The Enneagram and Intention

This blog was inspired by Ruth Landis' insights about Intention. You can read about how each of us, based on our Enneagram styles, tend to move away from intentionality, blocking our capacity to be all of what we are capable of being. Whether you are a leader, coach, consultant, trainer, parent, or friend, intention is crucial to your ability to fully manifest your desires.

Intention Activity by Ruth Landis, Senior Member of The Enneagram in Business Network:

Intention is having an honest awareness of what it is you want to manifest and moving yourself with commitment in that direction. Intention comes from clarity and claiming what already awaits you. Intentionality is powerful, but we must bring it into our consciousness and not take it for granted. Try pausing at the threshold of each doorway you walk through today, and bring your full attention to your deepest, most honest intention. Stay connected to that intention by remembering it several times. Your intention might change or remain the same as you walk through the next doorway.

Intention and Enneagram Styles
I’ve added the following to help us understand how our Enneagram styles can block our capacity to manifest out intentions and what we can each do to be more clear and honest about our intentions.

Enneagram Style One
An obstacle to intention: confusing your immediate gut-reaction with intention.
To become more intentional, ask your heart what it is you truly want.

Enneagram Style Two
An obstacle to intention: caring about helping others to manifest their intentions instead of focusing on your own desires.
To become more intentional, ask yourself what you really want 10 times per day.

Enneagram Style Three
An obstacle to intention: using social referents to determine what your intentions should be rather than what you truly want.
To become more intentional, ask yourself about your true desires and goals, rather than what you believe to be socially desirable or worthy of social respect.

Enneagram Style Four
An obstacle to intention: becoming unsettled by too many shifting intentions.
To become more intentional, remember that beneath your perceived desires are your real ones. Ask yourself about your desires behind your current wishes.

Enneagram Style Five An obstacle to intention: not believing that you can truly have all you deeply desire.
To become more intentional, acknowledge that your belief in “scarcity” of energy, time and resources is merely a belief. Challenge your mental model.

Enneagram Style Six
An obstacle to intention: assuming that you can’t execute your intentions effectively.
To become more intentional, use your vivid imagination to see yourself manifesting your intentions. Pick one deep desire and without doubting its validity, imagine yourself manifesting this intention for 3 minutes. Do this 3 times per day. The next day, select another desire and repeat the above process, and so forth.

Enneagram Style Seven
An obstacle to intention: spinning internally from one intention to another.
To become more intentional, Keep focused on one desire at a time. Make sure it is something you truly want by asking your gut if this is so.

Enneagram Style Eight
An obstacle to intention: confusing your need to make big things happen with your deeper, truer and most fundamental intentions.
To become more intentional, ask yourself what it is you truly want, then experiment with manifesting through your intention rather than pushing forward with great effort. Learn to allow rather than force.

Enneagram Style Nine
An obstacle to intention: not believing that you deserve to manifest your desires or intentions.
To become more intentional, allow yourself to really want something that is important to you, and imagine yourself creating, generating, and manifesting this. Focus on this imagining activity multiple times each day, using the same desire, until you have fully embodied it.

This is the second of a twelve part series titled “Enneagram Insights”.