expert, Ian Cron...