Healing, Money and the Enneagram. What do They all Have in Common?  

By, Annelise Bretthauer CFP®

 My journey since being diagnosed with an autoimmune disease (Crohn’s) has taught me two things that I believe are vital to wellness. 

#1: There are times when being is more effective than doing.

#2 (and most important): Awareness is a destination.

For most of my life, the way I’ve dealt with not feeling enough is by “doing”, by taking constant action. While sometimes doing IS the answer, other times just being is the answer. Too much doing can separate the mind and the body. For me, the hardest part of finding wellness has been about listening first, then doing only after my body has led the way. 

The second, and at this point, the biggest ah-ha of my life is that awareness is a destination. I want to say that again, awareness is a destination. Post diagnosis, I started working with an exceptional therapist who helped me start to reconnect with my body. 

The process of learning how to have awareness of my body was wildly frustrating. Pre-diagnosis, I truly had no idea that I created a dynamic within my body that prevented me from being able to hear the pleading my body had been sending to my brain. This dynamic came from the way I choose to overcome dyslexia as a child and teen. My mantra had always been if I just work harder and do more, I will achieve. The problem was this worked very well for a long time. 

Coming to awareness of my body was incredibly frustrating because I didn’t know what to DO with it. I was struggling with this when the universe sent me a message. I can’t tell you where I heard it first but over and over I came across this phrase in reading, podcasts and life, “awareness is not the journey, it’s the destination.”  

So why all this talk about awareness if we are talking about healing, money and the Enneagram? Because the connector between all of those things is they teach us about ourselves. They provide avenues for awareness. 

The Enneagram:

For those of you who don’t know about the Enneagram, in the simplest terms it’s a framework of 9 numbers to help us understand our own and others internal motivations. It is similar to Meyers Brigs in some ways, but the Enneagram is not about personality. It is a tool we can use for personal growth to recognize ourselves and others from a higher state of being.

Money:

When someone starts talking about money, often, the rest of the room checks out. Money can be a bittersweet term. If you have enough, it may feel like just a means to an end but if we don’t have enough, it may feel like a giant weight on your shoulders. Spending time looking at our relationship with money can reveal limiting beliefs we’ve placed on ourselves. These beliefs may be passed down from your parents, your experiences and your circumstances. 

We all have a money personality and sometimes a shadow money personality. Popularized by The Money Couple, there are 5 core money personalities. The Spender, the Saver, the Flyer (money doesn’t have much effect on you), the Security Seeker and the Risk Taker. As a financial planner who helps families managing chronic disease, I work with clients to be intentional with their money. We create a plan for them to use their resources to provide financial stability and life fulfillment. At the end of the day, money is just paper (or numbers on a computer), it’s the experiences and nourishment money can provide that are meaningful. Once you have your basic needs met, it’s not about how much you earn but how you spend it that impacts your satisfaction of your life.

Healing:

Healing is enormously complicated and curiously simple at the same time. When we are in the wrath of pain and suffering, it feels like the light at the end of the tunnel is so far away we can’t see it. Then, once we start to find a structure or formula that works for us sometimes we wonder why it was so hard. We forget how much learning we acquired along the way. I believe that grace is like putting on your tennis shoes before heading out for a walk or run in nature. When we bend down to tighten those laces the door to our experience in nature starts to open. The walk starts the moment you put those shoes on, it signals to your brain that you are ready. I believe the same is true with grace, when we give ourselves grace, we open the door to awareness. 

In these last few moment’s I have with you, I’d like to bring us full circle. Finding wellness is not linear but it is absolutely possible! If you only, remember one thing, remember that awareness is a destination, a healing destination. 

If you would like to learn more about financial planning and dip your toes in one of our free courses, sign up for our email list on our website, www.RiseUpFP.com. And of course contact Annette for all your coaching needs! We’d be happy to work together to help you along your journey. You are not alone in this!