Typology

Our greatest legacies are not just in what we achieve, but in the indomitable spirit we demonstrate and pass on to the ones we love. Living a life of purpose could be the greatest gift you can give to the people you love. 

In today’s episode, pastor and motivational speaker, Jay Hewitt shares his deeply personal journey of facing a terminal brain cancer diagnosis at thirty-seven and opens up about the big questions that challenge him and the profound lessons his diagnosis has taught him about vulnerability, deep connections, resilience, fatherhood, and faith.

Tune into this powerful conversation that reminds us of what truly is important – our connection to others. 

-------------

Learn more about Jay Hewitt at https://www.jayhewitt.org or follow him @jayhewitt on Instagram and YouTube. 

P.S. Don't forget to follow Typology Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player to get weekly episodes in your feed.

How can we use the Enneagram to understand and navigate our emotions? Each of us has a unique emotional wiring that has shaped our personality. But oftentimes, we undervalue the importance of our feelings. “Feelings are just as much a gift from God as thoughts,” explains Dr. Bill Gualtiere, “[...] our thoughts influence our feelings. But our feelings influence our thoughts also, and our feelings and emotions are very biological." 

Drs. Bill and Kristi Gaultiere join me for an Enneagram-filled conversation about the significance of empathy for emotional and spiritual development.  They share the emotional alarms and soul care practices for each type, and offer a unique map that uncovers the core feelings associated with each Enneagram type.  

To learn more about Drs. Kristi and Bill Gaultiere, visit their website here, connect with them on social media @soulshepherding, listen to their Soul Talks podcast, or grab a copy of their new book, Healthy Feelings, Thriving Faith: Growing Emotionally and Spiritually through the Enneagram.

The metric of success is not tied to money or fame, it’s living up to what you’re called to do. Founder and CEO of The Cupcake Collection, Mignon Francois, joins us for a delightful conversation about how she turned her last $5 into a $10 million dollar cupcake empire.  Now she’s helping other people learn what they can do if only they believe in themselves.  

“Everything is already here that will allow you to become or to create whatever it is that you decided in your heart that you want to do,” says Mignon. “It’s about finding joy in the process of being who you were called to be.” 

Not only does she offer a bit of wisdom gleaned from her life experiences, but she shares her love for the Enneagram and how she uses it in her personal and professional life. We help her hone in on her type by digging into the similarities and differences between an Enneagram 2 and Enneagram 4. 

To learn more about Mignon Francois, order your own cupcakes, or grab a copy of her new book, Made From Scratch: Finding Success Without A Recipe, visit www.thecupcakecollection.com 

As human beings we’re wired for connection – to be seen and known fully – yet loved anyway.  When we lack this true connection, we begin to drift into a feeling of loneliness or isolation, both of which have been proven to impact our physical and mental health. 

Today’s guest, Justin Whitmel Earley, explains the difference between social isolation and loneliness, then implores us to prioritize healthy, deep connections with others stating, “The difference between those of us who are persevering or getting crushed by life is whether or not you’re walking through life beside close friends, people who really deeply know you.  Because we all experience hard things, we all experience suffering, we all have mental health struggles.  But if you walk through it alone, you will be crushed.”

He also shares a few strategies we can all use to foster deep friendships from his new book, Made for People: Why We Drift into Loneliness and How to Fight for a Life of Friendship. 

I hope this episode encourages you to stop and take an inventory of your own connections.

Philip Yancey is an award-winning author, renowned theologian, and influential speaker who has written 13 Gold Medallion award-winning books and won two ECPA Book of the Year awards for What’s So Amazing About Grace? And The Jesus I Never Knew. 

Today, I had the wonderful opportunity to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the bestselling book, What’s So Amazing About Grace? with author Philip Yancey.  The question is just as relevant now as it was when the book was first published.  It still holds true that the most important things in life are love, forgiveness and grace. Regardless of your religious or spiritual beliefs, Philip invites us to question how we understand grace and how we extend it to ourselves and others.

Learn more about Philip Yancey and his works at: 

www.philipyancey.com

www.facebook.com/philipyancey

www.instagram.com/philipyanceyofficial/

www.twitter.com/philipyancey

What’s So Amazing About Grace?

“We have three energetic engines of what it means to be human. One is our feeling, one is our thinking, and one is our behaving. When those three things are integrated, the way that we’re kind of wired, when we kind of again walk into the party and we’re really behaving and thinking and feeling all in alignment, this is the fullest expression of a human being.” explains Dr. Julia DiGangi. 

Our new friend. Dr. Julia DiGangi brought the conversation today! We dig into the emotional, cognitive, and behavioral structure of the personality and what it means to live in alignment with all three. She is the author of the amazing new book Energy Rising: the Neuroscience of Leading with Emotional Power. 

If the content and the spirit of this episode has not convinced you to go by her book, please rewind to the beginning of the interview and listen more carefully because it has been such a privilege and a pleasure to have this time with Dr. DiGangi.

-----------------------------------

Learn more about Dr. Julia DiGangi

https://www.neurohealthpartners.com/dr-jdg

https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliadigangi

https://www.instagram.com/drjuliadigangi

Sixes have excellent analytical minds, are great strategists, troubleshooters, problem-solvers, and of course, see worst-case scenarios that other people don't see. The passion of the Six is fear which is often experienced as anxiety…anxiety that the unexpected could happen at any time. But once they launch a mental narrative in their head of all that could go wrong, these fictional stories can take on lives of their own and can grow and crowd out what’s actually happening.  

Today, we revisit my conversation with Jeff Chu to explore the complexities of The Loyalist, and how knowing his Enneagram type has allowed him to identify those aspects of his personality that are responses to things he's been through in the past and work through them.    

----------------

Jeff Chu is a writer, reporter, Editor-at-large at Travel + Leisure, and Teacher in residence at Crosspointe Church. His reporting and writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Travel+Leisure, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and Modern Farmer. When big publishers were still starting magazines and pouring millions of dollars into them, Jeff was an editor on the launch team of the now-defunct Conde Nast Portfolio. And before that, he spent seven years at Time magazine, where he really received his journalistic education. Jeff was a London-based web producer and staff writer.

In 2021, Jeff helped turn Rachel Held Evans’ latest work-in-progress into a finished book titled, “Wholehearted Faith.”  He wove the words of her partial manuscript with other unpublished writings to create a rich collection of essays that ask candid questions about the stories we’ve been told—and the stories we tell—about our faith, our selves, and our world. 

There’s no such thing as a pure personality type. We’re all a mash up of two types – your dominant type and your dominant wing. Knowing your wing is important because they reveal a whole different side of your personality and can explain contradictory elements within your personality. Enneagram Fives are edged between the passionate, intense Four on one side and the loyal but anxious Six on the other. Depending on their dominant wing, these two can look very different.

Today, we explore how an Enneagram Five with a dominant Four wing processes and experiences things very intensely on both the intellectual and feeling planes. Jason Adam Miller describes this complicated relationship as “as a civil war between the two.”

Tune in for an inside look through the lens of an Enneagram 5w4 and how Jason has learned to balance the two.

---

Jason Adam Miller is the founder and lead pastor of South Bend City Church, an eclectic Christian community known for its thoughtful teaching, inclusive vision, and commitment to its city context. An advocate for artists and peacemakers, his work beyond South Bend focuses on cultural headwaters and conflict zones, where he serves an international constituency of leaders. He holds a master’s degree in theology from the University of Notre Dame.

https://www.jasonadammiller.com/

https://www.instagram.com/jasonadammiller/

https://southbendcitychurch.com/

When the World Breaks: The Surprising Hope and Subversive Promises in the Teachings of Jesus

Burnout is more common than you think and the rates continue to rise. So, what constitutes burnout and how do we combat it?  First, we need to understand the stressors that lead to burnout in the first place. 

According to physician, executive coach, and speaker Dr. Neha Sangwan, “burnout is due to prolonged stress and an ongoing net drain of energy on one or more of five levels: physical, mental, emotional, social, and spiritual. When we burn out, our productivity suffers, our health declines, and we’re more reactive in our relationships.”

In today’s episode, Dr. Sangwan shares the story of her own wake-up call, breaks down the phases of burnout, and provides examples from her new book, Powered by Me: From Burned Out to Fully Charged at Work and in Life, of how to assess the five levels of burnout so you can take practical steps to replenish your energy and heal. 

To learn more about Dr. Sangwan, visit her website or grab a copy of her book on Amazon.

What is the gut-brain connection, and what role does it play in living a healthy and fulfilling life? Functional medicine expert Dr. Will Cole joins us to talk about his newest book, Gut-Feelings: Healing the Shame-Fueled Relationship Between What You Eat and How You Feel, and how to heal our bodies through nutrition.

Versed in the Enneagram, Dr. Cole shares how it has helped him educate and empower others by learning to communicate with others in a way they can receive it.  

"My Enneagram Five-ness as far as being a researcher really does suit me well, and I think that's why I've been such a voracious consumer of health information and research [...] but, there's this duality, bidirectional relationship between what I do as science and the art," explains Dr. Cole. "The art part of what we do is holding the space in between the words and really understanding how can I get this health information and help them to understand it, to empower them, to give them agency over their health, and to really help them apply these things so it's sustainable and practical, for them to reclaim their quality of life?"

Tune into this fascinating conversation, then jump over to Amazon to grab your copy of "Gut Feelings."

To be human is to suffer. Most people try to bypass suffering or live with it in isolation. But true healing happens when you acknowlege its presence, learn to be with it, and allow others to come alongside you in your pain. 

“Suffering is this whole notion of my perception that, 'I’m alone with my pain.’ So suffering is a direct function of the degree to which I am isolated with my pain,” explains Dr. Curt Thompson. “If I practice allowing others to be with me, it changes the nature of how I practice anticipating the future. And this is how ‘I’ don’t form hope for me…’we’ form hope for me.”

In today’s episode, Dr. Curt Thompson returns to discuss his incredible new book, The Deepest Place: Suffering and the Formation of Hope. We explore the intersection of faith and neuroscience, unraveling the profound impact of suffering and the formation of hope. 

To learn more about Dr. Curt Thompson, visit his website or grab a copy of his new book.

Does your internal world align with your external world? If not, how can the Enneagram help you harness the vast treasures of instinctual insights and inspirations on a regular basis to realize personal and professional success? 

Liz Tran, Executive Coach and author of The Karma of Success, joins me for a wonderful conversation about tapping into your inner genius in order to capitalize on what you’re truly capable of. She shares the four spiritual strategies that foster reflection and help you infuse intuition and creativity into a career of purpose and joy. 

----------

Liz Tran is the founder of Reset, an executive coaching company to CEOs and founders. Before founding Reset, Liz spent over a decade working in the tech industry, most recently as the only female executive at a leading venture capital firm. She is a trained meditation teacher and Reiki Master and studied yoga at the Samyak Ashram. She lives in New York City and Norfolk, Connecticut with her husband, Dev, and their dog, Grover.  To learn more about Liz Tran and The Karma of Success, visit her website or follow her on Instagram. 

We live in a world where we are faced with profound suffering on the news all day long and we see too much suffering of the world. But how do we take the unexpected things that happen to us and somehow breathe new life into them?

Author of The Gift of the Unexpected: Discovering Who You Were Meant to Be When Life Goes Off Plan, Jillian Benfield believes, “No matter what your unexpected circumstance is–you don’t have to classify it as good–but I do think that good can come out of it and that [good] is that we can change through our unexpected circumstances if we’re willing to go all the way through it.” 

Listen as Jillian shares the unexpected gift that helped shift her perspective and find true self-worth. 

----------------- 

Jillian Benfield is a former journalist and news anchor. She holds a broadcast journalism degree from the University of Georgia. As a freelance writer, her essays about living an unexpected life have appeared on sites such as TODAY, Good Morning America, Yahoo! News, and ABC News. Jillian regularly advocates for the full inclusion of people with disabilities in her writings, community, and as part of the National Down Syndrom Congress’s National Down Syndrom Advocacy Coalition. Jillian and her husband, Andy, and their three children make their home on Florida’s Space Coast. 

We’re kicking off Season 7 with a topic I’ve not yet discussed on the show: Holy Ideas.  Holy Ideas remind us of the powerful spiritual roots of the Enneagram. They are great, universal, spiritual truths that we forgot or lost touch with, as the ego created an overlay of personality. It’s a challenging concept, but today’s guest, renowned Enneagram teacher Renée Rosario walks us through the Holy Ideas for each type and reminds us to “relax with awareness into this idea that there is a power greater than us, that is actually taking care of all the things we think we have to take care of in our type.”

Renée Rosario is a Core Faculty member of The Narrative Enneagram and a transpersonal, body-centered psychotherapist in Boulder, CO. She has facilitated workshops and classes for over 20 years and loves to work in the Narrative Tradition where all are students and teachers of one another. Renée has been a mindfulness instructor at Naropa University and a peacemaker trained in contemplative social action through the Peacemaker Institute.

Her upcoming two classes, Narrative Enneagram Intensive Part 1 and Narrative Enneagram Learning Community will take place on August 4-6 in Menlo Park, CA or you can attend online.  Learn more at www.narrativeenneagram.org.

As Richard Rohr says, Ones are childlike and full of joy and wonder at the world and creation.  But for Ones, that sense of joy has been lost.  Instead, they suppress their own feelings and focus on being good and doing what is right.  They feel a sense of duty and responsibility and may harbor resentment toward others who don’t see things the right way – their way. 

But what would it look like if Ones reclaimed their childlike wonder? When Ones move toward health, they begin to let judgments go and become more at ease with imperfection. They begin to truly quiet that inner critic and turn it into an inner encourager.

Our guest today, Julianne Cusick, shares how her journey toward self-awareness and self-knowledge as an Enneagram One has allowed her to prioritize relationships over perfection and has given her permission to have fun dancing in the kitchen.

Julianne Cusick is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, a Certified EMDR Therapist (Maiberger Institute), and an AANE Certified Neurodiverse Couples Coach. She thrives on personal and professional growth.

A dynamic and engaging communicator, Julianne speaks to Christian organizations, women’s groups, and retreats – all from the voice of hope and her own story of healing and redemption.

She is a mother of two who enjoys gardening, reading, and spending time with her family and friends. For more about Julianne or Restoring the Soul, visit www.restoringthesoul.com.

Enneagram Threes focus on outstanding performance, being perceived as successful, and avoiding failure at all costs. They believe that love comes from achievement, image, and status and have the tendency to neglect or ignore the personal needs of self and others.

But when Threes move toward health, they move to the high side of Six.  When that happens, they no longer need to “drive the bus” or flaunt success. They are so good at helping others live to their full potential and be successful in their own right and not have it be all about their own success.

In this episode, Lisa Whelchel discusses her journey toward being a healthy Three.  Listen in as she touches on her subtypes, how she identifies her True Self, and how the Enneagram has impacted her life as an introverted Type 3 with a 2 wing.  

Lisa is an actress, author, international speaker, and life coach. Perhaps best known for her starring role as Blair Warner on NBC’s “The Facts of Life” for nine years, she’s also the author of “Creative Correction,” which has sold over 200,000 copies and has written more than a dozen books.  Currently, Lisa is a certified CoActive Life Coach and focuses most of her time these days coming alongside others on their transformational journey to remembering their True Self.

For more information please visit www.LisaWhelchel.com and www.ContigoLifeCoach.com.

Have you ever wondered why you like sad music, find comfort or inspiration in a rainy day, or react intensely to music, art, nature, and beauty?  If so, you may identify with the bittersweet state of mind. 

Bestselling author Susan Cain joins Anthony and I in a deep exploration of the important topic of bittersweet. She explains that “as humans, we enter this world with a sense of longing and separation from a more perfect and beautiful world. We come into the world with this knowledge and with these kinds of holy tears, you could call them, and this is one of the best and most beautiful things about us, the fact that we feel this [..], the fact of wanting to glimpse it and occasionally glimpsing it is that that's actually the secret fuel behind our creativity and our capacity for love.”

 Tune in for this incredible conversation that puts words to the pining and longing of Enneagram Fours. 

Susan Cain is the author of the bestsellers Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole and Quiet: The Power of Introverts in A World That Can’t Stop Talking, which spent eight years on the New York Times best seller list and has been translated into 40 languages. Susan’s TED talks have been viewed over 40 million times. LinkedIn named her the Top 6th Influencer in the World, just behind Richard Branson and Melinda French Gates. Susan partners with Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant and Dan Pink to curate the Next Big Idea Book Club. They donate all their proceeds to children’s literacy programs.

Some of my favorite interviews on Typology happen when a guest comes on thinking they’re one type but they present differently. Today is one of those conversations. We start the show by talking to author, speaker, and social media personality, Carlos Whittaker, exploring how he determined his type and what struck him the most about being an Enneagram 9. Not long into our conversation, we begin to unravel the lines between Enneagram 3s, 6s, and 9s and dig into a brief typing interview. It’s an engaging conversation you don’t want to miss.

We also pivot to talk about his new book, ​How to Human: Three Ways to Share Life Beyond What Distracts, Divides, and Disconnects​, where Carlos shares the transformative power of embracing human connection and learning to navigate difficult things with a little more grace. To learn more about Carlos and his new book, visit his website ​here​.

Listen ​now​ on your favorite podcast player.

When human language can no longer carry the freight of an idea or a spiritual truth, you have to default to metaphor or to another language that can do that job. That language might be sculpture, film, music, or art…whatever medium can express things that discursive analytical language cannot.

No other Enneagram type can match the Enneagram Four’s creative gift for giving language to ideas others of us can’t find words for. Today’s guests, Craig Lamar Brown and Andrea Summer share how they used their strengths to inspire others to find common ground and have healthy conversations about race, gentrification, and interracial dating in the church through their new movie, Between Mercy and Me.  

Tune in as we unpack the challenges they faced while working together, how and why Fours can self-destruct, and using art as an outlet for processing emotions. 

Let’s face it, relationships are complicated.  But the more you know about yourself and your partner, the easier it is to communicate and navigate conflict. This week, Mike Alexander, Enneagram Six returns along with his wife, Enneagram One, and psychotherapist Cheryl, for a powerful conversation about the dynamics of their relationship and their own journey of healing within their types. 

We dig into a few of the challenges they face and learn how figuring out the inner workings of themselves and each other helped salvage their marriage.

You don't want to miss this powerful conversation.

-----

ABOUT MIKE 

Mike Alexander is a nationally recognized expert in ethics, integrity, leadership development, and coaching. This specialty began and flourished during his 41-year career in law enforcement and has defined the years following his retirement from service. Through the U.S. Department of Justice Community Policing Divisions, the thirty-six (36) Regional Community Policing Institute, the Multi-jurisdictional Counterdrug Task Force Training Center, the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, the Texas Municipal League, the International Law Enforcement Administration, and the Texas Police Chiefs Association, the Carruth Policing Institute, he has traveled the nation training officers and community members on leadership development, ethics and integrity. In 1999, he founded the LION Leadership Institute, with workshops focused on leadership engagement, employee wellness, cost of conflict, psychological safety, emotional intelligence, healthy work environments, and socialization. He is currently working as an adjunct professor and leadership and curriculum development consultant with Austin Community College.

Instagram: @thelion_institute
LinkedIn: @thelion-organizational-development-institute
Twitter: @LION_Institute 
Facebook: @thelion.institute 

ABOUT CHERYL

Cheryl is a native Texan, born in Waco, Texas, and reared in San Antonio, Texas.  She is the daughter of the late LC and Dorothy Christman. She has one sister, Debbie Grady.  Cheryl lived in San Antonio, Texas, until she graduated from Incarnate Word High School. 

After graduating from high school, she attended Southwest Texas State University (now known today as Texas State University) in San Marcos, Texas, where she received her bachelor’s degree in Criminal Justice and a master’s degree in School Psychology with a minor in Special Education. She is currently working on her dissertation for the Ph.D. Marriage and Family Counseling program at Northwestern University.

She worked 13 years in the law enforcement field as a prison guard, an adult probation officer, and a Texas Youth Commission parole officer. She worked  22 years in the education field … 15 years as a school counselor.  She is currently in private practice as a Christian Licensed Professional Counselor at  Plan C Consultation and Counseling Services.