Emotional Intelligence

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That Moment You Realize Your Opinion Doesn’t Actually Matter Outside of Your Own Head

It felt like both a personal tragedy as well as the biggest relief, the moment I realized, “Oh… my personal opinion doesn’t really matter all that much outside of my own head. Wait… nobody cares? This is horrible! Wait… nobody cares? Ah… this is great, actually.”

And it wasn’t just me. I now can see that regardless of their current age, so many people live their lives constantly chasing validation of their own identity. It was a sobering revelation for me to realize this about myself- and it explained how I had lived so many years of my life.

Especially in my early and mid 30s, I “needed” people to agree with my opinions: I needed to “be right”. I took on the impossible responsibility of trying to make everyone around me think like I did.

 

But now at this point in life, I am years into living with the refreshing perspective that so little of the things that people worry about actually matter… as most of those things people worry about are the things we don’t actually have any control over.

A couple months ago I came across a meme that I found particularly helpful. Granted, it was laced in profanity. So here’s my own cleaned up version:

“Stages of the Awakening”

  1. Blissful ignorance.
  2. Nothing makes sense anymore.
  3. We’re doomed.
  4. Wake up, sheeple!
  5. Get off my lawn!
  6. Realizing that becoming the most loving and joyful version of myself, despite the chaos of the world around me, is the greatest rebellion.

Part of why I am finding it so much easier to be the most loving and joyful version of myself is because I stopped seeking the “validation of being right”. Granted, I still live by strong convictions that guide my own personal decisions and my lifestyle.

But I now know if I were even able to successfully prove I am right and another person is wrong, I would not be rewarded with that person’s respect. Instead, I would be met with their resentment. That is what life has actually taught me.

The self-destructive default had been for me to attempt to gain a sense of control over others by trying to convince them to agree with our my perspective, yet what I was actually seeking was emotional connection with the people in my life.

My personal opinion doesn’t really matter all that much outside of my own head. Being emotionally connected with other people does. Got it.

 

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Who is an Example of a “Healthy” Enneagram 8? Me, Actually.

Continued from yesterday’s cliffhanger here…

As I explained earlier, I discovered I live with an interesting condition where I subconsciously avoid feeling any of the “vulnerable emotions”, like sadness, fear, and embarrassment.

Something in particular that I don’t fear? I don’t fear being wrong. Because if I did… boy, would I feel silly right now. Or would I? Since I don’t seem to ever “feel” embarrassed… even if I should.

It is no secret I am certified in Enneagram. It is no secret I have published a book about men understanding themselves better through Enneagram, which anyone can easily purchase on Amazon.

And it is also no secret that I have publicly identified as an Enneagram 9 Wing 8.

But after my (joke of a) New Year’s Resolution to “be more vulnerable and more in touch with my emotions”, only to discover I am largely driven by the emotions of joy and anger and that it is my instinct to resist any association of being vulnerable…

It’s all there, black and white, clear as crystal… on the website for The Enneagram Institute:

“Eights typically have problems with their tempers and with allowing themselves to be vulnerable.”

If you’re familiar with the 9 different Enneagram personalities, then you know that Enneagram 8 has a certain reputation of being… well, an “eight-hole”.

Or if you’re looking for a more church-friendly term, we could say “bull headed”, “bossy”, or “control freak”.

Enneagram 8 is the Challenger, the Boss, and the Protector.

The plot twist: I subconsciously attempted to be any Enneagram number except the one that I actually was, because I fundamentally didn’t want to be associated with having a “challenging” personality.

I am not Enneagram 9 Wing 8. I am the inverse: Enneagram 8 Wing 9.

(Nine was such a likeable number, though. The Peacemaker? Oh well, I tried.)

I have been asked several times about how a person’s Enneagram number might be affected by the environment they are raised in: nature vs. nurture. I would say I am an interesting example of how nurture can heavily influence nature, as it relates to Enneagram.

If you have ever been around my parents, you know that they are mild-mannered. They identify as introverts. I was the first born child in the family. I carried with me this idea from childhood- even now I can still hear my mom’s voice from the early 1980’s: “You’re Mommy’s good little boy.”

I maintained this simple idea as part of my identity throughout my teenage years, college years, and adulthood: to be a good boy… and eventually a good man.

While I certainly consider myself to be “good”, as well as friendly and personable, I would never want to be known as a “nice guy”. Because the way my brain works, nice equals weak.

On the inside, I have always been driven by this strong sense of recognizing when something was wrong and being motivated to get involved to correct it and make it right.

This means, at times, being uncomfortably direct or confrontational; in other words, initiating conflict instead of avoiding it.

I think the “nurture” side of me has always been strong enough to redirect my energy, causing me to be a more tamed version of a typical Enneagram 8.

(As a reference, on the “not so tame” end of the Enneagram 8 spectrum, we find Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein, and Benito Mussolini.)

The “nurture side” of my upbringing led to my dominant wing being a 9 (seeking harmony and peace) and my subtype being “social”; which is the countertype of an Enneagram 8. I am the specific variation of an Enneagram that can resemble an Enneagram 9, or even an Enneagram 2.

Another clue to me actually being an Enneagram 8 is when I go into “stress mode”. What tends to trigger this is when I am in a room where I feel I have no control-  or when I feel I have taken too much control of the room and I realize it:

I shut down. I go silent. I leave the room. I disappear.

In this way, I resemble an Enneagram 5, the most socially reserved.

But since rebooting my life with my family here in Alabama where the culture is much calmer and “chaos as the norm” is now a distant memory, and considering how far along I am in life at age 43, I would consider myself a “healthy 8” at this point.

That implies that while I am definitely always at least “low key intense”, I become the best version of myself when I empower others; which is how I am finding I am choosing to spend a decent amount of free time these days.

I wanted to be the token Paul Rudd; the easy-going guy who gets eventually annoyed but still goes along with what the group wants to keep the peace. And sometimes, I could easily pass as that Enneagram 9.

But the reality is, the actual me has a stage presence much more similar to Robert DeNiro, Joe Rogan, Tom Hardy, Sean Penn, or Johnny Cash:

Enneagram 8 Wing 9, also known as “The Bear”, or “The Mob Boss”.

Back in high school, my senior year in 1999 I was voted “One and Only”. My entire life I have known I am different compared to the average person. How could I not be? Enneagram 8s are the official challengers of all the numbers.

Also my senior year, I casually auditioned for the senior play and was immediately cast as the comic relief/minor villain, “The Wolf”. It’s undeniably the energy of an Enneagram 8 on display. But was I really even acting?

Like Frank Sinatra, one of the most famous Enneagram 8 Wing 9s famously sang, “I did it my way.”

I guess it all goes back to my need for control. Here’s a perfect example: Years ago, I worked in an office where “Casual Fridays” were allowed.

To mock the arbitrary concept of only being allowed to wear jeans on Friday, but not Monday through Thursday, I started “Hawaiian Shirt Thursdays”. I even hung up flyers in the bathrooms to promote the perfect transition to Casual Friday.

A Hawaiian shirt is a button down shirt with a collar, so it didn’t violate the dress code for Thursdays. About a month into it, I had at least a dozen coworkers joining me each Wednesday for the event.

I “challenged” the dress code. Regardless of an official title, I acted like a boss- and people followed me; even if it was all in the name of fun.

So if only “eight-holes” come to mind when you think of Enneagram 8s, hopefully I have now “challenged” you to see us 8s in a new light.

Who knows? Maybe you’re an 8. Or maybe you’re married to an 8.

My wife is married to an 8. I almost feel bad for her. But as I was unpacking my true number, she was “helping” me realize hers:

She’s a 2, the Helper. Makes sense I would need her help.

So what about you? Do you think you might know an Enneagram 8 in your life?

I am curious. Tell me more!

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I Jokingly Made a New Year’s Resolution… Turns Out, the Joke’s On Me!

When it comes to New Year’s Resolutions, my initial thought is always, “If I knew there was something I needed to change about my habits or behavior, I wouldn’t wait until the New Year. I would make the change immediately!”

Yet still, I figured for 2025, I could at least have an answer ready to contribute and seem like a normal human being. One of the suggestions I have continued reading and hearing is that, as a man, I need to “be more vulnerable and more in touch with my emotions”. So I figured that by default, that would become my (joke of a) New Year’s Resolution.

The thing is, aren’t I fairly “vulnerable” as it is? I’ve been documenting my life here on my blog since 2009. I feel that I do a decent job of sharing the highlights as well as the struggles I have overcome throughout each phase in my life.

But the part about getting in touch with my emotions… well, it immediately became confusing to me. Only two emotions came to mind, regarding what I actually feel on a daily or weekly basis: Joy and anger.

Those two have seemingly gotten me through my adult life just fine… right? I’m just being “emotional efficient”… right?

Even going back a decade on my YouTube channel, I see that even the silly fictional characters I created for myself were running on nothing but joy and anger:

“Green Meanie”, the antagonist from my Jack-Man superhero series; and “Naughty Nick”, who regularly found himself initiating street fights with strangers.

I had to do a Google search: “What are the emotions?”

The only other ones that I connected with were passion and creativity, which I found on the most amazing emotions chart I have ever seen, on Abby Vanmuijen’s website.

She has a category called “Genius” that I immediately respected; which interestingly enough, is found sandwiched between the categories of “Joy” and “Anger”.

I felt a sense of accomplishment. It was confirmed that I most certainly am driven on a daily basis by the emotional categories of joy and anger; as well as genius; specifically, being passionate and creative.

But that only accounted for half of the emotions wheel. As I read through all the emotions on the other half, I instinctively felt rage inside of me; as if I was about to physically fight someone.

I was undeniably triggered by simply the sight of the very words found in the categories of sadness, fear, and disgust. My subconscious clearly felt “attacked” by even just the thought of ever attempting to connect with these ideas:

Overwhelmed, anxious, heartbroken, lonely, jealous, self-conscious- and yes, vulnerable.

Here is apparently the discovery: I refuse to associate with any word I deem as “weak”. I have formed my identity around being strong and capable; not just physically, but mentally- and therefore, emotionally.

This is how I am intrinsically wired; even if it’s not a sustainable functional model for most human beings on the planet. Imagine having no sense of smell. Well, that’s sort of like how it is for me; except basically I have no conscious access to the vulnerable emotions in the categories of sadness, fear, and disgust.

Recently, I proclaimed that I win the award for the “Least Emotional” person in my house. Based on my discovery about only “allowing” half of the existing emotions, that seems like a fair assessment.

It is my observation that for other men who are like me, having extremely limited access to the vulnerable emotions, they choose to seek access to experiencing sadness, fear, and disgust by watching sports; specifically when their team isn’t doing well. This escalates around the time of the Super Bowl and March Madness.

Just today on the radio at the gym, I heard the classic Hootie & the Blowfish song, “Only Wanna Be with You,”… as Darius Rucker proclaims, “I’m such a baby ’cause the Dolphins make me cry.”

As for me, I’ve openly never been a sports guy. However, I recently realized that a major motivation to regularly write new songs is because it reveals what emotions I am experiencing on a hidden level.

For example, the opening line of the first song I have recorded this year for my YouTube channel is this: “Feels like a former life I still have memories from, but I’m not done – Where did everyone go? Divinely disconnected, I can’t be the only one, missing out on something – Where did everyone go?”

This is the emotion of sadness. The very first phrase of the very first song I shared with the world this year so far… began with the phrase “feels like”. I wrote that song last summer when I left Tennessee and rebooted my life here in Alabama. Apparently, during that time, I was experiencing some sadness but didn’t realize it.

But beyond the songs I write, I pretty much never even hint at being sad or fearful or any emotion I feel would link me to identifying with “weakness” in my end.

So that is my synopsis. Am I on to something here?

What I don’t know yet is if as a man, I am a bit of an extreme exception…

Or if indeed most men avoid the emotional categories of disgust, fear, and sadness in an effort to maintain a mindset and reputation of being strong and in control… while most women need to have access to all of the emotions in order to feel human?

I mean, after God created Adam, He immediately acknowledged, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”

Perhaps one of the ways women help men is by giving them access, even if indirectly, to a much wider array of emotions to balance out the men’s tendency to depend so heavily on logic.

So yeah… there’s some supreme irony in regards to my joke of a New Year’s Resolution about becoming more vulnerable and more in touch with my emotions.

The joke was on me: As I successfully began achieving my goal, I discovered something sobering, confusing, and relieving:

I have lived my entire life trying to “just be myself”, while never truly understanding the actual “self” buried deep in layers of attempts to be anyone except my actual self. Until this year.

To be continued…click here to read the other half.

 

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“I Feel Like You Want Me to Care” – Song 8 – Enneagram 6 Songwriter – Analyzing Lyrics – Themes of Belonging and Security

My 8th song is a clear example of what Counterphobic 6 looks like. Keep in mind, I published this song on January 26, 2020; still a couple of years before I even started studying Enneagram to have a clue why I would be inspired to write a song like this, which was ultimately a reflection of what I was specifically going through at the time.

This was still at the start of my own Great Awakening, where I had begun to realize I had been giving too much control over my emotions to other people; that it is always my choice to be offended or insulted by what another person says.

“I Feel Like You Want Me to Care” is my official declaration about this realization; a concept which I have continued to build on in the past few years since writing this song.

I should also point out the Enneagram 6s often struggle with believing in themselves. By me overcoming this habit of letting other people offend me or insult me, it was a major step in my learning to depend on my inner self; even if it was by being “counterphobic”:

I feel like you want me to care – I would, but there ain’t nothin’ there – I’m not offended or disrespected – I don’t expect to be treated better – Not triggered, go figure – I’m not a victim but I might be a villain – You determine where I fall on the spectrum – I don’t have a dog in the fight – I’m an accidental catcher in the rye – Your information doesn’t affect my life – I don’t have any skin in the game – My emotions and time are my own domain – I refuse to give my peace of mind away

So looking back on this song I wrote over 2 years ago, can you see the Enneagram 6? Can you see my longing for security and confirmation of my own existence?

Feel free to leave a comment. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

And now you can listen to the song, below, if you wish:

 

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5 Important Life Lessons It Took Me 40 Years to Learn (A Crash Course in Emotional Intelligence)

Having turned 40 this week, I came to the realization I have now learned certain life hacks that… no one ever tells you about!

So for anyone out there still reading blogs in the year 2021, I am going to share with you 5 important life lessons it took me 40 years to learn; most of which relate to the underrated commodity of emotional intelligence.

Don’t Just Be Yourself:

To “always just be yourself” is implying that there is not constant need and constant room for change in your own life and in your perceptions of reality. In order to mature, you must always remain open to, and even crave, constructive criticism.

Plus, the reality is that people don’t simply like you for who you are: Instead, they like you for what value you add to their lives; how you provide for their needs.

So to just be yourself insinuates that you not are empathetic enough to at least temporarily evolve into a version of yourself in order to relate- and therefore to be valued by that person.

Don’t just be yourself. That’s not enough. Instead, be a better and more flexible version of yourself.

Stop Believing That You Are a Good Person:

It’s interesting how many people instinctively see themselves as “good”; which in their minds grants them access to good things happening to them, and not deserving bad things. They compare themselves to people who have different moral struggles than they do; using cliches like, “I’m not perfect, but at least I’m not an ax murderer.”

I feel that culturally, we have bought into this false concept that karma exists. Living for 40 years has shown me plenty of examples where bad things happened to “good” people and good things happened to “bad” people.

Am I a good person? No. Am I a bad person? No. I am a person- and that means both good things and bad things are going to happen at some point. I accept this.

No One Cares About Your Opinion:

What you believe caries no actual weight on the rest of the world. It doesn’t. All that matters is what you actually do.

Yet still, watch how many people express their beliefs on social media as if they were actually changing someone’s mind. Instead, they are only reinforcing what others already believe through a process called Identity Protective Cognition.

Notice how “news” headlines are designed to trigger your tribalism; to get you to take a judgmental side and even get angry and emotional about the other side being “wrong.” This is simply their tactic to sell ads; whether the topic is politics, sports, or entertainment.

Getting older has taught me that I actually only have control over a limited number of things in this world. I have learned to focus on the few things I can control, not the infinite number of things I can’t- like other people’s deep-rooted beliefs.

You Have Complete Control Over Your Own Emotions, Time, Energy, Money, and Nutrition:

Whereas it seems the default that people think their opinions matter and that they control what other people believe, for some reason they ironically assume they are powerless victims when it comes to the things they alone control 100 percent.

No one can offend you unless you let them. No one can waste your time unless you let them. No can force you to spend your mental and physical energy on them unless you let them.

Likewise, you get to decide how you manage the small or large amount of income you have access to; as well as the density of nutrients in the calories you consume everyday.

For many people, “victim mentality” is the default instead of taking control and therefore changing their daily personal choices that currently lead them to a lesser quality of life.

People Always Find a Way to Do the Thing They Really Want to Do:

In the same way people often assume they have control over other people’s opinions and views, they often assume they can motivate other people to change their behavior too. Very seldom is this the case.

Everyone has their own personal motivations. Some people actually find comfort in their self-destructive routine. This is often due to some type of trauma they experienced earlier in life that they never received professional counsel for. It is their defining wound that they’ve made part of their identity. To change for the better would be to lose sight of who they are.

(Ever seen an episode of Hoarders, My Strange Addiction or My 600-Lb Life?)

At best, you can learn to nurture a relationship with a person to the point they begin to want to help you, and that help that you want might mean they change for the better. However, that often is more of a long term investment.

It is often a waste of emotion, time and energy to try to change a person who isn’t motivated to do so on their own.

That’s it! If you found any of my life lessons to be helpful, let me know.

After all, I am making an assumption that my opinions don’t matter, that I am only reinforcing what you already believe, and that to try to convince you otherwise is simply a waste of my emotions, time, and energy.