Got Boundaries? (Part 2)

Read Part 1 here.

A boundary is only a boundary if you’re willing to enforce it. Otherwise it’s just a preference.

In order to maintain healthy boundaries, you need to know what your boundaries are, you need to communicate them to others, and you need to enforce consequences for boundary violations.

1. Discovering your boundaries:

What are your boundaries? To help you do this inquiry, explore your physical, intellectual, emotional, sexual, material and time boundaries. How do you want to be treated in these various aspects of your life?

As you become more aware of your boundaries, assess whether or not they serve their purpose at this point in your life. Healthy boundaries protect your well-being while also allowing you to have satisfying relationships with others. Too rigid boundaries prevent you from connecting deeply with others, and too loose boundaries put you at risk of losing yourself in others.

This topic is complex - what would be healthy in the context of one relationship could be too rigid or too lose in a different one. We need different boundaries in our relationships with strangers, acquaintances, colleagues, friends and family members. Take your time to journal about this topic.

2. Communicating your boundaries:

We tend to experience our boundaries instinctually because it’s our gut intelligence that detects boundary violations. Because we don’t really think about our boundaries before they’re crossed, we usually don’t anticipate potential misunderstandings and lay out our boundaries in advance. A lot of our boundary problems are dealt with by trials and errors - episodes of reactivity hopefully followed by repairs through conversations.

When friction happens in a relationship because a boundary has been challenged, it’s essential to communicate what happened, what emotions was experienced, and what is needed to be able to move on. It’s important for your own well-being, and it’s essential for the other person to know what’s not ok to do with you.

When we remain silent, we unconsciously train the other person to continue the behavior. If we react strongly and negatively, the other person might also feel mistreated and a vicious cycle starts. Since this kind of conversation will be uncomfortable, it’s a good idea to learn the Nonviolent Communication model so that you are prepared and able to express yourself assertively and also respectfully.

3. Enforcing your boundaries:

If communicating your feelings and needs is difficult, giving consequences in response to repeated violations is really the hard part of this process for a lot of people. It can feel like you are punishing the other person, and you might fear their reaction. If you have been used to either remain silent or react very strongly but without giving any consequences when you are mistreated, changing your pattern might require you to do a lot of inner work.

Enforcing consequences is truly the essence of having boundaries. If you stop at either knowing your boundaries - or even at communicating when your boundary is crossed - you’re really only expressing a preference. A boundary is a limit - it’s a full stop - it needs protection and enforcement when needed. If someone repeatedly disrespects a boundary that you have mindfully chosen for yourself and clearly communicated, your only way to protect that boundary is to have a consequence for when the boundary is not respected. You have to be willing to enact the consequence, and live with it. You have to be willing to put your self-respect and well-being first.

For example, if someone yells at you during an argument, and you have asked them two or three times to lower their voice and stop calling you names - and they do not stop - your only way to protect your boundary is to remove yourself from the situation.

Fundamentally, your boundary is your responsibility. Hopefully people respect your boundaries without needing to be asked, but if they don’t you can’t make them do it. You can ask them and explain your needs, but you can’t make them do anything. Therefore if you have explained your boundaries and consequences, and given how many chance you’re comfortable with, your next step to truly honor your boundaries is to enforce your consequences. This communicates respect to yourself, and it teaches the other person how to treat you.

Remember that having a consequence for a boundary violation is not childish, mean or unfair. It’s actually mature, self-respecting and fair to your well-being. It’s also helpful for the other person to learn that it’s not ok to do what they are doing.

This being said, “enforcement” can sound like a strong word. For small issues, the consequence can be limited in scope and time - taking a break from the conversation until the other person calms down for example. For serious issues, you might have to end the relationship. There is a whole spectrum for you to consider.

Only you can decide how many chances you are willing to give to someone who is crossing your boundary before giving a consequence. Something extremely serious should not get a second chance before enforcing your boundary. For less serious issues, you can give 2-3 chances to the other to change their behavior before moving to enforcement. This is up to you to explore what feels right for you, keeping in mind what your tendencies are. If you tend to be rigid, you might want to relax a little, and if you tend to be too flexible, you might benefit from practicing being more assertive.

Conclusion:

Please remember that you are responsible for your boundaries and your self-respect, no one else is. Boundaries only exist if there is a consequence for not respecting them. Please consider getting coaching to discover your boundaries and to learn how to communicate to protect them gracefully. Healthy boundaries lead to healthy relationships!

The Five Toltec Agreements

A few months ago, a friend introduced me to The Five Toltec Agreements by Miguel Ruiz. Since then I have used them in my self-reflection as well as in my coaching work with clients.

Here is a summary of the five agreements:

1. Be impeccable with your word.
Speak with integrity, honesty and transparency. Refrain from gossip and unnecessary complaining or criticism. Be aware of the power of your words and use them to build rather than destroy.

2. Don’t take anything personally.
You are not responsible for what others do or say. They are responsible for their actions, just like you are responsible for yours. When you refrain from taking things personally, you are able to take responsibility for what you can actually control – yourself – and you greatly reduce needless suffering.

3. Don’t make assumptions.
Refrain from assuming that you know; misunderstandings are common. It’s more effective to ask questions to check for understanding than to make assumptions and jump to erroneous conclusions.

4. Always do your best.
Regardless of circumstances, always do your best at any given time. It will change from moment to moment based on our well-being, life circumstances, and seasons of life. When you simply do your best, you can greatly avoid the spiral of self-judgement and have more compassion for yourself.

5. Be skeptical, but learn to listen.
Practice questioning what you think and experience, and refrain from believing yourself or anyone unconditionally. Use healthy doubt to ask “Is it really true?” Learn to pause your inner chatter and allow your inner silence to arise. Listen to a deeper source of knowing and to life itself.

How about sticking the Five Agreements on your refrigerator and observing how they play out in your life?

Tired Of Being Managed By Your To-Do Lists?

Do your to-do lists work well for you? Do they support you and your life purpose?

If not, you’re not alone!

Full disclosure: I love making to-do lists and crossing items off as I complete them. It feels really good in the moment, and that’s why I tend to keep coming back for more. It’s quite addictive!

In the last few months, I’ve been running my whole life on to-do lists because I had to handle too many projects in parallel. Using color-coded to-do lists has allowed me to stay on track and to not let things accumulate. It worked - I’ve been productive with the most pressing tasks that had to be addressed.

But looking back, it has not been the most fulfilling way of living my life, mostly because I have not been able to make time for a couple of projects that I deeply care about. I was so focused on working on the most pressing tasks that I postponed and therefore neglected less urgent but very important projects that are integral part of my life purpose and well-being.

That’s what happens when we are managed by our to-do lists. Because we can never complete everything, intentions that we deeply care about tend to get pushed back to the bottom of the list... and postponed over and over.

What’s the alternative?

There is actually another way to organize and complete our tasks – a method that I have actually used in the past and that I have decided to return to, starting this week.

As we plan our day for tomorrow, let’s start by answering these questions:

• How can I organize my tasks by themes or topics?
• What’s one must-do for tomorrow? (or two, or three : )
• How am I going to take care of myself?
• How am I going to take care of my loved ones?

With the answers to these questions in mind, we can schedule blocks of time based on the themes that have been identified and that need to be addressed tomorrow (and the following days). For each theme or topic we can certainly have short lists of tasks to complete, but once we reach the end of the time period assigned to that topic, we move to the next one.

For example, let’s say that our old to-do lists can be reorganized by grouping tasks in the following topics:

• Work Project 1
• Work Project 2
• Work Project 3
• Volunteer Project 1
• Volunteer Project 2
• Self Care
• Relationships
• Household

If our must-do’s for tomorrow are attending two meetings (one for Work Project 2 and one for Volunteer Project 1 for example), working on Work Project 1, and completing two household chores, we could schedule the following blocks of time to address all these tasks tomorrow, in addition to our self-care (something we deeply care about):

• Work Project 1
• Work Project 2
• Volunteer Project 1
• Self-Care
• Household

Therefore, here is how a schedule for tomorrow could look like:

• 8am-9am: Self-Care
• 9am-11am: Work Project 1
• 11am-Noon: Meeting for Volunteer Project 1
• Noon-1pm: Self-Care
• 1pm-2pm: Household
• 2pm-3pm: Work Project 1
• 3pm-4pm: Meeting for Work Project 2
• 4pm-5pm: Work Project 1
• 5pm-6pm: Self Care

Instead of long to-do lists, scheduling blocks of time is more effective because it ensures that all the important topics we care about get the attention they deserve, including our self-care and nurturing our relationships. During each block of time, it’s ok to work with a small to-do list, but when the time is up, we have to move to the next topic. How we spend our days is how we spend our lives. This scheduling method is especially relevant during the pandemic, as parents have to take turns with their partner to supervise their children’s online schooling while also being as productive as they can with their own workload and household tasks.

I’m going back to this method this week. Give it a try, and tell me what you think!

Self-Care vs Coping

Ever since my attention was brought to the difference between self-care and coping during my training in Peer Counseling in 2008, I have looked more carefully at the activities I engage in "to relax."

As a person with a sensitive nervous system, following a rigorous regimen of self-care has proven to be essential in my life. A lot of trials and errors and multiple falling off the wagon and bouncing back have occurred; yet I always (sometimes begrudgingly) come back to my self-care practices. Ongoing self-care is essential if I want to live the life I feel called to live.

So what's the difference between self-care and coping?

Well, what's the difference between journaling after a stressful day and eating ice-cream straight out of the tub?

Self-care practices build our reserves up whereas coping strategies simply tide us over. Coping allows us to deal with difficulties in the short-term while self-care maintains and replenishes our reserves in the long-term.

Coping strategies have an important role to play in times of crisis, but they contribute to draining us over time because they usually involve covering up the painful emotions that we can't deal with in the present.

Occasionally taking our mind off a triggering event is fine; consistently numbing out thoughts and feelings will have disastrous consequences in the long-term, as emotions must be processed to be released. If they are not, their energy will get stuck in our organism and eventually lead to a lot of physical, emotional, and relational problems.

I'm looking at you, tension headache, panic attack, short temper, weight gain,...

Although self-care activities can certainly “feel good” in the moment, they usually require intention, commitment, and therefore some sacrifice, since their purpose is not to gratify us in the present moment but rather to build long-term reserves that we will be able to rely on in times of difficulties.

Now, how can you build up your reserves of energy? What do you need to do to nourish your body, your heart, your mind, and your spirit?

What’s the proper self-care regimen for you at this time? And most importantly, what first small step you can take to get started?

We Don't Need To Self-Improve. We Need To Blossom.

You are not defective.
You are not broken.
You are not bad.

“Regard man as a mine rich in gems of inestimable value. Education can, alone, cause it to reveal its treasures, and enable mankind to benefit there from.” (Baha'u'llah)

Yes, you are a mine of precious gems – and many of them are still hidden deep inside your heart and spirit.

When we run into challenges or problems, from relationship issues to career setbacks, from money worries to health crises, we might wonder what’s going on with us, especially when we notice patterns in our behavior or in the issues we face.

We’re not defective, broken or bad. We’re good - we’re perfectly fine actually. Our true self, our true nature, is good just as it is. But just like a seed is meant to grow into a plant, just like a bud is meant to blossom into a flower, we human beings are meant to unfold and reveal our hidden gems. The seed or the bud don’t need to “self-improve”, they simply need to be in the proper conditions to do what they are meant to do.

And as the quote above states it, education is key in our journey of growth.

Problem is, education as currently provided in the school system in ineffective to equip us for this beautiful journey of self-discovery and unfolding. As kids and teens, we spend hours memorizing useless facts instead of leaning about our self and our true nature, our nervous system and how to heal pain, how to get in touch with our inner joy and discover our life purpose.

We need to learn about how to ground and center ourselves, how to listen to the messages of our feelings and intuition, and how to communicate from a place of respect of self and others.

The good news is that it’s never too late; we can embark on this journey any time we feel call to.

Every challenge we face is an invitation from life itself to mine our precious gems. It’s the stuff around the gems that creates problems; when we remove all those unnecessary defenses, our precious inner gifts and resources are revealed and we can use them to resolve problems, prevent new ones, and most importantly connect to our life purpose and grow into the person we are meant to be.

The Enneagram (Self-)Typing Process

If you get intrigued when you first hear about the Enneagram, your next step is going to want to figure out your type. After all, it all starts with that very special discovery about yourself!

There are four methods to discover your type, and they are not mutually exclusive:

1. Reading an Enneagram book:

Pros: Slowly getting to know each type - one by one - will naturally encourage you to self-reflect, and wonder at each chapter if it’s your type. At the end of the process, you’ll have a decent understanding of the system and of each type, and will probably have figured out a couple of solid options for your type.

Cons: It’s a bit tedious to go through a whole book and having to read about all nine types right at the beginning of the journey.

Suggestion: For a shorter read, grab “The Essential Enneagram” by David Daniels. If you’re up to jumping in the deep end of the pool, go for “The Wisdom of the Enneagram” by Don Riso and Russ Hudson.

2. Doing one or several tests:

Pros: It’s a quick and compelling way to get some insight on your type. You can find some good tests online and in some books.

Cons: Tests are notoriously inaccurate. You can increase reliability by answering the questions as if you were in your late teens or early twenties because this is when your personality was at its strongest. Regardless, please take the results with a grain of salt, and explore further if you’re going to start working with your type. Furthermore, no test can teach you anything about the Enneagram or the types; you will just end up with some numbers.

Suggestion: Consider doing the Riso-Hudson Enneagram Type Indicator (RHETI).

3. Scheduling a Self-Discovery Interview:

Pros: This method is collaborative – your Enneagram Coach or Teacher will ask you a lot of questions to help you narrow down the nine types to the 2-3 most likely candidates. Because it’s a well-trained human being asking you questions, following up and interpreting your answers, the options offered at the end will most likely have your type among them. At the end of the interview, you will be well-equipped to find out your correct type with a bit more of exploration on your own.

Cons: You will only learn about the few types that you resonate with, not the others, unless you start a more in-depth study on your own. It will also cost more than a book or a test, and you will have to locate a certified Enneagram Coach or Teacher with whom you will feel comfortable to do this self-discovery interview.

Suggestion: Consider working with me! I’m not only a certified Enneagram Teacher but I’m also certified as an Integral Coach - working 1-1 is my specialty and the passion of my life. I’ve supported a lot of people in discovering their type, and I offer a sliding scale to make typing interviews accessible to everyone. Contact me here.

4. Participating in a multi-week discovery program:

Pros: The combination of learning about the whole system, having time to explore options, participate in type panels and work with others in a small group over a few weeks offers an unrivaled method to not only discover your type, learn about all the dimensions of the Enenagram, but also see the other types in action in the group. It’s how we teach our curriculum at Enneagram Prison Project, and I love it. I also design my own programs as online multi-week adventures because I strongly believe that the discovery of all the dimensions of the Enneagram is best done in a community, and by absorbing smaller chunks of information over a period of time. And with Zoom, we can do all of this from the comfort of our home. Win-win-win.

Cons: This requires a much greater investment of time and money, as well as finding an Enneagram Teacher who organizes such programs near you or online. Currently most Enneagram programs take place as intensives on consecutive days.

Suggestion: I’m currently co-facilitating an 8-week program with a colleague in French, and I’m in the process of designing a curriculum in English. What I’m bringing to the world of Enneagram trainings is a well-rounded integration of what the greatest Enneagram scholars have developed, as well as the creation of compassionate, confidential and collaborative groups to explore together. Ask me when my next program is launching!

Where Are You On The Ladder Of The Nine Levels Of Development?

Discovering that my Enneagram type has been the most transformative experience of my life. It happened 14 years ago, and this incredible Aha moment propelled me into a journey of progressively greater joy and freedom.

Finding your Enneagram type when you are in a place of pain or confusion is life-changing. It’s like suddenly realizing that:
• You’ve been operating in a very low state of health, without even knowing it.
• Radiant health does exist and is available to you not matter how dire your current state of health is.
• A personalized healing protocol can bring you back to great health.

Not only am I living this journey myself, but I also get to share it intimately with my friends at Enneagram Prison Project. Furthermore, we get to witness this Aha moment happen to others on a regular basis as we teach the Enneagram to very hurting incarcerated men and women in jails and prisons. There is nothing more heartwarming than witnessing someone going through that life-changing experience of self-discovery.

Now, why is this personality system such an extraordinary tool for transformation?

To my perspective, there are three main reasons:

1. Our type is located on a circle uniting all nine types:

All the types are connected to one another, on a circle and through other lines in the symbol. The nine types described in the Enneagram are not isolated from one another in boxes or columns. Although we have only one type, we have access to the other eight types. Our journey of growth leads to expanding our presence to all nine energies - it’s actually our birthright as human beings to be able to use the gifts of all nine types.

2. Our type describes our unconscious motivation:

Our Enneagram type is not a simple description of our thoughts, feelings and behaviors ending with a piece of advice about what we should do or not do with our life. In our type is grounded the unconscious underlying motivation that gives rise to our patterns of thoughts, feelings and behaviors. And discovering the autopilot that has been running us since birth is what is incredibly life-changing and transformative. Yes, we’re run by an autopilot that we had no idea existed - until we learn where to watch.

3. Our type operates on a continuum of nine levels of presence:

Each type evolves on a ladder of nine levels of development. These levels are called levels of development, health or presence.

The top three levels are considered healthy and correlate to states of great presence. The middle three levels are considered average and correlate to states of progressively increasing reactivity. And the bottom three levels are considered unhealthy and correlate to states of great pain, ongoing crises, and sometimes personality disorders.

Basically, the higher up we find ourselves on the ladder of development, the more self-mastery we possess:
• We made contact with our True Nature (Essence), and therefore no longer take ourselves for who we are not (Personality/Autopilot).
• We have a great understanding of our reactivity and have developed creative ways to bring ourselves back to presence when we are triggered. We have a lot of freedom in responding to whatever happens, both internally and externally.
• We have developed and integrated our three Centers of Intelligence (Body, Mind, and Heart) and we have made contact with the gifts of the other eight types.
• We are part of loving and nurturing networks of support consisting of other present and integrated individuals.

So, what’s your level of presence?

Once we have discovered our type, the next step is diagnosing our level of development. It’s usually lower than we thought it’d be! Now let’s be clear: it’s not comfortable to realize that we’re not as present as we thought we were, and it can be an extremely vulnerable process to go there. But radical honesty with our self is essential if we want to heal, grow, and reclaim our birthright of living free and joyful. Our journey of healing consists of climbing back up the levels of presence until we get into the healthy zone of the ladder.

When we’re there, we no longer wonder why life happens the way it does, why we feel the way we feel, why we get sick, or why we have relationship problems. Actually, we have less of all of these problems in the first place since they’re all directly or indirectly connected to a lack of presence. Yes, even a bad cold or a migraine is related to a lack of presence. We have much more power than we might believe!

Personally I find this climbing adventure the most exciting aspect of being a human being. I’m in awe at the vast expanse of uncharted territory that hosts and generates my True Nature. It’s a never-ending voyage - that requires no flight or hotel booking!

And remember, no matter how low we might find ourselves on the ladder – in a place where life feels painful, crazy, perhaps even on fire, when we might believe that we’re either extremely unlucky, hopeless or even unredeemable, we can always rely our inner capacity for healing, evolution and redemption. The higher up on the mountain of presence, the greater our vantage point is. Life looks and feels very different up there.

And it’s our birthright to understand our self and life in this way.

How To Stop Failing At Your New Year Resolutions

At the end of each year, the same phenomenon occurs. Regardless of how we call them – resolutions or something different - we use the start of the new year as symbolism for a fresh start to make the changes that we wish for our life. We commit to starting with the change on January 1st (or 2nd : ), and we get going…

Now tell me, how has it been going for you to make sudden changes? Have you ever resolved to make a change, succeeded for a little while, only to fall back into your old habits a few days, weeks or months later?

You’re not alone.

As studies have showed, New Year resolutions last in average until mid-February. And the same thing happens with any sudden change we might try to implement at any time of the year.

If you have ever failed at making a change you really wanted to see happen in your life, it’s most likely because - just like most people - you have relied on your will to power yourself through the change.

And the problem is that will does not work. It might work in the short-term, but it definitely does not work in the long-term.

And this is frustrating because we desperately want to believe that our mighty will is in control!

Our resolve might be strong, and we might be extra disciplined or even stubborn, and we might even last a bit longer than the average… but relying on will alone is still not going to be effective to make a change last in the long-term.

And it’s because much, much more powerful forces - buried deep in the primitive parts of our brain - are in control.

To give an example of the strength of these forces, try to stop breathing. Soon enough, your instinct will force you to take a breath. Breath is probably our most deeply rooted instinct; the other habits and patterns that we’re talking about here are not as strong but they also operate at a way deeper level than our will. These deeply ingrained patterns are pulling you back to your comforting habits because for your nervous system, those old habits mean safety, trust, and comfort. They mean staying alive. They’re protecting you almost as fiercely as other physiological patterns such as regulating your heartbeat or your body temperature.

So if we want to succeed in making a change, rather than using our will we will fare better at trying a different approach: exploring and working with the powerful forces that are quietly pulling us away from the much desired change and back to our usual old pattern.

For example, common New Year resolutions include changing eating or drinking habits, or starting a new workout regimen. The corresponding old patterns are over-eating, eating too much fatty and sugary food or crashing on the couch in front of Netflix instead of being active.

Before we allow the Inner Critic to jump on our case and start beating us down, let’s remember that our patterns are our survival mechanisms. They’re that important and that powerful. They’re intelligent and they bring us a sense of safety and comfort. They have a valid reason to be there in the short-term even if we know they’re not helpful in the long-term.

These patterns indeed only care about the short-term, they don’t rationalize whether sitting on the couch eating potato chips is life-enhancing in the long-term. If eating fatty foods on the couch has been patterned in your nervous system as a message of safety and trust, because when things were out of control as a child, a loving caregiver was buying you a bag of chips and sitting you down in front of the TV, guess what? A bag of chips on the couch means safety and comfort for your nervous system, and it’s going to pull you over and over into that direction because there is nothing more important than safety and trust.

At the conscious level, we know that some of our comforting habits are not helpful in the long-term. We know that eating these highly processed foods will eventually undermine our well-being and health. That’s when we decide to make a change, and… use our will to embark on new habits.

Our will can allow change for a little while but our deeply rooted need for safety and comfort will come back with a revenge, and if we have not explored those needs and patterned other ways to get them met, sooner or later the bags of potato chips will come back into your kitchen pantry, and the call of the couch will make itself heard more and more loudly!

And by the way, the exact same mechanism is at play for any other new habit we might want to implement: being less reactive when angry, saving more, stopping over-planning, being more in touch with ones’ feelings, finishing tasks, spending less time on the phone, etc.

If you have an old recurring habit, it’s because it brings you comfort at some level. If you want to replace this habit by a new one, stop relying on your will alone and start exploring in depth what the old habit means emotionally to you, and how you could pattern new ways to address your very important and valid need for safety and comfort.

You will eventually succeed in keeping the new habit long-term by wiring into your nervous system a new association between feelings of comfort and the positive change you want for your life.

And by the way, this is the essence of what development coaching is all about. We don’t need advice, and we don’t need self-improvement. What we do need is support in getting to know our self with more depth and guidance on our path to self-mastery.

One Year Teaching In Jails

One of the most incredible things I get to do is teaching the Enneagram Prison Project (EPP) curriculum to incarcerated students in San Francisco Bay Area jails.

As I just concluded my first year working with EPP, I’m reflecting on over 200 hours spent with about 150 men and women, just feet away from their cells.

The most heartwarming feeling that I experience each time I’m with my program participants is how similar we all are. Sure, we’re different in a lot of ways - especially in levels of privilege (racial background, socio-economic status, childhood trauma, etc.) - but when we look deeper, we’re all human beings with a good heart, good intentions and full of potential. Yes, even people who have committed serious crimes have good hearts, good intentions and often an immense untapped potential to share their special gifts with the world.

And then an obvious aspect of incarceration that I knew intellectually but that hits me in the face each time I step inside a jail or a prison is that the focus on revenge and punishment does not work.

When people we care about are victimized, it’s very valid and human to feel all kinds of very painful emotions. It’s deeply enraging to suffer or see others suffer because of someone else’s actions. In reaction to this unfairness and pain, a part of us is driven to seek revenge and punishment as an attempt to reclaim our lost power and autonomy.

The problem is that revenge and punishment alone do not lead to the change that we want to see to feel safer and at peace, even if they might make us feel better in the short-term.

After all, when you make a mistake, what supports you in recognizing your error, empathizing with the person you might have hurt, and having the motivation to change? Would being dehumanized, sleep deprived, malnourished, disconnected and hated for months, years or decades help you in any way?

I didn’t think so.

From my experience of only one year inside, I can attest that EPP’s hypothesis is correct: what does work is supporting people in reconnecting to their essential self, their true nature. A human being’s true self is fundamentally good; it’s one’s reactivity that is not good. As EPP founder Susan Olesek says: “No baby is born a murderer, rapist or robber; these roles are fostered within their childhood environment” (paraphrased).

What our students have in common is a lack of attachment to nurturing caregivers, growing in poor and/or violent surroundings, and serious childhood trauma. Most of our students were regularly beaten by their parents and a high percentage of them were molested as children. A lot of them were surviving on the streets as children and were self-medicating their pain with addictive substances before they were even teens.

Anyone who is deeply connected to the depth of their inner goodness naturally uses it in healthy and productive ways. Anyone who has spent their whole childhood surviving chronic emotional and physical pain is deeply disconnected from that healthy sense of self and is more likely to get in trouble and hurt people.

Hurt people hurt people.

The EPP program is about teaching our students what we have learned ourselves: there is nothing wrong with us. We can heal our pain and we can learn to stay present to whatever triggers our reactivity. When we can tolerate being with whatever arises, we become able to shift from reactivity to response. We go from making mistakes to healing, and eventually to changing for the best and supporting others to do the same.

Working closely with people who have committed serious crimes is not for everyone. However, how about challenging our self to shift from a drive for revenge and punishment to supporting healing and focusing on rehabilitation?

Because healing, rehabilitation and evolution do happen when the right conditions are offered. Not only do I get to spend time with hurting people inside jails and prisons but I also get to spend time with healthy people who made it back to life outside, some after having served over 20 years in prison. These men and women are healed, they have changed, they are trustworthy, and they do beautiful work in the world.

People can change. But people change when they are loved, not hated.

Check out Enneagram Prison Project here if you want to know more.

When Life Hits The Pause Button…

… Are you listening?

How do you handle life events such as the end of a long-term relationship, getting ill or being diagnosed with a serious illness, financial issues, difficulties with your child, a serious conflict at work and other difficult issues?

The most common and automatic way of dealing with such life events is… to continue doing things in the exact same way that created the context in which the problem arose.

For example, if you tend to go with the flow and let things happen, chances are that you’re going to address any new problem in the exact same way.

And if you tend to live life with full force, it’s extremely likely that you’ll fight to the ground the issue you’re dealing with.

Look at how we handle health issues. People who tend to be passive in life will be passive in their illness. People who tend to fight will fight.

And that’s the problem.

Although we like to see ourselves victims of fate or of other people, we have a certain level of contribution to a lot of the issues that we face. It’s because every single event happens in a context that we greatly contribute to create. And the very patterns that we unconsciously use to live life generate imbalances that can lead to problems. Eventually, internal imbalances show up externally: a partner leaves, a conflict escalates, health deteriorates, etc.

If we attempt to resolve the problem in the same way that contributed to it, we’re not making the most of what life is trying to bring to our attention. Resolving the problem - and avoiding an even more painful repeat - requires us to reach a higher level of functioning.

“We can not solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.” (Albert Einstein)

To get started, here are some questions to ask our self:

• How do we shift from a state of shock to a place of internal center?

• How can we design the right questions about what’s occurring?

• How do we get clarity and objectivity in times of distress?

• How can we be compassionate to our self while accepting 100% responsibility of our part in the problem?

• How can we decide what changes are needed and most importantly, how do we embark on the journey of growth?

An important first step in our reflection is to stop feeding ourselves with belief systems that keep us in pattern, and to stop surrounding ourselves with too many people who celebrate us for doing the very things that get us in trouble.

There is nothing better than an open mind and friends who have the courage to rock our boat when they see a need to do so.

We’re living organisms called by life to grow, just like other living organisms. What does not grow die. When things get out of balance, we can see ourselves as victim of fate or of others - and be passive or aggressive in reaction - or we can accept the pause that we’re invited into and ask our self: “What is life trying to show me that I am not seeing?”

The answer could be to slow down or to speed up, to ask for advice or to listen more to our gut instinct, to open our heart or to open our mind. But it will most likely be very different than whatever we have done so far.

When life hits the pause button, honor yourself. Stop, take a breath and be curious.

That pause could very well be the best gift that life has ever given you.

The Foundation Of Sleep

Sleep is our most essential self care practice because getting enough quality sleep at the right time in the night is necessary to good physical health, mental health, quality of life, and safety.

Unfortunately we do not take our sleep seriously. We allow electronics, excess caffeine, anxiety, workaholism, and even fun times to get in the way of a good night's sleep. We go for fake relaxation in front of screens instead of natural, deep, restorative sleep.

Being sleep deprived is like living our life on credit. We sure can borrow energy from caffeine, adrenaline, and even medications, but sooner or later we'll have to pay this borrowed energy back in the form of emotional instability, illnesses, and sometimes even tragic mistakes.

Sleep is important for:

• Healing, repairing, and detoxifying our organs and blood vessels.

• Keeping our immune system strong enough to fight off viruses, bacteria, and cells that have become dysfunctional.

• Maintaining a healthy balance of the hormones that make us feel hungry (ghrelin) or full (leptin).

• Regulating our insulin, the hormone that controls our blood glucose level.

• Supporting a healthy brain function to form new pathways and remember new information.

• Integrating the previous day’s experiences and making important memories.

• Being focused, making good decisions, and being creative.

Not sleeping enough leads to all kinds of problems:

• A loss of just 1–2 hours of sleep per night affects our ability to function well.

• Increased risk of cancer, heart disease, kidney disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, and stroke.

• Feeling hungrier than when we're well-rested, which increase our risk of becoming overweight.

• Having trouble fighting common infections.

• Loss of productivity and increased risk of making mistakes - some that could be tragic.

• Having trouble making decisions, solving problems, controlling our emotions and behavior, and coping with change.

• Increased risk of suffering from depression.

Furthermore, sleeping at the right time in the night is crucial. Sleeping 8 hours from 2:00 AM-10:00 AM is not equal to sleeping 8 hours from 10:00 PM-6:00 AM. According to the wisdom of Chinese Medicine, very important organs such as our gall bladder, liver and lungs are detoxified between 11:00 PM and 5:00 AM in cycles of two hours. We must be asleep during that period of time if we want to prevent toxic build up, allergies and illnesses. And of course, we must sleep extra hours before and or after that stretch of night - when we sleep those extra 2-3 hours will depend on our own internal clock.

Here are a few tips to improve our sleep naturally:

• Designing our days around a good night’s sleep.

• Getting up and going to bed at the same time every day.

• Avoiding caffeine for at least 8 hours before bedtime.

• Being physically active during the day but avoiding vigorous workouts for at least 4 hours before bedtime.

• Only using our bed for sleep and sex.

• Turning off TV and electronics and dimming lights one to two hours before the time we want to fall asleep.

• Processing our feelings before going to bed, by journaling, talking to a trusted person, reflecting and validating everything that has been felt throughout the day.

• Engaging in a soothing bedtime ritual with writing, listening to relaxing music, reading something non-stimulating (from a real book, not a screen), doing some restorative yoga, drinking a cup of herbal tea, etc.

• Sleeping only when feeling sleepy. If we can't fall asleep within 20 minutes, it's best to get up and do some more processing or something boring until feeling sleepy again.

Get your Zzzzz’s!

Using The Five Love Languages At Home And At Work

Dr. Chapman, the author of the famous book “The Five Love Languages”, identified five “languages” that we "speak" when we express our love and appreciation to one another: Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Gifts, Acts of Service and Physical Touch.

Although Dr. Chapman’s focus is on intimate relationships, I have observed that using these languages in our professional life is equally valuable to develop and nurture great professional relationships.

Before going into more details, let’s first mention a few example of "dialects" for each type of Love Language, keeping in mind that some of these will obviously not be suitable for our professional relationships.

1. Words of Affirmation:

• Verbal compliments (truthful + specific)

• Encouraging words

2. Quality Time:

• Quality Conversation (active listening + self-revelation)

• Quality Activities (focus on the other person rather than the activity)

3. Receiving Gifts:

• Gift of self (in time of crisis, special event, etc.)

• Gift of freedom (allowing the other to do what they want to do, including being alone)

• Home-made gifts

• Purchased gifts

4. Acts of Service:

• Doing what is most helpful/supportive to the other person

5. Physical Touch:

• Comforting touch in difficult times

• Non-sexual touch

• Sexual touch (personal relationships only of course)

The premise of Chapman's theory is that we have an "emotional love tank" that needs to be filled up and remain full in order to stay engaged and connected in a long-term intimate relationship. What complicates things is that each of us tends to favor one or two types of "fuels" - aka Love Languages - over the other ones, and it's only when we consistently express our love in our partner's favorite "Love Language" that they feel truly loved.

Because we have different "fuel requirements" for our love tank, using the wrong one does not work as well as using the best one. Sometimes, using the wrong one does not work at all and even can have an adverse effect. If our partner expresses their love in a language that we don't understand as being loving, we won't feel truly loved. Conversely, if we speak the "wrong" love language to our partner, they won't feel loved by us despite our best effort.

When it comes to professional relationships, if we replace the word Love by Appreciation or Respect we’ll discover that respect and trust in our professional relationships can also be greatly improved when we use these languages to communicate sincere appreciation in our professional environment. Don’t we feel more engaged when we receive a sincere and heartfelt compliment at work? Don’t we feel more respected when our ideas are being listened to by our colleagues? Don’t we feel more trusted when given the gift of autonomy in our professional projects? Don’t we feel more appreciated when we receive extra days of vacation, a salary increase or a bonus?

The Five Love Languages are indeed useful both at home and at work!

After reflecting on previous relationships, observing my own marriage as well as other personal and professional relationships around me, and working with counseling and coaching clients, I have some additional thoughts to share with you on this topic:

1. Compromise is key:

Two people with different love languages have to make compromises so that everyone gets their needs met. It's sometimes necessary to do something that we don't love doing in order to make our partner feel loved or our colleagues appreciated, for so long as this does not conflict with our self-respect and personal values.

2. Size matters:

If I agree that our “Emotional Love Tank” needs to be regularly filled up by our partner, I find essential to keep the size of our tank in check. We must not allow it to become bigger and bigger over time and we must be mindful of what needs are reasonable to ask our partner to fulfill, and which ones we are responsible to fulfill ourselves.

3. Avoiding assumptions:

Dr. Chapman says that we can figure out a person's Love Language by observing how they express their love to others because people usually express their love in the way they want to receive it. While I agree that it's true in some (maybe most) cases, it's not for plenty of others. Some people express their love in one language but prefer to receive love in another. Do not make assumptions!

4. Love is not enough, but it's the foundation of everything:

Making one another feel loved and respected in a relationship is essential, yet your relationship needs more than love. Not all relationships problems – both personal and professional - are caused by a lack of appreciation. However, if other issues need to be resolved, consistently speaking the other person’s Love Language throughout the crisis creates a climate of security that will facilitate the resolution of other relationship problems, including at work.

5. Emotional availability:

If we are not receptive to someone's love or appreciation, receiving their loving words and actions will not touch us emotionally. If one partner is completely checked out of the relationship, abundantly speaking their preferred love language will not be sufficient to make them fall in love again. It still takes two to tango.

And that’s the same in our professional life: if we’re over a certain job or career path, no amount of listening, compliments or salary increase will make us want to stick around. The Five Love Languages are not the solution to every problem, but they do support healthier relationships both at home and at work.

We can never go wrong with expressing our appreciation towards others in concrete ways.

How We Spend Our Days Is How We Spend Our Lives

Time flies, and time flies faster and faster as we age. It's essential to make our time count in ways that matter to us, and if it has not already, this process must start now!

Organizing our life is essential to ensure that the sum of the days we live in the here and now ends up amounting to a life that we will actually be happy to have lived decades down the line. We do not want to wake up at 80 and realize that we spent our whole life either asleep or in emergency mode, always hoping for circumstances to change to accomplish what matters to us and feel fulfilled.

A lot of people value their relationships with family and friends. Even if you are not very relational, do you know that the most common regret mentioned in hospice care is not having invested enough time in relationships? Living the life that we want to live and having enough time and energy to nurture satisfying relationships require organization, because if we value our relationships and want them to last, we'll need to make our days reflect these values by dedicating focused time to our relationships on a daily basis.

And the most important relationship to nurture is with our own self.

Are you actively creating time in your day-to-day life to take care of yourself and nurture your relationship with the precious people in your life? Does it actually show up in your calendar, alongside all your other commitments?

Limiting our organization to simply filling up a calendar with appointments and deadlines imposed by others is unfortunately likely to lead to one of two undesirable outcomes:

• Not-too-busy people might end up having plenty of time for self-care and relationships, but they might find themselves spending their abundant free time with daydreaming and random activities that more often than not do not align with how they actually would like to live their life.

• Busy people are at risk of spending their days running from one commitment to the next, like a firefighter trying to put off as many fires as possible in as little time as possible. Some activities may align with long-term intentions, but self-care and relationships are likely to be neglected.

Over the years, as I went from not-too-busy to very engaged in my life, I created a system to organize my time purposefully in order to live - on a daily basis - a life aligned with my life purpose, but also well balanced and grounded in adequate self-care.

This process requires the willingness to commit to our own self.

In my system, there are 5 levels of organization:

1. Life

What would make my life a great life? What is my purpose or mission statement for my life? What principles do I want to ground my life on?

Answering these questions is crucial to develop a crystal clear sense of direction on how we are going to live our life. Although the "what" is not always clear - or under our control - the "how" can certainly be. Look at the Japanese concept of Ikigai for inspiration.

Tip: These questions could be answered in a journal entry or by creating a piece of art (think poetry, collage, calligraphy, photography, etc).

2. Year

What do I want to accomplish this year? Do my career, finances, household, relationships, development or continued education need attention? What action step(s) can I take next year to make progress on the long-term goals aligned with my life purpose?

One year is one cycle of human life, and therefore it's the perfect level to start reflecting on the organization of our life. At the end of each year, make a list of goals that are realistic to accomplish in the next twelve months and create a flexible schedule for when each goal will be addressed and worked on. If you need help to decide what areas(s) of your life need focus, consider using the wheel of life.

Tip: A simple three-column Excel spreadsheet or Word document can suffice for this level of organization. The list of goals can go in the first column, their projected deadline (month or even simply season) in the second column, and a status update in the third column.

3. Month

How does the next month look like? What are the non-negotiable commitments and obligations to take care of? Any event(s) to plan for? When is there some free time to work on yearly goals that have been scheduled for this month? What kind of support will I need this month?

It's at the level of the month that we can start allocating our time deliberately and purposefully. In a month, there are ongoing commitments, recurring obligations, and special events to schedule, but we must also allocate time for what matters to us in the long-term.

At the end of each month, go over the next month's commitments and schedule time slots to work on your goals for the year. If needed, cancel less important activities to make time to work on your long-term goals that align with the vision you have for your life. And yes, if a yearly goal of yours is to have more rest and relaxation you’re indeed going to schedule large blocks of rest in your monthly schedule! It’s not going to happen if you do not reserve time for it and commit yourself to it.

Tip: A calendar that can be shared between devices and between family members can be really useful to organize at the level of the month. However the most important is finding the method that truly works for you, so try out a few things until you find what is effective for you.

4. Week

How much time will I work this week? How will I take care of myself? How much time will I devote to my relationships? What do I have to do to keep my household run smoothly? How much time will I invest for my development and education? When will I work on my yearly goals?

If it can be difficult to create balance on a day-to-day basis, it's essential to do it at the week level. Pick a day each week to carefully plan the following week. If you are comfortable with structure or need it to fight off a tendency to get distracted, then hourly scheduling might work well for you. If not, simply writing down what needs to be accomplished for each day of the week with no set time could work better if your activities require more time flexibility, for so long as you are realistic with the number of things you put on your list for each day of the week.

Tip: Creating a template for your typical week(s) is extremely helpful to ensure a reasonable distribution of the 168 hours of the week between self-care, work, relationships, parenting, household management, development and education, commuting, and all the other buffers that must be scheduled between activities to keep things flowing realistically and effectively. This method ensures that we schedule the things that are usually not scheduled, such as self-care activities (sleep, meal prep and meal times, relaxing) and focused time with our loved ones.

5. Day

What do you most value in your life? What are the principles you decided to ground your life on? How can you embody and express them on a daily basis? How are you going to take good care of yourself today while also working on your other projects?

Each day can be lived as a metaphor for a whole life. If we value hard work, we have to take concrete steps to offer our skills to the world on a daily basis. If we greatly care about our spouse and children, we have to give them a daily dose of our full attention and concrete expression of our love. If what we care about is helping others, we have to express these values in some ways, day after day. We must devote daily time slots to our most valued intentions!

This being said, remember that you can’t do everything every day. If you are consistently overwhelmed, you have to learn to lower your ambitions, schedule less things or allocate more time for each activity. Go back and forth between daily and weekly scheduling to make sure that if balance is not reached every day, it’s at the very least reached every week.

Tip: If you resist organization, being creative with the way you approach your daily planning could help you tremendously. For some, a fancy app will be supportive. For others, it's a diary with inspiring quotes that will help create a bit of structure without being too rigid. For you, it might be something else. Try out various methods and choose whatever works for you, but keep in mind that the most effective might be the most old-fashioned one. Paper and pencil, anyone?

In summary, purposeful organization is necessary to live the life you are meant to live, and crucial to have enough time and energy to take care of what you actually deeply value. Being overly organized and structured can certainly stifle creativity and lead to burn out. On the other hand, going too much with the flow can lead to wasting time, living a life that lacks purpose, and neglecting important areas of life such as our self-care and cherished relationships.

May you live the life that you are meant to live!

Is Your Mindfulness Practice Preventing You From Processing Your Feelings Fully?

Originally, engaging in a mindfulness practice was done under the guidance of a teacher. As the practice has become popular, it’s nowadays very common to start on our own, maybe after a one-time instruction or under the “guidance” of a meditation app.

The positive of being able to practice independently is that more people are able to try out and hopefully adopt a regular mindfulness or meditation practice; the negative of practicing without guidance is that a lot of us don’t actually really know what to do, beside “focusing on the breath, observing thoughts and emotions that arise, and letting them go.”

Although I got some basic instructions when I first started my mindfulness practice over a decade ago - at yoga classes and later in a Buddhist monastery, I never practiced under the one-to-one ongoing guidance of a meditation teacher. Years later, I came to the conclusion that although my independent practice had been life-changing – and turned me into a fervent advocate – it had also led to imbalances in the processing of my emotions.

When practiced with guidance, and therefore with the possibility of receiving feedback, I believe that mindfulness is the holistic practice that it’s supposed to be. However when we practice with no regular guidance - like I have - we are at risk of falling in the trap of our blind spots, or if we are aware of them, of overcompensating too much in the other direction.

One over-compensation that can happen – and that happened to me – is to use our newfound clarity and acceptance to bypass the completion of our emotional experiences.

Example:

• As we’re sitting in our practice, we notice anxiety, either already present in the background or arising as we engage in our practice.

• We notice the anxiety, the thoughts and the somatic experience going with it.

• We accept it, maybe even validate it.

• And then we let it go and return to our breath.

• Then we notice something else arising.

• We go through the same process.

• Finally, we end our practice and go back to our regular business.

And now, what’s happening to the anxiety?

It’s possible that simply noticing it, validating it and letting it go was good enough for that specific emotional experience. However it’s also very likely that more needs to be done after our practice, such as exploring the underlying trigger underneath our experience of anxiety, the story we were telling our self as we felt the anxiety rising, and most importantly the somatic experience going with it. As much as the purpose of mindfulness is to observe what is arising and let it go in the moment, a lot of our thoughts and emotions will need to be revisited and explored after the practice so that we can fully complete them and let them go for good.

Completion requires using our mental, emotional and somatic intelligences to explore, process and integrate what has happened, and this is going to take more time and effort than simply noticing and letting go.

When we use our newfound awareness to let our feelings go too fast, our mind artificially speeds up our emotional processing. We might have great self-awareness and self-acceptance but our body might not have released all the energetic build-up of our fresh emotions, and our mind might not have made sense yet of our emotional experience.

Every feeling or emotion arises with an energetic charge that gets stored in our tissues over time if we don’t release it. Furthermore there might be some decision-making that needs to be done in response to some emotional experiences.

Our mindfulness practice’s roles are to develop our inner observer, hone our capacity for focusing our attention at will and become skillful at shifting from reactivity to response. We must pair this powerful practice with an equally powerful practice of revisiting and processing all the feelings that mindfulness allows us to notice and observe in the moment.

How The Enneagram Brings Us Back To Our True Self

What’s fantastic about the Enneagram is its role in guiding us back to our true nature, and therefore the talents that are hardwired into our being. Yes, each one of us has a unique set of talents!

It’s not only our birthright to enjoy these talents but also our responsibility to offer them to the world.

The Enneagram describes the nine psycho-spiritual structures that we can have. Although each one of us shows up with a little bit of each type, we specialize in one territory – our specific Enneagram type - and that’s what becomes our focus of attention, consciously or not. As we grow up - and then become stressed adults - we lose contact with our true nature and we start unconsciously manufacturing an imitation of it that can lead to all kinds of troubles, from anxiety and depression to relationship issues, or “just” a nagging sense of unfulfilled potential or lack of direction.

Here is a quick description of each Enneagram type – see if you can recognize your self and some of your loved ones as you read:

• When we are a Type One, also called the Idealist, we have an intuitive sense of what’s good and right about our self, others and the world. We conduct our self with integrity and we inspire others to do the same. When we’re stressed and less present, we tend to become critical and sometimes controlling. We must remind our self that our standards are just ours, and that multiple sets of standards can harmoniously coexist.

• When we are a Type Two, also called the Helper, we know deep down that we are love. We bring our selflessness and generosity into the world and teach others that we don’t have to deserve love, we’re all perfectly lovable just as we are. When we lose presence, we start unconsciously believing that we are excluded from this natural flow and that we must become useful and helpful in order to earn love from others. We become compulsive in our attempts to help and we can at times be manipulative. We must remind our self that we are lovable no matter what we do, or don’t do.

• When we are a Type Three, also called the Achiever, we have a knack for sensing what has value and the potential for success, in our self, others and the world around us. We make things happen and can literally turn lead into gold. We’re also great encouragers and leaders. When stressed, we unconsciously assume that we must be successful in order to earn approval and be perceived as worthwhile. This can lead to working too hard, maybe on things we don’t really care about, and to burnout and relationship issues. We must remind our self that our worth and brilliance is inherent and not based on our accomplishments.

• When we are a Type Four, also called the Individualist, we have the ability to feel deeply and to be present to the whole range of emotions in our self and with others. We are sensitive, empathic, comfortable with our vulnerable side, and have a deep connection with beauty and esthetics. When stressed and less present, we begin to identify to our feelings and moods and take our self and relationships onto a rollercoaster of emotions and oftentimes unnecessary drama. We must remind our self that our feelings are valuable pieces of information in the moment but never tell us the whole truth about our identity or what’s happening around us.

• When we are a Type Five, also called the Investigator, we excel at looking beyond what is obvious to find deeper truth about reality. We love learning and acquiring knowledge, and we think and communicate with precision. We are comfortable with solitude and allow others to just be. When we are under stress, we tend to feel overwhelmed by the world and we isolate from others in order to retreat into our own internal world. We must remind our self that we can master life out there in the world, and stay engaged with others in a sustainable way.

• When we are a Type Six, also called the Loyal Skeptic, we enjoy a fine-tuned inner guidance that allows us to know and do exactly what needs to be done. Our great intuition is able to sense what is true and safe in the world. When we’re stressed and not present, we lose touch with this inner guidance and look outside our self for safety. We can start having an uncomfortable relationship with authority figures and not knowing who and what to trust in general. We must remind our self that we have a stable inner space within our self that is the source of our safety and wisdom at all times and therefore do not have to submit our own authority to others.

• When we are a Type Seven, also called the Enthusiast, we have an extraordinary ability to enjoy the moment, extracting all the juice, the joy and the freedom of what is happening right now. We’re fun, we have plenty of ideas and we tend to invite others into our optimistic and joyful way of experiencing life. When we’re not present, we start resisting all the difficult experiences of life, from simple boredom to heartbreaks. We distract our self by unconsciously and compulsively planning our next moves or next ideas to not have to be in touch with any pain at all. We must remind our self that we’re strong and capable of being with all experiences - good, bad and ugly - and that this ability is actually the true source of our joy and freedom.

• When we are a Type Eight, also called the Challenger, we are deeply in touch with our own power, we’re confident and strong and able to challenge what we don’t believe in. We can also acutely sense energies and power dynamics around our self. When we’re stressed and less present, we resist our own vulnerability and intimacy, we exert more energy than the situation calls for, and we can become difficult, pushy and sometimes rebellious. We must remind our self that in our emotions lies real strength, and that intimacy is not threatening but a source of great fulfillment.

• When we are a Type Nine, also called the Peacemaker, we deeply connect with the thread that connects and unites us all. We intuitively know that we are one. We can see and accept all points of view and we excel at maintaining peace and harmony and bringing people together. When we’re stressed, we start feeling threatened by conflicts and we become compulsively accommodating to others to avoid disharmony. We must remind our self that addressing conflicts often leads to greater connection through deeper understanding and that our personal desires and needs matter. Contentment comes from participating fully in the world by including our self in the flow of life.

And that’s the Nine Types in a nutshell! For some, it’s very easy to land on our type right away. For others it takes a longer investigation because a lot of other factors can blend into our psycho-spiritual structure and these can make our Enneagram type less obvious. Such factors include Ennagram wings and subtypes, and also cultural and familial trends.

Tests and plenty more information are available online. Trustworthy sources include The Enneagram Institute and The Narrative Enneagram. Please explore! And be in touch if you’d like to book a Self-Discovery session with me, where we’ll figure your type out and discuss your next steps based on what you want to accomplish. Nothing beats a custom road map to get to precisely where we want to go!

Good Communication = Good Relationships

What relationships - both professional and personal - most desperately need is skilled communication. Communicating well together is an essential skill; without it there is no healthy relationships.

What makes communicating with another person not only effective but satisfying is taking into account the underlying emotional dimension of what is being shared. Good communication is not just about facts, and it’s definitely not just about “getting it out”.

Good communication builds understanding and trust, and trust is the foundation of good communication. It’s the virtuous cycle. The opposite is also true. Bad communication leads to disconnection in the relationship, and disconnection negatively affects communication. It’s the vicious cycle.

Developing the following competencies leads to effective and fulfilling communication with others:

1. Exploring feelings

A lot of what we communicate is about reacting/responding from our feelings. It’s difficult to communicate well if we don’t know what we are feeling because it means that we're not aware of our underlying motivation. Also, if we’re not able to be in touch with our own feelings, it’s going to be impossible to take into account someone else’s feelings. And yes, for professional conversations as well!

2. Developing mindfulness

Because the most challenging conversations involve difficult emotions such as anger, sadness, shame and fear, developing our mindfulness allows us to be present to these difficult emotions while remaining engaged with the other person. Mindfulness practice leads to the ability to pause and choose how to respond, rather than lashing out and/or withdrawing from the conversation.

3. Listening deeply

Skillful communication starts with listening to the other person’s point of view. It’s about refraining from assumptions and being curious while putting our own needs on the backburner until we understand the other person better.

4. Talking with compassion

Sometimes we have to say something that might activate negative feelings for the other person. In such cases, the way we talk verbally and non-verbally deeply affects trust in the relationship. Learning how to speak up in a way that is timely, authentic and compassionate is essential to build trust and understanding with the other person.

5. Being patient

Skillful communication requires patience. First off, it takes time to learn how to communicate well and our skills might go through ups and down depending on what we go through at any given time. Secondly, while some conversations will be completed in one session, the most difficult ones will need multiple sit-downs and will most likely require trying different ways to express what we want to communicate to the other person. Patience is key to communication success.

Is It True, Kind And Necessary?

A lot of the things I read goes in one ear and out the other. And then sometimes, I read something that triggers such a powerful ah ah moment that it sticks with me forever.

One of these things is the “test” I’m about to share with you that I read in a yoga magazine over a decade ago.

The test is short. When you want to speak, ask yourself: “Is what I’m about to say true, kind and necessary?”.

There is so much in this question, isnt’it?

• Pausing. In order to even do this test, we must have developed enough mindfulness to be able to sense the desire of speaking arising, choose to pause, and shift from reactivity to response.

• Honesty. It’s easy to make excuses for BS when we are in reactive mode. We call it “small lie” or “white lie”. It’s still BS. “Is what I’m about to say true?”

• Gentleness. When we react instead of respond, we are more likely to use a cold tone or lash out, and hurt feelings in the process. “Is what I’m about to say kind?”

• Usefulness. A lot of what we talk about is pretty useless. There would be much more silence and much more purposeful, useful speech if we could refrain from unnecessary chatter. “Is what I’m about to say necessary?”

Now, how do we reconcile conflicting priorities? If for a lot of our communication needs we can indeed choose to speak words that fulfill the three criteria of truth, kindness and necessity, there are more complex scenarios when one of these three criteria will need to be sacrificed for the sake of the two others.

• When to sacrifice necessity? A lot of “unnecessary” chatter takes place for the sake of connection. From small talk at the start of a new relationship to random conversations just for fun, we could argue that these are unnecessary. A lot of them are but many more have a deeper purpose of bonding and pleasure. Although technically unnecessary, they are still very important for so long as they are honest and kind.

• When to sacrifice kindness? This one is tough. We never have to sacrifice respect, and we never have to be mean. But there are plenty of situations where taking care of our self and our loved ones might require a level of firmness and bluntness that - although not mean - is also not kind. When something true and necessary must be expressed in a way that might not be actively kind, we must make sure to do so with the full awareness that there is another person on the receiving end of our speech that deserves our respect.

• When to sacrifice truth? Would there be any reasons to sacrifice honesty for the sake of necessity and kindness? Not many for sure. Let’s consider the generous people who hid Jews in Germany during the holocaust and who lied to nazi soldiers asking them if they had seen any Jewish person. Those very essential lies, made out of necessity and kindness, saved precious lives. There are other examples when not telling the truth is the necessary and compassionate thing to do, but it’s rare. It’s crucial to proceed with caution with that one because our egos excel at coming up with convoluted excuses to justify lying for the sake of being “nice”. Not good enough.

Now, how about using this test in our written communication as well? Instant messaging apps are super useful but they also have created more opportunities for mindless chatter. How about practising pausing before writing and asking our self the same question: “Is what I’m about to write true, kind and necessary?”

Mindful communication = healthier relationships.

Turning Regrets Into Opportunities

Do you have regrets?

I do.

Most of them are from my late teens and early twenties, and most of them concern relationships. I was a late bloomer in several aspects, especially emotionally. Unfortunately the self-absorption and emotional immaturity of my early adulthood led me to mishandle most of my relationships - with family, friends and boyfriends.

I definitely regret these mishaps because they have led people to feel hurt.

At 40, I still make mistakes but now I can usually recognize them earlier and therefore self-correct pretty quickly.

But what to do with missed opportunities and old mistakes?

We can turn our regrets into development opportunities.

Step 1:

The first step is to identify what we regret, take responsibility, accept that we have missed some opportunities or made mistakes, and seek understanding of what went wrong. Understanding helps a lot to accept regrets and mistakes and it can serve as a foundation to the difficult process of forgiving our self. It's a really crucial part of learning from mistakes, both small and big.

Step 2:

Because it’s never too late to start doing things in a more mature way, we need to identify what must be learned and develop a strategy to make progress. It might be useful to seek the support of a professional or of a group, or it can be a self-directed project. A daily practice is required to sustain and nourish the new actions we want to take.

Step 3:

Depending on what happened in the past and whether our regrets are about mistakes we made, we might want to apologize to the people we have hurt. Sometimes it's appropriate, sometimes it's not; this must be decided based on what's best for the other person, not for our own self. When it's best to not re-involve the person or the old feelings, we can write a letter that we don't send, or more meaningfully, we can commit to doing things differently with the people who are in our life today.

Every regret, missed opportunity or mistake is a rich source of learning and growth if we are up to the challenge. We grow more from mistakes than from success. Rather than brewing in old stories and feelings, we can pause, reflect, make an intention, and start taking new actions, based on a deeper understanding of ourselves, others and life itself.

The Difference Between Authenticity And Reactivity

One reason why we might fear being authentic is that we confuse being reactive with being authentic.

And since we might fear the impact of our reactions on others… we fear authenticity itself.

The thing is, being reactive and being authentic are not the same thing.

Reactivity is letting whatever arising emotion to be expressed in our most instinctual pattern. For example, it might mean allowing a surge of anger to explode if we’re instinctually driven to do so, or on the contrary, stuffing it inside if that’s what our reactive pattern is conditioned to do.

Authenticity, on the other hand, is feeling the surge of anger just as it starts arising, skillfully coming back to our center as we evaluate with curiosity and acceptance what is triggering our emotional reaction and what the circumstances around us are, and making a careful assessment on how to express our anger.

In reactivity, we are unconsciously driven by our emotional center and we unconsciously react from our instinctual center. Basically, we only use two intelligence centers and in a non-integrated way.

No wonder we fear our own reactivity!

When we choose authenticity, we integrate our four intelligence centers - Heart (emotions), Mind (thoughts), Body (gut instincts) and Spirit (higher purpose) – by somatically coming back to our center and asking ourselves the following questions:

• Is it the right time and place to express my emotions? Alternatively, would asking the person/people to step aside with me or postponing until later be wiser?

• How is it most effective to express my feelings? Is letting it all out the most adequate expression in this specific situation? If not, would translating these feelings into self-aware and eloquent language less damaging to the relationship and more useful to move forward?

• What is the context surrounding my emotional experience? How could everyone be best served, with both truth and compassion?

An authentic response integrates the intelligence and the truth of our Body, Mind, Heart and Spirit. And because it’s not just about ourselves, when we are truly authentic we also consider the unique context in which we are emoting, our relationships with others and the impact we would like to have in the world.

Reactivity is just emotional vomiting. It sure is real but it’s only real from a limited part of ourselves, a part that might actually be triggered in reaction to something that occurred a long, long time ago.

Authenticity is integrating our whole truth into our response to what is happening with a specific person, in the present moment. It is truth, compassion and purpose weaved together harmoniously.

Pain Is Unavoidable. Suffering Is Optional.

Difficult and painful situations, problems and questions are part of human life. However, we human beings excel at turning pain into suffering by getting attached to how things “should be” or “should not be”. Our minds are constantly scanning our inner and outer world for “likes” and “dislikes” and “rights” and “wrongs”.

From one experience of pain, our mind creates a story leading to suffering.

Example:

Pain: proposing an idea at a work meeting and being told by a coworker in front of everyone that the idea is completely dumb and that it does not bring anything valuable to the table. The pain that arises could be a transient feeling of anger or shame.

Suffering: turning this experience into a story of worthlessness (being stupid, never being able to contribute anything valuable), or into a story of judgment (how the coworker is a terrible person who is always mean to everyone and who should get fired).

An experience of pain is supposed to be relatively short-lived (unless we're talking about more tragic losses of course) because it matches the lifetime of a difficult feeling - the wave of arising, peaking and subsiding of the emotion. When we resist the experience of pain by rejecting it or by getting attached to it, we turn it into suffering which lasts much longer and feels more painful. Such stories can literally last a lifetime if we don't notice them and work at interrupting them.

The kind of stories we tell ourselves and the way we react against things not going the way we want to are incredibly well described by the Enneagram. There actually are nine very well characterized patterns of attachment, rejection and defense.

Each of us uses one of these nine ways to turn pain into suffering.

The Enneagram is a fantastic tool that helps us diagnose and understand the unique unconscious pattern we do over and over - often without even realizing it - for the purpose of avoiding pain but that prevents us from living freshly, freely and authentically. There is nothing that creates more suffering than living inside the script of stories that have little in common with reality.

An accurate Enneagram diagnostic jumpstarts our journey to freedom because it acts as a of beam of bright light revealing aspects of our personality that would remain hidden or otherwise take decades to unearth through running into the same roadblocks again and again. Once equipped with a better understanding of the stories we are *not*, we can use the medicine of presence to free ourselves little by little from the unconscious patterns leading to our unnecessary difficulties, resistance and ultimately suffering.

It's a journey towards freedom.

The Enneagram has guided my inner work for over twelve years, it has allowed me to develop healthy relationships thanks to understanding myself and others better, and it’s become the most incredible tool I use in my coaching practice to support my clients.

I just started the journey towards becoming certified as an Enneagram Teacher. I'm feeling deeply grateful to be learning under the guidance of the wise mentors of The Narrative Enneagram with a tribe of people as passionate as I am about human development.

Be in touch if you'd like to discover how using the Enneagram can transform your life!