What My Enneagram Results Taught Me About Inner Work

Last night, I attended a Juliet’s walkie-talkie meeting in Wisconsin Rapids - thanks for the invite Autumn! While walking and talking on the last stretch around Lake Wazeecha, someone brought up the Enneagram.

What started as a casual conversation turned into one of those moments where a bunch of puzzle pieces suddenly clicked together. I literally stopped and said, “I think I just had an epiphany - about enneagram and shadow work.”

I've taken the Enneagram test three times over the last six years.

Each time, I got a different result.

It’s definitely not that I thought that meant the test wasn't accurate.

I think it may have revealed something much bigger.

2020: The Achiever

The first time I took the Enneagram was January of 2020.

At the time, life was moving fast.

I was finishing the buildout for GRIT Nutrition, preparing for our opening on February 10th. I was also serving as a Director with Thirty-One after spending several years building a team of amazing women.

Leadership wasn't something I intentionally set out to pursue. It found me.

What surprised me most was how much joy I found in helping other women discover what they were capable of. Watching someone step into confidence they didn't know they had is still one of my favorite things.

That January, I attended a leadership conference in Grapevine, Texas.

Austen drove all the way there with me because I was still afraid to fly by myself. Somewhere along the route, we made a completely normal detour through Iowa to "look at" a corn planter. Farmers know exactly how that story ends. Not a farmer - well it ended up at our house a few weeks later. Good news - we got some “free” hoodies out of the deal.

Anyway, one of the sessions at that conference introduced us to the Enneagram.

My result?

Type 3: The Achiever.

Looking back, that couldn't have been more accurate.

I was in a season of building.

Building a business.
Building a team.
Building confidence.
Building a life.

Achievement wasn't just something I did. It was part of how I measured my value.

2024: The Peacemaker

When I took the test again in 2024, I got a completely different result.

Type 9.

At first, I was confused.

How could I go from a 3 to a 9?

But when I look at who I was becoming during that season, it makes perfect sense.

December of 2021 changed me.

Losing my cousin and two of my uncles forced me to confront something I had spent the past few years doing: pushing through.

Eventually my body made it clear that emotions don't disappear just because we don't acknowledge them.

They wait.

And they find a way to be heard.

What followed was the beginning of a much deeper healing journey.

I enrolled in Ignite Your Brand.

Then Soul Seed.

I started learning about Human Design, boundaries, shadow work, inner child healing, nervous system regulation, intuition, and self-discovery.

For the first time, I wasn't asking:

"What can I achieve next?"

I was asking:

"Who am I beneath all the roles I've been playing?"

That's a very different question.

2026: The Loyalist

Today, I took the test again - mostly because I was intrigued after our conversation last night.

This time I scored as a Type 6.

And once again, I found myself wondering how my results could possibly keep changing.

Until I realized something.

What if the test isn't showing me different personalities? What if it's showing me different layers?

The work I've been doing over the last several years hasn't been about becoming someone new.

It's been about removing everything that wasn't me.

The people-pleasing.

The perfectionism.

The need to prove.

The need to perform.

The stories I inherited.

The beliefs I picked up along the way.

Each layer I peel back reveals something different.

Today, one of the biggest themes in my life is trust.

Trusting my intuition.

Trusting my decisions.

Trusting the path even when I can't see where it's leading.

Trusting myself.

Maybe that's why Type 6 showed up.

The Real Gift of Inner Work

The biggest lesson I took from this experience isn't about the Enneagram at all.

It's this:

The goal of healing isn't to become someone else.

The goal is to become more fully yourself.

When we do the real work—the uncomfortable work, the shadow work, the grief work, the forgiveness work—we start uncovering pieces of ourselves that were buried beneath survival strategies.

The person I was in 2020 wasn't wrong.

She was doing her best with what she knew.

The person I was in 2024 wasn't wrong either.

Neither is the person I am today.

They're all me.

They're just different chapters of the same story.

And maybe that's what growth really is.

Not becoming someone new.

But finally remembering who you've been all along. 🤍