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Even without eavesdropping, you may have noticed some strange conversations around Nashville lately. Maybe there’s a table of breathless 20-somethings just across the restaurant, gleefully dissecting their best traits and owning up to their worst impulses with a bunch of (seemingly) random numbers.
“That’s my six coming out,” you might overhear. Or “My boss is a classic eight.” Even the dreaded “Guys, I think I’m a one.” But this is not some trendy new ranking system on the latest dating app. It’s actually an ancient model of human behavior—the Enneagram—and Nashville is obsessed.
In any given month, you can find Enneagram meet-ups, stand-alone classes and multi-week training programs all over town. A quick search online pulls up the best coffee shops, brunch spots, and cocktail bars based on your Enneagram number. And once you get introduced, almost every chat with friends seems to eventually land in Enneagram land, a mystical-but-not-magical place where the whole of humanity is split into nine distinct “types,” helping explain why we do the things we do … especially the stuff we don’t seem to control.
“The Enneagram really is a map of self growth and self understanding,” says Beth McCord, the Franklin-based author and speaker whose Instagram account @YourEnneagramCoach has more than 235,000 followers. “But we also describe it as our internal GPS. If we understand our personality type—the main way we view the world, interpret it, and react to it—the Enneagram is going to help us understand why we might veer off course. And, it’s going to help us understand where the hell the destination is. It’s like a non-judgmental friend: They’ll tell you like it is.”
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Beth and Jeff McCord
She goes on, speaking with the comforting cadence of a counselor who’s used the Enneagram to help everyone from overwhelmed students to couples on the brink of divorce.
“People can definitely get obsessed with it, especially when they’re new to it,” she says.
The name means “nine” and “something drawn” in Greek, a reference to the model’s nine “types” and the chart that shows how they interconnect—but no one really knows where it comes from. It may go back as far as ancient Babylon, and at least three religions seem tied into its development, with Christians especially finding spiritual connections to its teaching.
“The Christian world really enjoys it because they want to know their heart’s motivations, since that’s what God focuses on,” McCord explains.
But regardless of the Enneagram’s provenance, it came to the U.S. in the mid-20th century and has since stirred fascination with seekers of many stripes. Lately, it’s exploded in popularity in Nashville, with best-selling books, podcasts, and countless YouTube videos making Music City Enneagram ground zero. It’s even found corporate applications in the same way the DiSC assessment and Myers-Briggs spectrum have helped co-workers maximize interpersonal efficiency. According to McCord, it’s likely found an incubator here because of the city’s unique characteristics: A place of open-minded dreamers from many different walks of life, living in a relatively tight-knit community, allowing for both authenticity and vulnerability. (Key traits of the Enneagram faithful.)
With names like “The Perfectionist,” “The Guardian,” “The Challenger,” and “The Peacemaker” (names vary depending on the source), each type is imbued with its own pros, cons, and quirks. And your type is mostly determined by unconscious-yet-recognizable motivations often set in stone during childhood.
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“The nine types see the world differently and interpret it differently as well, and therefore react differently,” McCord says. “So think of it as nine different colored sunglasses, and each type sees the world from a fundamentally different perspective. It helps us understand why we get frustrated with people, like ‘Well, I wouldn’t have said that! I wouldn’t have done that!’ Really at its core, the Enneagram is getting to why you think, feel, and behave in particular ways. That’s the biggest thing: the word ‘why.’”
Once you understand that “why,” it’s pretty easy to tell if you’re living as the best version of yourself or not, and then it’s all about following that “internal GPS” back to your particular path.
Those interested can take one of the many free questionnaires online to figure out which type they are—a delightful and alarmingly accurate pronouncement, usually—or they can check out a free PDF download of McCord’s core-motivations chart at yourenneagramcoach.com/coremotivations. Introduce it to friends and family as a fun group-bonding activity, and you may even convert a few skeptics to its ancient wisdom.
“It’s kind of like a party game, like ‘Hey, let’s see what everyone lands on, what’s your main type?’” McCord says.
But be warned, you may open doors of intrigue that can’t be closed again. Just ask that table across the restaurant—they’ll be glad to tell you all about it.fje
(Beth and Jeff McCord will present their Becoming Us Live event in cities from coast to coast this spring. Books, journals and tour schedules are available at becomingus.com and yourenneagramcoach.com.)