Typology

Mother & Daughter duo Nancy and Samantha Beach are both leaning into their Enneagram number by tackling one of the most audacious goals possible: addressing the mass exodus from the church, and working to make it more inclusive.

As a millennial, Samantha suspects there may be a disconnect within the generations when it comes to messaging: "We're seeing this all across society, all the -isms, right? Racism, sexism, homophobia, all these things. And, I think my friends just wanna know, is the church having these conversations too?"

In this episode, we chat about how to create a healthy dialogue between people of different views and age groups, and how working together on that message was the best way to model community for those in the church: "The texture of community is vital. There's something different about confessing sins together…singing together, even learning together in a room side by side. Then there's something about the conversation before and after, that can happen."

—

Nancy Beach (3w4) serves as a leadership coach with theSlingshot Group and on the teaching team at Soul City Church in downtown Chicago. Previously, Nancy served as the programming director at Willow Creek Community Church in suburban Chicago. She is also the author of An Hour on Sunday and Gifted to Lead. Nancy and her husband Warren have two adult daughters, Samantha and Johanna.

Samantha Beach Kiley (3w2) is a writer and performer working at the intersection of art and faith. Samantha's creative work has appeared in theatres, churches, and non-profit spaces. She has taught at Northwestern's National High School Institute and Rocky Mountain Repertory Theatre, where she is the co-education director. She and her family have recently moved to Raleigh, NC where Samantha is associate pastor at Church on Morgan in Raleigh.

Check out their new book, Next Sunday: An Honest Dialogue About the Future of the Church.

To learn more about Nancy Beach, follow her on Twitter, or visit her website.

To learn more about Samantha Beach Kiley, follow her on Twitter, or visit her website.

For years, Irene Rollins lived on auto-pilot. Unaware of just how motivated by shame she was, it took a jolt to wake her up to the fact that she didn't have to live a life characterized by fear and defensiveness.

It was an addiction to alcohol, made more severe by the pressures of pastoring a church, that finally woke her up to these bigger problems: "Imagine the weight I was carrying. I still had three kids, the dogs, managing life, and I found myself reintroducing alcohol into my life." From there, things escalated, says Rollins. "My dependency increased over a six year period of time, and I went into a full blown alcohol addiction."

In this episode, we explore the nature of addiction and recovery, including the ways in which every one of us struggle with addiction in our own way.

—

Irene Rollins is passionate about the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health of all people. As a certified Emotional Intelligence Coach, she loves to study human behavior, which enables her to understand a wide variety of people, guiding them to be the best version of themselves through her teaching, writing and coaching. She founded the ministry of TWO = ONE with her husband Jimmy with a mission to help build strong marriages that result in healthy families that impact our communities for the better.

To learn more about Irene Rollins, follow her on Instagram, visit her ministry, TWO = ONE, or check out her new book, Reframe Your Shame: Experience Freedom from What Holds You Back.

As the director of family counseling at Daystar Counseling in Nashville, TN, David Thomas has seen some patterns develop over the years.

"Some of the healthiest parents I have worked with over the years are parents in recovery," says David. "Because you've done your work: those basic tenets of 'I understand I have a struggle, I need God, I need community.'"

Those are principles that apply for everyone, whether in recovery or not, and they reflect a kind of humble acknowledgement of reality that every parent needs.

But there's another way into these concepts: "The other set of parents that I see are the healthiest are those who are using the Enneagram," says David. "You're getting connected with some of those same things. Understanding, 'Here's what the shadow side looks like, Here are my traps, Here are my vulnerabilities."

This week, we talk to David Thomas about his own experience dealing with the Enneagram One's inner monologue, how the shadow side comes out in parenting, and how the Enneagram can help us raise emotionally strong boys.

—

David Thomas, LMSW, is the director of family counseling at Daystar Counseling in Nashville, TN, and the coauthor of ten books, including the bestselling Wild Things: The Art of Nurturing Boys and Are My Kids on Track? He is the co-host of the top 10 parenting podcast "Raising Boys and Girls."

To learn more about David Thomas, follow him on Instagram, visit his website, or check out his new book, Raising Emotionally Strong Boys: Tools Your Son Can Build On for Life.

Is motherhood really the hardest job in the world? Is there such a thing as a biological clock? Is motherhood the highest calling? And is it true that you can't truly know love until you're a mother?

For Erin Lane, the mythology around motherhood has gotten out of hand. "How did we make motherhood an occupational, performative, identity based measure of worth?"

This week, we speak to Erin Lane about these questions, and how being an Enneagram 5 has helped her break out of the scripts our culture gives her for motherhood. ---

Erin S. Lane is the author of Someone Other Than a Mother: Flipping the Scripts on a Woman's Purpose and Making Meaning Beyond Motherhood and works as a vocational retreat facilitator. She resides in Raleigh, North Carolina.

To learn more about Erin Lane, follow her on Instagram, visit her website, or check out her new book, Someone Other Than a Mother: Flipping the Scripts on a Woman's Purpose and Making Meaning Beyond Motherhood.

REGISTER NOW for Dos and Don'ts of the Enneagram with Ian Morgan Cron to get access to the live webinar with Ian on October 26th at 2pm CST.

In addition to breaking ten world records, Colin O'Brady's feats include the world's first solo, unsupported, and fully human-powered crossing of Antarctica, speed records for the Explorers Grand Slam and the Seven Summits, and the first human-powered ocean row across Drake Passage. Would you be surprised to hear he's a three on the Enneagram?

But as he grows older, his approach to achieving his goals is changing. "It's not the same burning desire, like deep in my bones," says Colin. Is he losing his "three-ness" or is there something deeper going on here?

On this episode of Typology, we explore the ways our approach to goals, and the need to achieve, can evolve over time.

—

Colin O'Brady is a ten-time world record breaking explorer, speaker, entrepreneur, and expert on mindset. Colin's highly publicized expeditions have been followed by millions and his work has been featured by The New York Times, The Tonight Show, The Joe Rogan Experience, and The Today Show. He is the author of The New York Times bestseller The Impossible First and now The 12-Hour Walk: Invest One Day, Conquer Your Mind, and Unlock Your Best Life (Scribner; August 2nd).

This week, we step bravely into the world of politics, investigating the reasons it feels more divided than ever, and how we can truly listen to one another.

Sarah and Beth started discussing these issues from opposite sides of the aisle, and while their positions have changed over time, they still believe in the power of dialoguing with those who disagree. In fact, they see their shifting positions on politics and government as a sign of the value of truly hearing one another out.

But listening can be difficult when so many are leading with anger and rage. And those are emotions that signal something deeper beneath the surface than merely strong opinions on policy: "Instead of starting from 'what's wrong with you'," says Sarah, it's better to start with "What happened? How did you get here?"

—

Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers host Pantsuit Politics podcast, named by Apple Podcasts as one of the Best Shows of 2021. They are also the authors of Now What? How to Move Forward When We're Divided (About Basically Everything) (2022) and I Think You're Wrong (But I'm Listening): A Guide to Grace-Filled Political Conversation (2019).

When Maud Newton read about the traits of the Enneagram Four, she had to laugh out of pure recognition. "On my mother's side, there was this impulse toward larger than life stories. There wasn't really shame around difficult histories and that sort of thing. The greatest sin was to be boring."

Maud's ancestors were anything but boring. In this episode, Maud shares what she's learned about herself through exploring her ancestors' lives, and explains how we're setting ourselves up to repeat our ancestors' trauma and toxic patterns if we aren't able to acknowledge them first.

—

Maud Newton has written for The New York Times Magazine, Harper's, The New York Times Book Review, and Oxford American. She grew up in Miami and graduated from the University of Florida with degrees in English and law.

Just three weeks shy of their one-year anniversary, the unthinkable happened. Mattie's 28-year-old husband died unexpectedly, leaving her with a massive hole in her life.

But being an Enneagram three becomes a double-edged sword in grief: "This compulsion to perform that I have, in whatever I'm doing, was one of my greatest assets in my grief," says Jackson, who adds, "It was also one of the things that I had to be the most careful to keep in check."

This week, we hear how she pursued personal growth and balance through her grief, and managed to come out on the other side with hope, ambition, and her love for her former husband intact.

Mattie Jackson Selecman is an author, podcaster, speaker, and co-founder NaSHEville, a women's philanthropic apparel brand serving orphans, widows, and victims of human trafficking.

To learn more about Mattie, follow her on Instagram, check out her new book, Lemons on Friday, or visit her website.

Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Mary Gauthier has experienced abandonment from her mother, put herself in positions where she would inevitably be betrayed, come to terms with the power of her anger, and found herself struggling with addiction and alcoholism. But for Mary, so much of that tumult and life experience came from a sense of internal intensity. "The self-destructive and self-constructive forces inside of me," she says, "are both very, very strong." That conflict often can be too much to bear for many. But for Mary, it was songwriting that gave her the space and opportunity to work it all out.

In the end, those six decades were time enough for her story to be reframed, rewritten, and even redeemed.

To learn more about Mary, follow her on Instagram, check out her new book, Saved by a Song, or visit her website.

Every creative has a dream project: something they'd love to do if they had infinite time and resources. But what if you got the chance to pull off that dream project, and it didn't succeed?

That's what happened to Steve Taylor, who poured himself into directing Blue Like Jazz, only to see a middling response at the theater. To him, that result felt like humiliation.

This week, we hear about how his experience creating art for a living has changed his approach to success, risk-taking, and his own personal worth.

Filmmaker/writer/producer/recording artist/entrepreneur Steve Taylor earned his "Renaissance Man" stripes (Prism Magazine) from a body of work that's garnered him multiple Grammy, Billboard, Telly, Addy, and Dove awards and nominations. As a recording artist, he's sold over one million albums worldwide, garnered two Grammy nominations for Meltdown (1984) and Squint (1993), and made history as the only artist to twice win Billboard Music Video Awards for self-directed music videos. He also fronted the MCA-signed rock band Chagall Guevara.