The Truth You Need to Hear in 2023, Based On Your Enneagram Type

At the beginning of the year, we all have grand, vague ideas of the people we want to become.

We tell ourselves that we’ll eat healthier, read more, “be a better person”. And when we fail to achieve these goals, we beat ourselves up and remain the people we were last year.

But regardless of whether it’s a new year, we are always growing. 2023 is  not meant to come with pressure to make it the best year ever, or finally follow through with those vague and unrealistic goals. Instead, it is an invitation to grow each day. One day at a time.

A great way to begin growth that lasts is by changing the way you think. And depending on your Enneagram type, beginning to tell yourself one truth this new year can move you closer to the life you want.

Not sure what your Enneagram type is? Take our questionnaire here.

The Truth You Need to Hear in 2023, Based On Your Enneagram Type

Type One: In the grand scheme of things, it does not matter whether you are perfect or not.

If any type is most haunted by their inner critic, it’s the Type One.

Ones have this beautiful desire to create goodness in every aspect of their lives. This can look like stepping up to raise their siblings in the absence of stable parents, or working hard in school because they eventually want to learn how to become a lawyer and help people.

But because generating goodness is such a big deal to them, everything on the way to doing so also feels like a big deal.

They may get busy and end up making dinner too late for their siblings, giving themselves lectures about the importance of responsibility. Or they may oversleep and wake up late for school, seemingly jeopardizing their entire daily schedule and ruining their chances at becoming a lawyer, and thus letting down hundreds of future clients.

Subconsciously, Ones hold themselves to a high standard and view any violation of that standard as an instant jeopardizing of their life goals.

But when you step outside your mind and look at reality for what it is, you will be able to forgive yourself.

Think about the last time you made a mistake, and how ashamed you felt after. Then, it seemed like a big deal. But now, you have forgotten about it and moved on to another thing to beat yourself up about. Give yourself a break — realize that even though it may feel that way, there is no way that each mistake you make will ruin your life.

And sometimes, mistakes are stepping stones to even bigger lessons! Not all mistakes are “mistakes” at the end.

Expect yourself to make mistakes. Like all the people you help and try to lead, you are only a person. You aren’t perfect, and that is okay.

And you are just one person on the face of the planet. Remind yourself each day of how big Earth is. You are just one person in a sea of eight billion people, all of whom make mistakes. Regardless of whether you follow your schedule perfectly or not, the Earth will continue to spin.

While your anxiety around perfection can feel productive when you are helpless, it only hampers your ability to produce what you know you are capable of. It only holds you back.

Before you start your day, or your work, diffuse some of it by reminding yourself why you are working. Is it to positively impact the world? To achieve the goals that are important to you? When you reduce your purpose to your core motivations, you will be less prone to getting entangled in the same pressures and mind games.

Your 2023 Song: “Sunny Day” by beabadoobee

Find Out More About Enneagram Ones: The Enneagram 1 – The Perfectionist

Type Two: You don’t have to forget yourself for people to love you.

While healthy Twos can be truly selfless and empathetic, Twos who are struggling and unhealthy can become “martyrs” to receive love from others.

When Twos see that they gain positive responses from doing things for other people — like their friends telling them that they love them, their loved ones telling other people about how kind they are — they connect the dots and decide that this is the way to get people to like them.

This leads to them giving more than they can. They will make themselves the “therapist” of the friend group and focus more on their friends’ feelings than their own. Instead of standing up to people who crossed them, they will make excuses for the person in the wrong, to appear “nice”. And their schedules will be full of commitments to other people.

At the end of the day, they will look at their full schedules, neglected emotions and hurt pride, and feel like they don’t receive a proportional amount of love back. They will drop hints to their friends and family about stepping up more in their relationship, and may use favors to guilt people into giving them validation.

Usually, Twos who do this aren’t even aware that they are doing it. However, the process hurts their relationships because it makes them built on who did what for the other person. And it hurts Twos by making them feel like they have to push themselves too hard to deserve love.

Learn to give what you can. Don’t overexert yourself by giving more than that.

You gain a toxic relationship with doing good deeds when you push yourself farther than you can and expect everybody else to appreciate how selfless you are. But when you just give people the time and resources you know that you realistically can, you create a healthy relationship with good deeds because you know that you did them with a pure heart. Help others, but do it because you want to. Not because you’re worried about losing love, appreciation, or friendship. And prioritize time for yourself to get to know who you are and what you like and need.

Ask yourself why you rely on being needed to keep other people’s love. Do you feel like you as yourself are not enough? Do you do everything just to create a solid place in people’s lives so they won’t abandon you?

Ask yourself why you think that people won’t stick around if you stop overloading them with favors and gifts, and just be yourself. What happened in the past to reinforce the idea that you aren’t enough? Is it a self esteem issue? Are your friends the kind to use people for what they can give them?

Know that you as yourself are enough. You are lovable, and you deserve love for who you are — not for what you give.

Your 2023 song: “Matilda” by Harry Styles

Find Out More About Enneagram Twos: 21 Signs That You’re an Enneagram Two

Type Three: You are not somebody to be ashamed of.

Threes feel a strong desire to prove themselves and to show that they are a success. Some form big friend groups so they can feel validated by large numbers of people. Some pursue jobs, internships and impressive projects, just so they can feel competent and admirable in other peoples’ eyes. The core fear of the Three is that they are worthless without their success; so they often work themselves to exhaustion trying to be the “success” that they think the world wants them to be.

Threes spend life competing with people, to hide the shame they feel about themselves.

But you need to realize that it’s just you. You are the main character of your own life. Other people’s opinions about you have nothing to do with who you are.

And at the end of your life, it will be just you, alone, reflecting on what you did and whether your life was worth living. It won’t matter if other people believed that your life was well-lived, because you will be looking for proof that you enjoyed it.

To weaken the power that others have over your life, wean yourself off excessive external pressures or “symbols of success”.

One simple way to do this is setting boundaries with social media. When you spend too much time looking at the perfectly curated, mostly fake, lives of other people, you let their lives make you insecure about your own. You give photoshopped bikini pictures and good pictures of bad parties power over you.

If possible, try deleting your account for a few weeks and get to know yourself. Spend time getting acquainted with your inner voice. From what you tell yourself all the time to what you do, let yourself know that you are not somebody to be ashamed of. Because you’re not.

When you do use social media, talk to yourself the whole time:

“I do not need to one-up this post.”

“I am not lacking because I wasn’t invited to this party.”

“It’s better to have real friends that I can count on than a big group to take pictures with.”

Not on social media? Think of other ways that you compare yourself to others. You may be comparing yourself to the celebrities on the magazine covers at grocery stores or to the other people at your work or church. How can you focus less on where you “stack up” compared to others, and more about yourself and others as unique individuals, each with their own individual strengths and weaknesses?

Your 2023 song: “evermore” by Taylor Swift (who is also a type Three)

Find Out More About Enneagram Threes: The Enneagram 3 – The Achiever

Type Four: You can leave things behind.

Fours ruminate on everything. They ponder how to get the approval of the person they are trying so hard to be friends with. They make excuses for people who hurt them, coming up with a million reasons why they accidentally broke their hearts. And, in periods of insecurity, they try to become what they think the rest of the world wants them to be. These redundant thoughts cycle through their brains until they no longer realize how toxic their mind has become.

And when they associate their identity with this constant insecurity, it can be hard for them to let go of the feeling that they are “other” and different from everyone else. Not good enough. A misfit.

But this year, I encourage Fours to leave things behind.

Leave behind painful memories. You’ve ruminated on them enough.You can’t let those few moments poison your life. And replaying your worst days won’t fix what happened. Every day, teach yourself to let them go.

Leave behind people who hurt you. Don’t keep them on a pedestal. Don’t make excuses for them, like, “They probably didn’t mean it that way” or “They just keep lashing out because they’re going through a hard time”. Because of them, you are going through a hard time. The fact is, they hurt you. They could have considered your feelings and they chose not to. Draw the line, admit that you are not okay with it, and move on.

And lastly, leave behind your fantasy self. It’s the super-version of yourself that you created in your imagination to cope with how little you may like your real self. No matter how you feel, learn that you are not somebody to be ashamed of. You have more potential than you know, and you can harness it once you stop hiding behind a distorted picture of yourself.

You can create a good life for yourself. You have the power to take out all the toxicity and mush, and replace it with good things. Because as much as your subconscious may fight against this fact, you are as deserving and capable of a good life as everyone else.

To replace negative self-talk with good thoughts, write down positive affirmations or things you are grateful for each day. Try living in the moment; what aspects of beauty or goodness are all around you? Read books and consume content about positive psychology. Spend time loving your friends and enjoying how much they love you.

And enjoy the world. Set goals that mean plenty to you (not your peers or your family). Maybe that means pouring yourself into being there for people who are hurting, because you have so much empathy to give. Maybe that means letting yourself make homemade popsicles on the weekends and go for walks around town. Get moving and active in doing things that you can feel good about.

Your 2023 song: “Good Time” by Owl City

Find Out More About Enneagram Fours: The Enneagram 4- The Individualist

Type Five: You are fully capable of taking charge of your life.

Fives are deeply observant and enjoy analyzing life from every angle. This makes them wise and open minded. However, it also makes them prone to living in their heads.

This leads to Fives having trouble adapting to the real world. They are used to analyzing people, but they may have trouble actually talking to them. They have rich ideas of what they want to achieve, but they struggle with actually doing what needs to be done to get there. Fives who have this struggle can feel helpless or anxious in their own lives.

Your role in life is not to be the person sitting back and watching as everything unfolds. Your role is to be a part of it. You are not a background character in your own life. You’re the key player.

This year, Fives can break old habits and make themselves proud by taking charge of their lives.

Take responsibility for your happiness and realize that the initial discomfort and anxiety of putting yourself out there is normal and will pass. Your position in life will never be perfect, and your relationships will never be perfect. If you wait for them to be before you start creating the life you love, you’ll never be happy.

Don’t think of it as a New Year’s resolution, because those can feel superficial and temporary, things we drop after a week and laugh about with our friends. Instead, try to grow a little each day.

This is as simple as choosing one or two healthy habits to start, while showing up for yourself in your daily life. Instead of thinking of it as striving to become somebody who is better than you, think about it as getting closer to the best version of yourself.

You aren’t always going to think that the daily affirmations are effective, and you won’t always feel like reading before bed. But when we slow down and choose to do things to improve and take care of ourselves, we became more engaged in the present and prove to ourselves that we are competent, interactive members of the real world.

Remember, the life you want is within your reach. You are capable of being successful.

Take growth one day at a time. Don’t be overwhelmed by the amount of self-control you expect that you’ll have to do to stay on the path to success. Focus on today and be okay with the fact that you won’t do everything perfectly.

“Work for It” by Mission and Brvndon P

Find Out More About Enneagram Fives: The Enneagram 5 – The Investigator

Type Six: Expecting the worst doesn’t keep you safe — it just makes you sad.

To protect themselves, Sixes tend to see the world as worse than it actually is.

They understand that in any situation, there is a chance that things can go sour. So to prepare themselves for the mental turmoil of having trusted the wrong person, put themselves in danger, or being abandoned, they turn each of these possibilities around in their heads so that when they do happen, they don’t feel blind sighted.

Assuming the worst becomes a self-protection tactic when your trust has been broken, or you have endured painful memories. It becomes so easy to point to the trail of broken relationships behind you to explain why you don’t trust people. And while learning from our bad memories is essential, living in fear only prolongs the suffering.

This is why expecting the worst in each situation and looking to the awful moments in our past as proof that we can’t enjoy life does not keep you safe. It just makes you miss out.

Following safety standards — not going out after a specific time, not going anywhere with people you have an off feeling about, adhering to the law — provides a safety net, and so does using common sense. But when you are afraid to form a friendship with someone who has given you no reason to believe they are anything but genuine, or too afraid to go out for an internship that you lose nothing by applying to, that’s just your anxiety speaking.

And bad things are just going to happen to you. Living with your mind on survival mode won’t stop painful things from happening. When you accept that not every day will be a good one, you will be in a healthier mindset to overcome struggles when they happen.

Imagine how awesome your life would be if you didn’t allow yourself to hide as much. Imagine how many places you would have visited, how many of your friendships would be stronger, if you let your desire to live out loud overcome your fear.

Allow yourself to take risks. Build your courage by doing one thing a day that scares you — waving hi and smiling to the coworker who sneaks you dirty looks, putting away your phone and being alone with your thoughts for five minutes — and in no time, you’ll be doing things that you used to tell yourself you couldn’t.

Your 2023 Song: “Where Are You Now?” – The Wrecks

Find Out More About Enneagram Sixes: The Enneagram 6 – The Loyalist

Type Seven: You need to stop running from negative emotions.

Whether positive or negative, Sevens don’t like to dwell on things for too long. When they feel like they have exhausted the novelty of an experience or opportunity they feel compelled to drop it and find a new thing to focus on.

This is also how they tend to treat their feelings.

It’s a misconception that Sevens do not feel deep sadness. In reality, they feel negative emotions with just as much intensity as everybody else. They aren’t numb to the embarrassment of being ghosted or the disappointment that comes with not getting that internship they wanted.

The difference lies in how they cope with these feelings. Sevens who are not as in tune with their emotions can see negative ones as things to “get over”, because they are so unpleasant. Sitting in sadness is uncomfortable, and so is taking the time to grieve a failed relationship. So they cope by moving on to the next thing, surrounding themselves with more noise, and “forgetting” the thing that brought them down.

Unfortunately, suppressed emotions will always find a way to manifest in our lives. Sevens who are convinced that they have gotten over negative feelings that they never really addressed are shocked when they start lashing out at people with little prompting, or crying for seemingly no reason before bed each night.

This year, stop running from unpleasant emotions.

They aren’t anything to be ashamed of — they are meant to help you navigate life. Exploring them and using them to understand your behaviors will make you a healthier and happier person.

Spending time processing your negative feelings doesn’t look like wallowing in them for days — it looks like taking a few seconds after someone hurts you to ask yourself if you’re okay. It means canceling plans to stay at home and sleep if you’re worn out after a hard week.

Sometimes, it’s okay to detach from the quickly flowing stream of life to check in on yourself. Remind yourself that taking time to build a healthy emotional life won’t take away from life’s pleasures — it will make you better able to receive them.

Your 2023 Song: “Birds” by Coldplay

Find Out More About Enneagram Seven: The Enneagram 7 – The Enthusiast

Type Eight: Friends are meant to be loved and enjoyed.

Eights who are healthy make the best friends. They are fiercely protective, thoughtful, and will always look for ways to fix their friends’ problems. But when Eights feel insecure or threatened, they will put themselves over the people in their lives. This is a product of seeing their friends as secondary to preserving their autonomy — a “me against the world” mindset.

When Eights mess up badly in relationships, they can lose sight of the feelings of the person they hurt and focus their energy on preserving their good sense of self. This can look like going into survival mode and denying any wrongdoing, and can lead to the dissolution of the relationship.

Eights who struggle with abandonment can prevent themselves from having friendships that aren’t surface level, because they don’t want to put themselves in a position to be laughed at or abandoned.

Last year, I met an Eight who outright told his friends that he didn’t truly love any people in his life. However, he loved his dogs and his car. After some reflection, he realized that he only allowed himself to love things that couldn’t take their love away.

And if you are an Eight who struggles with being connected with your friends, you aren’t acting the way you do to hurt anybody. You’re just trying to protect yourself from getting hurt. But that way of living is lonely, and it’s unsustainable.

This is the year when you let your guard down and learn to truly love your friends.

Don’t just see them as fun people to hang out with, or friends who you can easily replace the second you feel crossed. One of the keys to a happy life is good relationships, so you can’t settle for surface-level connections.

Spend time with people. Not just for fun, but to enjoy them. Get to know them and let them get to know you. Play the online game where you take turns asking each other deeper questions, so you can share your dreams and anxieties. When you form these bonds, you become more like a healthy Two (the type you integrate to), full of love for your friends and family.

Don’t view the people who want to be in your life as the enemy.

Your 2023 Song: “I See You” by MISSIO

Find Out More About Enneagram Eights: The Enneagram 8 – The Challenger

Type Nine: The opinions of others are not (always) relevant.

From a young age, we were taught to take others into consideration. And most of this was good. As kids, we learned to say “please” and “thank you” and apologize after hurting our friends. But we also learned how to fear other people.

This fear continues through high school and early adulthood, and usually fades as we grow older. But for Nines, fear of displeasing people and disrupting the peace is harder to get rid of. Other people seem larger than life, and their own opinions look small in comparison.

Nines minimize their own hurt, convictions, and experiences to make room for others’ because they fear the pushback they will receive for being assertive. They learn to live within the lines of what their coworkers expect, play the role that their friend group needs, and live out their family’s expectations.

But what other people think doesn’t matter.

We all know this consciously. It’s what we tell ourselves when we’re trying on a new style for school or mustering the courage to leave someone on read. But subconsciously, we are tied to other people’s opinions. We live for their compliments and convince ourselves that we’ll die if they don’t like us.

However, this is not something you just tell yourself while subconsciously believing the opposite. It is the truth.

You can live free from the constraint of what others approve of because it does not exist. It truly does not matter. You have no obligation to obsess over social situations, or strive to be what other people want, or silence your voice so others aren’t offended. That’s a waste of time.

What other people think about you has nothing to do with you and everything to do with them. That’s why, on Goodreads, a bestselling book will often have one good review with plenty of likes and one bad review with plenty of likes — it was never about the book. It was about the reader.

And when you reach the point when you truly believe this, it’s no longer something to tell yourself as you pretend not to care that you were left on read. It’s something you know as you turn off your phone and go outside for a walk.

Your 2023 Song: “Clean” by Taylor Swift

Find Out More About Enneagram Nines: The Enneagram 9 – The Peacemaker

What Are Your Thoughts?

Discover more about your personality type in our eBooks, Discovering You: Unlocking the Power of Personality Type,  The INFJ – Understanding the Mystic, The INTJ – Understanding the Strategist, and The INFP – Understanding the Dreamer.