9 Enneagram Types
Point 1
GOALS: Doing the right thing/being a good person
1s are principled and rational. They are ethical and conscientious, with a strong sense of right and wrong. They are generally idealists, which often means high standards of ethics and fairness, which gives them a sense of purpose and mission. 1s are well-organized, orderly, and detail-oriented, but as they try to maintain high standards they can slip into being critical and perfectionistic. 1s care about upholding goodness and doing the right thing, even when everything is against them.
1s are in the Body Center of the Enneagram because 1s are responding to a gut wisdom when making decisions. They have a natural ability to know what should be done, not necessarily from an intellectual place, but from an instinctual knowing which feels like there’s alignment. In pursuit of living up to their ideals, 1s have to contend with a fierce inner critic.
Point 2
GOALS: Having successful relationships
2s are caring and relational. They are empathetic, sincere, and warm-hearted. They are friendly, generous, and self-sacrificing, but they can also be overly flattering and people-pleasing. They are driven to be close to others, and they often do things for others in order to be needed. 2s have a great tenacity for caring for difficult people and seemingly lost causes. 2s can have problems taking care of themselves and acknowledging their own needs. When 2s are present they are altruistic and supportive, and are able to see love everywhere.
Point 3
GOALS: Getting recognition through achievement/having a successful image
3s are motivated, skillful, goal-oriented, and adaptable. 3s intuitively see potential and use their considerable gifts, talents, and energy to make sure that potential is realized. They have an amazing capacity to direct their energy and attention at a particular goal so fully that they can quickly adapt the skills necessary to accomplish their aims, all while looking good while doing it. Their natural adaptability means that young Threes typically internalize familial and cultural ideas of value. It’s like 3s are looking into a mirror but through other people’s eyes. 3s typically have problems with workaholism and competitiveness.
Point 4
GOALS: Living with personal authenticity and meaning
4s tend to be artistically creative, introspective, and idiosyncratic. 4s gravitate toward the melancholic, symbolic, and darkly beautiful. They can be romantics who are often motivated by intimacy. They tend to be withdrawn and highly attuned to their inner states, so most of their attention is on the nuances of their subjective impressions. 4s express themselves primarily through artistic creativity and are extremely individualistic, living according to a deeply personal outlook that they stray little from. 4s can become increasingly preoccupied with their inner world, and the practical demands of life can begin to seem like too much. They seek to find depth by rejecting anything that seems ordinary, shallow, or mundane. 4s often can have a feeling that they are profoundly misunderstood.
Point 5
GOALS: Having knowledge, expertise and personal autonomy
5s are intense and cerebral. 5s have a gift for concentration, with creative imaginations and an ability to conceptually break down complex subject matter. Their curiosity is easily piqued, but they tend not to take anyone’s word on anything. They prefer instead to test, probe, and experiment with what others may take for granted. Their curiosity is not so much a general obsession with learning everything but a desire to discover something never-before revealed. However, as they begin to prioritize their inquisitiveness, Fives begin to feel distracted and overwhelmed by the practical necessities of life. 5s can feel largely unequipped to deal with life outside subjects of their interest—feeling that they lack inner resources and that too much interaction with others will deplete them.
Point 6
GOALS: Reaching security through understanding, preparedness and dependability
6s are committed and security-oriented. 6s have a gift for foresight and practical intuition. They are typically curious, funny, and thoughtful, but they can also be rebellious and oppositional. 6s have a profound love of the truth, not in claiming to know something as fact, but expressed as a search for authenticity, validity, and discerning the reality of something. When 6s find that kind of clarity with a cause, relationship, or mission, they have a powerful capacity for devotion, commitment, and service.
6s usually have a strong sense of responsibility and are tenacious supporters of whatever they care for. As 6s seek to manage life’s ambiguities, they rely on their minds to reason through problems and anticipate outcomes, but this develops into chronically overthinking their choices and convictions, leading to a habit of doubt and skepticism.
Point 7
GOALS: To enjoy life
7s are busy, playful, and practical. They tend to be spontaneous, optimistic, and experience-oriented. They are in love with possibilities, and have a kind of enduring hopefulness and understanding that limitations and difficulties pass to give rise to something new. 7s are typically up for adventure and tend to jump into new situations with ease. They have a great deal of energy and enthusiasm for the unexpected and novel.
7s make pleasure a priority, but they can skimp on giving adequate attention to processing negative feelings, especially feelings that feel heavy or limiting, like boredom, grief, and deprivation. While 7s are typically sensitive, they can become emotional escape artists who can rationalize their way out of having to attend to the parts of their experience that feel limiting.
Point 8
GOALS: Feeling personal empowerment, fairness and direct action
8s are bold, assertive, and can have a strong physical presence. They have an innate resourcefulness and drive that produces a great deal of confidence and impact. Most 8s tend to be very direct, even confrontational, and enjoy challenges. 8s have an intuition for how to assert themselves in order to “make things happen”. 8s unconsciously live in a power-up (vs. power-down) mentality— there’s an amping up of energy/an overdoing of one’s vitality. This intensity can be overt and obvious to others, or more subtle and less visible at first glance. Despite their apparent confidence, most 8s rarely feel safe enough to acknowledge their vulnerabilities within themselves, much less able to share them with others.
Point 9
GOALS: Having harmony and comfort
9s are natural harmonizers. 9s have a multifaceted, holistic outlook on life that makes them profoundly accepting, curious, and intuitive. While quite inwardly sensitive, 9s on the outside tend to be easy-going and not easily dismayed by setbacks. 9s tend to go-with-the-flow in group settings, and avoid conflict at all costs. However, in order to maintain a sense of wholeness, and not disrupt the harmonious fabric of life, 9s disconnect from their direct experience, effectively keeping their sense of themself vague and out of focus. This leads to not allowing all of themselves to be fully engaged, tamping down their full expression and blocking them from seeing their own personal value.
these summaries come from a conglomeration of my own research and the information I have found to be the most true taught by Enneagram teachers Don Riso, Russ Hudson, John Luckovich, Peter O’Hanrahan and Josh Lavine
