Our greatest challenges and gifts

The Enneagram teaches us that our greatest challenges and our greatest gifts are intertwined - that our challenges can be transformed into our greatest gifts and that our gifts can also be our greatest challenge - that they go both ways.

For instance, one of the gifts of the Four is their self-awareness. They are able to be emotionally honest about themselves which may, at times, not always paint them in a flattering light but none of us are perfect so pretending we are is, in fact, a form of dishonesty. The emotional truth that the Four is seeking is what makes what they have to say often so touching and profound. It is what can make it resonate on a peculiarly intimate and yet also universal level. However, the very self-awareness that makes the Four so honest and vulnerable is also their challenge because it can lead to self-consciousness, to them feeling like outsiders, somehow different or defective or as though everyone else has their life together except them, This is not comfortable and is one of the ways in which Fours suffer. Perhaps, though, if we were all as emotionally honest as the Four we would also admit to feelings and thoughts which are conflicted, not perhaps deemed 'attractive' or always convenient or are perhaps, for example, shameful in the eyes of society. But their drive to express their truth is also what drives Fours to be the deep sea divers of the human psyche, the artists and truth-tellers of the human condition that many of them excel at.

In the following posts I am going to look at some of the gifts and challenges of the other Types and what they can teach us.