Season 2 Ep.18 // Who are you?? (Summer of Enneagram)

Welcome to another episode of Amplified marriage. I'm Brian, Natalie, wherever you are, wherever you are doing. Have a seat, have a coffee take, just relax and listen to the podcast today. We actually using this as an introductory episode to dive deep in the next several months and to the Enneagram, we want to deeply told you we were going to the Enneagram and that's what we were about to do.

So, if you missed our last podcast, it was a special father's day. And we had our three kids on here talking real and raw about their perspective of our

marriage. Absolutely. And so one of the big reasons that we had decided to do a marriage podcast was we wanted to be able to offer tools to people that needed tools that didn't know where to look to offer practical. Application, some practical transformation stories of our own walk in marriage and our own walk with the Lord. Well, we want to offer people some tools into how to actually embrace their marriage, realize that things aren't perfect, but the things that aren't oftentimes as hopeless as they may

that's right. And we, you know, we said this episodes ago where we were that couple, that really felt hopeless. We felt. We will be the only ones are seemingly the only ones who ever had disagreements or struggled in any way, shape or form. And it was really disheartening and it was really debilitating as newlyweds. I mean, we were 21 and 23 when we got married and we've just felt like we had no support. And so that was like a primary thing of creating this podcast was to share our journey. Throughout our marriage and provide some tools.

Yeah, absolutely. There, I think you've probably heard me say if you were listening to this podcast for a while, you've heard me say, said we oftentimes listen with the intent to respond, not with the intent to understand exactly. And we said, even as we were kind of just talking about how we want to move this podcast forward, digging deep into the Enneagram is where we want to go. We actually did. Two couples that we've counseled and coached over these years. And the last few years in particular that we wish we would have had the Enneagram W I think we got it on. You're like 17. When we finally took our tests and we finally started figuring out who we are. We wish we would've had it 17 years earlier. Right. Because that statement, we oftentimes listen with the intent to respond, but not with the intent to understand is so huge when it comes into relationships is because we want to prove ourselves. Right. We want to be the one that's right. We want to make sure that our voice is heard and there's a. A way to do that, to understanding even if you don't end up agreeing, right? Like it's not about

Callie's agreement. No, it's not about that. It's it's not about agreement is coming to a place of understanding why. Or who you are and why you do some of the things you do or why you react or respond.

And if you actually can understand why the person does the things that they do, the why they say the things that they do, why they have those thought processes, the way that they do, why they do any of these things, that the way that they do, man, it actually changes how you approach it.

Oh, absolutely right. Absolutely. We felt in talking about like some of the series that we've got planned coming up, this one was huge because, you know, and for those of you are like, what is an Enneagram? It's a, essentially like a personality. Oh, what's the word? Topology. Thank you. Type apology. And one of the things that we want to say in regards to. The Enneagram is that it's not a one size fits all. And that, you know, we'll talk about, I mean, there are nine numbers and we'll get into each of those numbers as we go, but that you're not typoed into like every motivation and every Basset that each number provides. You might not. Fit all of that and that's

okay. And it's actually, even, even if you like, what the, what's the purpose of the Enneagram, if you've never heard of it or you have heard of it, you've never done it or you've done it. The purpose is that you essentially, you are in, or you belong to one of the nine. Types. Right. And there's sub types. And then there's wings. There's a whole lot into it, but it's not to put you into any kind of box. It's not to say, Hey, this is who you are and you have to stay this way, but it's to help you identify both of the strengths and the limits or the limitations of the Or the strategy or how you deal with emotions or how you see the world, that's your perception and at your core, that's who you are. So for myself, I'm a challenger, which is also known as the protector and a few other ones, the number eight. So I'm known as a challenger I'm as I'm actually the most aggressive on the Enneagram scale. So if I'm an unhealthy. I am. I'm damaging to people around me. I'll hurt people. I'll say things, do things, push people. I don't care about emotions if I'm unhealthy. Right. And so those things we were talking about, this how I was at the beginning of our relationship up until probably year 15 or 14 or 15. Yeah. I, when I started getting healthy and I started surrounding myself with good godly men and starting with that, then good business people and good the right people in my life. Men made a huge difference. It made a massive difference in how, on how healthy I was as a, as a person. If I'm an eight. And my S my say my wing is a seven, which is the enthusiast. If I was to try and be like a one I'm actually acting outside of my outside of my personality. Yeah. And it actually, it's actually more work and a lot, so much harder to be something that I'm not. So what this does is it helps you discover who you are, why you are the way you are. And how to actually handle things in time. And so they have the two different things where it talks about distress, who you are when you're in stress and who you are when you're in and when you're healthy, when you're in growth. Yeah. Right. And so I think in my mature life, now I'm more in growth than ever than I am in stressed. Yeah. But I'm pretty much spent the first 35 years of my life being just in stress and. That helped form who I

was. And that was very challenging. Did you see what I did there? I saw what you did. There is very challenging and it provided a lot of frustration and a lot of, kind of like banging your head against a wall in re in regards to like, just not getting it right. Like, I was so irritated with you and you were so irritated with me and both of us as we were like going through prepping for the series. We were like, oh man, when we started out, we were very unhealthy, super, super unhealthy. And boy had, we wished that we would have had this tool of this Enneagram situation all 20 years ago. Yeah. When we got married, because I think it would have really helped alleviate some of the stress and some of the awkwardness and some of the misunderstanding, misunderstanding. Cause we were downright nasty. On the Andy Graham, I'm a six and we'll be starting with eight and six. So I'm a six married to an eight. And that in of itself, poses its own set of challenges. Right? Because both the numbers are completely emotional, but in different ways. And so the six is a loyalist and we're fear-based and so we are like super stressed. And when we're unhealthy member. Podcasts that go was talking about like passive the passive communication style and then how I'd dive into passive aggressive in order to get what I needed. Yeah. Well, one is when I am unhealthy, those are the patterns that I resort to.

And, but immediately the challenger cannot stand. I, I don't be in decisiveness. I can't handle the in decisiveness. Like I make jokes about this, but this actually is the pain point for me at all. But we'll go to Tim Horton's. Natalie has ordered only three things from Tim Horton's for the last 15 years, and we'll get into line and she'll stop. And she likes she's like, What do I want? I'm like, what do you mean? What do you want? And so well, I'll poke and jab him, like, you know what you're going to have, it's going to be at the same two cream, one sugar, which actually has changed surprisingly to, we were trying to cut down her sugar. That's a whole diet thing. That's it? That's another discussion, but yeah. It will go into a store and there's three chocolate bars that she has that she never deviates from, but she doesn't know which ones she wants. And so it's a whole thing, whereas I've already planned what I want, know where I'm going, where it is in the store. We'll walk right to it, pick it, buy it, and then be gone in the time it takes her to even get out of the car to discover which one

that's all right. But it's just. I think it's super helpful. And I think doing this particular series will be super helpful for you. And one of the things we want to caution is typecasting other people who have not taken the test and people will ask you, Hey, well, you know, if you're this, then, then what do you think I am? We don't want you doing that because. I mean one, it puts people in a box and puts labels

on people, but then you, you actually because you've typed cast someone, you put them in the box and so you actually respond to them in that way. We years this last year, when about three, three years ago, we went to a church conference called team church down in, in Portland and they said, Oh, no for Linde Tacoma Tacoma, once in a while I was doing what I was thinking of Portland, but it was in Tacoma. And one of the things that they actually do as a, as a team is that they have their, any numbers on the door and also their disc test personality sitting on their desk. So when, as a manager, as an eight, I know that if I go in after the two, which is a helper. And I go at it like a bull in a China shop. I will, I will crush the helper, but if I go in healthy and with the intent to just be constructive and even a little bit gentle, which I'm not always the greatest at, but to be a little bit gentle and caring and loving. And it's not that. I don't feel those things and I'm not those things, but my, the way I get things done is by being a driver, being ambitious and getting things finished well, you can't

approach everyone like that.

If you type cast people, you put them in a box that they may not be, and actually behave in the way that may cause them damage by thinking that's who they are. But when they could be something else

entirely. Exactly. So what can you expect? So there are two tests, I guess there is one that should take about 15. That's not the whole entire test. So we really encourage you to take the 45 minute one, which you have to pay for. I think it's $12 us, which is, I don't know, $20 Canadian depends on the dollar

could be 50.

It could be right. But Really, really reasonable and we highly recommend. And so as as you're listening to it, the following podcast, we are going to dive into six and eight because that is our numbers and we'll start there and then we'll work our way through the other numbers. Really encourage you to spend the $12 if you're in a marriage. 20, if you're in Canada and really take

that test and take it away from people. This is what we recommend is we, when we coach people in pre-marriage counseling, do not take it with someone. So you can't ask them, well, is this how I do answer? Honestly, be honest and

don't overthink it. Self-reflect and be like, what is my, what's the answer that really jumps out to me. And that's the one. Yeah. Right. If you start over analyzing then you're not going to get like a really authentic. Accurate in my opinion. Yeah,

because oftentimes we, we, we answer the questions in like, well, there's one time I did it this way, but a similar situation, I did it this way and that's not what we want. We want to know about that test. We'll want to know exactly who you are. And so when we go into these things, like we can't stress this enough, all of our listeners, wherever you are, whatever you're doing, we can't stress this enough that the Enneagram can 100% help you in your relationship. With the Enneagram. A lot of times we were saying that there's, that a lot of people have done the Instagram for business or that done it for being an entrepreneur, or how do we, you know, I'm going to write a book and what's my style, but we're coming at it from a standpoint of marriage. Yeah.

How does, how does working and knowing the things about you? Because one of the things, and we've said this in our podcast that you would say to me all the time, it's like, I just don't get why you do. I don't understand why you think that, or I don't understand why you do it. X Y Z. Right. And it was really frustrating for you because you're not wired that way. And it was really frustrating for me cause I'm like, you just, don't like, you're not hearing me. I am not you. And yeah, you're not hearing me. And why can't you just accept that? I'm going to do things differently. It was really like, it was almost, we were butting heads because we just didn't understand this really kind of opened the door again as a tool in our arsenal of, of Tricks and tips that we've learned along the way it, this one here has been, I believe one of the most beneficial. Yeah,

absolutely. And it's not to say that the other personality tests aren't

oh gosh, we've done. I don't even know how many personality tests and, and you're probably thinking, oh, good God. I really, really, really encourage you to push past, because this is not like any of the other ones we've done.

Yep. So what we're going to do is we're going to post the link in the description or the link of the website that we used. We used it with our whole team for church and for our volunteer team all the major volunteer team leads at our church and it's actually helped us as a team. So there is so much benefit to us if

you're a business owner, right. Working with people or family members friends, coworkers, employers, but we want to kind of focus it on. How does this apply to marriage,

but I will tell you that understanding Natalie's motivations, not only has she been able to break free from some oppressive things that happened with her family because of her understanding of that, but also, you know, like having to really struggle through it, but understanding that if she doesn't break through these things, it'll be a lifelong or a generational thing. Be passed onto the kids just might not dealing with it. Yeah. Not only has she broken through there, but we've also broken through some major barriers in our own relationship, our own marriage in the, in not just the practical application of how we actually reach each other, but also understanding like, I don't know. I can't remember the last time I ever said to you. I don't understand why you think like that. I'm actually, now I know why I've actually said to you, I've actually said to you. I know why you think that way. And it, and the funny thing is, is knowing actually took away the anger. Sometimes it's,

sometimes we're still frustrated,

but not angry. Not like we were before. We're like, I just don't get it. I want it. Right. And that was also, the challenger was always responding that way.

But I dunno, I think it's going to be a fantastic. Series, I think it's going to be eyeopening.

So this was just a little bit into the story about how we change. And so we're going to dig a little bit deeper into our own numbers. We will, like I said, post a link in the description and we appreciate you listening. We appreciate you constantly sending we've got an amazing email from one of our listeners that asked about, very specifically about a topic about alcoholics and how to handle an unchanging alcoholic in the home. And so we're going to be bringing that topic up and actually bring it. On to actually discuss that one. So if you're listening to this, we really appreciate you sending that email in. Yes, we

have not forgotten. We are lining it up,

lining it up to have that to be impact because we know that that's not just a one-off that's, there's a lot of people struggling in this particular area, especially. Over COVID these last months. So we know you like our podcasts. We know that you keep listening. We know that you keep downloading and it does mean a lot. When you share it, you let people know about it. When you let people know about us, you can follow us on Instagram and Facebook. If you have a topic or a question or anything, you'd like us to discuss, please email us@amplifiedmarriageatgmail.com. And as you have heard us say, we believe that marriage can and be reset, refreshed, recharged, and restored. Thanks for listening.