Worldview & Motivation

Driving your personality type is the worldview that the world is not perfect, and you need to correct what is wrong and make things better. In order to be valued, you need to be good, responsible, and conscientious and do things correctly. You are also highly invested in being right. As a type 1, your underlying motivation is to be good and to continually strive to make things better. You are sincere, hardworking, practical, and you pay close attention to detail. Because you have such high standards you can be hard on yourself, always pushing yourself to improve and being critical of yourself when you make even a minor mistake. You also have high standards for others and your sincere efforts to help others improve can sometimes be interpreted as criticism.

Habitual Patterns of Thinking

Because of this underlying belief, your focus of attention naturally goes to right and wrong and specifically what is wrong and needs to be corrected. Not all type 1s focus their attention on the same things, so you may focus primarily on what is wrong in yourself, in others or in your environment, culture or society. Your habitual patterns of thinking include a lot of “should” or “shouldn’t” and self-criticism.

Your blind spots are shades of gray, letting good enough alone and the value of alternative points of view.

To expand your focus of attention, practice becoming more aware of where your attention naturally goes. As you notice these habits of mind they will begin to loosen and allow you to intentionally shift your attention and be more open and available to the present moment. Develop a practice of intentionally looking for your blind spots in order to gain a more balanced perspective.

Habitual Patterns of Feeling

Because the world is not perfect and things are just not quite right, you have a habitual underlying feeling of anger. Although you aren’t necessarily aware of anger, it most often manifests as irritation or frustration. Because of your belief that you have to be good, you have learned that it is not ok for you to express your anger directly so you tend to hold it as tension in your body and it can build up and create resentment or even rage. In Enneagram language, anger is the Passion or Vice of type 1.

What is missing is serenity, which refers to a way of being that is free of attachment to specific ways of doing things or needing things to be a certain way. In Enneagram language, serenity is the Virtue of type 1.

The path from anger to serenity is becoming aware of your anger and how it drives you and causes suffering. Practice letting go of control and needing to have things be a certain way. Learn to go with the flow and trust that everything (including you) is as it should be, perfectly imperfect.

Strengths & Challenges

As a type 1, you have many strengths which when integrated in a healthy and balanced way support you and your well-being. Paradoxically, these strengths can work against you when they are overdone or not appropriately integrated.

When you are at your best, you exhibit these strengths:

  • You are responsible, reliable, conscientious and have a high degree of self-discipline

  • You are hard-working and industrious and you lead by example

  • You are discerning and have clarity about the correct way of doing things

  • You have integrity and high standards and a strong drive for self-improvement

  • You excel at bringing order, structure and attention to details

  • You are very sincere and have a strong sense of idealism

When your strengths get out of balance or are used in unhealthy ways, they result in these challenges:

  • You push yourself too hard and don’t take time for rest or pleasure

  • You become perfectionistic and obsess about details and getting things exactly right

  • You become critical of yourself and others for not living up to your high standards

  • You are unaware of and suppress your anger and it leaks out or turns into resentment

  • You become controlling, righteous, moralistic and rigid

Centers of Intelligence

The Enneagram recognizes our three centers of intelligence: the head center, which is the intelligence of the mind; the body center, which is the energy and sensations of the body; and the heart center, which is the intelligence of feelings and emotions. While we each have all three centers, most people tend to favor one center over the others. Ideally, we want to balance all three centers because each carries valuable wisdom.

Each Enneagram type is rooted in one of these three centers. The way this affects us is that we tend to perceive the world and rely most heavily for information from our own center of intelligence. We also tend to have the most dysfunction in connection with this center. It is both our strength and our weakness.

As a type 1, you are a body type and most likely process information through your gut instinct. The underlying emotion of body types in anger. However, type 1s typically learn to suppress their anger and it manifests as irritation, frustration, tension in the body or resentment. As a body type you are also tuned in to issues of control. Type 1s seek to exert control through order, structure and rules and by needing to control the outcome. Body types also are self-forgetting, which shows up for type 1s as forgetting about your need for rest, relaxation and pleasure.

The path to growth is to balance the three centers of intelligence, which for type 1s means to get more in touch with your heart and to balance your reactivity with rational, objective thinking.