You know them, the highly motivated, super inspiring, confident-acting person with a strong belief in self and ambition. They are goal-setting, energized producers - think Tony Robbins. We need Threes in the world to put a fire under our butts. They check items off their to-do lists, add some more and cross those off. You could give them your list and they would get that done as well. When they are at their best they are tender, adaptable, authentic-hearted, and inner-directed. Their average behaviors include being driven to be the best, competitive, emphasizing their status, emotionally detached, and self-promoting. But underneath all of this “get-er-done” attitude is deceit, their Shadow.

The Shadow of deceit isn’t what you think. They aren’t purposely deceitful to others, rather they are self-deceiving. They automatically and unconsciously present a false front to influence the way people respond to them and they often believe their false image is who they really are. Threes lie to themselves about who they really are because they so badly need to believe they are whoever they need to be for others to see them in a positive light. They are masters at chameleoning but at the expense of knowing who they truly are. When you break this news to a Three, like anyone discovering their Ennea-type Shadow, you can see the defeat in their faces, as they acknowledge something they never wanted anyone to know, especially themselves. When Threes are asleep to their Shadow, they turn to their Saboteur for relief.

Type Three’s Saboteur (PQ Intelligence™) is Hyper-Achiever. Hyper-Achiever shows up as being dependent on constant performance and achievement for self-respect and self-validation (attention and acceptance from others). This leads to unsustainable workaholic tendencies and loss of touch with deeper emotional and relationship needs.  The Saboteur is a word coined by Shirzad Chamine (PQ Intelligence™) to simplify our Enneagram type’s neural addictive behavior, our fixation. It is the perfect description of the behavior that a Three goes to on their “low side.” (Here is a wonderful video you can watch that goes deeper into this “low side.”)

So where is the relief? The relief is in the awareness of when that Hyper-Achiever shows up. Observation is our first line of defense when it comes to change and then we can move to our Whole-y Idea which includes Hope, Harmony, and Balance. When a Three recognizes the Universe does already and while the Universe needs your doing, you aren’t the only one who does. Doing already happens - you are a part of the doing. Your job as a Three is to understand that the world is already balanced and harmonic, and you don’t need to shoulder the burden. Relax into your gifts. We need your gifts but we don’t need your Saboteur. In fact, we don’t need anyone’s Saboteur and the sooner we all realize this and do the work of catching that nasty character in the act, and opt-in for a better choice (behavior), we can relax into our gifts, and give them with the full knowledge that we are a simply a part of something much much bigger than us.