Worldview & Motivation

Driving your personality is the worldview that the world limits people and causes pain so you need to protect yourself by engaging in pleasurable and interesting ideas and experiences and avoiding negativity. You are drawn to stimulating possibilities and don’t like having your options limited.

As a type 7, your underlying motivation is to engage in new and interesting ideas, plans possibilities and experiences. The mental stimulation is what gives you pleasure and you love creative problem solving. You have a very curious mind and like to come up with new ways of looking at things. You are also motivated to avoid getting stuck in negativity or boredom.

Habitual Patterns of Thinking

Because of this underlying belief, your focus of attention naturally goes to interesting and stimulating ideas, plans, possibilities, options or projects. Your habitual patterns of thinking also include intellectual problem solving, creative solutions, thinking outside the box and interconnections between diverse areas of information.

Your blind spots are actual limitations, problems or pitfalls, painful feelings and negativity.

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

The emotional drive of type 7 is gluttony, which refers to an insatiable need for stimulating, pleasurable and interesting ideas, options, plans and experiences. The feeling is one of never being satisfied with what is actually here now, and it is driven by a need to avoid the experience of feeling an underlying fear or inner emptiness. In Enneagram language gluttony is the Passion or Vice of type 7.

What is missing is sobriety, which refers to being fully grounded in the present moment exactly as it occurs. There is no need to go into your head to the next idea or experience, what is here now is enough just as it is. In Enneagram language sobriety is the Virtue of type 7.

The path from gluttony to sobriety is to notice and then let go of your need for constant mental stimulation and ground yourself in the present moment. Notice how your mind goes to planning, creating thinking or problem solving and practice being fully present to what is here now. Practice grounding yourself by letting that be enough.

Strengths & Challenges

As a type 7, 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 optimistic, upbeat, charming, playful and fun-loving

  • You are imaginative, intellectually curious and articulate

  • You are a visionary and generate many interesting options, possibilities and ideas

  • You excel at creative problem solving and love to think outside the box and connect disparate ideas

  • You love adventure, novelty and you value your freedom

  • You have a lot of energy, and your enthusiasm is contagious

When you move toward the unhealthy aspects of your personality you exhibit these characteristics:

  • Your avoidance of negativity can cause you to miss important data

  • You lose focus and get sidetracked when things get repetitive, mundane or boring

  • You have trouble confronting and dealing with pain and sadness and can discount difficult realities

  • You avoid commitment or being pinned down and don’t like limits to your freedom

  • You rationalize and make excuses for missed deadlines, being late or other broken agreements

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 7, you are a head type and most likely process information primarily through your mind. The underlying emotion of head types in fear. As a type 7 you likely avoid feeling fear or anxiety by keeping your mind occupied with interesting ideas and may not even be aware of the anxiety running underneath.

The path to growth is to balance the three centers of intelligence, which for you as a type 7 means to quiet your monkey mind by getting more grounded in your body and connecting more with your heart..