Worldview & Motivation

Driving your personality is the worldview that the world is hard and unjust, the powerful take advantage of the innocent and you have to protect yourself and others by being strong and hiding any potential vulnerability.

As a type 8, your underlying motivation is to be strong and powerful in order to guard against injustice and or being taken advantage of. In order to be strong you have to be confident, opinionated, decisive, assertive and direct, and you must not show any sign of weakness. You also have to protect the innocent from those who will take advantage of them.

Habitual Patterns of Thinking

Because of this underlying belief, your focus of attention naturally goes to power and control, and particularly who has the power and whether they can be trusted. Your habitual patterns of thinking also include looking for injustice, deceptions or manipulations, whatever requires action in the moment and black and white thinking.

Your blind spots are your own impulsiveness, your impact on others, your tendency toward excess and the validity of other people’s point 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

The emotional drive of type 8 is lust, which refers to a passion for intensity, a tendency toward excess and an insatiable quest for pleasure. It is a lust for life, a relentless seeking of sensual stimulation and satisfaction of physical desires. In Enneagram language lust is the Passion or Vice of type 8.

What is missing is innocence, which refers to a way of being that is spontaneous and naturally connected to the flow of your instinctual nature and energy. Innocence means responding with just the right amount of energy to each moment, without judgment or expectation. In Enneagram language innocence is the Virtue of type 8.

The path from lust to innocence is to become more aware of how lust operates in your life and of your insatiable need for intensity and physical satisfaction. Practice experiencing the moment just as it is without needing to assert control or create intensity.

Strengths & Challenges

As a type 8, 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 strong, powerful, passionate, intense and have a commanding presence

  • You are decisive, take action quickly and confidently and have a big impact

  • You are a natural leader, comfortable being in charge and stay focused on the big picture

  • You are energetic, hard working and courageous

  • You are generous, big-hearted and would take a bullet for the people you protect

  • You are honest, direct, straightforward and address conflict and difficulties directly

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

  • You are controlling, rebellious and bossy

  • You are impulsive and excessive, never quite satisfied

  • You are too direct, outspoken and blunt, and people can find you intimidating

  • You openly express your anger and are insensitive to your impact on others

  • You are overbearing, impatient and intolerant – “my way or the highway”

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 8, you are a body type and most likely process information through your gut instinct. The underlying emotion of body types in anger, and type 8s generally have more access to their anger than the other types. As a body type you are also tuned in to issues of control. Type 8s are aware of who is in control and whether they can be trusted and have no problem taking over control when they feel it is necessary. Body types also are self-forgetting, which shows up for type 8s as forgetting about your need for rest and relaxation.

The path to growth is to balance the three centers of intelligence, which for type 8s means to balance your gut instinct with rational objective thinking and to get more in touch with your heart so that you can soften.