Enneagram Type 3 Blueprint: The Self-Promoting Achiever

(By Eldad Ben-Moshe)

❤ Hey there Better Lifers!

Welcome to another episode of the Enneagram Blueprint. And this time we're going to talk about type three of the Enneagram, the Self-Promoting Achiever.

But before we do that, a few words of wisdom:

If you have missed our first video in this series, that video is an introduction about what is the Enneagram and how is it so successful in changing so many people's lives.

 There are some important notes there about how to use the Enneagram and a better understanding, even though it's still an intro about what is the Enneagram.

It's beyond the scope of your usual intro to the Enneagram that you might find on the internet, just like the videos about the types themselves are more in-depth than the usual videos or articles that you'll find for free about the Enneagram.

Having said that, there is more in-depth material in my Enneagram school, the E-School™, at  betterlifeawareness.com/eschool.

But the point I'm making is that if you haven't seen the introduction video and you're not really well versed in Enneagram, you might want to take a look at that video.

Another video you might want to look at is the video about type one.

The video about type one starts with a few minutes of some remarks about how to find your type and about the names of the types. So that might be wise as well to watch, and there's going to be a link for that too.

This is not my full online course or non-online, in-person course. This is a taste. So there's only so much I can dive into - even in an online course there's only so much I can dive into.

For more details about my Enneagram courses, visit E-School™, our Enneagram school, at betterlifeawareness.com/eschool. 

But the important thing is that here, in the Enneagram Blueprint series, I'm going to give you the essential blueprint of the nine types. It will be a quick description of each type, and it is going to be beautiful.

 
Type 3's Blueprint: The Proud Helper.

1. Type 3's core belief.

And now without further ado, let me introduce our blueprint for type three in the Enneagram, The Self-Promoting Achiever.

Now, as we discussed in the introduction video about what is the Enneagram, the types, the map of our personality, they map our defense mechanism, right?

Our personality, as we understand it through the prism of the Enneagram or at least the way I choose to use the Enneagram but I'm not the only one, is a defense mechanism, a survival mechanism.

It's our attempt to deal with the world, basically, and to gain what we want to gain and avoid what we want to avoid because we're afraid of it, because it threatens us and so on and so on.

So all that personality structure starts from our core belief. And each type has its own core belief about the world and myself.

And in the case of type three, the core belief is this:
In this world, you are appreciated for what you achieve, not for who you are. Again, in this world you are appreciated for your achievements, not for who you are.

Now, like any other core belief of any type, the core belief is mostly behind the scenes in the sense that I don't know it's my core belief about the world but it rings a bell, and many times they'll say "what do you mean it's a belief? It's not a belief, it's a fact."

It's not just about type three. Type two as we discussed, they will see the world as you have to give in order to receive, and they'll say many times it's not a belief, that's the way it goes, just look at people, just look at the world.

So type three, they'll do the same, many times they'll tell me "it's not a belief, just the way things are". The fact that it's their core belief and what runs the entire personality system and their automatic pilot, automatic behavior behind the scenes, they are unaware of that.

But they do think many times that this is a fact and not a belief - so if that's my core belief, that I'm appreciated for achievements and not for who I am, that means I must achieve.

I must be number one. I must be presenting myself as successful. I must have a successful image and I must avoid failure and defeat.

Now again, going back to the introduction video of what is the Enneagram we're talking about a core belief that goes all the way to our survival instinct, right?

It's not just a belief. It's what my life depends on even though we're not aware that that's how it goes. 

So that's why I'm using the word 'must'.
I must achieve. I must be number one.

In the case of avoiding failure and defeat, I must avoid failure and defeat at all costs because my life actually seems to be depending on that If I'm a type three.

2. Type 3's core need.

Now from that core belief, come our core need and our core fear.

So in the case of type three, if that's my core belief, my core need is success.

And that goes both externally - I want other people to know that I'm successful because I want to be valuable and I want to be praised and acknowledge and admired and respected;

And also internally - I want to be successful also because I want to be the best at whatever I do.

And with that in mind, we need to understand that success is not just about money and fame, it's actually context-driven.

So to understand what success means to a specific person with the type three mechanism or type three personality type, you have to talk to them and check in with them.

And usually it comes from what success means to their community, their culture, their environment. They take on that.

Why?

Because they want to be appearing successful in the eyes of others. Many times it is meaning money and fame, especially in western culture. But let's take some even almost opposite examples.

So let's say I am a three and I live in a community of meditators. Spirituality and meditation are the highest values. So I would want to be the 'best' meditator, or the most enlightened person.

Of course, when it comes from the ego it will never work, but we are talking about ego structures here, at least in the unhealthy parts.

And if you talk spiritually, it's also in the healthy part of the personality. But that's a different topic. If you know what I'm talking about, that's great, if not, don't worry about it.

Another example is, let's say I'm in a hippie community, and I want to be the 'best' hippie, whatever that would mean in that specific community.

Maybe I'll have the most hippie values and hippie clothes and stuff like that.

That's the context we need to understand about success for threes, it's not just necessarily money and fame. It might be even the opposite.

Maybe I'm in a culture that thinks money is the source of all evil, and then I'll repel money and repel fame but not from an authentic, honest, genuine, humble place.

I will repel fame from wanting to create an image of being the best at whatever my community and my culture appreciate.

So another thing about the core need, as I always say in our videos:

To me personally, and I don't see or hear a lot of it about it in the Enneagram world, but it's true for me, the core need is along with two other core needs that we all have.

So to me, we all have a core need of survival or safety, and the core need of being loved. On top of that, each type has its core need. And in the case of type three, it's success.

3. Type 3's core fear.

Now as far as the core fear, if my core belief is such that in this world you are valued for your achievements and not for who you are and so I have to be successful and avoid failure, my core fear is failure.

And it comes in many shapes and forms, like being worthless and being incompetent and being exposed as such, being exposed as unsuccessful or as a failure, or someone who cannot achieve or accomplish what is expected of them.

And again, it's all connected to our sense of safety and survival.

So it's not just I don't like that feeling of being a failure. It's not like all of us - we don't like to be failures or to feel failures, and I remind you of the metaphor of the nine rooms that we discussed in the first video, in the introduction video:

We all have some of these nine types, like a house with nine rooms, but there is a room that we stay in most and that's our main type.

So type three, that fear of failure is the most connected with our feeling of safety or in case of failure, feeling unsafe, a threat to my own existence even.

So that fear goes deeper, let's put it this way. It's harder to deal with or to live with than for the rest of us.

4. Type 3's strategy and tactics.

So if these are my core belief and my core fear and my core need, what's the tactics? How will I fulfill this need and avoid this fear?

That's where we start seeing more and more of the behavior part of people when we talk about the type. Because the entire personality, basically, that's what it does. It's a tactic of how to fulfill our needs and avoid our fear.

So in the case of type three, in order to be loved and safe and avoid being worthless, I must achieve. I must be number one. I must show a successful image and I must avoid failure. 

And again, that 'must' is a key here because it's more than just 'I want to achieve', 'I want to be successful', or 'I want people to think I'm successful'. I must do it for my survival.

5. Type 3's automatic focus of awareness.

And from there comes my automatic focus because if that's what I need to do in order to survive -

my automatic focus that scans for dangers and opportunities must look for opportunities for success, and must look for what constitutes success in our culture and in my environment so that I can show off a successful image.

So my automatic focus of awareness, my automatic focus of thought, goes to success and image. 

And I know awareness and thoughts are not the same but they're related. So my automatic focus of awareness and thoughts will go to success and image if I am a type three.

6. Type 3's automatic focus of actions.

And my automatic focus of actions, as a result, will go to achieving, accomplishing, winning, and doing.

Now again, when we talk about types, we're not saying, okay, he's an achieving person, he has achieved so much so he's a type three. No.

Knowing your type goes by the motivation, using what we discussed before - the core fear, the core need, the core belief, it goes from there.

Because I can be highly successful and not be a type three. That's a whole different discussion.

So we always, and I elaborate on that too on the introduction video, we always go from the motivation and not from the behavior.

But when we're talking about the classic actions that we'll see, the automatic focus of actions that we'll see from type three, it will be achieving, accomplishing, winning and doing -

so much so, that there are many times thought of as 'human doings' as opposed to 'human beings'.

Or if you want a metaphor - the classic workaholic, that would be one of the metaphors for type three.

It doesn't mean that every workaholic is a type three, but we're talking metaphorically, symbolically.

7. Type 3's self-image.

So if that's all true about me and about my mechanism, my personality, type three goes around the world with a self-image that "I am successful, I'm a winner, I'm competent, I'm driven, I'm hard-working, I'm capable, I'm focused, I'm efficient, I'm productive".

Because if my self-image would be the opposite of that- that I'm a loser, that I'm incompetent, I can't live with myself.

My sense of survival and safety depends on being successful and a winner and competent and all that.

So I must avoid the feelings associated and the existence associated with being a loser and incompetent and worthless.

So my self-image, just for my own sake of sanity and safety is "I'm successful, I'm a winner, I'm competent", and so on and so on.

Now, if I'm sinking to the lower part of the three I might not believe that.

But we're talking about average and up levels of three and usually the average, because if you're a super healthy three you know that you're more than just that.

You're more than that, it's only your self-image that you're successful, you have a healthier self-image than just ego-driven self-image.

8. Type 3's gifts (“healthy”/ balanced/ high level of development).

So with all of that, we get to the behavior and when we speak about behavior, as always, we speak about two parts, right?

There is the healthy part of the three, the balanced, the 'high level of development' part of the free and the unhealthy, the unbalance, the shadow, the 'lower level of development'.

So in the healthy level of development of type three, we can expect to see, and again we're having a taste here, this is not the most in-depth that I can talk about everything because too much is sometimes too much, right?

This is an introduction to the world of type three and we do have more in-depth information for you if you are interested in that.

But we're talking about some classic examples of healthy behavior you can expect from people with type three personality.

So definitely one of the most common things that you can expect to see is world-class excellence, world-class performance, world-class execution, right?

Because their drive and their mechanism are to be the best to achieve every goal.

So you can talk about Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Cristiano Ronaldo, Carl Lewis, Lance Armstrong - people who are the best of the best in their field.

And I'm intentionally giving examples from the sports world because over there it's really easy to see if you won or lost, right? Even more so over time.

So it's a classic, three-ish world, you might say: There's the winners' podium, there are the medals, and everybody sees that you won or that you lost.

And about Lance Armstrong, if some of you are familiar with him, he is a multiple Tour de France winner, who's considered - or was considered - the best bicycle rider in history until some scandal with drug usage, stuff like that, came on to the surface.

And that opens up a door to a discussion of what happens with threes and their shadowed part. Like that drive to achieve and win at all costs can deteriorate into some very unhealthy habits and patterns of behavior.

I'm not saying specifically about Lance Armstrong, I don't know him, but I'm using that as a metaphor, as a possibility of what happened there.

And again, this is one of the things that I can go more in-depth in more advanced materials.

Another behavior we'll see commonly from threes is that they are getting a lot of things done quickly.

In the unhealthy part, it will be at the expense of doing it well. But in the healthy part, they're doing it quickly and well because that's their drive and that's what they excel at.

They're always looking to improve and establish goals and achieve them.

They are super good at motivating others to become their best selves because that's what I do for myself. That's my focus. I can see how to succeed. I can see where's the chance for success. I'm really good at that.

I've been doing that all my life. Here, let me help you do that. They can be extremely good at helping others to become their best selves.

If the name Tonny Robbins comes to your mind right now, that's not by mistake. He's probably an Enneagram 3, and if you know about tritypes (advanced material, I cover that in our Enneagram school. There's so much depth in the Enneagram!), he's probably a 387.

They're highly adaptable because no situation can be used as an excuse to fail or not do the task at hand.

It doesn't matter what happened, I must succeed. I must achieve. So whatever circumstances I'm in, whatever happened, I need to overcome that.

So they are really well at overcoming setbacks and fears, and they're highly adaptable to whatever happens.

They'll find the solutions to any problem. Failure is not an option.

I have to adapt myself to the situation, I have to overcome any setback, I have to overcome any fear, because my safety depends on that. My wellbeing depends on that.

I have to be a winner in order to get love and appreciation and safety.

They are tremendously driven to achieve and try again even after failure and they'll continue until they achieve their goal. And again, in the healthy aspect of it is very admirable, right?

Their threshold of breaking is very, very, very high compared to most of us. They'll go again and again and again and again again and won't break because that's their automatic mechanism.

Again, in the healthy part, that's a beautiful gift. I will not give up. I will not give up until I make it, until I get what I want, until I achieve what I need to achieve.

They truly believe in themselves and their ability to succeed and get things done. And on the healthy side of things, it's so beautiful and so inspiring.

Many of us battle with a sense of unworthiness and insecurity and "I can't do it", and some people do 'fake it 'till you make it.'

For them, it's a gift- again, on the healthy side. They truly believe in their ability to get things done and to succeed and they don't need to work on themselves for that.

They can be very energetic, enthusiastic, ambitious, and they can really enjoy being in action and doing things.

So these are some of their beautiful gifts and things you can see in the high side of their behavior.

9. Type 3's shadows (“unhealthy”/ unbalanced/ lower levels of development).

Now when we're talking about the shadows, the unhealthy, unbalanced, 'lower level of development' side of threes - again, we're doing that to gain compassion and understanding, not to judge and criticize.

Every type has its downsides. No type is better than the other. But there are the lower levels of development or the shadows of every type, every strategy of how to deal with the world.

So if this is my core belief about the world, core need, core focus, all of that - in the lower levels of development type three can be inauthentic and deceitful.

First of all, to others. They will present an image of being successful at all costs, even if they are not successful, even if it's a lie.

Because being a failure or sometimes even number two, means a threat to their safety, it means danger.

And then it's also happening that they'll be inauthentic and deceitful to themselves.

They'll present that successful image so much and so often and it's such a core thing that it goes all the way to their sense of safety, that they'll end up thinking that the image is true.

So they get so obsessed with playing the role of the successful person that they'll forget that they're only playing the role and it's not the truth.

And they'll end up not knowing who they really are when they're not playing the role.

If I'm not playing that role all of a sudden because there is a crisis or all of a sudden I got my mind to be quiet for a second or a moment, there comes a scary realization that I don't know who I am.

If I'm not an achieving machine, if I'm not a human doing, if I'm not just obsessively doing and achieving and showing how I'm successful, who am I? What's important to me? What do I like? What do I want to do?

You know, all of a sudden there's quietness and relaxation and I don't know what to do. I don't know that state. I don't know that situation. I don't know how to exist in there.

Who is in there? There's nothing in there, supposedly. That's the feeling sometimes, although, of course, it's not true.

That's where the authentic self can come out, or be noticed. But that's part of the shadows aspect.

Another one is that they find it hard to slow down, to rest, to take a break, and let alone to stop. So even on vacation, again we're talking about the classic workaholic image.

Imagine going on a vacation with your wife or kids and all that and everybody wants to have fun and you are just hectic, and you can't rest, and you have to do, and you have to work and whatever.

Your mind is not at peace, and it drives yourself and others crazy and you pay prices for the lower levels of development, you and others around you.

So it's actually a bigger price to pay than you might think. Also, because of other things we're going to get to later on.

They might be experienced by others as arrogant, insensitive, egoistic, even mean, and aggressive - because of that drive at all costs to achieve and succeed.

So at all costs - in the lower parts of me, I'll do some, not me Eldad, but lower levels threes, will bend the rules and bend the truth and do some nasty things because my safety depends on achieving.

So when your life depends on that, a lot of things that pushed aside, especially if you haven't done enough work on yourself. Right?

So morals and others and all that can be pushed aside, and I'll just do whatever it takes.

Which on a healthy side can be a good thing and on an unhealthy side, on an unbalanced side, can be devastating to yourself and to others.So it's another shadow aspect.

And another one is that they'll spend so much of their energy in doing, and in projecting a successful image, that they will not attend to other parts of their life, like physical health, mental wellbeing, friends, family, relationship.

And of course, when you don't take care of that things get bad and out of control and you pay really big prices there too.

So these are some examples of the shadow side of the type three behaviors.

10. Famous 3's.

And if we're talking about famous people, when you're talking about type three, you can talk about some really famous people because that's part of the strategy, right?

That's where we're aiming at.

So we have those athletes that I named before, Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods, Cristiano Ronaldo, Carl Lewis, and so on and so on.

And then we have many politicians in key roles - arguably Bill Clinton. And basically, everything is 'arguably' because we don't necessarily know Michael Jordan.

We haven't sat one on one with him and found out his core belief and core fear and core need, which is how we see what type a person is, not just by his achievements or by his actions.

But some people are a safer bet than others.

In the specific case of Bill Clinton, most Enneagram experts think he's a three, but not everybody.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is also considered a three. And talking about achievements, right?

Starting from where he did, and then becoming a world-famous, leading athlete, winning major body-building contests, and Hollywood actor in some pretty big movies, and the governor of California.

And Benjamin Netanyahu, if you know who he is, he used to be Israel's Prime Minister. He actually got reelected and reelected and reelected and reelected.

In Israel there is no limit to how many times you can get reelected, and as with every politician it's political views aside, we're talking about the achievement.

Benjamin Netanyahu, for example, has served more days as the Prime Minister of Israel than any other person in the history of Israel.

And in Israel, Prime Minister is the highest role, not the President. So whether you like him or not, or even how he got reelected, that's a big achievement.

The debate about 'how he did it' is more of a personal point of view, and if you don't like the how - remember what I said about the lower side of threes, and how they'll do things like bend the truth and bend the rules in order to achieve.

Again, I'm not saying Netanyahu did that, or that he didn't - but that morals and politics aside, it can be seen as an achievement (especially if you voted for him...).

Many leading public figures are also considered to have enneagram three as their main type, like Andy Warhol, Oprah Winfrey, Deepak Chopra, and Tony Robbins.

And many famous musicians and actors and models, presumably Elvis Presley, and Tom Cruise, and Will Smith, and Cindy Crawford.

So as you can see it's a good long list of successful famous people.

Why?

Because that's the strategy of type 3. So you can expect actually that more threes will be famous than other people.

11. Metaphors to their world.

And if we're talking about metaphors to get into the world and understand the world of threes and how it's like, one common metaphor that comes to mind, the first one probably, is the United States of America, right?

The crowds screaming "we're number one, we're number one", the worship of winners, the worship of famous people.

That western culture, that United States of America is probably the leading factor in that culture, is a classic type three culture.

We are worshiping the successful and famous and rich.

And we aspire to not just be number one, but to show you that we're number one and to scream it at the top of our lungs so that everybody will love us and will be safe because we're number one.

And again, it's not always working. It's not always bringing you the love and safety that you want, but that's a different story.

Another metaphor, a very interesting one, is a race car. The image of a race car is shiny, It's pretty, it's expensive, it's exclusive. It has an amazing performance.

And it's actually desirable for that image, because it's shiny and exclusive, like the American Dream too. So it's a desirable image.

And also the performances that it promises are desirable. We want that. It's an amazing machine and it goes from zero to a hundred in milliseconds, or not milliseconds, but really fast and all that stuff.

So the image is one part of that metaphor of type three with the race car, and also the performance itself. So it's both achieving and this image of being successful.

Another great metaphor for the world of type three is an audition. In an audition, one person can be chosen for the role and many people are fighting for the role.

Only one can win. All the rest lose.
So you must win in order to get what you want.

And basically, any metaphor of life as a win-lose situation is a good metaphor for the world of threes.

Maybe I can't say any, because there are always exceptions, but that gets you a good understanding.

And it also leads us to the last metaphor I'll use here, which is anything sports and racing and Olympics and stuff like that.

Performance and winning, and it's measurable, and it's clear if you win or lose.

And even in sports that you have a tie in a certain game, eventually, there's going to be one champion.

It can't be two teams as a champion, right? Or two people who want first place, maybe in some exceptions, there are.

But I'm talking metaphorically, this is the classic scenario - we're standing on the winners' podium and there's first place, second place, third place;

And all those people who are not even on the podium, all these 'losers' - supposedly, of course. They're not. But in the world of threes they are.

And I'm getting the medal in front of everybody, I'm getting the recognition for my victory, and flowers are being thrown at me, and money and recognition and fame...

So this is the world of three in some metaphors.

12. The prices type 3 pay for their strategy (/automatic patterns of behavior).

But with all this success and glory, there are prices to be paid.

As we said in other videos - in every type, which is basically every way of trying to deal with the world - every survival strategy, we pay prices for that tactics, for that strategy.

So in the case of type three, and again, the prices always get more connected to the shadow aspects of our behavior, the unbalanced parts, they will believe that their worth is set by what they achieve.

This is my worth. It's set by what I'm achieving; and that they are what others think of them, which is already in and of itself a big price to pay.

It's not a good, healthy, fun way to walk around in the world and say 'my worth is depending on what you think of me or what I've achieved.'

But out of that there's another price they pay, which is that they lose touch with what they really think, what they really feel and what they really want.

Why?

Because if my worth is set by what you think of me, I'll aim my life towards you and what you think. And so I'm losing touch with what I think and what I feel and what I want.

I'll do that compulsively, and that's the thing with the personality, we're mostly run by automatic patterns, automatic behaviors. 

If you saw the first video, the introduction video - that's where we discussed this.

We're almost 95% of our time, 99, 90, whatever you want to call it, there's no exact number, but almost always, run by automatic patterns, automatic behaviors - especially if we didn't do work.

And that's where the Enneagram is so great, because it helps us not only to understand and gain knowledge.

There are exercises and ways we can use the Enneagram to overcome the shadow aspect of our type and have more of the healthy side, and less of the unhealthy side and even overcome our personality and go beyond that.

So we're talking about the prices, we're talking about threes that eventually get disconnected from who they really are and what they think and what they feel and what they want.

And if I want to go to the beach and relax, I can't because I must achieve and do and achieve and do so that you'll like me and I'll be safe.

So this is a harsh way to live. Eventually, nobody's a machine, and as we'll see in a moment, they pay heavy prices for acting like a machine in that sense.

Also, they find it hard to slow down and rest and take a break, as we said, and that's because they don't give themselves permission to fail, to not achieve, to let go, which is already again hard in and of itself.

Imagine that you live your life and you don't have permission to fail.

You don't even have permission to not achieve, which is not even failure. You can't even let go. There's something inside you that doesn't let you do that.

You're kind of a slave to that mechanism, like we all are in unhealthy parts of our personality.

If we're there, then we're slaves to the ego and to the survival mechanism. And the whole point is to overcome that, go beyond that, have it serve you instead of you serving it.

So another aspect of that classic workaholic thing is that health and mental wellbeing and other things like that are pushed aside.

So we spoke about health and relationship and mental wellbeing and personal growth and all that. It all gets pushed aside in favor of achieving and success.

Everything that is not a competition, there's no finish line, there's no win or lose, there's no achievement, there's no medal, there are no winners' podiums - they get pushed aside, and one day all of a sudden wake up with a huge crisis.

And many times it's too late. Many times it's even a crisis in more than one thing, like both health and relationship together.

And it might be too late now. I already have cancer or stroke or nervous breakdown, and it might not be too late, but it might be almost too late and even too late sometimes.

And the thing is that because everything is pushed aside so that I'll focus on my achieving and I must do and I must achieve and I must keep going, it's kind of like there's either no problem, or at least the experience or belief there's no problem - or a major crisis.

Anything between gets pushed aside consciously and unconsciously, again - on the unhealthy part of threes, so that I'll be able to keep performing and acting and achieving.

So if I have a substantial health issue, as long as it's not slowing me down, I'll keep going, I'll keep going, keep going because I can overcome it.

And nothing can stop me and I must achieve and it's slowing me down and I can't deal with it right now because I must achieve this thing.

I must do this thing. I must complete this task. I must win this game.

So again, on the healthy side, it can be amazing, but you will know when to stop.

On the unhealthy side, you're so overridden by the "safety" mechanism, that it becomes unhealthy and you don't know where to stop and you wake up with a major crisis at the end.

One of the reasons that they're afraid to stop is that they're afraid to stop playing the role of being successful. Right?

So then another price I pay for my strategy and my way of trying to deal with the world is that I walk around in the world with a constant fear of being exposed as worthless, an imposter, a fraud, a liar.

I go around in the world with constant fear, again conscious or unconscious but it's there, that people will find that I am a million-dollar check without any money in the bank.

There's just this facade, this image of being Mr. Million Dollar or Ms. Successful, but there's nothing behind that image. There's no money in the bank. There's insufficient coverage for this check.

And that fear of being exposed as such is all the time there. Again the healthier I am the less it's there, but we're talking about the prices that they pay.

Another price is that they can experience anything that is not productive, such as a day off or rest or doing nothing for half a day, they can experience that as a threat -

because it's all connected to our survival mechanism, to our feeling of safety, because it goes to the core belief.

So a simple thing like a day off can bring depression and anxiety. Like I said before, I don't know who I am, what I believe, what I think, what I want, and also I can't rest.

And why am I not like all these normal people out there that can take a day off and enjoy? Or a week off and enjoy. How do they not lose their mind? What's wrong with me?

Why am I getting anxious and I can't even sit for a moment? What's wrong with me?

So there's that frightening recognition that hits them sometimes, and it can bring depression and anxiety and things like that.

So in a way you can say about threes that they feel themselves through doing an action. Otherwise, I don't feel myself. If I don't do, If I'm not in action, I have no access to myself. I don't know who I am.

Now, imagine realizing that. "If I'm not in action I don't know myself, I can't feel myself, I don't have access to myself, I don't know who I am." It's a huge price to pay.

So again, we're talking about having compassion for them, understanding their world, and being better friends and allies to them.

Or if it's ourselves, if I'm a type three, then having more compassion for myself - and understanding that there are ways to get out of that situation.

There are ways to deal with our strategy and mechanism in order to enjoy more of the benefits and the gifts and less of the shadow side and the prices.

12. Common things they ask to be coached about.

So talking about all that, the common things that they come to a coaching session for, things they ask for help with -

With type three, I need to take a step back before that because I have to put on the table and dress this: Many times they don't come.

Because they're always in action, the metaphor of workaholics or human doings, there's no interest in inner observation. Everything is geared up toward achievement and goals.

Inner observations, there's no goal, there's no achievement, there are no medals there. It's a waste of time in a way.

So as a result of that, they are not in touch with all the prices that they pay for the strategy, like things we said a minute ago, and the pain that they have that this strategy is causing them - so they don't come.

Another part of it is that when they do come many times, they try to perfect the doing machine, the achieving machine. They want to achieve more.

They want to achieve, be a better achiever, not to deal with the problems, not to deal with the relationship, and not to deal with the crisis in the relationship or the health and stuff like that. It's just pushed aside.

I just need to achieve more.

I achieved a million dollars a year in my business, now I want to achieve 10 million, which in and of itself it's not a problem, but when it's done in an unbalanced way, everything else is pushed aside and nothing else matters and so on and so on, that creates a lot of problems.

And then as a coach many times I'll have to deal with that. They come to me with this, they want to achieve more, but underneath that, there are other major issues.

And if they don't want to work with that I can't force them and I won't force them, but if I can help them see that, then we can start doing the real work - and it can contribute to achieving more because I'm in a healthier state, definitely can contribute. But it's two different aspects.

Another thing they come with, things they need to work on or want to work on in coaching, and when the person comes to me for coaching, I ask them what they want to work on, many times they come only when a crisis happens.

Like relationships - 'she wants to leave me', or health - especially if it means they must slow down. I physically can't continue. There's a whole breakdown of the physical system. I'm bedridden. I can't physically do anything. Then they'll come.

Depression, anxiety, the self-image is shattered - getting fired, losing key clients, anything that has to do with a sense of failure and worthlessness.

But this crisis happening in these things, one or more, then I might see them coming to do some work on things beyond achieving more.

13. Type 3's ultimate mission for growth & happiness.

So with all that in mind, the ultimate mission for growth for people with type three as their main type would be to understand that you're loved for who you are and not for what you achieve.

You don't have to be successful. You don't have to be a winner. You don't have to be number one in order to be loved and safe. Which is not what your core belief is telling you.

And a big part of the work is to doubt your beliefs, to doubt your ego's report on reality and your core belief and all that.

So the ultimate mission for growth for type three, understand that you're loved for who you are and not for what you achieve.

For most of us, it sounds obvious, but not to people with type three. But that's true for anyone.

If you're a type two and your core belief would be that in this world you have to give in order to receive. Many of us understand that it's not true, but for type two that's how the world is.

So to grow, I have to grow beyond that belief. I have to because everything starts from the core belief.

So this is our taste of the blueprint of type three on the Enneagram.

And there's so much more that I dive into in E-School™, our Enneagram school, and in the Enneagram courses.

If you want to know more, go to betterlifeawareness.com/eschool, E for Enneagram, and we'll talk wings and arrows, and we'll have exercises for growth, and the traps of the type, and the paradox and all that.

We go way, way deeper.

I hope this has been useful. I hope this helps you if you're a type three or if you know type free in your life, people with type free personality in your life.

I hope it helps you overcome things and see things differently.

And let's discuss this either here in the comments or on social media. You can find me in Better Life Awareness or Eldad Ben-Moshe, and let's have a ball.

If you are curious, let's talk about it.

You can share some comments, write me an email, or even join E-School™, our Enneagram school at betterlifeawareness.com/eschool - we'll be happy to see you there.

I'm here for questions. I'm here for help.

Let's use the Enneagram to grow, to be better people to ourselves and to others, to have a happier, better, more aware life, more awakened life.

And next steps might be to go to our Enneagram school, or simply to watch the next video about type four, the Dramatic Creative.

Alright, that's it for today. Have a beautiful, beautiful day and bye for now.

To your better life,
with tons of 💖

Eldad Ben-Moshe
Founder, Teacher, and Coach
Better Life Awareness Center