Instead of wishing we were otherwise

It is amazing how much time is spent wishing we were otherwise. We are continually bombarded in the media with other peoples lives that it is hard not to get caught up in them. And when we get caught up in them we start, often, to compare ourselves. We are exposed to people who have much more money than we have, more success, more love (so it seems), more children, a more creative lifestyle, people who travel more, who seem to have their lives more 'together' than we do, who live in lovely houses, who have a better figure.... and on and on it goes. in fact we can end up spending so much time focussed on others that we spend very little time thinking about ourselves other than to compare and contrast ourselves with them which can lead us to bemoan our lot and wish that we were otherwise. We do not spend enough time focusing on ourselves and who we are. Focussing on oneself in order to better understand how we function is not selfish, it is necessary. We may not know what motivates us, what things would be good for us, what parts of ourselves are getting in our own way, what would make us happy or would help us instead of hinder us. We can get so caught up in the psychodrama of comparison, spending too much time thinking about how we are not good enough and if only.we were more this and a little less that... -that we short change ourselves and devalue our own contribution.

The Enneagram helps us to understand ourselves better, to see ourselves a little more clearly because we all see ourselves and life through the filter of our own personality. We have to therefore understand the nature of our own filter. Once we start to understand that - where we are in the Enneagram - our developmental pathway is opened up for us. Understanding oneself can lead to surprising insights about who we are and we are better able to see the qualities we bring into the world and so spend less time wishing we were otherwise.