How to get started with the Enneagram

In the last 10 years, the Enneagram has become an extremely popular tool for understanding your personality and your hidden motivations, especially in Christian circles. Today you can find everything from mugs and t-shirts with silly Enneagram quips on them, to deeply esoteric books on the subject. The Enneagram has been powerfully transformative in my own life: 

• it has helped me fall more in love with Jesus

• it has helped me move towards emotional wholeness by revealing the hidden motivations in my life

• it has given me the language to understand my own story with more grace and compassion

• it has helped my marriage immensely, providing a lens to see how my wife and I’s default survival mechanisms differ, and how we are not actually enemies!

• it has provided a toolset for loving and serving others well.

I used some Enneagram language and typology in my devotional, You Are Enough: Learning to Love Yourself the Way God Loves You. I used it specifically to help us identify some of the trauma patterns in our lives and the habits we have constructed around our deepest fears so that we can gently love ourselves back to wholeness. More on that here, if you’re interested.

But where to begin? I get asked this question fairly regularly, so I’ve put together a quick guide for where you might want to begin your Enneagram journey. There are many teachers on the subject and they range in quality and reliability. This is by no means exhaustive but it should help you get started. Most of my journey with the Enneagram has been self-led, through books and podcasts but there are Enneagram coaches out there too if you want that.

1. Listen to some podcasts to get a high-level overview.

2. Take a test to find your type

3. Read some books to get a deeper understanding of yourself.

4. Combine it with other practices to help you grow.

5. Use the Enneagram to understand more about your relationships.

1. High-level overview

Start by listening to a podcast such as my interview with priest, therapist and Enneagram teacher, Ian Morgan Cron, where he provides a high-level overview of the Enneagram types and some reasons why they might be useful to you.

Follow that up with another overview from a different teacher to get a slightly different flavour. My interview with author Chris Heuertz covers some of the history of the Enneagram system and how it relates to finding our purpose in life.

2. Find your type

Take an online test to get a ballpark reading of your strongest types. Some tests are better than others, I recommend these two:

The RHETI test from enneagraminstitute.com (costs $12)
yourenneagramcoach.com/dont-know-your-type (free)

Tests are a great way to get started because you don’t have to try and understand the whole system at once, you can just focus on your top one or two types. That said, tests should not the be-all-and-end-all indicator of your type(s). Once you’ve done more of a deep dive into the system, you will likely see yourself represented in the descriptions of one or two types more clearly and consistently than others, and that gut-level response is better than any test.

3. Build a robust view of yourself

The strength of the Enneagram is in understanding your hidden motivations, keeping the good bits and choosing what to do with the destructive stuff. That’s a work that requires a bit more time and consideration than just reading a funny Instagram Ennea-meme. Read a few books and other resources to develop a robust understanding of yourself.

Read the free type descriptions and other materials at enneagraminstitute.com and yourenneagramcoach.com.

Order The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery by Ian Morgan Cron & Suzanne Stabile
Order The Sacred Enneagram: Finding Your Unique Path to Spiritual Growth by Christopher L. Heuertz

Ryan O’Neal, AKA Sleeping At Last, has written and produced an incredible series of songs for each Enneagram type, featuring musicians of each type performing on each song. You can listen to the songs on the album Atlas: Enneagram (available everywhere) and hear a full breakdown of each song with related Enneagram teaching, on the Sleeping at Last podcast. Here are each of the episodes: One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight | Nine

4. Combine with practices to heal and grow

Simply knowing things about yourself is great but to make deep, sustainable, gracious changes in your life, you’ll need to lean into other tools and practices. In my own journey, I combined my Enneagram-driven knowledge of self with contemplative prayer practices, inner healing, parts-work and professional therapy from a psychotherapist. Together, all of this helped me explore the layers of my inner world, move towards wholeness and see God and the Gospel in beautifully fresh ways. I’ve turned some of my own journey into a 30-day devotional which you might find helpful as well. (You can download a free sample here.)

Order The Brain-Based Enneagram: you are not A number by Dr. Jerome D. Lubbe
Order The Enneagram of Belonging: A Compassionate Journey of Self-Acceptance by Christopher L. Heuertz

InterVarsity Press have released a series of 40-day devotionals for each Enneagram type, called “Enneagram Daily Reflections.” Each one is written by an amazing author and the series is edited by master Enneagram teacher, Suzanne Stabile. I highly recommend it! One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight | Nine

5. Expand your awareness of the other types

Once you’ve spent some time working compassionately on yourself, embracing your shadow side and leading it towards the light, it’s a good time to expand your understanding of the types to include others. Learning about the types of your spouse, your kids, your close friends, your colleagues, and others can build new layers of compassionate understanding into your world. Go back through all the above resources but focus on the types of others, rather than yourself.

Digging into the ways the types combine between couples is can be really helpful (and humorous). A great place to start is this list of type combinations: https://www.enneagraminstitute.com/the-enneagram-type-combinations

Remember that no single type describes us, each of us are endlessly multifaceted. As my friend Dr. Jerome D. Lubbe says, “You are not a number!”

I hope that helps get you started!

Here are some other books and resources and I can recommend:

• The Typology Podcast from Ian Morgan Cron

• The Enneagram for Spiritual Formation: How Knowing Ourselves Can Make Us More Like Jesus, by AJ Sherrill

• The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective by Richard Rohr & Andreas Ebert

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