Ruined for Life: Phoenix Edition

This is the Daily Post prompt. I’ll take a stab.

My answer is neither. I’m primarily instinctive. According to the Enneagram system, I’m a One. Thus I feel most confident when I follow my gut to decide. Now I can be wrong, but so can heart or head centered people.

free enneagram test

Type One Overview

We have named personality type One The Reformer because Ones have a “sense of mission” that leads them to want to improve the world in various ways, using whatever degree of influence they have. They strive to overcome adversity—particularly moral adversity—so that the human spirit can shine through and make a difference. They strive after “higher values,” even at the cost of great personal sacrifice.

History is full of Ones who have left comfortable lives to do something extraordinary because they felt that something higher was calling them. During the Second World War, Raoul Wallenburg left a comfortable middle-class life to work for the protection of thousands of European Jews from invading Nazis. In India, Gandhi left behind his wife and family and life as a successful lawyer to become an itinerant advocate of Indian independence and non-violent social changes. Joan of Arc left her village in France to restore the throne to the Dauphin and to expel the English from the country. The idealism of each of these Ones has inspired millions.

Ones are people of practical action—they wish to be useful in the best sense of the word. On some level of consciousness, they feel that they “have a mission” to fulfill in life, if only to try their best to reduce the disorder they see in their environment.

Famous Ones include Hillary Clinton, Ralph Nadar, Bill Moyers, Gandhi, Meryl Streep, and Kathryn Hepburn.