What Makes the Enneagram Unique?

The Enneagram is unlike Myers-Briggs, StrengthsFinder, DiSC Assessments, or other typology systems. In addition to delving into your base personality characteristics, the Enneagram is fluid in that it reveals how you change when you’re growing, stressed, secure, unhealthy, or healthy. 

You are not the same person at twenty as you are at sixty. You’re not the same person at your stressful workplace as you are when you’re at home binge-watching your favorite TV show and eating ice cream. The Enneagram accounts for these inconsistencies and changes in your behavior and informs you of when and how those changes occur. 

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In this graph, each Enneagram number connects to two other numbers by arrows. The arrow pointed toward your number is your growth arrow; the arrow pointed away is your stress number. When your life leaves you with more room to breathe, you exhibit positive characteristics of your growth number; when you’re stretched thin in seasons of stress, you exhibit the negative characteristics of your stress number. 

This is one explanation for big shifts in personality over a lifetime. 

Another point of difference between the Enneagram and other typology systems is wings. Your wings are the two numbers on either side of your core number, which add flavor to your personality type. Although your core number won’t change—and your main motivation, sin proclivities, and personality will come from that core number—your wings can be very influential on your overall personality and how it presents itself. 

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