breaking the habit of being myself

If I act, feel and think the same way, the same results show up.

The Enneagram, my go-to personal insight tool, has three distinct aspects - an action style, a thinking style, and a feeling style.

These are essentially subconscious patterns rooted in a lifetime of habit, playing out from early childhood. They're shaped by our ancestry (DNA), our environment, and the ways our guardians modelled being in the world.

They are unconscious - until they’re not.

The most rewarding work I do is helping clients unmask these patterns through the Enneagram and reach a deeper level of - I am actually a good human, doing the very best I can, with my level of awareness.

Most of us have a sense of how we show up relative to how we think, feel or act - but to have it spelled out in black, white and colour, in a report unpacked by a total stranger (an Enneagram specialist) can be both disarming and deeply empowering.

“We can only change what we can accept” - someone real smart said this and I have found it profoundly true in my life. I have never been able to change what I have not understood and then accepted.

I have been an Enneagram specialist coach for 11 years now and have had the privilege of inviting hundreds of people to face themselves with truth in grace (both are needed for acceptance).

But the missing piece of how to grow beyond these habitual ways of expressing ourselves has been an experiential mystery for me, until now.

How do we break the barriers inherent in us which might limit our freedom to reach further into living authntically and more fully?

Step one was facing, understanding and accepting myself - with objectivity.

Years ago, I asked 10 people close to me - as a coaching exercise - a set of questions about how they saw my strengths, gifts and blind spots. These weren’t all easy relationships. Some were more challenging. But all of them had known me long and deeply enough to speak with honesty.

Their feedback was truthful. Some of it was hard to digest. Some was positively revelatory.

Between this exercise and my romance with the Enneagram, I found a missing piece - Step two: how to truly break the habit of being myself.

At some point in the last few years, it became clear to me: my habits and personality were built on belief systems - both conscious and unconscious.

These habits are a combination of emotional and cognitive patterning, which leads to predictable actions. The mechanics are simple enough - the brain’s neural networks fire in familiar ways, giving rise to patterned thoughts and emotions, which then express as behaviour. That behaviour leads to repeated outcomes.

So if I think the same, feel the same, and act the same - I will get the same results.

But before going into the focus of growth, let me be really clear that my life over the last 11 years has been a very deliberate creative project, working on areas I wish to have more space, satisfaction and contentment.

Person: Decades of questioning and growing myself has resulted in my meeting and marrying a person with deep grace, kindness and an open mind and heart. Someone who see’s the whole of me and believes deeply in my vision of my life.

Family: I have unusually good relationships with my family and choose to invest as much time with them as possible - they are my highest priority and always will be!

Friends: I have such good humans in my life, the legitimate difficulty is in finding time with everyone I want to spend time around.

Work: My income is earned in the work I love, not like but truly LOVE to do.

Health: I am fitter and stronger at 49 years old than I was in my 20’s (and I wasn’t a slouch then)

Food: My wife is the best creative cook I know - and health sits at the core of her creative passion.

Adventure: I usually travel internationally twice a year to soothe that travel itch and locally line up as many hike, run and surf adventures as possible.

But, and this is f#cken hard to admit publicly, my habits and stories around money are rooted in scarcity.

This has been a core focus of my growth for over five years. And although it’s shifted significantly, the pace feels too slow for my liking.

Ironically, by South African standards, I’m deep within the top 1% of earners. Yet I still catch myself replaying the same old scarcity stories - limiting my creativity, my experience, and my potential.

And even with all my understanding of the mind and belief systems - my humanness still wrestles with these old patterns.

So for the balance of 2025, I’m dedicating myself to breaking this belief more creatively than before.

As someone who is a deep thinker and even deeper feeler, the antidote for disrupting my patterning and underlying belief system is efficient and instinctive action, even at the cost of failure and foolishness.

And this is where the gifts and value of coaching others shines through as guidance for my own growth!

Recently, a number of clients with high action but low feeling (time not capability or ability) have shifted in profound ways. By creating space for blocked emotions to emerge, their action becomes informed by new intelligence - emotional and intuitive wisdom. Thier three centres begin to balance: mind, heart and body.

Feels like a good time to flip the script and disrupt the habit of being myself - in one focussed belief.

Chosen and focussed discomfort in growth outside of my preferred reaction and pattern feels far more empowering than apathetic discomfort of life happening to me - making it rather “life happening for me” than “life happening to me”. 

The former is empowering, the latter sits within a victim ideology, for me at least!

Thanks for listening and being my accountability buddies - the lot of you ;-) Look forward to the end of year update on this!