ENNEAGRAM & CREATING CULTURE.

So hopefully you took THIS ENNEAGRAM TEST yesterday. It was very self-revealing to me. This was quite possibly the most revealing personality test i've ever taken.

I scored Type #4.

Fours are unique and create their own distinct culture. They experience the highs and lows of life intensely. They take great pride in their aesthetic tastes...

It's a great descriptor of the creative artist.

What was revealing though, was not the "creating their own distinct culture" part, but the "experiencing the highs and lows with intensity" part.

This is completely me!

This answers my ULCER questions...I'm either WAY up, or WAY down.

I could call this a curse, but instead i'll explain my take...

I hate plateau. I have no interest in status quo. If you look at my music catalogue (the stuff I write, or the stuff I listen to), there's very little mid-tempo, mid-intensity, music in the playlist(s). I either like stuff that's in your face and over the top, or stuff that's extremely minimalist and subdued. I listen to progressive stuff, risky stuff, that people either love or hate.

As I tackle leadership, momentum, change, pace, etc, I try to stay in the poles - either really high, or really low. Let me explain.

Some risks end in failure (the low). Some risks end in home runs (the high).
I'm ok with both of those places. I just love to try new things - to risk new things.

What I'm not ok with, is maintaining. I see plateau as slow death. Right, wrong, or indifferent, that's how I operate.

I cringe at the phrase, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

On a cultural level, you'll never hear me say, "those were the days..." But even more distasteful, is the attitude of trying to be in the current fad. Fads fade. Fads are temporal. And if you focus on the current, you waste a lot of creative time on what might just be a fly-by-night trend.

I'm much more interested in creating future culture (even if that means I misread trends and context, and what I create is discarded and forgotten). At least, I'm looking ahead and working creatively to create newness, richness, and hope. Because nothing in the future-minded creative process is lost. It all sharpens and refines.

I hope you'll take the test if you haven't already, and that it's as meaningful to you, in connecting the dots, as it has been for me.

Peace,
Ross