Today we look at the Enneagram Thinkers - 5, 6, 7.

The Enneagram has been a tremendous tool to reduce our stress in family relationships. We have learned a lot about our blind spots and our family's strengths and weaknesses.

Start here with an enneagram test:
https://www.truity.com/test/enneagram-personality-test

Next, the enneagram Institute has a good quick overview:
https://www.enneagraminstitute.com/type-descriptions

If you want to dive deep into the Enneagram, I love Beatrice Chestnut's book:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1938314549/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1938314549&linkCode=as2&tag=lsfp-20&linkId=21afe0fb0d953bd42caca18ddf84584b

Today we lay out the heart/feeling intelligence types = 2, 3, 4

The Enneagram has been a tremendous tool to reduce our stress in family relationships. We have learned a lot about our blind spots and our family's strengths and weaknesses.

Start here with an enneagram test:
https://www.truity.com/test/enneagram-personality-test

Next, the enneagram Institute has a good quick overview:
https://www.enneagraminstitute.com/type-descriptions

If you want to dive deep into the Enneagram, I love Beatrice Chestnut's book:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1938314549/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1938314549&linkCode=as2&tag=lsfp-20&linkId=21afe0fb0d953bd42caca18ddf84584b

Today we lay out the body/doing intelligence types = 9, 8, 1.

The Enneagram has been a tremendous tool to reduce our stress in family relationships. We have learned a lot about our blind spots and our family's strengths and weaknesses.

Start here with an enneagram test:
https://www.truity.com/test/enneagram-personality-test

Next, the enneagram Institute has a good quick overview:
https://www.enneagraminstitute.com/type-descriptions

If you want to dive deep into the Enneagram, I love Beatrice Chestnut's book:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1938314549/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1938314549&linkCode=as2&tag=lsfp-20&linkId=21afe0fb0d953bd42caca18ddf84584b

We all have blindspots in our character and personality. Just like in a vehicle, if you drive without paying attention to your blindspots, then you will run over stuff.

We share a story about how the enneagram helped us understand our 14 year old son.

The enneagram is sort of a personality test, but it assumes that the personality we have is a coping mechanism, a false self, that we have developed to deal with the world around us. We share the structure of the enneagram with the 3 centers of intelligence. We talk about the growth process involved with learning about your number.

The Enneagram is opened sourced - meaning that no one person owns it.

We really like this test because of the pie chart result it gives.
https://www.truity.com/test/enneagram-personality-test

Here is a basic overview:
https://www.enneagraminstitute.com/type-descriptions

Everyone struggles with family devotions. Why?

We talk about a couple of the issues: 
1st - we have this false belief that information = transformation. With all the info available in our society, people should becoming smarter and smarter. But this just isn't the case. Gaining lots of information does not guarantee transformation. Talking and learning lots of Bible facts doesn't mean your life has changed for the better. 

2nd - For the past decades, churches have relied on lots of programs (from Sunday School, to VBS, etc.). Run people through all the programs and hope that they are good Christians on the other side of it all. 

Parents are responsible for their kids spiritual growth. So we talk about how we keep our family devotions very simple, and the 4 very simple questions we use. 

This episode comes from our stress of trying and doing all the things in life, but still feeling so disconnected from people that we love. 

The solution comes by asking your spouse and kids - what are the 3 most important things I can do for you on a regular basis. 

Even if you can only do one of these a day, you will start to have a deeper connection with those you love. 

Our kids seem to have hit a new stress level during this re-opening Covid summer. Things are open but not "normal". We as parents have been trying to work through this stress processing with our kids.

We came across this article and spend our time talking about how good leadership always bring you back to the basics. And if you are a leader, you will get so tired of repeating these type questions. But asking questions and really listening are the keys to the best leaders. 

https://www.lollydaskal.com/leadership/important-questions-to-ask-your-team-in-a-time-of-crisis/

We use metrics to measure everything. Whether it is the fuel gauge in a vehicle or metrics on a website. 

Today we talk about the metric of creating quality relationships with the people we love. We are entering a time of "social poverty" that existed prior to COVID but has been intensified even more during isolation. 

We have to prioritize and that means scheduling time for meaningful connections with each other. We dive into some practical ways of doing this. 

This episode was inspired by this article:
https://qz.com/1570179/how-to-make-friends-build-a-community-and-create-the-life-you-want/

No child ever picks up a coloring book and then colors a person in the book "black" or "white" Even a child sees the shades of color that each person carries.

In this episode, we share about our separate experiences in Ethiopia and Kenya when we were both corrected for not understanding that "white" and "black" are not good terms to describe all the many colors of people. 

Our society is stressed out for many reasons. One reason seems to only be speaking binary code about everything. It must be this or that. It must be us vs. them for everything. 

We talk about how our 2nd Constitution (the one we use now), and that African Americans (we talk about the problem with that phrase too in this episode) were only 60% of a person compared to "whites". But we also talk that women didn't have many rights either. 

But the system of laws has evolved and changed for the better. Will we be able to see the changes needed today?

We need to be aware of racism as both systemic and systematic. We need to check our own hearts. There has never been a perfect side to anything, but we must start walking in a greater love and a greater understanding.