Latest / Typology / Trust and Let Go: Confronting Fear with Jonathan Merritt (Enneagram 3)

Transcript

Trust and Let Go: Confronting Fear with Jonathan Merritt (Enneagram 3) · Typology

0:00
Hey, everybody, welcome back to Typology, the podcast on
0:04
which we explore the mystery of the human personality and the
0:07
human adventure through the lens of the Enneagram. As
0:11
always, I'm joined by my dear friend, Anthony Skinner. Anthony,
0:14
greetings. Hey, man, happy to be here. How you doing? Man,
0:18
I am doing well, and I'm doing particularly well
0:22
because we have an old friend on the show today who I cannot wait
0:25
to speak to about his new book. Please welcome Enneagram 3 Jonathan
0:31
Hello. Hello. Good to be back with you again. It's been a
0:35
few years since I've been on Tapology. It has been
0:41
That's quite- That's it. It's pre-pandemic. It is
0:45
pre-so many things. It's
0:48
crazy. You have this wonderful new children's story children's
0:52
book by Gunkel and me. I want to hear all about it. But first, I
0:55
want to dive into some Enneagram 3 stuff with you. Can we do that? Let's
0:59
do it. I want to read you a quote that I that
1:03
I love from Parker Palmer, who
1:10
Yes. Parker Palmer is an Enneagram 3, friends. You heard it
1:13
here first. And he he
1:17
talks about his journey, and I don't
1:20
know if he was thinking about the Enneagram when he wrote this, but this is what
1:24
he said. He says, our
1:28
deepest calling is to grow into our own
1:31
authentic selfhood, whether or not it conforms to
1:35
some image of who we ought to be. As we
1:38
do so, we will not only find the joy that every
1:42
human being seeks, we will also find our
1:45
path of authentic service in the world. How does that land with
1:49
Well, I love that. I think as an
1:52
Enneagram 3, and maybe this is a challenge,
1:56
I mean, you're the expert more than I am, but I think one of the challenges I
1:59
have is when I hear that phrase,
2:03
authentic self, It feels so far
2:07
away. It feels like something that I'm constantly out
2:10
of touch with. Like I'm constantly asking myself, is
2:14
this who I am or is this the person that I'm trying
2:18
to project to the world? And sometimes I actually
2:22
don't know. So I think it connects with
2:25
me because that's my constant challenge is to live out
2:28
my calling as my authentic self. But man, that's a
2:34
Yeah, you're so funny. One of the questions I wrote down actually, it's the first question I wrote
2:37
is, how do you tell when you are your own authentic
2:41
self or when you're simply crafting
2:45
an image for public consumption? And of
2:49
course, when we talk about Enneagram types, these are prototypes, right?
2:52
So there's a part of me that does this, Anthony that does this, right? And there
2:56
are the prototype of the four, the seven or the nine, those are pieces of
2:59
me as well. But
3:03
I am curious, because I'm always trying to, you know, I think threes ask
3:06
all the time, like, well, how do I know, right? Like, when
3:10
I am flowing in the truth of myself, and when
3:14
I am merely projecting
3:18
an image to
3:21
win the admiration and the approval and the love of others. Does
3:26
your body tell you? Is there something in you now at this age
3:29
in your life where you're like, Okay. I know I'm
3:35
Yes. You know, like anything, there's like the gray area
3:39
in the middle where it gets really confusing, but then there are
3:42
the poles. And I'll say that there are times where I'll
3:47
laugh and I'll catch myself going, that really wasn't,
3:51
that wasn't a real laugh, right? Or
3:55
I can tell that I'm editing something in real time, right? Like
3:58
I'm editing out all of the rough parts or the embarrassing parts. And
4:02
so I catch myself, I mean, this is... In some ways, it's
4:05
like the gift of the Enneagram is like a greater awareness.
4:10
It's not that I don't do the things, but now when I do
4:13
the things, I'm aware that I'm doing it. I
4:17
can hold myself accountable and pivot away from
4:21
those affectations, those personality affectations. I
4:26
find that I am doing it Maybe not as
4:29
much as I used to, but I'm catching myself doing it
4:32
a lot when I'm interacting with friends and family members and
4:37
So I have a woman I'm working with, and she's a very, very strong
4:41
three. And I'm completely masking this
4:44
person's identity. But
4:47
one of the things I've noticed in public settings
4:52
is what I call the need to control the narrative.
4:57
Oh yeah. So it's as if in real time,
5:02
in a group setting where this person is a leader, she
5:08
wants to make sure that the narrative is crafted all the time.
5:12
The conversation is just being crafted in the way that she wants
5:15
things to be perceived and understood about herself and
5:19
this situation. And it's almost like like bending
5:23
reality. It's like I'm watching this person burn incredible
5:27
amounts of calories trying to bend reality for everyone
5:30
to see it a certain way. And
5:38
Oh, 100%. And I'll tell you how, you know, maybe this even goes
5:41
back to the last question you asked. Sometimes the way
5:45
that I know I'm doing the thing, the shtick,
5:49
is after the encounter, after I've left
5:52
the business meeting, after I've had the lunch with a friend and
5:56
I begin to kind of question whether or not they bought
6:00
it, right? You begin to go like, did
6:03
they perceive me the way that I wanted them to perceive me? And
6:07
that sort of is the tell that you're doing the thing that
6:10
threes do so well. So a lot of times I'll pay attention to
6:14
what I feel afterwards and then I'll become obsessive. where
6:19
then, let's say for example, let's say that I'm in a
6:22
business meeting and there are three of us and two of us walk away. I'll
6:26
begin to ask that second person whether they
6:29
thought I presented in this way in that meeting. You
6:33
can see it on people's faces because maybe they're not a three, so they're
6:37
like, what are you talking? Why are we still talking about this? Why are
6:40
we having a conversation about this? But I will want to kind of deconstruct
6:44
the interaction to see like, hey, did I sound did I sound
6:47
dumb when I said that thing? Or do you think that they
6:51
thought that I was this way when I
6:54
said that thing? Right. So I will start to like deconstruct and
6:57
tease apart the encounter, the meeting
7:01
with the other person who was bearing witness to it. I do that all the time.
7:12
Exactly right. Yeah. I mean, how does
7:15
one break free of the
7:19
addiction, really? And I say that not just about threes, but
7:22
of all types, right? We have addictive patterns like this, right? How
7:26
does one break free of the need to control the
7:30
narrative, to bend reality so that it shines
7:35
on the right side of our face, our best side? How do we How
7:44
And that's a good question. And you're probably the guru
7:47
here, but I'll tell you something that that's really been been
7:51
helpful for me and has been liberating for me. Is
7:54
I always I talk about it as like reviewing the
7:58
tape. So I go back and I look
8:01
at all of the times when I wasn't able
8:05
to control the narrative. And it turned out okay. You
8:10
know, I was, I think maybe I talked about it
8:13
five years ago when I was on this podcast before, but in
8:18
2012, I was very publicly outed for
8:21
being gay. And I was, I was not only was
8:25
I not able to control the narrative in that situation, but
8:29
I really mangled it. I responded, you
8:33
know, because I felt I felt so judged
8:38
and I felt like I was failing in that moment so deeply that
8:42
I began to panic and I began to kind of express like stress behavior.
8:46
I began to say things that I didn't, that I didn't
8:49
believe were true, but I felt like people wanted to hear even if
8:52
they conflicted with other things that I was saying and I was a total mess.
8:57
And now I look back on that, you know, some 12 years
9:01
ago now and I go, it's all
9:04
okay. It all, it all came out in the wash. Yes,
9:09
you responded in a terrible way at times. Yes,
9:13
you said things that were not a reflection of your authentic self,
9:16
your authentic beliefs, and it was still okay. And
9:20
so I think sometimes it's reminding ourselves Of
9:24
the pattern that many of us have in our lives when we
9:27
weren't able to do the thing and we still survived And
9:31
we still move past it and we still move through it And
9:35
so for me reminding myself that there's a pattern there
9:38
That when i'm not able to control it, the stakes are
9:41
not nearly as high as I assume allows me to
9:44
kind of like allows my shoulders to come down from
9:48
around my ears in the moment when I think that if I
9:51
can't control this, then the worst possible thing,
9:59
So oftentimes I think what I've seen in threes, and by
10:02
the way, I have such a strong three-wing, it's kooky. I'm a
10:06
self-preservation four, which already makes me a little three-ish and
10:10
seven-ish, but I have a very, very
10:13
strong three-wing. So I'm resonating with
10:16
everything that's being said. It
10:21
seems to me that when you can't control the
10:24
narrative, it's not working. It's
10:27
just not working. That often what
10:31
happens is we go into a tailspin. We
10:35
start the helix down. And we
10:39
find ourselves lost in the room of mirrors. Because if
10:44
you've been playing all these games with different people for so long, it's like,
10:49
you get sort of thrust into a panic mode, and you
10:52
don't know which of your true selves is the true
10:55
self to put out there. It's like a vertigo-like experience.
11:00
But I can't imagine Oh,
11:09
and also I'd say this, where threes and sevens are
11:12
different is, in those situations, the seven might
11:15
reframe this, and I've said this before on the show, but it's worth saying, whereas
11:19
the three will spin it. So the
11:23
seven might say, oh, this is a terrible experience, but it's really going to
11:26
help me grow with blah, blah, blah. So all of a sudden the negative becomes a positive and
11:30
they don't have to feel all the bad feelings associated with betrayal or
11:34
being outed publicly, humiliation, embarrassment, making
11:38
mistakes, et cetera. Whereas the three will
11:41
take a situation like that and spin it to
11:44
make themselves look good. Do you
11:48
know what I'm saying? Which is different. It's a nuanced, you're smiling a little
11:51
bit for me. Is that, so it's like, how do I spin this debacle
11:59
Yeah. Yeah, and I do this all
12:03
the time. It's like the creative storytelling of the
12:06
three. And it's like that inner, I mean, as a
12:10
three, like I have a publicist that lives inside my brain.
12:13
And so I'm always trying to tell
12:18
stories about the choices that I've made, the way that things have
12:21
worked out. And it kind of drives me crazy because
12:24
now that I have a little bit of self-awareness, I'm like, am I, is
12:28
that, I don't know what's real. Is that the story that
12:31
I'm telling or is that really what happened, right?
12:35
Did I make that decision and
12:38
it worked out this way because that's the way it was supposed to
12:41
have worked out and that was the health of the whole thing? Or is that like
12:44
my post hoc rationalization of the situation
12:49
so that I can make peace with it and move on? And I don't know
12:56
Yeah, it's like, if you, I met
13:00
a three one time, and there, they had a very public failure.
13:05
And the first word, this person said, like, maybe
13:09
two or three days after it hit the headlines, right? The
13:12
remark was something like, well, you know, this is going to make a
13:15
New York Times bestseller. And he
13:19
had already begun thinking, how can I turn
13:22
this into a win, like into a
13:26
win for me and for my public image and for my brand and my platform.
13:30
And that's spinning versus
13:34
reframing. And I always love to make that delineation for
13:37
people because sometimes it looks the same, but it's not, right?
13:41
Because it's all around the image and
13:45
for the three. So We're
13:49
going to get to this wonderful children's
13:52
book in just a moment, but I'm fascinated by this topic today. Twos,
13:58
threes, and fours, the most image-conscious numbers on
14:01
the Enneagram, meaning they all project an image, believing they
14:04
can't be loved for who they are. So
14:08
in the case of twos, but only for what they can do for others. For
14:12
fours, for being special and unique. And really for
14:17
threes, there's this need
14:21
to really craft an
14:25
image of winning and success, because
14:28
for them, there's this belief that winning and success
14:32
equals love somehow. They
14:36
want love and they settle for admiration. But
14:41
one of the things that Beatrice Chestnut says that I find so interesting, she
14:44
says for all three types, the common
14:49
thread that runs through it is grief and shame. or
14:53
particularly grief and sadness, I should say. Others say shame, others say
14:57
feelings, like what at the heart center, what is
15:00
the emotion that they share? And it's grief and sadness
15:05
for twos, threes, and fours, which you would not think for twos and threes, because
15:08
twos are so likable and upbeat and cheerful and ebullient and
15:12
sometimes histrionic. And then you have threes, and
15:16
they're confident and blah, blah, blah, and the
15:20
appearance of having it all together. What role has grief
15:24
Well, you know, so much of of
15:28
what you just said around not just grief and sadness, but
15:31
you also use the word shame, I feel like plays
15:35
a huge role in this, because for
15:39
me, the the publicist in
15:42
me is aware that I'm doing it and I feel
15:45
sort of embarrassed about it. I don't say that out loud. I
15:50
don't speak that part out loud, but I feel sort of ashamed.
15:54
Particularly, this is the hard thing, the sort of
15:57
the burden of learning a system like the
16:01
Enneagram, is now you know you're doing it. And
16:06
so then you're sort of aware of your inauthenticities. And
16:10
so I feel
16:13
a lot of shame. I think the other thing is, is
16:17
that, and this is where at least for me, where grief
16:20
comes into the equation, is that I realize not just
16:24
the way I am, but I start to realize why I
16:28
am the way that I am. And I begin to look back in
16:32
my childhood, the demands that were placed
16:36
on me when I was just a little boy and I
16:40
feel such a deep sense of sadness because
16:44
it's like I can't, now it sort of feels fixed,
16:48
right? I can't escape who I am so I have a
16:51
constant reminder of these deep
16:55
wounds from my childhood. And
17:00
I'm constantly having to grieve that because now that
17:04
I see it, I see it everywhere and I can't get away from it. And
17:07
so I do feel like constantly grieved for that kid
17:12
inside me who felt that he had to become who
17:15
I am in order to survive, in order to
17:18
be seen, in order to be loved. And
17:21
I think anybody who becomes aware of that kind of thing pain
17:25
that produces the personality, feels
17:29
a real, a real sadness, a real sadness that
17:32
hopefully you can like allow it to mature into self compassion, which
17:37
is a little bit like softer form of grief. It's not just
17:40
despair, right? It kind of falls off that cliff in
17:43
one direction, it becomes despair. But if you allow it
17:46
to kind of mature and blossom, it becomes self love and
17:50
self compassion. I think in my best moments, that's what happens. I
17:54
feel I feel a deep sense of compassion for myself and
17:58
for previous iterations of myself that had to endure all
18:01
the pain they endured. But in my worst moments, I
18:04
feel utter despair because this is part of my story
18:10
Yeah. So I think for me, as
18:15
a four in the hard triad. I think
18:21
I've pretty successfully made the cross the bridge from
18:25
grief and despair to self-compassion and a sense of
18:28
humor too. When I catch myself in the
18:31
act of doing what I do, like my things, You
18:35
know, there's a little part of me that sort of smiles at
18:38
myself the way a mother smiles at a child with his hand in
18:41
the cookie jar. You know what I mean? Like with a bit like, well, of course
18:45
you are, you're eight years old. Kids steal cookies at eight, you know, and there's
18:48
this kind of a smile. And I sort of giggle at
18:52
myself a little bit, like, you know, busted. And I'm glad
18:55
that, you know, but it took a minute to get there. I mean, like
18:58
it, there was a long time on the grief and despair side of
19:02
the bridge for sure. And and
19:05
I do think that humor is like so
19:09
important, like just having a sense of humor about
19:12
our particular way of being in the world is
19:16
like so freaking vital. But
19:20
I want to hear for people to be reminded of why, like
19:24
what was the situation growing up and
19:28
the pressures you felt? Because it is a compelling story.
19:32
Yeah. Well, I grew up in a fundamentalist
19:36
home with a sort of famous religious leader. My
19:40
dad is, to this day, a TV
19:45
preacher. He was president of the Southern Baptist Convention, so
19:49
it was a very pietistic household, a very high-pressure environment,
19:55
an environment with a lot of anger
19:59
and a lot of guilt. and a
20:03
lot of fear, a lot of anger, guilt and fear. And
20:08
those things were kind of the motivating factors for
20:11
conformity in our house. And
20:15
so when we were able to conform
20:19
to what was expected of us and to do it really, really well, then
20:23
we were rewarded, or at least we weren't punished, which was
20:27
its own form of reward is
20:30
not being punished. Because if we all deserve punishment,
20:34
not being punishment is the reward. So I
20:38
grew up kind of in that pressure cooker. And
20:43
it wasn't until later on that I kind of
20:46
assumed this is how everybody's house was. I went
20:50
to college and I remember people saying, why do you
20:53
yell all the time? And I was like, what
20:57
are you talking about? What do you mean? People
21:01
don't yell like you yell all the time and I
21:04
realized like, you know, I grew up in this household That was that
21:07
was so contentious that we were all having to
21:11
to get louder In order to be heard over everybody
21:15
else and I just thought this is how people talk or
21:19
we could we would judge and eviscerate each other and when
21:23
I would start to do that other people people be like You can't talk to
21:26
me in that way. I mean What do you mean? I'm
21:31
just saying what I think is true. People don't talk to
21:34
other people this way. So I had a real awakening
21:39
really in college because I would
21:42
learn the sort of normal human patterns
21:46
of relationship and then I would come home and I would be thrust back into
21:49
this very different environment and I realized I wasn't really
21:53
able to tolerate it. And
21:57
so, you know, it was a multi-year
22:01
journey to kind of untangling what's normal, what's
22:05
not normal. And then when I began to realize what
22:09
I wanted for my life, kind of a more normal
22:13
human way of relating to other people, then how would
22:17
I go back and survive when I had to go home to be with my family, which
22:21
is something that all of us do? And that was a multi-year journey,
22:25
really, of having to sit down with my
22:28
parents and my siblings and be like, guys, not
22:31
only is this not normal, maybe it is, sometimes it is normal, sadly,
22:36
but it's not healthy, and it's not good, and
22:39
we have to find a different way of relating
22:43
to each other. And, you know, I was lucky
22:46
enough that I had a family for the most part over time that
22:55
So you're the son of a famous religious
22:59
figure, public figure, you're a gay young
23:03
man, let's say, or I'm not sure at what point in your life's
23:06
journey all the dots connected for you
23:09
in terms of coming to terms with your own sexual identity.
23:16
Where is it now? There's
23:20
so many things I want to ask you about. Okay, so making
23:24
peace with family. You have a brand new book out, My Gunkle and
23:27
Me, about this young boy, Henry Higgleston,
23:31
who's viewed
23:35
as an oddball by the other kids at school. His
23:40
wonderful gay uncle arrives for a weekend with his
23:43
French bulldog in tow. He's on a mission to teach Henry
23:47
that what makes us different makes us special. Okay,
23:51
so you, you know, you are a
23:55
gay man in the public sphere, you are a public figure, like
24:01
Well, you know, in some ways, my siblings
24:05
and their kind of growing embrace transformed
24:09
me. because they were like, we love you. You don't
24:13
have to be something in order to be loved by us. We love
24:16
you. And, you know, they began to have kids and
24:19
those kids as kids do. They loved me and they
24:22
loved me because of of who I was, not
24:26
because of which box I checked under sexual orientation, let's
24:29
say. I think that that whole my whole
24:33
imagination for what it what family
24:37
could be And what it meant to
24:41
live and love within the confines of family really expanded
24:45
a few years ago in New York City because I moved
24:50
into an old seminary property here in Manhattan
24:54
in Chelsea. And I began to live alongside
24:58
a number of families. In fact, it was shortly after or right
25:02
around the time, I guess that was on your show last and probably
25:07
2019, I just moved in here. And these families invited
25:11
me in and they said, you have a seat
25:14
at our table. And this seat is not just
25:18
like any other seat. It is an honored and a celebrated seat.
25:23
And we recognize that you have
25:26
gifts to give that we cannot give. And our family will be
25:29
poor if you're not giving those gifts to us. And,
25:34
you know, for somebody like me who grew up in in
25:39
a culture that said that gay people were threatening, to
25:43
families, both the lowercase F family that
25:46
lives next door and the kids that exist in those households, and
25:49
also the big capital F family, the traditional family, I
25:55
didn't realize how ingrained that assumption had
25:58
been made in my own spirit, that
26:02
I really ingested that idea and even had
26:06
accepted that that I couldn't be around
26:10
families and kids like this. And so it
26:14
was their love for me and their embrace of me that
26:18
really changed me. And it really alerted me to all
26:22
of the ways that I had come to believe things about myself that
26:25
were not true. And so it's been
26:29
actually living here that I think accelerated that
26:32
process. So when I ended up deciding that I wanted to write a children's book,
26:37
A friend of mine who lives here said, why don't
26:40
you just write about what you know and write about how you've been living alongside
26:44
us and the ways that you have touched our
26:48
families. And so this book is kind of a
26:51
composite, both of my biological nephews and nieces back home.
26:55
And also, it incorporates all of
26:58
these stories of the ways that I have been living here
27:05
So what would it have been like for you to have had a book like Mike Gunkel and
27:12
You know, this is this is sort of the crazy thing, because and I
27:15
think a lot of children's authors say this or they do this.
27:19
They write the book that that they wish they would have had when
27:23
they were a child. And in some ways, I
27:26
guess I really I really did that. You know, I'm well
27:30
aware that the kind
27:34
of grown-up that a person becomes is
27:38
largely a result of the types of stories that the grown-ups in
27:42
their life chose to tell them when they were children. And
27:46
we can all point back to the stories that we were told for good or
27:49
ill, and they weren't always written down on pages. They
27:52
were the stories our families told. They were the mythologies that we were given
27:56
in our families, the kinds of stories we were told, and
27:59
the assumptions underneath those stories, and the films we watched, and
28:02
the TV shows that we watched. And we ingested
28:06
those, and we digested those, and they became sort of embedded
28:09
in our DNA. And we've lived into those assumptions, in many
28:13
cases, unaware in adulthood. And I
28:16
wish I had had better stories. I wish I had had stories
28:20
that said, you are loved because of who you
28:23
are. And God loves you because of who you are. And God made
28:27
you the way you are. And that the ways in
28:30
which you are different from the majority of people in
28:33
this world. Those differences are not liabilities. They're
28:37
your gifts to the world. They're the things that make you,
28:40
you. You know, I was, I think in some ways when
28:44
people see this book, they go, you're the Gunkel, right? I
28:47
can even kind of look like this, this, the way that the, the illustrator,
28:51
the great illustrator, great illustrator, the way that this illustrator rendered
28:54
me. And it wasn't actually until this book was published
28:58
that I realized I'm also Henry. And
29:02
what I think I did, maybe even on an unconscious
29:06
level, was I,
29:09
the future self, or I guess at this point, the
29:13
present me, almost went back in time to
29:17
take a knee and to look the past me in the eyes
29:21
and to say the things that needed to be said to
29:25
me that were never said. And I think that's ultimately what
29:32
Everybody, I'm speaking with our friend Jonathan Merritt, the
29:35
author of the new children's book, My Gunkle and Me.
29:39
Jonathan, what is it right now that is the frontier of
29:43
growth for you? It could be what you're dealing with
29:46
in therapy or just a
29:49
theme that's coming up over and over again in your life right now that
29:57
Oh, this is a good one because And I can tell you,
30:00
I might not have been able to tell you a year ago, but I began this like journaling
30:04
practice starting last summer. And it started by
30:07
doing the artist way, which I'm sure a lot of people know, where you do morning pages,
30:11
you sort of write stream of consciousness in the morning. And
30:15
for me, it's become, I think, a more intentional journaling
30:18
practice meets prayer practice even. And
30:22
I've been able to kind of track some things going on. And I
30:25
think one of the things I've realized is the ways in
30:28
which fear motivates so
30:33
much of my life. Fear of failure, fear
30:37
of rejection, fear of insignificance, fear
30:42
of irrelevance. I mean, I'm all the
30:45
time afraid Afraid
30:49
of how people perceive me. I mean, even when I wrote this book,
30:52
I was like, you can't write a children's book. First of all, you
30:56
won't be able to do it well, and it'll be a big mess, and
30:59
that'll embarrass you. And if you go out and
31:02
do it, and if you do get it published, then people will think that you're
31:06
unserious. You're supposed to be this columnist. You write
31:09
for the New York Times. You write for the Atlantic. You write serious grown-up books
31:13
with data and arguments and persuasion inside
31:17
of them. You can't write a children's book. It's silly. It's unserious. And
31:21
I'm realizing all of the things that I
31:24
feel called to do and compelled to do that I am held
31:28
back from doing because fear has
31:31
grown in my life at such
31:35
a level that that's really what I feel like I need
31:38
to. It's like the number one task of
31:41
my life right now is digging down deep and
31:45
trying to kind of chip away at the root of fear that
31:49
is so deeply ingrained in my life. Even a minute ago, you
31:52
were talking about the ways in which
31:55
Enneagram threes are
31:59
trying to kind of control the narrative. And I
32:02
have these like twin responses. I'm
32:06
both trying to control the narrative and I'm telling myself I'm
32:10
not doing it. I'm failing at it. And so I
32:13
feel like everybody else, I'm trying to do it and I feel like everybody
32:17
else must see that I'm trying to do it. And then I feel embarrassed
32:21
and ashamed that the jig is up, that
32:24
everybody knows what's going on. And so
32:27
I'm both trying to do something that I'm convinced I'm going
32:31
to fail at. And there's a real misery. Living
32:36
stuck in in that cycle and so I think that's the one
32:39
thing that I'm I'm really working on right now the one thing that I hear over
32:43
and over and over I have been hearing over the last year when I'm I'm having this
32:47
kind of moment of prayer meditation in the morning is
32:51
you know I hear God or the universe whatever you want to call it. saying
32:54
back to me, trust and let go. Trust
32:58
and let go. You cannot control. And
33:02
the thing that keeps me stuck as a three is
33:06
trying to control what I cannot control. It's
33:10
like an exercise in frustration and failure, trying to
33:13
control the thing I can't control. And so I think the task for
33:16
me right now is recognizing the fear that's driving that impulse
33:23
I love what you just said, the fear of
33:27
not being able to control what I can't control. And
33:32
I love what you said about trust and letting go. You know,
33:37
in my 12-step program, we do a lot of work with
33:41
what's called a fear inventory, where we actually do like as
33:44
part of our fourth and fifth steps, right?
33:48
You have to actually write a fear inventory. like
33:52
to write down everything you're afraid of. And
33:56
one of the, you know, amazing gifts of that
34:01
of that program is like I had no idea. the
34:05
degree to which fear governed my life. I
34:08
just, I had no idea until I sat down and really started
34:12
to write stuff out. And I was like, oh my gosh, like
34:16
fear dictates so much of my thinking and
34:20
my feeling and my way of behaving. It's ridiculous, right?
34:25
And so we go through this process and I think the Enneagram helps us, things
34:28
like the 12 steps help us, different tools that
34:32
we can avail ourselves of, help us to uncover,
34:37
discover, and discard those parts
34:40
of ourselves that are no longer serving us. And you've done
34:44
a beautiful job of just articulating, I think, You
34:47
were talking about the fear of irrelevance, the
34:51
fear of insignificance. This is like textbook Enneagram 3 stuff, right? The
34:55
fear of worthlessness. And of course, what can we control? You
35:09
know, and realizing there are so many things I get anxious
35:13
about, over which I have no control, in which the only solution is
35:17
surrender and trust. You know, just perpetually reminding
35:22
myself, surrender and trust. Thank you. Thank you for
35:25
that. Jonathan Merritt, author of My Gunkle and Me, this
35:28
marvelous new children's
35:32
book. I love what Kate Bowler said about it. Every parent needs this,
35:36
a story of love that teaches children that they are never, ever alone.
35:40
We all need a gunkle. And I'm glad I had a gunkle today,
35:43
Anthony, and he was on our show. Jonathan, thanks for
35:48
Oh, my gosh. The pleasure is all mine. Thank you
35:59
May you and everyone listening have love, may
36:02
you have joy, may you have peace, may you have healing, and