Do You Have Any Feet Left to Shoot?
I was wondering if you have any advice to give a Six who's having a hard time getting out
of a rut.
One of the characters in a Nelson Demille novel asked another if he had "any feet left to shoot." The
person in question was the hero of the story in every sense of the word, and his
metaphorical "shot in the foot" referred to how recklessly he
exposed himself to gangsters, because it was the "right" thing to do. So
I'm not being literal in the title to this essay, although the metaphorical
"wound" can be painful for
Sixes,
and it's easy to forget how the shooting was self-fulfilling. The positive side of
this phenomenon is a willingness to challenge I call the
Patrick Henry Syndrome: "Give me
liberty or give me death!" (It's interesting, given the Six's focus on
hidden agendas, that Patrick Henry also said, "Eternal vigilance is the price of
freedom.")
Sixes typically hold high standards for leadership, their own and others,
and want to be helpful to their bosses. In personal relationships they may even seek
partners who need help, and then keep the cycle alive by criticizing their partners for
their failings. On the up side they're giving potentially useful feedback (and Sixes
are good observers about what makes relationships work). At the same time, constantly reminding your boss or your life partner how s/he could be a better
person has its obvious pitfalls. A Six client, for example, took great pride in his ability to pull
projects together across functions, and couldn't understand why he received so little
recognition and couldn't seem to get ahead in the organization. Yet every
time he and I met he had another complaint he'd raised with his boss (a
Five): "He's got to see that holing himself up in his office won't help
him. He needs to wander around and let people get to know him. He never
gives me or the others any praise," etc., etc., etc. Another Six
found herself bouncing from job to job because she eventually got into an argument with
her boss over some injustice and quit in anger (and without another job waiting on the
side).
In
Beginning Your Enneagram Journey, Loretta Brady
outlines a
process for self-observation that gently reminds us of the joys and difficulties of all
nine styles. She says Sixes "offer trust and reliability in
their friendships. And they seem able to be committed to others through all the ups
and downs of relating..." However, "Because
safety is tied to friendship, any change in affection is very
threatening...."
Sixes tend to conclude "I'm somehow lacking and may be abandoned,"
but instead of staying with their feelings and embracing their fear, they create a cover that makes it seem as if they
know what's going on. This cover Brady refers to is associated with a psychological
mechanism known as "projection" -- the act of observing and reacting
to something in others we fail to see in ourselves. Sixes certainly aren't the only ones to use projection, but they sometimes seem to have a
corner on the market. As pointed out by William Miller in Chapter 7 of
Meeting the Shadow (edited by
Zweig and Abrams), projections can be positive as well as negative. So the fact that
Sixes make heroes of certain people, for example, may be a projection of their own
positive traits held in their unconscious. More often than not, however, our
projections are negative. Some aspects of projections truly fit the other person (e.g.,
the Five boss mentioned above was a
little stingy with praise). You're probably projecting when your feelings about
others are unusually strong and persistent. If you
can't let go of focusing on how stingy with praise your boss is, for example, chances are you
carry the same trait to some degree.
Sixes don't usually face the fact that their criticisms are held toward people
they desperately want to like them. Nor do they realize the degree to which
they give away their power placing all that energy
outside
themselves, instead of learning to love and trust themselves. It takes
real
courage to look inside, because to get there you've also got to face what you
don't like about
yourself.
Instead of always focusing on the lion, gazelles need to turn inward to
embrace their own strengths and weaknesses, and deal with the lion only when they have
to. Of many excellent self-empowerment strategies, here are two of
the best for Sixes:
-
Get feedback from others about how they see you, and
listen to it. Don't try to explain or defend
yourself. Just try it on for size for a few days, giving yourself permission to see
some things about yourself you may not like, as well as some strengths you find it hard to
believe about yourself. (Sixes do a lot of
self-doubting.)
-
Notice when you get really "hooked" by someone's behavior, assume
that your reaction is partly projection of some unknown part of your own unconscious, and
"bring it home."
For example, if you find your wife or girlfriend to be
"too critical," accept that as partly true but also "try it on"
yourself. Notice the ways you're critical (of her, for example). If you think your boss is too stingy with praise, accept that as partly true but "try
it on" yourself. Notice when you're stingy with praise. (And we know
already you're stingy with praise for your boss.)
Over time you'll develop the capability to
know what fits you and
what doesn't. When you catch on to a projection, you'll find the strength of
your emotion toward the other person lessens and you'll begin to see the unwanted trait in
yourself. That's O.K. This doesn't make you a bad person; it just makes you
more fully human. And the more you accept yourself as you are, the less those
unwanted behaviors will own you.
