Motivating creatives - Personal Values

Another helpful article from Wishful Thinking, Wishful Thinking � Blog Archive � Motivating Creative People - Personal Values: "What makes the Enneagram so powerful? For me, it’s the fact that each of the personality types is not just a list of traits, but is based on core values and motivations. For example, point Eight, known as the Boss or Leader, values power and control. This leads the typical Eight to seek leadership roles, shouldering responsibility and challenging others to be ‘top dog’. When lacking self-awareness they can also abuse their power, becoming an overbearing bully. The character traits - such as responsibility, bravery and aggression - are really side-effects of the motivation to seek out power."
I find the enneagram harder to work with, but I do think that this aspect of it is the helpful thing as a tool for spiritual growth, but highlighting the core tendency, we identify the besetting temptations and even sins as well as how that tendency can look when redeemed. And that is helpful -rather than 'just say "no", giving us a way to see how a sinful trait can actually be the twisting of a good and potentially redeemed trait gives hope, life and a sense of potential change that is in line with who we are (before God). Sometimes our vision of what it might be for us to be holy is actually death-dealing because it is a vision of how someone else might be holy. What we need is something that helps us to gain a vision for what it might be for 'me' to be holy; that will be something that could resonate and inspire us because something in us knows that it is 'me'; who I could be, who I actually should be (should in the sense of what I am made for).