WHO I AM AND WHO I AM NOT Threes bear the image of the effective God. Your life resonates with: “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light” (Genesis 1:3).
➤ Which words reflect the image of God in you? ➤ Which words are you most attached to? Addicted to? Compulsive about? ➤ Which words do you resist and judge the most? ➤ If you opened up to the words you resist without judgment, how might your life and relationships shift? ➤ Journal about the words that reflect how God’s loving care looks after you.
Who we are or are not comes with expression and energy. The attitudes, behaviors, and motivations of beloved Threes convey driven presence. Your true self emerges from union with God. It is not built on achievements, performance, or roles. Your false self is compulsive and deeply entrenched in the old nature or ego self, which is constructed on a complex mixture of nature, nurture, achievements, image building, and free will. This section will help you recognize compulsive and impulsive false self reactions to impress, as well as make you aware of when you FLOW with God’s loving productivity.
(The Three’s image of God and the pull of false-self performance)
True Self Threes: Sacred Confidence Threes are designed to reflect God’s motivated, connected, and effective energy. Your presence says, “I am here and able!” Transforming Threes motivate others and help them shine. You are adaptable, authentic, achievement-oriented, self-assured, magnetic, ambitious, and competent. Action-oriented Threes don’t just produce and manufacture product. You reproduce from your intimacy with God. You lean into servant leadership and can set an example of how to relax your pace and agenda. True self Threes stop working and rest! You embody sacred confidence and are everything you seem to be. When you are present to God, you seek divine inspiration and reveal divine efficacy that never cuts corners or overlooks people.
HARMONY: EFFECTIVE LOYALTY HARMONIZES Threes are often identified as the effective achiever, but you are much more than just one number! You bear the image and harmony of a three-in-one God. When beloved Threes integrate your IQ and GQ, you harmonize. Your effectiveness flows with the loyalty of the Six and the peacefulness of the Nine. This section creates awareness of how FLOW is the unique gift of the Harmony Triads.
This beloved Three is learning how sacred confidence helps him detach from the addiction to prove his worth and always be on. Balancing his deceiving, performing heart with his head and gut enables him to embrace the truth-seeking of a Six and patient-moving Nine energy. Integrating head and gut slows him down and brings discernment to his hectic life. Notice how monitoring his frenetic energy with IQ and GQ makes both his relationships and projects go better.
My Six also helps me follow and let go of my drive to be out front. My gut Nine says there is a time to end work each day! There is a time to release my agenda and enter the peace and presence of my family. The practices
(Harmony triads: integrating head and gut to slow the driven Three)
Children are wired for resilience. Still, residual childhood baggage and messages can leak into adult Three relationships. Three children can lose the message, “You are loved for yourself.” The default message you can learn is, “Your own feelings and identity are not enough.” Three children learn to cope by constructing an image (identification). Competition is a way you protect. This mitigates against loyalty and rest. When these messages get triggered in adult interactions, then raw, ragged, and unprocessed pain can erupt, sabotaging the FLOW of a Three’s efficacy. Suddenly a needy, four-year-old inside you feels deeply distressed that efforts and accomplishments go unappreciated. Defaulting to the false self, you compete harder to prove your worth. Competition moves you from your center to your edge of workaholism, vainglory (false glory), and deception. The Harmony Triad offers a way for Threes to be curious about the trauma, defenses, and childhood lies about not being worthy that shape your relationships today.
Prayer of Ignatius of Loyola Allow this prayer of Ignatius of Loyola, which addresses the heart, head, and gut energy of the Enneagram Triads, to become your prayer. This week, pray the mind, heart, and strength of the Trinity into your life and interactions. Father, I dedicate this new day to you;
as I go about my work [EQ], I ask you to bless those with whom I come in contact [EQ]. Lord, I pray for all men and women who work to earn their living; give them satisfaction in what they do [GQ]. Spirit of God, comfort the unemployed and their families; they are your children and my brothers and sisters [IQ]. I ask you to help them find work soon.
Receiving your dismissed child can heal and give Threes freedom to be truthful and authentic again. Remember, within the confident, high-energy, and charismatic Three there is a fearful, self-doubting, untrusting Six who believes in an unsafe world in which you must prepare for the worst and be on guard. There is also a little Nine who wants to stay out of conflict, avoid the limelight, and procrastinate about what is hard. To recognize where you dismissed your childlike self and your needs, pay attention to where you may have ignored your GQ and IQ.
➤ Growing up under extreme duress and uncertainty about her value led this Three to define her life as a competition. How does this affect her ability to be present and FLOW with her God-given design? ➤ Within the driven, vainglorious Three is a numbed out, “hide under the covers” Nine who is passive-aggressive about what is required of her. Take a slow and silent walk or lay down and allow your body to remember where these messages show up in your life. ➤ Within the driven, deceived Three is the questioning Six who asks, “Am I right? Will I be safe?” When does your inner child ask or dismiss these questions? ➤ How do you dismiss your head IQ and gut GQ?
▶▶ JOURNALING YOUR DISMISSED CHILDLIKE SELF Integrating and accessing your IQ and GQ can make you aware of what needs to happen so you can heal and find freedom to be authentic and less driven by image and work.
➤ What is your story about needing to impress and be successful? What triggers your malformed belief that you are a failure and will be rejected? What childlike defenses still operate today? ➤ Where do you overwork or deceive because of shame or past trauma? ➤ What is causing distress in your heart right now? What is that about? If you relaxed to nurture yourself and trusted things to work on their own, what might happen? ➤ Where has your trust been repaired/healed or increased/solidified? Immediate and never-fail Threes have a default stance of, “Make it happen.” In your false self you find following another’s lead risky, frustrating, inefficient, and a waste of your own talent. God’s invitation to follow provides a huge opportunity to heal, let go of vainglory, and ask, “Who am I and who is God when I’m not leading?” It may be helpful to explore the chapter “Invitation to Follow” in Invitations from God by Adele Ahlberg Calhoun.
(Childhood wounds, dismissed self, and the root of the Three’s shame)
Threes need to intentionally embrace silence and solitude. In God’s restful care, Threes can find inner freedom to FLOW with true self effectiveness that makes a lasting impact. Your vice of vainglory is transformed into your virtue of truth.
Desolations of anxiety, shame, and vainglory help Threes notice when you have fallen into over-performing to look successful and thus miss bringing harmonic results. (More information on Harmony Triad discernment is found in Soul Resource 5.) Threes experience consolations such as harmonized relationships, peaceful optimism, unconditional value, humble competence, servant leadership, empowering presence, and contemplative action. This is your freedom.
When Threes fear being a failure, you self-promote to be admired. This is bondage.
As Threes partner with the Holy Spirit for transformation, you replace the old false self ego doing with true self rhythms that create new neural pathways and ways of responding.
Attending to the motions of the soul on a daily basis helps Threes move from addiction to doing and needing a response to the inner freedom to tell the truth about your limits, failures, and need to be seen. The Spirit’s movement within helps Threes integrate so your effective loyalty harmonizes.
When you notice that you are stuck in achieving and constricting around your success, this is the moment to breathe and ask the Spirit to give you inner freedom to open your head and gut and to be with God and what is. Ask, “Where is my hyper-speed limiting what I see?” or “How much energy do I need in this moment?” At the end of the day, pause and take a deeper look. Log what happened when you welcomed FLOW. What happened when you were not in FLOW? Celebrate how God’s efficacy flows through and confess when it doesn’t. Begin again tomorrow.
Practice Honesty/Truth About Who You Are Feel your heart’s desire for authenticity and true connection. ▶ Threes create reality out of their words. Pay attention to where you spin, exaggerate, and lie to make an impression. What is happening inside you? ▶ When you sense you want to embroider truth, ask for grace to let truth speak. Notice what happens when you speak truth. ▶ What is the truth about your ability to trust IQ Six people and learn from GQ Nine people who have potential energy rather than kinetic energy like you? ▶ When you hear yourself exaggerate, back up and say, “I get carried away with my stories. Let me backtrack and make sure this is accurate.”
Practice Secrecy Secrecy is a practice of anonymity. Giving and serving anonymously addresses the disordered need for visibility and attention in Threes. ▶ When you feel the urge to tell everyone your latest accomplishment, self-mute. Let the truth that God sees you and what you have done fill the inner void. ▶ Minimize
This Three is working to integrate the trauma and shame that led her to dismiss her emotions, keep secrets, and become a human doing. Let your IQ, GQ, and EQ direct you toward understanding and compassion as you read.
(Practices of honesty, secrecy, and Spirit-led transformation for Threes)
frees me to let my real, true self shine. Read through the questions. Choose to answer the ones that capture your attention. These questions can be most useful to you when you are working with a Three. 1. As you consider the story, notice: • What are you thinking about this Three? • What are you feeling about this Three? • What is your gut instinct about this Three? 2. When have you pushed pain and feelings away through performing and achieving? Where has shame and vainglory wrecked your empathy? 3. Can you find a disconnected, cautious Six child hiding behind the image conscientious, anxious Three? 4. Get inside a Three’s story with its shame and need for approval. How does their lack of integrating IQ and GQ mitigate against truth, presence, slowing down, and caring for others?
RELATING TO A THREE We find grace to see things from a Three’s point of view when we remember that under the lightning speed of a Three is a tender, anxious child who is still producing to be loved.
• Be curious and interested in their breathtaking capacity and energy; celebrate their achievements. Threes like support; they pick up on your spoken and unspoken resistance.
Basic fear: Of being worthless • Basic desire: To feel valuable and worthwhile • Drive: Want to be affirmed, have success, be admired Based on the description
The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen. ELISABETH KÜBLER-ROSS