Intro
Do you know your Enneagram number? If you don't, online quizzes can help you find out, or even better, a spiritual director or life coach can help you with that discovery. It's sort of a psychometric, and very useful to help you understand all kinds of relationships, your interests and career, as well as your own history. I'm an Enneagram 3 with a 4 wing: 3w4. For this week's perform prompt I'll consider my identity as a 3 that's sometimes called the achiever, sometimes a performer, often performer-achiever. Short version? A 3 doesn't really know the difference between what they do and who they are. Here are a couple of places that describe the good and the bad of being a 3:
• What Is the Enneagram Type 3
• Crystal Knows Enneagram 3
Perform
As image-aware as I can be, I don't necessarily concern myself with others opinions of me or my actions except when it might affect overall public perception of how I perform. As I've replied a couple times on twitter, as a little kid my life ambition was to be famous. Well-known, but not fame attached to any endeavor or accomplishment. However, true to my enneagram type that can't quite figure out the difference between what I do and who I am, I've spent forever gaining more skills, more academic and professional credentials, all that time glancing over my shoulder to see if anyone notices. If it looks like maybe they don't, it's more effort, more time to refine the way I perform.
• your views, Leah?
• the best is yet to come!
• follow your heart
• but you've got to be an expert.
All that slices at least two ways. First, stewardship of gifts and opportunities God places in our path requires our serious cooperation to take advantage of them and become the best possible version of ourselves. And second, almost everyone has agonized through cringe-worthy musical or poetic, sometimes theatrical performances from people of all ages and it's in everyone's interest to be expert rather than embarrassing.
There's clearly a place to perform and places where we need only be. A pastor I served with reminded the staff Sunday morning worship is about The Performance. We'd definitely rather people don't cringe; we strongly desire they connect to God and to each other during worship. That means working hard and persistently so we can perform well. It means letting go of a healthy desire for better or best and letting ourself simply be as we perform.
I used think I had to be
ReplyDeletean expert, cool and calm and sure,
and then the truth occurred to me,
it's fun to be an amateur
and just flail happily away,
laughing off each dumb mistake,
savouring each precious day,
in learning that I shouldn't take
this in such serious vein,
for we will pass here only once,
and there's fersure no need to strain
to make folks think you're not a dunce,
'cause in some ways, yeah, you are,
so own the thing, and you'll go far.
Thanks for sharing. I'm a 1w9. Visiting from FMF #21 this week.
ReplyDeleteI only recently discovered that I'm a 2. I really must learn more to understand how this works.
ReplyDelete