I Feel Different Today: The Feeling of No, The Feeling of Yes, And Being an Enneagram Nine
Enneagram Nine is the one that makes you never tell the truth ever... even when it's just you talking to you!
I’m not sure what it is or why it’s happening, but there’s something different going on in my heart and body. Maybe it was getting enough sleep for the first time. Maybe it was listening to a podcast as I slept. Perhaps it was something more self-aligned.
In reading an Enneagram post about “Imposter Syndrome” from The Bold Nine Academy, I’m reminded of how strange it is to see someone work specifically with my enneagram type. The Enneagram itself is one of nine different ways of behaving that each number dictates what you could be like. Depending on who you are and how you were raised, it’s easy to see each enneagram number as a type of armor a person wears to avoid (or invite) trouble.
Most of the time, there is always some Enneagram dealer working their way through. From what I’ve seen, they’re usually an Enneagram Seven or an Enneagram Four. Like every other person messing around in Enneagram-land, they probably read a lot about themselves before wanting to work with other people. What was interesting about this The Bold Nine Academy woman was the fact that she was a nine herself. Nines aren’t usually into helping other people deal with what we deal with all the time. A lot of not knowing what to do and not making great decisions. We can armor up extremely well, but when you behave as a nine, you start to understand pretty quickly that all your thoughts and feelings are very much restricted to be caught up inside you. You start to wonder if you can even have any others as you attempt to find out more about yourself.
But today is good. Even the weaker parts of me don’t feel as… pronounced today. It’s different. It’s rested. It’s something new. If I decide to give my new The Bold Enneagram lady any money for all the conversations she wants to plan, I’ll be sure to report back to you guys on how it goes.
What I’ve Given Myself
I got up very early this morning and retreated to the bathroom to voice record this idea about a song about a broken treehouse. It’s a track about a place I can’t reach. I couldn’t get up to it without help or some sort of parental guidance. I could see myself laying on the ground just thinking about it.
This song idea reminded me of the thing Questlove put out on his Instagram account starring actor Ethan Hawke. While I always thought he was some sort of well acting nepokid, his ideas in this video really stood out to me. Hawke spoke about how much we need things like poetry, art, and creativity. Without that aspect of our communication, we can’t do a good job of communicating with each other.
As a songwriter and musical artist myself, I can appreciate when so many of us try to exist beyond our initial feelings we get to share with who we are with the world around us. Unfortunately, I tend to start with what I like to call a “Feeling of No.” It constantly takes shots at us with his blasphemous negativity. In this case, imagine if Questlove of the Roots hadn’t posted the video that someone else had sent across the Internet to me, I may never have bothered caring about anything Ethan Hawke had ever said. “The Feeling of No” against Ethan Hawke would be unfairly placed across that strand of “no-ness.”
“The Feeling of No” is what I call something when I’m lumped closely to someone that seems to “have it all.” I think to myself how I’m not in that category. Didn’t Ethan Hawke have “rich parents” and get a “hot wife” and is still having an “illustrious career?” “The Feeling of No” makes me feel I wouldn’t there little to nothing to learn from him. This is admittedly quite foolish. There’s something to be learned from everyone. Instead of thinking about the ways in which I’m not like Hawke, perhaps I could look to him as a teacher for myself. Ethan Hawke has had to get better too. He’s had to work through his own struggles in life just like I did.
What does it mean to struggle like me? I grew up with two loving parents that are still alive and who stayed together in the good times and the bad. Who has been able to really find the method to get oneself out of one’s bad times and into their better ones? Who else gets to leave their relationship in a positive way? Is that me? Is that what I get to do while other people fail in their own ways?
Can my “Feeling of No” ever have a “Feeling of Yes” attached to it? Whatever starts as a “no” can always change, can’t it. It could just be my imposter syndrome. I want to try my hand at the feeling of YES that animates me in darker moments. I want to feel that “yes!”
So what is Michael’s “Feeling of Yes?”
1. What I call being lumped in with someone who also has what I have.
2. How I get to feel worthy and desired based on my own feelings of love.
3. How do I get to feel anything of value going forward?
I’m sure there’s more, but this is a good start. So who gives me the “Feeling of Yes?” I guess Ethan Hawke. He’s made some really interesting choices and he left college to pursue acting with Dead Poet’s Society. I think that is very cool. When I think back to my own life, I remember my own chance to act that I never took seriously. I was too much of a Nine to get over myself at the time.
I don’t feel bad about my blown chances, but imagine if I did everything the woman who put me on MTV’s Fear wanted me to do back in the 2000s. After Fear was over, she came back to Austin with a co-worker once. These two people were then willing to hook up with a college sophomore and get him to hit the scene and talk to people in the middle of 6th Street. I just… couldn’t make it work though. All those people on the street scared me too much. Yet when I imagine having the same type of Cambodian fearlessness at that point in my life rather than establishing it 10 years later. What new world could I have put together?
Once, a friend from High School was able to get me into the Real World house as an extra. It’s not the same as being in the house as a character, but it was something that was pretty amazing to do. Unfortunately, I never turned it into anything amazing. Now that I’m older and sicker, I can go back to doing more impossible things. I don’t believe I can be the same type of character now that I was then, but it’s more about a lack of desire than lack of ability.
Life can be rather tough at 40.
Maybe that is my “Feeling of Yes.” The idea is that Michael Bridgett can do whatever he likes. Perhaps that means building myself up in a different way.
I can get back to doing push-ups and squats in my daily workouts.
I can take time to sing every day.
I can play more video games.
I can turn my declining time in Estonia into something fun and more magical.
It doesn’t have to be bad that I’m leaving. I think the people in Estonia will get it. Meanwhile, “The Feeling of Yes” says it doesn’t matter if they support me or not. They will have to follow along either way.
Here is what I ran across earlier that made me want to write this today.
Roughly 960 Enneagram Nines responded. Here are the results:
96% always feel like they should be doing it better.
66% feel like their successes are flukes.
86% often feel incompetent despite their competency.
78% are uncomfortable receiving praise or congratulations.
81% doubt their successes
and
96% fear not meeting people's expectations.
If we don't take ownership of the results that we've created, we have a really hard time creating them again.
960 Enneagram Nines responded to The Bold Nine and we looks rather terrible. We Nines are a big group of people that think we’re flukes who feel incompetent, can’t stand being congratulated, doubt our successes and fear not meeting the expectations of others. It hurts so bad to read sometimes, but if any of that was true from the survey that was done, it makes us look really terrible and kind of gross.
That is the true ruthless desire baked into the the Enneagram. It is the hope that you can learn how to be different than you have been up to that point. Whatever your parents did to you and forced you to become before you even knew your own name, I hope we can find change it for ourselves. Deep down, we’d all like to be a little different, sometimes. Hopefully we’ll figure out how some time soon.
Great Read….