A Writer’s Survival Guide for Being Defrauded

So, a trusted industry expert turned out to not be the person they presented themselves to be. What now?

You might know what your first reaction will be upon learning this, since none of us make it into adulthood without experiencing this sort of disappointment in an authority figure. Maybe, upon learning the truth about the trusted expert, you roll your eyes and say, ever so cynically, “Oh wow, what a shocker.” Maybe you feel deeply betrayed and turn from their biggest supporter to their worst nightmare. Maybe you feel genuinely lost and unmoored, wondering what to do now that the person you looked to has been unmasked as a fallible, if not intentionally duplicitous, person. Maybe you simply refuse to believe it. Maybe you delight in watching the downfall.

Whatever your reaction, consider this your moment between the stimulus and the response to pause, take a beat with yourself to ask why this is your pattern, and decide if your usual response is the one you’d like to proceed with.

Disappointment of this variety is all too familiar to those of us who’ve been in this industry for a long time, and I admit that my default response over the years has turned from disappointment and betrayal to instant cynicism, even though I know that cynicism is not noble or cool and is, in fact, an expression of anxiety and yet one more failed attempt by my psyche to protect me from pain.

So really, I invite you to pause along with me while we take a deeper look into our menu of thinking, feeling, and behaving for when someone we looked up to in our professional lives is revealed to be someone different from who we thought they were.

The reason I’m addressing this issue today is that we will be seeing this process happen more and more as the industry conditions change and the façades of success people have maintained for so long come crumbling down due to a lack of finances to keep them going or even the ultimate expression of the person’s ego that got them into that situation in the first place.

Under the pressure cooker of the tightening industry conditions, the truth will out. Stress accentuates the ego, and if we haven’t laid the groundwork of self-awareness to keep ours in check, we, too, will inevitably “show our asses,” as it were.

This is obviously something I’ve thought about myself over the last couple of years, as I joined the Sell More Books Show, started consulting and speaking, and generally made myself more visible. I know that when you’re in any visible position, there will be people who take a dislike to you, and those people can sometimes confuse their envy or simple difference of opinion with the notion that you have a character defect that deserves to be publicly punished.

I’ve seen this happen to people I’m close to and have experienced it myself to some extent, and that has certainly made me more sensitive to any accusations about people’s character without substantiating evidence.

It might be wise to preface this touchy discussion with a few reminders from our higher selves:

1. Just because someone does something we think is unethical does not mean that they are an unethical person. We don’t need to throw the whole person out because we don’t like something they did. You and I would hope for better treatment, and so we must give it.

2. We are free to not work with anyone in this industry we don’t trust for any reason.

3. We can stop following someone’s work without posting about it on the internet.

4. Just because we don’t like or trust someone doesn’t mean that their information isn’t helpful to someone else.

If you don’t agree with these statements, then your higher self might not be in the active stance it needs to be for the rest of this discussion, and you might want to come back to this later to avoid further irritation now.

Okay, now I want to talk about some of the usual reactions we have when industry experts aren’t who we thought they were and what might really be going on behind these reactions. This can help us more effectively and honestly handle our emotions and take actions we’ll be proud of for years to come.  

The four reactions we’re going to inspect are shame, betrayal, cynicism, and schadenfreude. We may feel a little bit of each or switch quickly from one to another, so I recommend reading through all of them to not only make sense of your own reaction, but to better understand and gain sympathy for the reactions others around you might be experiencing.   

Shame

It is very rare that anyone talks about the shame felt among the author community when this happens. Since shame is a contagious emotion—we feel it and our impulse is usually to pass it onto someone else as soon as humanly possible—it’s crucial that we talk about it.

There’s the shame that the person who’s been “found out” feels, certainly. And we might hope that the shame turns into some sort of guilt and remorse, as that might lead to a change of behavior in the future.

But there’s also the shame felt by the supporters of what I’ll call “the fallen hero.”

It is understandably embarrassing to feel like you’ve been conned. Perhaps it was not only that you were conned, but that you brought others into the fold as well by recommending the fallen hero’s podcast or books or courses, and so you feel a sense of shame for being complicit in the con. I should’ve known better. I should’ve seen through it. How did I fall for this sort of thing again? 

Shame can isolate us and steal from us things we care about. If you feel ashamed of who you trusted for advice in your writing, that shame may become so associated with writing that you find yourself struggling to put words on the page. Shame is poisonous like that.

If you’re one of the people who feels shame in these situations, I won’t simply tell you to stop feeling it. I know it’s not that easy. But it’s important to remember that feeling shame for having been convincingly misled is, quite frankly, victim blaming.

Also: Shame thrives when you keep it a secret. By sharing with a close friend that you feel ashamed about falling for something, you’ve taken the first step toward letting that shame dissipate in the light and open air. Shame tells us we’re the only one who feels this way and that we should choke it down, but that’s just shame trying to keep itself alive.

Fallen heroes can be divided up crudely into two kinds: those who knew they were full of shit but didn’t care and those who were buying their own bullshit. When dealing with a fallen hero, it can be helpful to try to sort out which type you’re dealing with.

People who buy their own bullshit (self-deception plays an important role in ego protection, so this is quite common) are so convincing in their portrayal of success and expert knowledge that even if they didn’t believe it at first, they’ve begun to buy in. This is a common side-effect of the “fake it till you make it” mentality. Do they ever make it? Maybe, maybe not, but they certainly faked it enough to convince themselves on some level. Why, then, should you have known any better? The person closest to the song and dance was even fooled!

The variety of fallen hero who know they’re full of shit and simply don’t care so long as they get your money… well, that’s a particular type of psychology that lacks basic empathy and tends to fill the attentional space that empathy might’ve occupied with extensive plans for deception. While you were busy caring about the people in your life, this person was spending that mental energy concocting ways to steal your time, money, and attention. Therefore, the reason you were at a disadvantage was because you have a crucial piece of being human that they are missing. I don’t believe that’s something to feel shame over.

Usually, a fallen hero will be a mix of these two extremes. They may start out believing that they are doing it to help the community (usually buying their own bullshit to maintain their positive self-image), but then they begin to care less and less about that impact once the money flows in. They shift their attention to the real game at hand: seeing how much money they can rack up. So long as one of their contemporaries is making more, they’ll keep trying to find ways to up the cash flow.

Although, usually the amount they claim to be pulling in is exaggerated to create clout, and if that isn’t happening, the amount of profit they claim to be making is most definitely exaggerated if they even mention it. (An industry expert who talks more about revenue than profit is a big red flag.)

Regardless of where they fall on this sliding scale, you can see that, logically, there isn’t a strong case for you to feel ashamed of not having seen through the façade earlier.

Of course, knowing something logically and feeling it in your heart and body are different experiences. So if you still feel shame when you think about it, just keep walking yourself through the logic of it. This is a golden opportunity to practice compassion with yourself.

I’ll leave you with this, too: I don’t know of a single person who has been in this industry longer than a few years who has not followed an industry expert who was eventually revealed to be a fraudster or simply not a particularly ethically minded person. Not one. It’s practically a rite of passage.

Betrayal

I hesitate to even broach this emotion because is it so goddamn triggering for people. Betrayal is used to justify so much behavior that we would otherwise collectively classify as unacceptable or even horrifying.

But when someone you looked up to for guidance, support, and a path forward turns out to be much different than you imagined, betrayal is a common emotion that follows. And after all, why wouldn’t it be? “I listened to you every week believing you were [X], only to find out you’re really [Y]!” or “I paid you out of my retirement fund because because you claimed you knew what you were talking about, and now I find out you were bullshitting it all!”

I won’t argue that those things do fit the definition of betrayal. I would likely agree that you’ve been betrayed by that person. So maybe the reaction of betrayal is simple, and you’re entitled to feel that way for as long as you want.

But also.

*Closes eyes, takes a deep breath before walking straight into a shitstorm*

It’s possible that not all of the betrayal you’re feeling can be credited directly to the person you believe has betrayed you. There are patterns that each of us can fall into that put us in positions where our perception of betrayal is heightened, sometimes to the point of it becoming inevitable if given enough time.

Looking at our portion of responsibility does not need to lead to shame, but it is often the best way to lessen the intensity of our feelings of betrayal if those are interfering with the functioning of our everyday lives. I’m not telling you that your cheating ex-spouse betrayed you because you weren’t a good enough spouse to them, so please don’t cut me next time you see me at an event.

We are diving into nuance now. Hear me out.

There are a few patterns that lead us to trust people who are likely to later burn us, and if we tend toward those patterns throughout our lives and therefore find ourselves feeling betrayed by people frequently, the best thing we can do for ourselves moving forward is to look at these patterns closely and resolve them.

I am in no way saying that someone has not broken your trust by pointing out where your patterns might’ve contributed to the sense of betrayal you’re feeling. The reason I point these patterns out to you is so you can sort through what is betrayal on the part of the other person and how you could avoid feeling so monumentally betrayed in a situation.

Pointing out these patterns is not intended to shame you for having them. It’s to allow you to reevaluate some patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving that you might’ve picked up early in life that are no longer of use and are, in fact, contributing to your suffering in situations like these.

Here are the main patterns we might fall into that heighten our negative feelings in a betrayal:

Pattern 1: Creating fantasized or romanticized versions of others

Enneagram 4s are the most prone to this pattern, and it looks like building an idealized fantasy version of someone to amplify whatever feeling you’re seeking from the relationship.

If you’re craving a soulmate, for example, you might find someone who ticks a few boxes and then fill in any gaps with the right imaginings to create a picture in your mind of the perfect partner. If you’re craving an industry expert to show you how to make seven figures a year from your books, you may find someone who seems smart enough and is A-OK accepting the fantasy they’ve created about themselves and their success.

I’ve seen people build layers and layers of fantasy on people this way. I’ve been subject to the layers and layers of fantasy myself from a past partner with this tendency, and it’s a strange and dehumanizing experience, frankly.

The reaction to this fantasy version having an undeniable hole poked in it (as is the case when your hero falls) is that the betrayal feels MAJOR. Even though you were responsible for projecting qualities onto them to complete the romanticized picture in your mind, you may still be holding them accountable for adhering to those standards that they never claimed to meet (or even knew about).

If you’re an Enneagram 4 or have a close connection to the patterns of the Four through a wing or stress or growth lines, it’s important to take a step back in fallen-hero situations and look at where the person truly misled and betrayed your trust and where you might’ve unintentionally made the betrayal more painful through the strokes of fantasy you added to your picture of them. Not only will doing that work likely help you feel less betrayed (which is the point of the exercise, because walking around feeling betrayed is not fun), but it will also help you recognize how this pattern develops in you so that you’re much less likely to repeat it in the future.

Pattern 2: Hope of being rescued

Any day now, some unbelievably wealthy person will show up at my door and tell me they love my satire novels so much that they’d like to provide me room and board in their vacation estate in the countryside, take care of all my expenses, and pay me a hefty stipend to keep writing my books. And, of course, I get to write whatever I want and they won’t interfere or ever ask for anything in return except for my unadulterated wit. Any day now.

Deep down inside, I think most people hold this secret hope. It’s the desire to be able to create freely without all the other responsibilities of life bogging us down.

This simply and childlike desire can become amplified into something more disastrous, though, and that’s the pattern of wanting to be saved or of looking for a savior.

There are plenty of legitimate reasons why adults might be carrying this pattern on from childhood, so I won’t go into all that here, but suffice to say, if one of your patterns is that you’re walking around subconsciously hoping someone will save you from your problems, the chances are high that someone will offer to save you from all your problems.

That’s the function of marketing. It offers a solution to a problem (one you may not have even realized you had).

For folks who don’t happen to have the pattern of waiting to be saved (or once had it and have worked through it), they might see an especially ridiculous claim in a bit of marketing copy, scoff at it, and move on.

But if one of your current patterns is looking for a savior, you’re much more likely to believe that you can go from making $0 to $1,000,000 in a year on nothing but your debut novel. Or maybe you have 20 books out and they’re not making you the money you’d been led to believe they would. If this is your situation and someone offers to save you from it, the pattern is likely to activate, and you’ll gladly click that ad and signup.

This doesn’t make you a dupe or a fool, and when noticing this pattern in yourself there is no beneficial purpose in feeling ashamed. You probably have very good biographical reasons to have developed this belief that someone will come along and save you, so please try to notice without judgment as best you can. As we say in Enneagram circles: it’s not personal, it’s personality. The pattern exists, and you may not have seen it before. But now you do, so you have a wonderful opportunity to try something different next time.

Either way, people who believe on a deep and uninspected level that someone might be out there who can save them are some of the most susceptible to exaggerated promises of “I will save you for ten easy payments of $59.99.” Once you overcome the belief that this is even a possibility, your natural skepticism will have more space to inspect such claims.

Pattern 3: Popularity = credibility

This plays into the cognitive bias of “if everyone likes them, they must be okay.” This particular pattern is one that Fours are usually least likely to fall into, since a common belief of the type is that if everyone likes something, it’s probably boring and mainstream.

I’ll tell you who does fall into this trap regularly, though, and that’s Twos, Threes, Sixes, and Nines.

Twos and Threes can fall into this trap because popularity implies that the person is getting a lot of attention, which is the unmet childhood need of Twos and Threes, and therefore a major subconscious driver of their decisions. These two types can become somewhat blinded by the dazzling lights as their desire to have what the expert appears to have draws their attention away from fact checking. Additionally, these two types may be more drawn to a promise of how many followers and subscribers they can amass, as well as bestseller rank and copies sold—all things that have little to no direct correlation with profit—because these numbers are a measure of attention from others. If you’re a Two or Three, gaining awareness about how big your eyes get when an “expert” promises to help you gain you more attention (irrelevant of profit) is a great place to practice bringing your own attention.

While I say Sixes are susceptible to the pattern of believing that a popular figure is a trustworthy figure, this is actually a split bag. That goes back to the Six’s relationship with authority, which is similarly a split bag.

Sixes cling to certain authority because it looks like the guidance, support, and safety they seek. They do this while also rejecting other authority outright, because if someone has authority, they also have the ability to threaten your safety and betray you. Yes, it’s a contradiction. Each type has one, and this is the one Sixes live with.

Some Sixes rush into trusting an authority sooner than there’s evidence that the trust is well placed, while others might require piles of evidence that an authority is trustworthy before they trust them… and even then, they’re vigilant for signs of betrayal. And some sixes overly trust one authority figure and then immediately mistrust another authority figure in a seemingly arbitrary way. (We can see this most starkly in some folks’ deep mistrust of “government” but the blind trust of, say, a recent president. Not all of these folks are Sixes, surely, but they are all exemplifying how this contradiction can be held within a single mind.)

It’s the Sixes who tend to trust too soon that are likely to have the cognitive pattern of mistaking popularity for trustworthiness or a promise of protection. These Sixes live in the paradox of trusting people instantly while also maintaining that “you can’t trust anyone” because their (unearned) trust has been betrayed (by their view) so many times.

If you’re a Six who feels like everyone will inevitably betray you, this might be a pattern to look at more closely. What evidence do you require before trusting someone? And is your definition of “trustworthy” so narrow that anyone with their own volition can’t help but violate it eventually?

And finally, Nines will also likely fall into this pattern of mistaking popularity with credibility. Part of this is that a pattern of the Nine is to pretend conflict doesn’t exist and ignore it for as long as possible. If a Nine follows people who seem well liked, respected, and generally popular, they’re more likely to be able to live in that world of non-conflict for longer than if they attached to a controversial figure, someone who’s going around saying unpopular things like, “You may never make $100k selling books,” and “many of the lauded experts at the top of this industry are actually creeps and predators” just as an example. I’m not saying all Nines fall into this pattern, because clearly I work with plenty of authors who are Nines, but just, ya know, as an example.

To avoid seeing unpleasant realities or feeling the inner pull/conflict to stand up and speak out, Nines will sometimes overlook red flags and default to “everyone likes them, so they’re probably okay.” If you’re a Nine or have it as a wing, stress, or growth number, learning to spot those red flags in retrospect and committing to acknowledging them in the future will make you less likely to fall into this situation of betrayal again.

Pattern 4: Projecting our ethical standards onto others

Our tendency toward this pattern is how psychopaths, sociopaths, and clinical narcissists get away with so much, so please don’t beat yourself up if you notice this pattern in your life. It’s a sign that you don’t have an antisocial personality disorder, which is generally considered a win.

For those of us who cannot imagine knowingly promising something we have no way to deliver on, or who shudder at the thought of claiming credit for a book that is either plagiarized or ghost written without proper disclosure, our first instinct is not going to be that we imagine everyone—or anyone—else is doing that. This is because our default is to assume that our most basic ethics are shared by those around us.

Until we learn more about the pathology of people who have an open relationship with the truth, we’re likely to assume that everyone thinks and feels like we do until otherwise informed. This includes being honest, ethical, and compassionate.

It makes it quite easy for those who do not play by these rules to mislead those who do.

But there’s a trap here, especially for Enneagram 1s, and that’s when we assume our ethical standards are the only acceptable standards. They may be the only acceptable standards to us, hence why we hold them, but that does not mean that they are objectively the only ones that a “good person” can live by.

If a One hasn’t done basic work on expanding their lens, they may still function in the black-and-white mode of thinking, with “my way or the highway” moral and ethical standards.

What this looks like in our industry is the crusader who goes after someone for playing by the rules but not by the crusader’s rules. It looks like, “I wouldn’t be comfortable doing that, so doing that is clearly unethical; ergo, that person is an unethical person,” rather than, “I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing that, but I realize that’s a ‘me’ thing, so I’ll do it my way and they do it their way.”

When we expect everyone to conform to our standards and don’t see that there may be perfectly ethical things that fall outside of our preferred standard, we end up with very few people around us who meet those standards. This means very few options for networking, collaboration, or all the other opportunities that arise from positive professional relationships.

Not only that, but making it known that you think 90% of the people in your industry are unethical is a great way to get a target on your back. What happens when something that meets your ethical standards doesn’t meet someone else’s? What happens when the crusader is out-crusadered?

I won’t belabor this point any longer, but to sum up: expecting others to meet our ethical standards puts us in a vulnerable position to people who don’t care about ethics. It can leave us incredibly isolated in an industry where success is very much predicated on positive connections. Looking at our patterns around ethics—what we’re projecting onto others and what we’re expecting of others—is important work for any Ones or folks who have connections to One through a wing, stress, or growth.

Pattern 5: Seeking power by proxy

People who don’t feel empowered may fall into this pattern. It looks like cozying up to and earning the trust of powerful people in a hope that some of that power will pass along to you. Eights, Threes, and Sixes tend to be the most susceptible to this pattern.  

Regardless of your Enneagram type, if you’ve cozied up to power, whether intentionally or as a subconscious pattern, and then that power is threatened by the source being exposed as a fraud of some type, the fear that this power you were hoping to gain from is disappearing can mingle with the sense of betrayal to create a potent product of justification.

For anyone who isn’t yet aware of their pattern of seeking power by proxy, the first impulse in a situation like this can be to regain the lost power at any cost. This could look like leading the charge against the fallen hero, meanwhile hoping to take their spot atop the podium (depending on the likelihood that you could be successful at that), or it may look like something quite different: becoming a staunch defender of the fallen hero to help them protect their own power and thereby the benefits of that power that you’ve been receiving.

Folks with this pattern don’t usually spot that they’re doing this out of a desire to preserve their source of power by proxy. Instead, they tell themselves that they really believe the person is innocent of all charges, or they dramatically downplay the charges against the person. Eights can use their defense mechanism of denial to accomplish this, Sixes use their defense mechanism of projection (projecting the faults of their fallen hero onto the accusers), and Threes can use their defense mechanism of deceit (specifically self-deceit) to present the fallen hero as well-intentioned and misread.

Again, though, I’ve seen people of every type fall victim to doubling down when their heroes are exposed in one way or another. It’s how cult leaders can wrongly predict the end of the world and still have followers on the other side. It’s quite something, and as much as we might judge this behavior in the followers, we probably want to look at the subtler ways we’ve done it in our own lives first.

If one of your industry heroes is accused of doing something you’d rather not be associated with, it might be an opportunity to check in with yourself and see if you tend toward the pattern of doubling down on their innocence to protect your sense of power by proxy. If you find that you’re following that pattern, I suggest you choose the route of honesty. This doesn’t mean you turn into your fallen hero’s worst nightmare, only that perhaps the faults that are coming to the surface might not be ones you’re entirely comfortable being in close contact with, regardless of the power by proxy you might gain from the continued relationship. If it makes sense, ask the person directly for their story and remember that they might not be in a position to be fully honest with themselves, let alone you. But if you’re close to the person, this honest conversation might grant you enough compassion to keep the sense of betrayal at a minimum. From there, you can decide how you want to proceed in a more nuanced and mature way.

Cynicism

When the industry suffers another fallen hero, when another one bites the dust, some folks may fall into the pattern of cynicism, especially if you have been around for a while.

Cynicism is learned, often from an early age, through the process of having authority figures mistreat, betray, or fail us (according to our perception, at least). Rather than practicing more refined skills of trust—learning what particular things we can trust specific people with rather than an all-or-nothing approach, learning to trust our gut about people, being okay with imperfect authority figures—the cynic throws up a wall. That wall usually looks like, “You can’t trust anyone,” or “the only way to rise to power is by being a shyster,” and so forth. Cynics inherently mistrust anyone claiming to be an expert, which is a great way to have to reinvent the wheel a million times over.

The pattern of cynicism, if you find that it plays a role in your personality, is one of anxiety. You lack an effective skillset for determining who to trust with what, and that can lead to low-grade vigilance about it all the time (anxiety is so exhausting, isn’t it?). Not only do you feel unprepared for determining who to trust, but on some level you don’t trust in your ability to recover from a betrayal. So you go the better-safe-than-sorry route, generally mistrusting anyone in a position of authority. The problem with this pattern is that it that often means your progress in your career is much slower than it might be if you learned whose advice to take and then took it.

I encounter low-grade cynicism in people every day. They’ve been burned a million times by advice that wasn’t properly tailored to them and might not have had an ounce of scientific backing for its effectiveness. So when I discuss practices to incorporate to their writing life that are tailored to them and have scientific backing, those recommendations are met with resistance galore. Don’t worry, I get it. It means that person’s progress in our sessions will be much slower, though, as we have to break through the cynicism they might not even be aware of yet. (Cynicism and skepticism are not the same things, btw.)

Cynicism can look like throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and of the four reactions to a fallen hero, it’s my default. I’ll be honest, there are very few industry experts who I trust enough to collaborate with at this point. I’ve seen this fall too many times, and when I see even one of the signs, my habit is to throw up that wall of cynicism.

But when I notice I’m doing this, I have a new option: I can look at them in a less sweeping and a more granular way. Sure, some of their marketing rhetoric seems smarmy and overly manipulative to me, but how do they treat the authors they work with? How transparent are they about the results? If their marketing copy turns me off but they have obvious transparency about their results and many happy authors to prove it, perhaps what they offer is worth closer inspection.

If you notice patterns of cynicism in yourself, it may be time to look more granularly at people rather than writing them off when you get the first whiff of ick. This way, you might eventually find someone who is right for a particular aspect of your business you need help with. Thankfully, they don’t have to be a saint or a well-rounded genius to help you with a single pillar of your business.

Not to mention, when someone you had a bad feeling about takes a tumble from grace in the industry, addressing your cynicism means you’ll be able to extend more compassion to them and therefore avoid the next trap many people fall into.

Schadenfreude

“Karma is my boyfriend…” Okay, another confession from me: I’ve treated myself to a ton of schadenfreude over the years in this industry. One of my gifts is sniffing out full-on shysters, and I’ve sniffed out a lot of them that nobody would believe until they see it laid out. It feels personally validating when the truth comes out and my intuition proves to be correct.

BUT as gratifying as it is in the short term (and oh my god, is it gratifying), schadenfreude is a poisoned gift in the long run.

Indulging in schadenfreude, or taking pleasure in another person’s comeuppance, is the opposite of humility, and it deprives us of the opportunity to feel compassion for another human being having a terrible time of it (even if they brought that terrible time on themselves, more or less).

It cuts us off from our shared humanity when we delight in another person’s fall. The other person is often a victim of their own ego, after all, and who among us is not from time to time? Many of us make similar missteps out of ego but don’t suffer near the consequences because we don’t have the spotlight on us like some of the industry leaders do.

I’m not telling you that to be a good person you need to be like, “Poor R. Kelly just fell victim to his ego,” but in reality, most of the strikes against indie publishing experts are much lower stakes and less harmful than, ya know, all that stuff R. Kelly did. One of the benefits of being married to a police detective is that I hear about violent crimes every day, so that when someone says, “So-and-so was using ChatGPT without disclosing it,” I can usually maintain some perspective about the impact of it on my life, community, and planet. That doesn’t mean that the lesser offenses aren’t offenses. What I do when I create that perspective is to regain some of my own emotional equilibrium, which can help me make decisions from a more conscious place.

Gaming Amazon rankings, for example, isn’t human trafficking, and I think it’s important to remember this once the community starts to work itself into a lather. In reality, these indie publishing “crimes” like gaming Amazon rankings or claiming credit for something that you didn’t write are frequently a result of someone who loves a challenge and became too focused on the outcome to keep their eyes on the ethics of the process. Haven’t we all fallen into that trap more or less in our lives? We became so focused on the product that we took our eyes off the process?

Again, I’m not letting anyone off the hook for doing something unacceptable. What I hope to gain from the above questions is to take the edge off some of the drunken betrayal we can sometimes feel that takes us outside of ourselves and the way we’d like to behave as professional adults. The more we can see ourselves falling victim to some of the same traps of ego that lead to our heroes’ fall from grace, the more compassion we can muster, which keeps us connected to ourselves, our values, and our integrity.

And then there are the traps that we might’ve laid for ourselves years, possibly even decades ago, when we were quite different people. I certainly hold much more evolved and informed opinions on race, gender, class, and age now than I did even ten years ago. And I suspect those attitudes will be even more informed and developed ten years from now! I hope we all experience this! That’s growth!

The problem with schadenfreude, especially when someone’s fall is for something they might’ve done years ago (I’m not talking about crimes, but perhaps harmful attitudes or legitimately ignorant mistakes), is that in rejoicing about another’s downfall we must either divorce ourselves from the older versions of us who were also more ignorant and unevolved (a process that is not psychologically healthy), or we start to live in fear that our own mistakes of youth (and again, I’m talking more about “I’m so glad they didn’t have social media when I was in high school” mistakes rather than “is there a statute of limitations on that?” mistakes) might be discovered and thrown in our face later on.

This fear can become so strong that we hold ourselves back for fear that being seen might invite someone else (especially someone whose fall we’ve schadenfreuded all over ourselves about) to take us down in the same way.

So, when we find ourselves falling into this particular pattern, I totally get it (and might be right there with you at first), but at some point, consider pausing to remember that you, too, have made mistakes, have let your ego get away from you in your own special way, and are generally imperfect. Celebrating someone else’s pain will always injure your connection to yourself, and at the end of the day, that’s not worth it. When we delight in another’s suffering, we suffer too.

I was sitting in bed the other night, chatting with my husband about the latest downfall of a prominent author and explaining why I’m worried about so many people who are watching it. At the end of the day, it hurts to see someone you trusted revealed as less than trustworthy. I don’t want anyone to feel the shame, betrayal, or cynicism that results, and I don’t want anybody to be stalked by the aftereffects of schadenfreude.  

“This is really unfortunate, and it keeps happening,” I said.

He replied with, “You should write up something about it.” I’m pretty sure he meant it and wasn’t just trying to get me to stop talking so he could read his book. So here I am, writing it up.

Our industry will continue to suffer from fallen heroes because this is what happens in life. We raise people above us, put them on a pedestal, and expect something close to perfection from them. But living life on a pedestal lends itself to the rapid growth of ego, which can turn even level-headed people into a victim of their own hubris. They can begin to buy the hype that they belong on a pedestal, and the cycle perpetuates.

Then something pops the bubble of our perception. Perhaps our hero is revealed to be malicious. Or perhaps we learn that they are just human like the rest of us, and we demand to know who the hell put them on that pedestal.  

Yes, they are responsible for letting their ego get the best of them just as we are responsible for viewing them as infallible, sagacious, superior in fundamental ways, and possibly even our savior. This dynamic takes two to sustain it, but the center never holds.

Thankfully, when we gain awareness of the patterns we’ve contributed to the dynamic, we’re able to make different decisions, and our different decisions ripple out to our community. We can’t save anyone from their own inflated ego, but we can create an environment where people who might have some useful knowledge to share aren’t expected to be a full-package role model for other adults, and where we, the adults, stop projecting our need for a hero onto anyone who has something useful to teach us.

This will make the fraudsters who drift in and out of our industry lose interest and move on when they can’t make a quick buck like they used to. And when the ordinary, well-intentioned people in the spotlight do unacceptable but quite human things, the perceived transgressions won’t feel so personal. We’ll be able to witness them, decide how we feel, perhaps even extend compassion to the fallen, and then return our attention to what we were put on this earth to do. 

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The patterns I examine in this post are just some of the many that we may have operating in our life without being fully aware of their impact on our decisions. As authors, we make a lot of decisions. Learning about what patterns are behind these, and determining if we want to continue on in that way, is crucial to building a sturdy and fulfilling writing career. This is what we go deep into in my Liberated Writer 5-Week Course.
To read more or enroll for the next session, tap the button:

Gender and the Enneagram

I received a great question from an author this week: Does gender influence Enneagram type?

This is important to consider, as you'll probably write male, female, and non-binary versions of various types over the course of your long career. ​​

The short answer is: yes, gender expectations influence Enneagram type expressions.

That is, what the society we grow up in thinks and expresses boys/men are allowed to do vs. what girls/women are allowed to do.

​​(Our society still doesn't have clearly expressed expectations for NB people other than, "Pick a side," which any NB people​ reading this know is a whole other thing to contend with.)​

The same goes for racial expectations and any other projected "people like this should act this way" bullshit you can think of.

Here are a few ways the gender-specific expectations can play out in the Enneagram:

-Male 2s (the Helpers) are often mistyped. This is because they've learned that their natural expressions of their core fear (to be unloved) and desire (to be worthy of love)​ are considered "feminine." Boys are objectively not raised with the same pressure to "be nice" and to take personal responsibility for the emotions of everyone around them like little girls are, because those behaviors have the word "feminine" attached to them.

So, when these naturally helpful and caring little boys show that, they eventually hit a wall among the adults and peers around them that discourages them from expressing those natural traits.

-Bold women are often mistyped as 8s (the Challengers). ​This is a result of the same unfair sexism and misogyny that results in male 2s being mistyped (yes, misogyny hurts men, too), but resulting from different artifacts. As we're all seeing in big ways these last few years, the systems we've established in the Western world were not designed specifically (or at all) with the lives of women in mind. By and large, women are supposed to be happy if they have a single seat at the table rather than look around and question, "Why the hell is everyone else a man?"

When everyday life sets out more challenges for you, just by taking them on out of necessity, you'll start to look like a Challenger. That doesn't mean you're a type 8, though. It just means you're trying to get your work done while the kids are out of school and also plan what's for dinner and then tolerate "locker room talk" in professional environments, and when you do find time to go to the grocery store, you have to consider if what you're wearing is going to draw unwanted attention and then remain hyper-vigilant as you walk to your car to make sure no one is following you. And when you get sick of it and speak out? CHALLENGER.

As a 1 whose desire to fix things is focused on these injustices and who has enough secure attachments in my life to speak out about it without giving a fuck, this mistype is all but guaranteed for me when I take an online Enneagram test.

And of course, when you add race into it, you find that almost every black woman, who's had to take on even more challenges in society, is in danger of being mistyped as an 8. (The Enneagram Institute's examples of type 8s contains a disproportionate amount of famous black women, for instance.) That’s not to say there are no type 8 black women (of course there are), just that typing them as that without close examination of the facts can be used as a way of dismissing their real-life challenges as a personality quirk rather than an expression of legitimate systemic issues.

​​-Male 7s (the Enthusiasts) are often given more grace than female 7s. When the 7's tendency to flake out or joke around kicks in, you can probably imagine who's going to get more grief for it. We've all heard the tired argument about how men "aren't made for monogamy" and you shouldn't try to tie them down. Not to say every 7 have an avoidant attachment style, but when they do, it's usually tolerated, if not excused with unsubstantiated pseudo-science explanations about the role of testosterone.

If a woman just wants a little freedom to explore her life and not be tied down, though? Oh, she's broken. Sevens also tended to be the class clowns in school. Think about how boys were treated for messing around versus how the girls were treated? Who faced harsher consequences?

The result is that I encounter a lot of type 7 men who have never faced real consequences for the unhealthy expressions of their type and a lot of type 7 women who believe there's something broken with them and are searching for an explanation or at least a diagnosis.

-Male 6s (the Loyalists) are only allowed to be counter-phobic, even if they're phobic. ​When you think about the lauded men in American history, how many can you think of who are revered for saying, "I don't know if this is a good idea, guys"? Caution is not usually labeled a "masculine" trait. But rushing recklessly into a dangerous situation before you're ready? That's called "courage" which is most definitely an expectation of a "good man."

Sixes' core motivation is about support and security, and they're the most in touch with the underlying emotion of fear that rules the 5-6-7 triad. Being aware of possible threats to you social and physical security all the time is exhausting, though, and the handling of that exhaustion breaks down into avoidance of the danger (phobic) and confrontation of the fear (counter-phobic). One approach is not better than the other, as both can be expressed in healthy and unhealthy ways. But only one is seen as manly by the masses.

So, if you're a phobic 6 and male, you've probably faced disrespect or even been labeled cowardly by those who've chosen to adhere to and enforce sexist ideas about what's masculine and what's feminine. The only silver lining is that at least when you speak up about your concerns, you're probably listened to. Phobic female 6s are often subject to the Cassandra effect.

There are examples of this for every type's expression, and as a writer of realistic and complex characters, it's important that you consider not only the Enneagram type, but also how the world around your ​character allows and encourages them to express the core fear and core desire without social punishment. Maybe in your story, women are given higher status than men. No problem, but think about how that changes each type's expression of their core motivations. Maybe your story world doesn't have a long history of racial discrimination, so that doesn't affect the characters. Cool! ... but did you still accidentally write all your black characters as Challengers... or Helpers? (No judgment from me on this, because everyone has a lot to unpack in this department, but we do need to watch out for these unconscious biases to write the best stories we can.)

If the fact that I've brought gender and race into this email leaves you unsettled or feeling unexplained aggression toward me, before you send me that email reply, I encourage you to ask yourself what about your core fear I've triggered.

That's what this Enneagram thing is all about—learning to respond thoughtfully rather than react. Yes, it helps us write stronger characters, but it also helps us live with reality as it is, not as we wish it would be. And the reality is that we are treated differently by society at large because of race, gender, and so many more superficial things. If you don't take those into consideration when writing your stories, learning the Enneagram ain't gonna be enough to save your books.

Motivation: Type Four, the Individualist

You feel a deep, persistent longing. Sometimes it’s for another person, sometimes a place, sometimes a lifestyle, sometimes even a bygone era. When people try to describe it, they don’t even come close. Hell, you often fall short when you try to put words to it. It’s like you have a vastness inside you that’s trying to connect with the vastness outside of you but never quite reaches.

So, you try to express it through fiction, maybe a little poetry. But no one quite gets it when they read your words. You have a sneaking suspicion that even if you finally got the words right to express yourself precisely, people still wouldn’t understand.

Part of you likes that. The fear of being understood, of being comprehensible to others shakes you at an existential level. Only once your full being is understood can your full being be rejected.

And part of you hates being so different. There’s nothing lonelier than feeling like no one could ever connect with you fully.

If you didn’t like reading any of that and seeing that part of you put into words, then you’re probably an Enneagram Type 4, the Individualist. It’s not all somber news for you, though of all the types, yours would be the most okay with it if that were the case.

Welcome back to this series where we explore what motivates us and how we might build a life that works with our creative impulses rather than against them.

Today, we’re talking all about the Enneagram Four, “the Individualist.” We’re going to dive deep into what motivates someone with these core fears and desires, and how we can build a rich and abundant author life for ourselves if this is our type.

If this isn’t your type, I strongly suggest you read it anyway. Not only will it help you write strong Individualist characters, but I guarantee you have a Four close to you, and understanding them will only strengthen the relationship.

At their core, Fours’ desire is to have significance. Their fear is that they’re insignificant. The concept of significance or identity is central to what compels or repels Fours.

Indie publishing can be a perilous landscape for Fours, who are so full of this raw urge to create the beautiful and portray the ugly that accepting payment for such a natural act can feel dirty. Humans are made to create and express, so how would capitalism do anything but cheapen the experience?

“Marketability” is also considered a taboo subject by many Fours, who often believe that the confines of genre or page length or even the most basic accepted rules of grammar and punctuation are anathema to true creativity.

But this belief runs counter to that need of significance. If you want to be a significant creative force in the publishing world (or the world at large), you can’t do that if no one reads your stuff. And people will not read your stuff if it’s incomprehensible, the book cover makes no sense, the blurb is a mess, or your words do not follow the expected and accepted rules for your language of choice.

Only once you hit a certain threshold of comprehensibility can you realistically get the book into people’s hands. Yes! Your work could expand and shape hearts and minds! But only if people know about it. And for people to know about it, you must tell them. You know, marketing. It’s not a dirty word, I promise.

You can price your books at free, if that makes you feel like less of a sellout. Then, only do free marketing. Perfect. Your business is breaking even, assuming you don’t shell out for an editor and cover designer (which you really should).

Now, how are you going to eat and pay rent? A day job? Great! Go for it, if that job doesn’t make you interact with superficial and boring people who make you want to jump out of the window. You’re all set.

If that’s not the case, though, maybe consider selling your books to eventually make enough to quit your office job and devote ALL your energy to your important creative work.

When an Individualist is maxed out, that valuable tendency to find beauty in the darker corners of the world can morph into straight nihilism. Self-pity and the misunderstood artist archetype start to emerge in everyday interactions, which feeds a vicious cycle. Fours insist that nobody understands them, and in doing so, they make their misery incomprehensible to others, which makes them even more misunderstood.

Fours must watch out for this, because an Individualist who has lost the motivation to create hits a downward spiral quick, fast, and in a hurry, and it can end in some unfortunate permanent decisions. That internal furnace of creation turns into one of self-destruction, and I don’t want that for you. You don’t deserve that, no matter what the voice inside your head may say. (As a One, I swing to the lower side of Four when I’m under stress, so I’m intimately familiar with the harmful scripts that play on repeat in that emotional space.)

When I’m working with an Individualist who’s struggling with motivation, it’s usually because they don’t feel like their writing is getting the attention it deserves. They’re probably right, too. The Four’s ability to tap into the broad range of human emotion, to create beauty from the mundane and assign normality to the bizarre is a rare gift that the world needs.

But feeling like you or your work deserve more than you’re receiving is the first step toward this insidious thing called “envy,” the passion of the Four.

Envy stems from the idea that other people are getting the praise or life you deserve without having earned it, while you’re getting short changed or ripped off. It creates a fantasy version of the world where everything is stacked against you. It justifies whatever vindictive attempts you might make to ruin what others have rather than focusing on your own life and the possible legitimate reasons you don’t have what you believe you deserve.

Envy murders motivation. It says that the deck is stacked against you, so why even try? It says that your energy is better spent leveling the playing field by pulling others down instead of building yourself up. Envy is a sinking ship that will suck anyone near it to the bottom of the ocean.

Usually, when Fours come to see me in this state, the truth is that a few cosmetic tweaks may be all that stands between their book selling zero copies and it selling enough to gain serious momentum. But when we get caught in the thought pattern that the universe is against us, it’s incredibly hard to focus on the details in front of us or receive constructive feedback. Most people aren’t great at delivering criticism, either, so it’s worth paying for someone like me who has years of experience delivering honest feedback in ways creatives can take without wanting to run away.

It would be a shame to be a few superficial tweaks away from a breakthrough only to give up before you made it. So, don’t do that. Instead, keep reading.

Each of the nine types of the Enneagram has nine Levels of Development within it. Three are considered healthy, three are average, and three are unhealthy. We move through these levels at various moments of our lives, but we usually have an anchor point or baseline that’s our default. As we unlock some of the unconscious patterns associated with our type, our anchor point can move slowly upward toward healthier levels.

Below are descriptions of a Four in the three categories of development (healthy, average, unhealthy):

Healthy: A self-regenerating creative, profoundly inspired, able to see the beautiful in the mundane, introspective, sensitive, comfortable feeling the full spectrum of human emotions without identifying with them, individualistic and effortlessly unique, intuitive, highly attuned to the feelings of others.
Average: Strong sense for aesthetics, creates a heightened reality through fantasy, interiorizing of the world turns to self-absorption, prone to moodiness, withdrawn, feels they are exempt from social norms, envy of others leads to justification of self-indulgence, creates fantasized versions of friends, family, and lovers (positive or negative).

Unhealthy: Withdrawn and angry at self and others when dreams and fantasies don’t pan out, loses self in paralyzing shame, self-hatred arises, runs off those trying to help with blame and accusations, engages in self-destructive behavior, indulges in altering substances to escape reality, self-harm likely at the lowest development level.

If you’re not a Four, you’re now thinking of someone you know who is. Or maybe even a character. As you can see, Fours can make great heroes or villains in your books, depending on what development level they most often inhabit.  

Okay, so how do you use this information to motivate yourself as a writer?

The trick is simple: Remember that nobody can write the stories you have to tell but you, and those stories are important to human consciousness. When you find yourself getting hung up asking the big questions about your own significance in the grand scheme, it’s important to view that as raw motivational power. You can let it fester into negative thoughts like, “Does it even matter if I write this?” or you can remind yourself that these kinds of questions and considerations are shared by everyone, and you’re the best person to explore them because they are so central to who you are.

You were built to write stories that explore identity and our place in the world. This is your gift, and that insatiable longing you feel will never let up unless you plumb these depths. Sorry, but through creativity is your only way out from the thick of your emotions.  

Structure can also be your friend. If you feel unmotivated, it might be that you are unable to wrangle your emotions into something tangible. Give yourself constraints, be that the length of work you’re going to produce, what voice you’ll write in, what tone you’ll aim for, or what theme you’ll write to.

Have you ever told 5-year-olds to entertain themselves without any boundaries? Of course not. That’s a bad idea. They will immediately apply permanent marker to your favorite keepsakes. We give the unrefined creative energy of little kids rules and supervision, and that’s when they can most fruitfully enjoy themselves. Too many rules and restrictions will make things much less fun, but as a Four, you’re in little danger of giving yourself too many constraints. But some are needed. You must build channels for your creativity to flow through rather than flooding the entire plain.

Write stories about outcasts, oddballs, and pariahs. Write an antihero. Write from the perspective of an alien landing on a new planet. And write it all for the younger you who clung so dearly to works of art like that.

Your ability to sit with the full range of emotions without flinching is a gift you can offer through your words. People need to see the characters they like and respect run the gambit of messiness. It gives the reader permission to feel. Though you might view your flood of emotions as a weakness, I can tell you that in this stifled world, it’s an innate talent you can model for others.

Every Enneagram type has a wake-up call associated with it to tell us we’re plummeting down the development levels and it’s time to pause, take a deep breath, and reevaluate some of the premises we’re working from. For the Four, the red flag is fantasizing. This looks like clinging to a mood and creating fantasized versions of reality to support that mood.

The problem with this is that we stop seeing people and situations as they are, and that’s not fair to others or ourselves. It took me years to understand why the songs my Individualist ex-boyfriend wrote about me bothered me so much, but now I see that each one was a fantasy version of me—either idealizing or demonizing, depending on where we were in our relationship when he wrote it—but not actually me. Hearing them performed in front of our friends was a dehumanizing experience as a result. He hadn’t been seeing me at all; he’d been seeing his fantasized image of me.

And for Fours, this can leave you trapped in a fantasy that’s like watching the world through a frosted window but never getting to touch and experience it for yourself. As you can imagine, this would make anyone feel even more isolated.

I’ll admit, I’m a little jealous of the work that Fours can produce once they find that motivation and set their mind to it. It’s the kind of art that stops you in your tracks, that moves you, that creates powerful emotions even in the Enneagram types most disconnected from their emotional centers. The Four is so powerful that simply having it as your wing (wing = a type on either side of the dominant type that can be used to reinforce the aims of the dominant type) can turn a Three with a Four wing (Taylor Swift) or a Five with a Four wing (Stephen King) into a powerful creator whose art thrusts us into particular moods whether we like it or not.

It's easy to spot an Individualist writer when you read them because their work transports you, and the mood and emotions of it stick to you like a film for hours, day, or even years after. Edgar Allan Poe—the quintessential Four—writes about this, describing it as a “singular effect” that he aims for in each of his stories. Not sure what I’m talking about? Go read The Fall of the House of Usher and you’ll understand. When I started reading Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice (a Four) a few years ago, I put the book down after the first page, said, “Okay, this is going to be that kind of book,” made myself some tea, discarded the bra, and snuggled under a heap of blankets to prepare for the moody onslaught I would thoroughly enjoy for hours on end.

Individualist artists love to play with themes of identity, too. Virginia Woolf does it brazenly in Orlando, and Prince did it in the span of his entire career. Those types of public explorations can challenge the reader or audience to analyze their own identity, which may have calcified over time, with a fresh and critical eye.

So if you’re struggling to put the words down or the words you’re writing feel aimless or like “meaningless garbage,” see if any of these unhelpful scripts are running on loop in your head:

“Is this unoriginal trash?”

“Someone’s already written this.”

“There are no original ideas left in this world.”

“I loathe writing.”

“Anyone who writes faster than I do is turning out crap.”

“If I write any faster, I’ll turn out crap like everyone else.”

“No one will ever understand my art.”

“It doesn’t make a difference to anyone if I write this or not.”

“Readers only like crap nowadays, like the stuff [bestselling author] writes.”

“Books have to fit every genre trope for anyone to read them, and I don’t write tropes.”

“Nobody reads anymore.”

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but every one of these ideas is faultier than the Texas power grid. Each of them is your ego or personal identity trying to spare itself possible injury. Your ego doesn’t care about YOU. It doesn’t care if you ever create anything meaningful. All it cares about it risk aversion. You can say, “Thank you, ego. I know you’re trying to protect me, but I have something important to share with the world.”

Drawing conscious thought to our subconscious scripts is like drawing blood to an injury to help it heal. And that’s how we begin to break these cycles that hold us prisoner so we can move to healthier development levels of our type.

It’s also how we keep ourselves motivated and connected to the work when we’re Individualists.

So, if you’re a Four who’s struggling with motivation:

• Honestly, what else are you going to do with your life and all that longing? Express it or it’ll ferment in your gut.

• Establish a few more rules on form or process, then let loose with content.

• Remember that the path to feeling less isolated is communication, and the first step to communication is expression. Withholding your ideas out of fear of being misunderstood is the fastest way to keep people from being able to understand you.

• Learn to spot envy in yourself and use that as a signal that someone has something you want. Then plan action that will move you more toward that thing, taking the power to achieve your dreams and your desired significance out of the hands of the universe, restoring it to you.

• When you find yourself ruminating, fantasizing, or spending too much time in your own imagination, go out and engage your senses in the present. This is where you’ll find so much inspiration that not writing will feel impossible.

• Build relationships with other authors, even if you feel like the oddball in the group. If you don’t do this, your tendency toward fantasy will fill in the gaps of what you think you know about the community, and if envy gets involved, it won’t be a positive outlook. It also won’t be real.

• Try framing “I’m misunderstood” as “I have a unique perspective people can’t get anywhere else.” Don’t dramatize others rejecting you before you even give them a chance to love and appreciate you.  

Next week, we’ll discuss how to find your writing motivation if you’re a Type 5, the Investigator. This is the type of Stephen King, Ursula K. LeGuin, Sherlock Holmes, and Severus Snape.

Motivation: Type Two, the Helper

Ask a group of people what they think of Shel Silverstein’s book The Giving Tree, and you’re almost guaranteed to start a heated debate. Is it a sweet story of unconditional love, or is it a tragedy about how people can give until they’re all used up?

If you’re an Enneagram Type 2, the Helper, this question will hit home especially hard for you. Can you ever give or help too much? Is it shameful to feel angry after you’ve willingly given everything you had but gotten nothing in return?

These are central questions that Twos battle with their whole life, but a little Enneagram guidance can go a long way toward finding comfortable answers.

Welcome back to this series where we explore what motivates us and how we might build a life that works with our creative impulses rather than against them. To read the previous entries, go here: www.ffs.media/story-tips/category/Motivation+series

Today, we’re talking all about the Enneagram Twos, “the Helpers.” We’re going to dive deep into what motivates someone with these core fears and desires, and how we can build a nice little author life for ourselves if this is our type.

If this isn’t your type, I strongly suggest you read it anyway. Not only will it help you write strong Helper characters, but I guarantee you have a Two close to you in your life and understanding them will only strengthen the relationship.

At their core, Twos’ desire is to be loved. Their fear is that they’ll be unworthy of love. Love and service are central to this type, who can enjoy fulfilling lifelong friendships as well as plenty of one-sided relationships if they’re not careful.

The Twos I know are almost too sweet for this world. They have so much love to give that not showing it to others can be physically and emotionally painful. They’re natural nurturers, which makes them exceptional at anticipating the needs of others. But if they don’t learn a few raw truths about the nature of help vs. enabling and interdependency vs. codependency, the world around them will use them up. And as you can imagine, it’s hard to get the words down when you’re all used up.

If you’re a Two, it’s important to attach everything you do to a deeper motivation of nurturing the world, and that includes yourself.  We hear the words “self-care” thrown around in somewhat obnoxious ways all the time, but it’s a necessary ritual for Twos to build into their daily routine. I’m not talking bubble baths and manicures (though feel free to treat yourself to those, too). I’m talking about protecting your writing time like a mother dog defends her pups. I’m talking about learning to ask for and accept help. While caring for others comes naturally for a Two, these forms of self-care generally do not.

Twos: You must learn to protect your flow of love! It’s a bright and bubbling font that attracts all kinds of creepy crawlers of the human species. It may feel rewarding to provide that nurturing at first, and you may even convince yourself that by drinking from your well, those creepy crawlers will be transformed into adorable little forest creatures. Unfortunately, that’s not the case.  

When I’m working with a Helper who is struggling with motivation, it’s usually because this exchange of energy is off. If you’re a Two who sits by yourself all day, you may need to work more social time into your schedule so you can expend some of the nurturing energy that’s building up inside you. But more likely, your day consists of too many people with endless needs, and you’ve left nothing for yourself and your art. This is a tragedy, and obviously I won’t tolerate it. I care about you too much, Two.

Each of the nine types of the Enneagram has nine Levels of Development within it. Three are considered healthy, three are average, and three are unhealthy. We move through these levels at various moments of our lives, but we usually have an anchor point or baseline that’s our default. As we unlock some of the unconscious patterns associated with our type, our anchor point can move slowly upward toward healthier levels.

Below are descriptions of a Two in the three categories of development (healthy, average, unhealthy):

Healthy: Feels unconditional love for others and self, is empathetic, attuned to the needs of others and gives what is needed rather than whatever will win approval, maintains clear boundaries and is able to accept help, flourishes in interdependent relationships
Average: Gives to ingratiate or people please, forces help upon others, becomes possessive of those who have received the help, acts self-important based on ability to give

Unhealthy: Relies on forced reciprocation to manipulate others, feels entitled after giving, refuses help from others then plays the martyr, feels perpetually victimized, acts helpless to force others into codependency

If you’re not a Two, you’re now thinking of someone you know who is. Or maybe even a character. As you can see, Twos can make great heroes or villains in your books, depending on what development level they most often inhabit.

Okay, so how do you use this information to motivate yourself as a writer?

The trick is simple: You need to be writing books that provide nurturance for your readers. Twos often end up writing romance for this reason. The promise of an HEA gives readers who need some TLC a safe place to find it.

Write stories that heal others while you heal yourself. Write stories where the conflict is resolved through your protagonist’s self-love. Show your readers, through the art of fiction, how we can build healthy relationships where love flows equally both ways and leave toxic relationships that take more than they give. Inspire others to love themselves the same way they love the world. You are a healer and nurturer by nature. Write stories that serve your soul, and those stories will serve the souls of your readers as well.

To a certain extent, American/Western culture expects all women to behave like Twos—selflessly giving and not asking for anything in return, yet somehow lasting in this way for decades and decades—mothers especially. And because these average and unhealthy traits of a Two are rewarded (by not being actively punished), Helpers can easily fall into that unhealthy trap.

Other types will usually reach a point where they say, “Yeah, this just ain’t me,” and default to their particular core motivations instead, but the Two is left behind, accepting the crumbs social rewards and avoiding punishment by being their unhealthy self. What a shitty situation to be in!

Twos who struggle to express their needs, or have done so in the past only to be met with indifference and neglect, can fall into what’s called the Drama Triangle. This includes three roles that a person rotates through: rescuer, martyr, persecutor.

In Twos, it starts like this: their genuine desire to help and care for others becomes an overexaggerated ego need that expresses itself in such a way that the Helper takes on the role of “rescuer.”

From time to time, most adults benefit from help, but not necessarily rescuing. Rescuing a person establishes a relationship dynamic where one person gives, and the other receives, but not in anything close to equal measure.

Once the Helper’s resources for rescuing are tapped out, they realize the situation is lopsided. Their stores are exhausted. They’ve given all their love to someone and left none for helping themselves. And then—gasp—in their time of need, no one is around to rescue them! (Twos’ pride usually means they show no obvious symptoms of needing help and therefore expect people to just know.) This leads to the next stage of the Drama Triangle as the rescuer becomes the martyr.

There’s a certain satisfaction to being a martyr. It shows that you have more love to give than others, and in the eyes of a Two, this might make you feel a pop of superiority. But that dries up quickly, and when your rescuer still hasn’t arrived, the third part of the Drama Triangle goes into effect, and the martyr becomes the persecutor. How dare no one else give until they drop over dead! How dare people not do for you what you did for others.

This is obviously not a healthy way to live, and to be fair, most Twos only experience mild versions of it. But none of it is good, and all of it is a missed opportunity for growth and development of healthy boundaries.

Every type has a wake-up call associated with it to tell us we’re plummeting down the development levels and it’s time to pause, take a deep breath, and reevaluate some of the premises we’re working from. For the Two, the red flag is people pleasing. This is the point at which the Helper switches from giving the help that she is 1) able to give without over-giving and 2) is the amount needed by the recipient, and instead she begins giving based upon what will ingratiate her to those she’s giving to.

For example, maybe your friend needs $10 to cover a cab, and you give them $50 instead. It’s important for Twos to ask why precisely they threw in the extra $40. Because the recipient is wondering the same thing. What are they expected to do in return?

This creates a strange dynamic called “forced reciprocation.” It leaves the recipient on edge because humans have evolved with a sense of reciprocation (it’s what keeps us a social species), and we have a primal reaction to someone doing something for us: we want to return the favor and in equal or greater measure.

So, when a Two gives more than what the recipient genuinely needs, they’re putting them in a power-down position, socially speaking. The recipient will feel indebted to the Two, which is the groundwork for codependency (unhealthy attachment) rather than interdependency (a healthy and free flow of love and energy).

Combating these less than desirable patterns starts with a single word: no.

“Yes” comes naturally to a Helper, but saying “I won’t” before having to admit “I can’t” is called boundaries, and it’s a developed skill.

Writing a book is a long process. There are weeks, months, or years between when we write the first word and when others see our product and can benefit from it in the way we intended.

This means that those quick-fixes our brain often craves—instant gratification for our core desires and numbing to soothe our core fear—are not always baked into the book writing process. (If we’re smart about it and self-aware, though, we can build those in.)

So, if you’re a Two, you may know in your heart that your book will provide the nurturance to your readers that you hope for, but between the first word and hitting publish, what are you supposed to do, hold all your love inside?

No way. Especially when there are all kinds of people you can help on a daily basis! Woohoo!

So, you wake up at 6am to pack lunches for your kids and have breakfast ready for them. Then, it’s time to sit and write for two hours.

But then your wife overslept and can’t find her keys and the printer isn’t working but she needs to print out something before she can go to the big meeting at work in half an hour! Helper to the rescue!

Finally, you sit down with an hour and fifteen minutes left in your writing time. Better than nothing. But your sister just texted you saying that she had a big fight with her husband last night. Poor thing. You give her a call. When that’s done, you sit down to write and only have fifteen minutes left.

Well, shoot. That’s hardly any time at all before you head over to the women’s prison to volunteer. Probably better to leave 15 minutes early in case you hit traffic.

Suddenly, no writing.

Is this a familiar story?

I would never tell a Two not to care for the people they love. But when giving becomes a matter of instant gratification for our core desire (to be loved) and a balm for our core fear (to be unlovable), then it rules our schedule and kills our ability to create projects that require time before the payoff.

Don’t come at me with pitchforks, but maybe your kids can order lunch at school. Maybe they can fix their own breakfast. Your wife got herself into this mess and she’s a grown-up. Let her fix it for herself (she’ll feel better about having done it solo). And while your sister might need a shoulder to cry on, she can wait until you have available time, or she can speak with a therapist. None of those options makes you selfish or unloving. It’s normal boundary setting. People may (will) respond poorly at first as you break the pattern, but if they genuinely love you, they’ll adjust, and you’re helping them in the end by asking them to solve their own minor problems. 

There’s really nothing like watching a Two who’s developed their gifts of love and caring express all of that through their creativity. Dolly Parton is an example of this. She made a name through the soulful songs that could only be created by someone with the ability to feel love so truly and deeply. As a result, she’s amassed enough financial resources to have plenty to give without 1) leaving nothing for herself or 2) expecting others to reciprocate. The people she has in her life love her fiercely and freely because of the love she’s given without expectation of receiving.

Same for Stevie Wonder, another Two. As far as fictional characters go, you have the loyal servant Samwise Gamgee, whose love for his friend Frodo inspires love back (okay, shippers, I see you). And then you have Molly Weasley, whose love for her many children takes all sort of shapes, from knitting them every article of clothing they own to uttering the only instance of “you bitch” in the entire series. The love of the Two can be fierce when it needs to be.

Helpers may be sweet, but they are not weak. The opposite, in fact. They’re strong enough to love in a world that doesn’t always show them love back. They’ll fight for love. When they’re healthy, they’ll be the shoulder to cry on in the hard times and the stalwart defender of those who cannot defend themselves.

There’s that now famous quote from the late Fred Rogers. We’ve all heard it, but it’s worth reading again in the context of this discussion:

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of ‘disaster,’ I remember my mother’s words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers — so many caring people in this world.”

Helpers, you restore our faith in humanity. You are the heart of humankind.

So if you’re struggling to put the words down or market your book, see if any of these scripts are running on loop in your head:

“I should be helping [whoever], not selfishly writing a book.”

“No one wanted my last book, so why bother with this one?”

“This is the book where everyone is going to read it and stop loving me.”

“My family needs me more.”

“I shouldn’t need a break.”

“If I stopped writing, no one would care.”

“I haven’t earned my writing time.”

“I can write after I’ve completed X,Y,Z.”

“I’ll write once [whoever] is in a better situation and doesn’t need my assistance.”

“How can I write when there’s so much pain in the world and no one’s doing anything about it?”

Creativity is a human requirement like exercise or a healthy diet. If you’ve chosen writing as your passion (or it’s chosen you), then it is not selfish to meet your basic human need. It is also not selfish to meet it before you meet the needs of others. After all, the only person who can meet your creative needs is you.

Drawing conscious thought to our subconscious scripts is like drawing blood to an injury to help it heal. And that’s how we begin to break these cycles that hold us prisoner so we can move to healthier development levels of our type.

It’s also how we keep ourselves motivated when we’re Helpers.

So, if you’re a Two who’s struggling with motivation:

• Remember what your purpose for writing is and the caring world you want to create for your reader.  

• Find ways to connect with readers frequently (daily, even) throughout the writing process so you don’t have to wait months for any meaningful gratification.

• Express your needs to readers. They care about you more than you know, and you probably have a lot of Twos who would benefit from seeing that modeled.

• Learn to recognize when a relationship has fallen into a pattern of you giving more than you’re receiving and address it. (Maybe they’ll leave, or maybe they’ll change their behavior. Their response is outside of your control but standing up for yourself is not.)

• If you start to feel like a martyr, ask yourself who you’re trying to rescue and whether you’ve been helping or enabling, then set aside time ASAP to care for your own needs.

• Build relationships with other authors who will support you when it comes time to set and enforce difficult boundaries around your writing time.

• Schedule frequent time for self-care like exercise and sports, journaling, psychotherapy, preparing healthy meals for yourself, naps, and time with competent friends who make you feel unconditionally loved.

Next week, we’ll discuss how to find you writing motivation if you’re a Type 3, the Achiever. This is the type of Taylor Swift, Oprah, Odysseus, and Jay Gatsby.

I would absolutely love to hear your thoughts on this type. Maybe you just realized this describes you and you feel slightly attacked but equally seen. Maybe your spouse or parent or sibling is a Two and suddenly everything makes sense. I live for these insights, so send them my way. And if you have remaining questions, I’ll take those, too.

Motivation: Type One, the Reformer

There’s the syndrome that one out of every nine people, myself included, suffers from. It’s called Fuck It, I’ll Do It Myself, or FIIDIM. There’s a lesser version of it called Screw it, I’ll Do It Myself (SIIDIM), but the people I’ve met who suffer from it usually experience the more severe form.

Symptoms of FIIDIM include an overactive sense of personal obligation, perfectionism, acute judgement of self and others, headaches, resentment, and exhaustion.

This is not a real syndrome, obviously, but if you’re an Enneagram One, the Reformer, then you might have read all that with wide eyes as you realized someone had finally diagnosed you properly.

Welcome back to this series where we explore what motivates us and how we might build a life that works with our creative impulses rather than against them. To read the previous entries, go here: www.ffs.media/story-tips/category/Motivation+series

Today, we’re talking all about the Enneagram Ones, “the Reformers.” We’re going to dive deep into what motivates someone with these core fears and desires, and how we can build a nice little author life for ourselves if this is our type.

If this isn’t your type, I strongly suggest you read it anyway. Not only will it help you write strong Reformer characters, but I guarantee you have a One close to you in your life and understanding them will only strengthen the relationship.

At their core, Ones’ desire is to be good and moral and balanced. Their fear is that they’ll be bad or corrupt or imbalanced. Fairness is also important to this type, which connects back to the need for balance and righteousness and extends to a deep dedication to justice of all types.

I’ve noticed that when people first identify their type, they usually feel like it’s the worst one to have, but after doing some of the inner work on it, they begin to feel like it’s the best one to have as they realize what gifts they bring to the world. (Not to be a killjoy, but all types are equally important for a healthy world.)

Ones are frequently stereotyped as neat freaks, but I can say from personal experiencing of being a One that this is not necessarily true. I like when everything is organized, but my need to maintain order and improve things is focused on bigger issues than my desk or how the dishwasher is loaded. So, sometimes messier Ones are mistyped.

If you’re a One, it’s important to attach everything you do to a deeper motivation of making the world around you a better place. That’s what we do. It’s why we’re called the Reformers. Our ability to find the flaws and injustices of the world is our strength (even if it makes us feel like we’re taking crazy pills from time to time), and our ability to envision ways forward toward something more just, equitable, and good is the gift we can share with the world.

That is, of course, when we’re at our best.

Each of the nine types of the Enneagram has nine Levels of Development within it. Three are considered healthy, three are average, and three are unhealthy. We move through these levels at various moments of our lives, but we usually have an anchor point or baseline that’s our default. As we unlock some of the unconscious patterns associated with our type, our anchor point can move slowly upward toward healthier levels.

Most people, when beginning their Enneagram work, start at a low-average level of development (Level 5 or 6, where 1 is healthy and 9 is destructively unhealthy). We’ll occasionally dip into the unhealthy levels, and that’s usually ugly for everyone involved. We’ll also experience healthy moments of our type now and again, but more out of luck of circumstances than any conscious effort.

Below are descriptions of a One in the three categories of development (healthy, average, unhealthy):

Healthy: Possesses deep wisdom, conducts oneself with integrity, works toward building a better world, stands up for what they believe in despite the personal cost, inspires others to be more merciful and less judgmental, treats self with mercy and acceptance.
Average: Striving hard worker, self-controlled but often rigid, critical and judgmental of self and others, functions on basis of personal obligation.

Unhealthy: Self-righteous and condemning, obsessive, hypocritical with incoherent moral beliefs, a sense of entitlement to punish others, downright merciless.

If you’re not a One, you’re now thinking of someone you know who is. Or maybe even a character. As you can see, Ones can make great heroes or villains in your books, depending on what development level they most often inhabit.

Okay, so how do you use this information to motivate yourself as a writer?

The trick is simple: You need to be writing books that you believe will make the world a better place by existing and attracting readers. Writing to trend in some genre you don’t care about with stock characters that go through the motions will not be enough to get you out of your warm bed in the morning.

Write stories that activate those healthy parts of yourself. Write stories that require characters to stand up for what they believe in. Show your readers, through the art of fiction, how we can fix the things that are broken in the world, in others, and in ourselves. Inspire others to love themselves, imperfections and all. You are a fixer and healer by nature. Use it for good, not evil.

When you start to feel less motivated, it’s usually because you’ve lost sight of the purpose and importance of the work you’re creating. You might start thinking, Nothing in the world would change if I never published another book, so why bother?

Exactly! Nothing will change, and the way things are isn’t working. But your voice, your stories, can push the world toward something better. You can’t do it all on your own, but you can do a part of it. That’s all you need to do because 1/9th of the population is a Reformer like you, so you’re not in this alone.  

I have a sticky note on my computer that says, “What the fuck else are you going to do with your LIFE?!” In typical One fashion, I approach myself with a little tough love and pitch-black humor, but the message reminds me of my sense of purpose, and that’s why it’s there where I see it every day.

As a Reformer, I write stories to change hearts and minds. Life is short, and I want to make a positive impact, and this is the best way I’ve found to do it using my talents. The positive emails from readers only confirm that I’m on the right track. But speaking unpopular truths and criticizing the status quo isn’t without its punishments (and one-star reviews), and when those happen, I need the reminder: What the fuck else would you do with your life, Claire? I can’t come up with a more worthy way to spend my years, and so I get back to work.

Pay attention to where your mind goes when you’re writing. Are you having trouble getting to the next scene because you’ve slipped into harsh self-judgment? Are you working on projects because you feel like you should or because you’re passionate about them?

Every type has a wake-up call associated with it to tell us we’re plummeting down the development levels and it’s time to pause, take a deep breath, and reevaluate some of the premises we’re working from. For the One, the red flag is personal obligation. This is that FIIDIM syndrome I mentioned, and the reason we need to watch out for it is because personal obligation invalidates our desire for boundaries around our energy. And when boundaries are ignored or infringed upon, resentment seeps in. Over time, it becomes the water we swim in.

Resentment is something Ones really need to watch out for. It’s our trap. It sends us plummeting into those unhealthy levels at breakneck speed if we’re not careful, and once you’re there, you’re not going to be able to write anything your healthy self would be proud of, if you can even get yourself to put down words at all.

Combating this starts with not agreeing to things that don’t move you deeply and engage your higher self just because you think they need to get done. There is so much good you could do in every corner of the world and in every relationship you have. Don’t be afraid to narrow it down and put your energy toward the things that matter to you most.

There’s really nothing like watching a One who’s developed their gifts of wisdom and discretion and mercy pick up a cause and champion it. Nelson Mandela is an example of this. So is Elizabeth Warren. As far as fictional characters go, you have Bruce Wayne and Hermione Granger. Batman fights corruption (especially this new version, which Ones should definitely check out), and Hermione fights for house elf rights (and constantly follows her conscience in tricky matters of the wizarding world).

You might think that Ones aren’t a lot of fun to be around or that they’re necessarily overly serious killjoys, but that’s not the case. When we’re around our close friends, we tend to resemble the fun-loving Seven, and there are plenty of famous comedians who are Reformers, like Jerry Seinfeld, Tina Fey, and Bo Burnham. We just do fun and comedy our own way. But everyone can rest assured that when a One is having fun, it’s harmless fun, because they’ve already put it through extensive moral vetting.

Laughter is also an essential part of a healthy One. You’ll never stop noticing the flaws in yourself and others, sorry. It just ain’t in the cards for you. But if you learn to laugh at your own flaws and the foibles of mankind, you’ll do yourself (and your nervous system) a huge favor.

 I figure I’ll end each of these emails with some subconscious scripts that might trip up people of this type and sap our motivation if left unchecked and unquestioned. If you’re struggling to put the words down or market your book, see if any of these are running on loop in your head:

“Nobody cares if I publish this or not.”

“Why am I writing made-up stories when there are so many problems in the world that need fixing?”

“This book is garbage and I’m just going to embarrass myself.”

“I can believe I agreed to this project. How dare someone ask this much of me.”

“I can’t move onto the next scene until this one is fixed/perfect.”

“Nothing I do is going to make any difference in this screwed up world anyway.”

All of these statements are false. You may not believe me, but try entertaining the idea for a while and see how your life would feel if you stopped thinking these things. (Spoiler: much lighter and more joyful.)

Your inner critic is trying to protect you from your worst nightmare of being bad or corrupt, but it’s going about it in the least helpful way possible. Try summoning these negative thoughts to the forefront and saying, “Thank you for trying to protect me, but I don’t need that belief anymore.”

Drawing conscious thought to our subconscious scripts is like drawing blood to an injury to help it heal. And that’s how we begin to break these cycles that hold us prisoner so we can move to healthier development levels of our type.

It’s also how we keep ourselves motivated when we’re Reformers. Out with the critical, in with the purpose-driven.

So, if you’re a One who’s struggling with motivation:

• Remember what your purpose for writing is and what you want to change for the better in this world.

• Get your karate hands up when you realize you’re functioning with a sense of personal obligation rather than passion, and either drop that project like it’s hot or find a way it can support your goals of making the world a better place.

• Watch out when you become overly critical of others. It causes you to be equally critical of yourself, and that is detrimental to creative work.

• Learn to laugh at yourself. The hardest belly laughs I ever experience are at my own expense.

• If you find yourself telling lots of stories that paint you as the hero, it might mean that you’re feeling more like a villain and need to stop and reassess. Great insight can be found in those moments that you can stitch into your current book.

• Build relationships with other people who share your passion for causes so you remember you don’t have to do it all on your own.

• Schedule frequent time for rest. You’re an intense person and when you commit yourself to something, you go hard. You can’t do that forever. Rest is an essential part of your work if you want it to continue long term.

Next week, we’ll discuss how to find you writing motivation if you’re a Type 2, the Helper. This is the type of Dolly Parton, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Samwise Gamgee, and Molly Weasley.

I would absolutely love to hear your thoughts on this type. Maybe you just realized this describes you and you feel slightly attacked but equally seen. Maybe your spouse or parent or sibling is a One and suddenly everything makes sense. I live for these insights, so send them my way. And if you have remaining questions, I’ll take those, too.

Motivation: The Nine Types

What was the last thing you had on your to-do list that you just couldn’t get yourself to do no matter what? Was it writing an email to your list? Scheduling social media posts? Setting up Amazon ads? Revising the next scene?

We all experience that. An item keeps getting pushed back and back and back. It can become baffling, but the cause is usually the same. We’re not discriminating enough about what we let on our to-do list. It becomes a “should do” list. We hear about something authors should do and so we add it to the list without a second thought about whether it’s right for us or we’re excited to do it.

Then it sits on our list, collecting cobwebs and haunting us, adding to the feeling that we’re always a thousand tasks behind.

Why are some tasks so much harder for us to do than others?

Rarely is it the case that we don’t want to be writers anymore, that the love it gone, that if only we wanted to be writers badly enough we would launch into some sort of high-activity frenzy in pursuit of our dreams. Leave that kind of obsession to Stephen King protagonists, frankly.

One reason why we struggle with our to-do list is that we’re not internally motivated to do the tasks. They don’t stoke our core desire or trigger our core fear enough for us to find them engaging at all.

This means that unless you can connect the items to your core motivation or create external motivators (the old stick and carrot, remember?), they’re either never getting done, or when you do them, the most emotional satisfaction you can hope to get will come solely from that power-drunk feeling of ticking boxes.

So, how do we know what our core fear and core desire are, so we can pander to them  bully them into submission work with them rather than against them?

Welcome back to this series where we explore what motivates us and how we might build a life that works with our creative impulses rather than against them. To read the previous entries, go here: www.ffs.media/story-tips/category/Motivation+series

The Enneagram is a motivation framework that dates back in various forms for hundreds of years. Some people claim there are traces of it from thousands of years ago, but I don’t personally have enough evidence to support that, and I don’t think it matters. What does matter is that it’s a psychological tool that helps us understand the driving forces that make people do what they do.

But most importantly, it’s a language system that helps us understand why we do what we do. You’ll see a lot of familiar psychological terms in it like fear, desire, liberation, stress, growth, fixation, sense of self, and so forth. It’s not reinventing anything, just cataloging and organizing what we already know about psychological patterns associated with each core motivation.

Personal improvement has always been a focus of mine. I was a severe perfectionist in my younger years, and to those who would tell me “perfection isn’t realistic” or (since I’m in Texas) “Only Jesus is perfect,” I would simply think, Sounds like you’re not trying hard enough.

As you probably guessed, I was miserable for most of my life. I developed chronic acid reflux by age 17. When I wasn’t driving myself too hard, I could be found telling myself how bad of a person I was, or simply going through the motions of the straight-A student while secretly longing to be committed to a mental institution so I had a valid excuse to rest.

And I didn’t understand any of it. I thought that this was what life was like for everyone, which left me baffled as to how people could act indifferent toward things I cared so much about.

Maybe this sounds familiar. All I’m describing here is the state of being trapped so totally in unconscious patterns that it’s impossible to imagine any other way of being.

“This isn’t working for me, but I have no idea how else to be.” It’s a common refrain. We all hit these walls throughout our life.

I tried journaling and therapy, and that helped some, but ultimately what helped me hack my way through my limiting belief patterns (after finally seeing them for the first time) was learning about the Enneagram.

The word motivation comes from the Late Latin word movere which means “to move.” It’s how you move things. It’s motion. How do you get yourself from the comfort of your bed each morning into motion? What moves you to the computer to get those words done? That’s the question we’re asking here.

It’s simple: either a fear or a desire causes us to move. Those are the two options. Maybe you’re afraid of running out of money if you don’t publish your next book on time. Maybe you’re fueled by the desire to find yourself on stage in front of thousands of people someday, discussing your latest release. Maybe the dog is whining for food, and you want nothing more than to shut them up (just for example, say). These are all valid reasons to get out of bed.

Sometimes, though, they run thin.

Figuring out which fear and which desire are most near and dear to your heart is the trick.

The Enneagram includes 9 types of these “core motivations.”

“Only 9 types?” Yes. Everything can be reduced to these nine. Wait until you read about them before protesting.

According to the Riso-Hudson (RHETI) model, the Enneagram types are:

One, the Reformer

Two, the Helper

Three, the Achiever

Four, the Individualist

Five, the Investigator

Six, the Loyalist

Seven, the Enthusiast

Eight, the Challenger

Nine, the Peacemaker

Each type has a core fear and core desire that are essentially two side of the same coin. For instance, the Investigator’s core fear is to be incompetent, and their core desire is to be competent or self-sufficient. I’ve found it useful for those getting familiar with this to boil the motivation down to a central concern for each type. It’s a smaller portion to bite into. In the case of the Investigator, the central concern would simply be “competency.”

Below are the types with their central concerns. The added words in parentheses can be helpful to triangulate the concept.

One, the Reformer

Central concern: Goodness (or Integrity, Morality)

Two, the Helper

Central concern: Love (or Help, Worth)

Three, the Achiever

Central concern: Value (or Worthiness, Success)

Four, the Individualist

Central concern: Significance (or Identity)

Five, the Investigator

Central concern: Competence (or Self-sufficiency, Resourcefulness)

Six, the Loyalist

Central concern: Support (or Security, Loyalty)

Seven, the Enthusiast

Central concern: Satisfaction (or Pleasure/Pain)

Eight, the Challenger

Central concern: Power (or Protection, Autonomy)

Nine, the Peacemaker

Central concern: Connection (or Peace, Harmony)

This doesn’t mean that only Sevens want satisfaction. All types like feeling satisfied, just as all types dislike being denied satisfaction or trapped in a state of deprivation. And it doesn’t mean that Sevens only want satisfaction and don’t care about anything else. But when given the choice between an opportunity to be satisfied and anything else, the Seven will consciously or subconsciously choose satisfaction.

Don’t worry if this seems oversimplified because this is a 101-level use of the Enneagram. The framework can become as complex as you let it. But we’re not going there yet.

The discovery I made that changed the trajectory of my life was that I was a One, the Reformer. Have been my whole life (our type is a birth-to-death thing).

My problematic patterns were a result of my central concern of Goodness. I was afraid of being bad or corrupt, and the messages I received early in my life (who knows where, precisely, but they were lodged in there) were that to be a good person, I had to be a perfect person. There was no reward in my mind for being good, doing the right thing, acting with integrity. It was the standard. Meanwhile, every so-called imperfection was points off. When I received a 99 on a test, all I saw was the point off. I’d failed to achieve perfection, in that case. I was bad.

And now? I let that go. Sure, I sometimes feel the twinge, but it’s a conscious impulse now, so I can see it for what it is. By noticing this pattern over and over again, I’ve unraveled it. Now, I understand that I don’t have to be perfect to be perfectly constructed for some bigger purpose. That may sound obvious, but to a Reformer prior to her Enneagram journey, it’s anything but.

These are the types of forehead slapper moments of liberation that come from learning about our Enneagram type. Before, I didn’t see a way out of feeling the way I felt. Now, I not only feel better, but I know what it looks like for someone like me to be emotionally healthy. I can see the next step toward a purposeful and empowered life for me. When things start to feel off and wrong and miserable, I can take a step back, identify the problem using the framework, and adjust accordingly.

Over the next nine weeks, I’m going to break down each of the Enneagram types for you and talk about how each kind can design and align a career using that inner core motivation. The more we tap into that, the easier everything becomes, including but not limited to your writing and marketing.

I encourage you to read and learn about every type, even if you already know which one is yours. While this is a tool for self-discovery, I’ve also found it to be a great resource for understanding your relationships (and their naturally arising conflicts) with other types.

Learning all nine types will help you make sense of your co-writers, your readers, your characters, your marriage, your parents, your enemies, and the woman having a meltdown at the grocery store. That small bit of understanding can make the difference between reacting on impulse or responding thoughtfully and in terms the other person understands.

Next week, we’ll start with how to find you writing motivation if you’re a Type 1, the Reformer. This is my type, but it’s also the type of Nelson Mandela, Tiny Fey, Atticus Finch, Hermione Granger, and Osama bin Laden. (Gotta take the bad with the good.)

If you don’t want to miss any installments of this series on motivation, be sure to whitelist contact@ffs.media by adding me as a contact. And if you know of someone who might enjoy this series (alternate motive: you’ll have someone to discuss it with), they can sign up to my list and skip the onboarding sequence by going to www.ffs.media/readnow. 

If you want to find your Enneagram type now, the best way to start is to take a test and then read about your top three or four scores to see which one feels the most accurate. The test at www.enneagraminstitute.com is my favorite, but it does cost $12 (I get no kickbacks from your purchase). That’s not nothing, but it’s cheaper than therapy.