Typology

What is the gut-brain connection, and what role does it play in living a healthy and fulfilling life? Functional medicine expert Dr. Will Cole joins us to talk about his newest book, Gut-Feelings: Healing the Shame-Fueled Relationship Between What You Eat and How You Feel, and how to heal our bodies through nutrition.

Versed in the Enneagram, Dr. Cole shares how it has helped him educate and empower others by learning to communicate with others in a way they can receive it.

"My Enneagram Five-ness as far as being a researcher really does suit me well, and I think that's why I've been such a voracious consumer of health information and research [...] but, there's this duality, bidirectional relationship between what I do as science and the art," explains Dr. Cole. "The art part of what we do is holding the space in between the words and really understanding how can I get this health information and help them to understand it, to empower them, to give them agency over their health, and to really help them apply these things so it's sustainable and practical, for them to reclaim their quality of life?"

Tune into this fascinating conversation, then jump over to Amazon to grab your copy of "Gut Feelings."

To be human is to suffer. Most people try to bypass suffering or live with it in isolation. But true healing happens when you acknowlege its presence, learn to be with it, and allow others to come alongside you in your pain.

"Suffering is this whole notion of my perception that, 'I'm alone with my pain.' So suffering is a direct function of the degree to which I am isolated with my pain," explains Dr. Curt Thompson. "If I practice allowing others to be with me, it changes the nature of how I practice anticipating the future. And this is how 'I' don't form hope for me…'we' form hope for me."

In today's episode, Dr. Curt Thompson returns to discuss his incredible new book, The Deepest Place: Suffering and the Formation of Hope. We explore the intersection of faith and neuroscience, unraveling the profound impact of suffering and the formation of hope.

To learn more about Dr. Curt Thompson, visit his website or grab a copy of his new book.

Does your internal world align with your external world? If not, how can the Enneagram help you harness the vast treasures of instinctual insights and inspirations on a regular basis to realize personal and professional success?

Liz Tran, Executive Coach and author of The Karma of Success, joins me for a wonderful conversation about tapping into your inner genius in order to capitalize on what you're truly capable of. She shares the four spiritual strategies that foster reflection and help you infuse intuition and creativity into a career of purpose and joy.

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Liz Tran is the founder of Reset, an executive coaching company to CEOs and founders. Before founding Reset, Liz spent over a decade working in the tech industry, most recently as the only female executive at a leading venture capital firm. She is a trained meditation teacher and Reiki Master and studied yoga at the Samyak Ashram. She lives in New York City and Norfolk, Connecticut with her husband, Dev, and their dog, Grover. To learn more about Liz Tran and The Karma of Success, visit her website or follow her on Instagram.

We live in a world where we are faced with profound suffering on the news all day long and we see too much suffering of the world. But how do we take the unexpected things that happen to us and somehow breathe new life into them?

Author of The Gift of the Unexpected: Discovering Who You Were Meant to Be When Life Goes Off Plan, Jillian Benfield believes, "No matter what your unexpected circumstance is–you don't have to classify it as good–but I do think that good can come out of it and that [good] is that we can change through our unexpected circumstances if we're willing to go all the way through it."

Listen as Jillian shares the unexpected gift that helped shift her perspective and find true self-worth.

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Jillian Benfield is a former journalist and news anchor. She holds a broadcast journalism degree from the University of Georgia. As a freelance writer, her essays about living an unexpected life have appeared on sites such as TODAY, Good Morning America, Yahoo! News, and ABC News. Jillian regularly advocates for the full inclusion of people with disabilities in her writings, community, and as part of the National Down Syndrom Congress's National Down Syndrom Advocacy Coalition. Jillian and her husband, Andy, and their three children make their home on Florida's Space Coast.

We're kicking off Season 7 with a topic I've not yet discussed on the show: Holy Ideas. Holy Ideas remind us of the powerful spiritual roots of the Enneagram. They are great, universal, spiritual truths that we forgot or lost touch with, as the ego created an overlay of personality. It's a challenging concept, but today's guest, renowned Enneagram teacher Renée Rosario walks us through the Holy Ideas for each type and reminds us to "relax with awareness into this idea that there is a power greater than us, that is actually taking care of all the things we think we have to take care of in our type."

Renée Rosario is a Core Faculty member of The Narrative Enneagram and a transpersonal, body-centered psychotherapist in Boulder, CO. She has facilitated workshops and classes for over 20 years and loves to work in the Narrative Tradition where all are students and teachers of one another. Renée has been a mindfulness instructor at Naropa University and a peacemaker trained in contemplative social action through the Peacemaker Institute.

Her upcoming two classes, Narrative Enneagram Intensive Part 1 and Narrative Enneagram Learning Community will take place on August 4-6 in Menlo Park, CA or you can attend online. Learn more at www.narrativeenneagram.org.

As Richard Rohr says, Ones are childlike and full of joy and wonder at the world and creation. But for Ones, that sense of joy has been lost. Instead, they suppress their own feelings and focus on being good and doing what is right. They feel a sense of duty and responsibility and may harbor resentment toward others who don't see things the right way – their way.

But what would it look like if Ones reclaimed their childlike wonder? When Ones move toward health, they begin to let judgments go and become more at ease with imperfection. They begin to truly quiet that inner critic and turn it into an inner encourager.

Our guest today, Julianne Cusick, shares how her journey toward self-awareness and self-knowledge as an Enneagram One has allowed her to prioritize relationships over perfection and has given her permission to have fun dancing in the kitchen.

Julianne Cusick is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, a Certified EMDR Therapist (Maiberger Institute), and an AANE Certified Neurodiverse Couples Coach. She thrives on personal and professional growth.

A dynamic and engaging communicator, Julianne speaks to Christian organizations, women's groups, and retreats – all from the voice of hope and her own story of healing and redemption.

She is a mother of two who enjoys gardening, reading, and spending time with her family and friends. For more about Julianne or Restoring the Soul, visit www.restoringthesoul.com.

Enneagram Threes focus on outstanding performance, being perceived as successful, and avoiding failure at all costs. They believe that love comes from achievement, image, and status and have the tendency to neglect or ignore the personal needs of self and others.

But when Threes move toward health, they move to the high side of Six. When that happens, they no longer need to "drive the bus" or flaunt success. They are so good at helping others live to their full potential and be successful in their own right and not have it be all about their own success.

In this episode, Lisa Whelchel discusses her journey toward being a healthy Three. Listen in as she touches on her subtypes, how she identifies her True Self, and how the Enneagram has impacted her life as an introverted Type 3 with a 2 wing.

Lisa is an actress, author, international speaker, and life coach. Perhaps best known for her starring role as Blair Warner on NBC's "The Facts of Life" for nine years, she's also the author of "Creative Correction," which has sold over 200,000 copies and has written more than a dozen books. Currently, Lisa is a certified CoActive Life Coach and focuses most of her time these days coming alongside others on their transformational journey to remembering their True Self.

For more information please visit www.LisaWhelchel.com and www.ContigoLifeCoach.com.

Have you ever wondered why you like sad music, find comfort or inspiration in a rainy day, or react intensely to music, art, nature, and beauty? If so, you may identify with the bittersweet state of mind.

Bestselling author Susan Cain joins Anthony and I in a deep exploration of the important topic of bittersweet. She explains that "as humans, we enter this world with a sense of longing and separation from a more perfect and beautiful world. We come into the world with this knowledge and with these kinds of holy tears, you could call them, and this is one of the best and most beautiful things about us, the fact that we feel this [..], the fact of wanting to glimpse it and occasionally glimpsing it is that that's actually the secret fuel behind our creativity and our capacity for love."

Tune in for this incredible conversation that puts words to the pining and longing of Enneagram Fours.

Susan Cain is the author of the bestsellers Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole and Quiet: The Power of Introverts in A World That Can't Stop Talking, which spent eight years on the New York Times best seller list and has been translated into 40 languages. Susan's TED talks have been viewed over 40 million times. LinkedIn named her the Top 6th Influencer in the World, just behind Richard Branson and Melinda French Gates. Susan partners with Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant and Dan Pink to curate the Next Big Idea Book Club. They donate all their proceeds to children's literacy programs.

Some of my favorite interviews on Typology happen when a guest comes on thinking they're one type but they present differently. Today is one of those conversations. We start the show by talking to author, speaker, and social media personality, Carlos Whittaker, exploring how he determined his type and what struck him the most about being an Enneagram 9. Not long into our conversation, we begin to unravel the lines between Enneagram 3s, 6s, and 9s and dig into a brief typing interview. It's an engaging conversation you don't want to miss.

We also pivot to talk about his new book, ​How to Human: Three Ways to Share Life Beyond What Distracts, Divides, and Disconnects​, where Carlos shares the transformative power of embracing human connection and learning to navigate difficult things with a little more grace. To learn more about Carlos and his new book, visit his website ​here​.

Listen ​now​ on your favorite podcast player.

When human language can no longer carry the freight of an idea or a spiritual truth, you have to default to metaphor or to another language that can do that job. That language might be sculpture, film, music, or art…whatever medium can express things that discursive analytical language cannot.

No other Enneagram type can match the Enneagram Four's creative gift for giving language to ideas others of us can't find words for. Today's guests, Craig Lamar Brown and Andrea Summer share how they used their strengths to inspire others to find common ground and have healthy conversations about race, gentrification, and interracial dating in the church through their new movie, Between Mercy and Me.

Tune in as we unpack the challenges they faced while working together, how and why Fours can self-destruct, and using art as an outlet for processing emotions.