Personality Blind Spots
Raise your hand if your blind spot ever hurt you.
🙋
I often joke that the only place I have actual balance and coordination is the country two step/line dance floor. And if you knew me in my day-to-day life, I bet you'd agree with me.
A handicap parking sign.
A KID-SIZED bar on a PRE-K playground. Twice.
A bench.
Three collisions that would've sent me to the ER to check for concussions had I been a little wiser.
My blind spot is REAL THING. A very real thing. And every time I'm moving too fast through my daily life, not paying complete attention to where I am in time and space, BOOM - my blind spot pops up and ruins the day.
It is the exact same way with our personality blind spots.
The blind spot of our personality is where we go in our most relationally relaxed environments.
And they are pieces of ourselves that we just don't see. They're so ingrained into our behavior patterns that we don't work to change them.
Either we don't see them, or out of pride or shame or embarrassment we see them, but refuse to see & change them.
But they hurt us & everything & everyone we care about.
So we need to see them & address them.
Think of this way: your blind spots are the immature pieces of our baseline selves that have a hard time growing with us.
Like when you were growing up and you wanted the television remote.
You’d ask your sibling: where’s the remote?
He’d answer: I don’t know.
You’d say: Stand up. You have it, I know you do.
That kind of suspicion isn’t really “you”, but with the folks you grew up with, you’re at your baseline self.
Or…
The person who is so intent on making sure she’s not “bad” will stop at nothing to make sure she’s “good” and seen as “good”.
The person who is so focused on conserving energy that she rudely and ruthlessly enforces boundaries that shut people out in a feisty, hurtful way.
Every single one of us has a blind spot. That doesn't make us horrible, just human. And growing from our blind spot is just our baseline growth path -- taking our laziest personality traits & actively working to make them healthier, make ourselves better.
Enneagram 1
Motivated by: being good & right
Blind spot pattern: self-focused, greedy, childish
Grow out of it: In your quest for rightness, notice how what you care about impacts the people around you. If you can’t find one other person it positively impacts, move on.
Enneagram 2
Motivated by: being helpful in order to be appreciated
Blind spot pattern: Act in overly & unhealthy sensitive and emotional ways.
Grow out of it: Accept painful feelings as being part of the life experience. Take care of yourself before you reach a point where the feelings come bleeding out.
Enneagram 3
Motivated by: status & respect
Blind spot pattern: Vent / express a hidden negativity and list of dissatisfactions.
Grow out of it: Trade competitiveness in every area to cooperation in most areas.
Enneagram 4
Motivated by: authenticity, uniqueness
Blind spot pattern: Vocal about, impatient with, and critical of the flaws they see around them.
Grow out of it: Lean into a balance of emotions, objectivity, and principles.
Enneagram 5
Motivated by: competency & capability
Blind spot pattern: Question others’ intelligence while arrogantly asserting your own.
Grow out of it: Allow the same curiosity you have for subjects you learn about to transfer over to your interactions with other humans.
Enneagram 6
Motivated by: safety & security
Blind spot pattern: Becoming stubborn, negative, and / or distanced from whatever demands they feel are overwhelming.
Grow out of it: Quiet the inner committee (which often causes that sense of overwhelm by always chiming in with ideas) by focusing on relaxing in the actual moment you’re in.
Enneagram 7
Motivated by: fun, avoiding pain and boredom
Blind spot pattern: Withdraw into a negative space, especially when things aren’t exactly as they’d have them to be.
Grow out of it: Find a grounding practice that helps you place value on rest, wisdom, discipline, and life lessons.
Enneagram 8
Motivated by: feeling strong, avoiding weakness & vulnerability
Blind spot pattern: Clingy, domineering, overstepping relational boundaries.
Grow out of it: Serve your people from a place of humility.
Enneagram 9
Motivated by: peacemaking & peacekeeping, internally & externally
Blind spot pattern: Overtly, unhealthily assert their value and worth.
Grow out of it: Assert yourself with your knowledge & insight from a place of service, not pride or fear.
More for you…
My favorite Enneagram assessments:
FREE Your Enneagram Coach (faith-based)
FREE Truity Enneagram Personality test (not faith-based)
Paid: RHETI Institute
Remember: Assessments are a *component* of figuring out your Enneagram type, but reading type descriptions is really how to nail it down.
Get the Typing Guide right here or in the form below. Figuring out your Enneagram number is a great way to start figuring out why you say, do & think the way you do. It’s a great way to learn that you’re not weird, you’re just you. And we need you.
Still looking for more? Shoot me an email & we can talk about coaching!