Embracing Diligence and Cultivating Self-Compassion with Gladys Schaefer

In this episode of The Real Enneagram, we had the privilege of hosting Gladys Schaefer, a dear friend and dedicated student from the Institute for Conscious Being (ICB). As a fellow type nine, Gladys shared her insightful journey of discovering her Enneagram type and the profound impact it has had on her life.

Gladys began by recounting how she found ICB through a Google search while seeking a name for her dyslexia tutoring business. This search led her to a conference where she was first introduced to the Enneagram. Initially identifying as a type two, she ultimately found her true identity at the nine table, where she connected deeply with others who shared her worldview.

During our conversation, we explored the common challenges faced by nines, particularly the struggle with self-love and the difficulty in recognizing personal needs. Gladys emphasized the importance of diligence as the virtue of the nine, contrasting it with the busyness that often obscures deeper issues. She shared her passion for literacy, which was ignited by her experiences with her daughter, and how this passion has driven her to pursue a career in education, helping others overcome their challenges.

We also discussed the significance of community for nines, highlighting how it provides the support and energy necessary for engaging in diligent action. Gladys illustrated her recent efforts to build connections within her church and writing classes, demonstrating how being part of a community can invigorate and motivate us.

As we concluded the episode, we reflected on the journey of self-compassion and the importance of recognizing our own worth. Gladys's story serves as a powerful reminder of the transformative potential of the Enneagram and the growth that comes from embracing our authentic selves.

Thank you for joining us today. We hope you found inspiration in Gladys's journey. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with your friends and family!

To learn more about the Institute for Conscious Being, visit: theicb.info

Transcript

Scott:
You are now listening to The Real Enneagram, a podcast by the Institute for Conscious Being. To learn more about the Institute and its offerings, visit theicb.info. That's T-H-E I-C-B dot I-N-F-O. And now, here are your hosts, Dr. Joe Howell and Nanette Mudiam.

Nanette: Well, welcome back to The Real Enneagram, a podcast brought to you by the Institute for Conscious Being. My name is Nanette Mudiam, and I'm here with Dr. Joseph Howell. Hi, Dr. Howell, how are you today? I'm fine, Nanette.

Joe: How are you?

Nanette: I'm good. Good. We're very excited about a guest here that we have as we take a deep dive into the virtues of each type. And we're really excited, I'm very excited today, because we have one of our own students with us, Gladys Schaefer. Welcome, Gladys. Thank you so much.

Gladys: I'm so excited to be here and so honored to be included in this. And this community means so much to me, our ICD group and our friends, and they've become family.

Nanette: Yeah, you have Gladys. Gladys is especially special to me because she's my egotype sister nine. So, I am not the virtue of the nine today. I have brought Gladys, my special friend, to talk this week. And yeah, I agree with you. It really is like a family and we're so grateful to Joe and Lark for helping us to build this community where we can really discover our souls and grow in consciousness together in community. So, Gladys, tell me how you found ICB.

Gladys: Well, I started with a Google search, and I was looking for a name for a business. And it was a dyslexia tutoring business, and I thought, this is the welcoming place. It would just be so nice. So I Googled it to see if that was available, and it wasn't. But I found something called the Welcoming Prayer. And I thought, I want to know about that. So I went to a conference about that. And somebody mentioned something about the Enneagram. And I thought, well, I wonder if there's anybody in the state of Alabama who knows about the Enneagram. And I thought, surely there's not a conference here. And so again, I went to my computer and Googled Enneagram Alabama. And in about two weeks time, the Institute of Conscious Being was coming to my town to do a conference, a Friday nights and a Saturday conference. And I didn't know anybody who knew anything about the Enneagram. And I had to just pluck up some courage and decide to go do this thing because it was just a time in my life where I really needed some answers. And so I signed up and I went to a conference and it was absolutely life changing. from just seeing and hearing about the soul child to what my Enneagram type was. And I went into that conference not knowing, not knowing what ego type I was. And I came out committed to learning more and more and signed up for the institute at that conference and haven't looked back. That's probably a bit about four to five years ago.

Nanette: I met you at your first intensive. I remember when you walked in and and we just instantly connected and how pleased I was to get to know you and have been since then. So I that conference was in Birmingham. It was. Yeah. OK, wonderful. And wow, what? That's so cool that I mean, Google sent her to to us. And so, yay, yay for Google. So tell me how the experience has been Like, did you know immediately, oh, that's me, I'm a 9, or was it a reluctance to come to that number? How has that discovery been experienced?

Gladys: At that first conference, I had researched some on Enneagram and taken some online tests and thought, okay, I think I might be a 2 based on my behaviors. I was probably in my mid-50s when I first learned about the Enneagram. And the wonderful thing about our ICB conferences is you get and you're invited to join a table of like ego personalities. So there's table of ones, twos, threes. And so I started at the two table and with a group of wonderful people, but they weren't, I didn't feel at home there. I thought this is not quite where I belong. I think maybe at the next opportunity at that conference, I went to a six table. And again, so many things I had in common, but it wasn't quite right. You know, I felt like Goldilocks. Like, this bed feels good, but it's not quite the right one. And then I went to the nine table, and I really didn't want to be a nine. I didn't like the idea of those words of laziness or slothfulness. Oh, that is nine. I do not want to be at that table. And I went and I absolutely felt at home. And all those people were my people. They were perfect. strangers at the beginning of that conference and they were like lifelong sisters and brothers by the end of a day and a half because they saw the world the way I see the world. We laughed and we cried and I thought, okay, well, this is what I am. I'm a nine and let's, an ego nine and let's see what I can do about that or what, you know, where do we go from here? So I signed up, as I said, for the Institute so I could continue learning.

Nanette: Joe, you have a similar story as well when you first went to the sixth table. It was the last table you wanted to be at, right? I went to really just look at these poor, miserable people, and I found out I was one of them. It's just what's interesting to me is it's inherent in every type to reject who we are. To see that word, whether it's lazy or afraid or whatever that is for your ego type, to see that word is the very worst possible thing, right? The shame that is inherently there. What if people know that I am sometimes lazy? You know, like that's such a terrible, it's shameful. It's hard for me to still say, you know, that people, because it's just such an, it's like the epitome of a low blow because it's just so accurate, you know. You're scaring me, Nanette.

Gladys: Exactly. And looking at my life, I didn't look lazy because I've always been very busy. A nun can be very busy.

Nanette: No, I think that's a good point. Talk about that because, you know, I think everyone, I mean, it's funny. I know I'm married to a sixth. They can also seem very bold and very out there. We all can project something that may be even part true. But at the same time, it's a struggle. So talk to us about that. Why is a nine who might have a pitfall of laziness be very busy?

Gladys: Well, we're really busy keeping everybody calm and happy. And especially when you go back and you look at yourself at the height of your ego. I've learned from Dr. Howell. You know. To go, oh, that's what was motivating me at that time. That I really, my motivation was peace. And that's one of the ways I could tell that I wasn't a two. That, you know, I've learned that a two wants to be loved. And I thought, well, that's not really it. I don't, love is nice. I just want everybody to be at peace. And that's how I could tell, kind of divide those two things for me. And so I, when I walk into a room, it's completely unconscious, but I can, I experience what's going on in that room. I can tell if somebody's upset, somebody's happy, and I just unconsciously feel a need to get everybody on an even keel. And growing up, that definitely was my role that I spent lots of time and energy doing. So being very busy, I raised six great children who grew up and are doing well, married, and I adore them and have grandchildren. So I can be busy doing stuff. But what I've learned to ask myself, am I doing the right stuff? Am I spending my life doing the things that God has called me to do? To be the person that I was made in the beginning to be. And the question of what is mine to do is definitely something that has evolved within these last few years of ICB.

Nanette: So, the virtue of the nine is diligence. And I want you to talk about that. But before we move on to that, I want to talk about the difference between diligence and busyness. Because I think it's a really good point to be made for type 9. I had a similar discovery that I'm also very afraid of being lazy. So in my mind, I really try to stay busy. And I was a stay-at-home mom for about a decade. And I never, I always, my house is, you can go to my house now and it's clean, my beds are made. There's a lot of, I exert a lot of control over those kind of things because I want to seem productive. But I realized that a lot of my activity was still escaping doing the work on me. If I'm upset about something, I'll clean out a closet, you know, because it's mindless to me and I can check out with activity. It's still the same activity. It's still checking out. I'm not sitting on the couch, but I'm mindlessly cleaning something out. And I realized it's actually the same destructive pattern of not facing me. So, can you talk about diligence and busyness and how maybe they first differ and then maybe how you've experienced diligence? I do feel like there are times when I do just need to clean out the closet.

Gladys: Everybody, yeah. Out of compassion for myself, like there's something going on in my life that I need to, like physically being my body and doing, whether it's taking a walk or organizing a drawer or something. And it's a way, but there's an awareness to it now. It's like, oh, that is a, painful something that you're going through, or I experience that as something that is very challenging, and I am going to give myself permission just to do this and do this right now as I process some of this. So I think bringing the awareness to it has helped.

Nanette: and not spending my whole life. That's wise advice to me, Gladys. Thank you. It's amazing how just adding awareness and mindful, well, that is consciousness, right, Dr. Joe? It's just bringing it to an awareness. Absolutely. So you're not asleep. Right. So talk to me about the virtue of diligence, because you've had a really accomplished career in your pursuit of education. And so tell us about that.

Gladys: I had a daughter who still has dyslexia, and I grew up loving to read. It was such a—going to the library. finding a book and going to another world was just life for me. And when she couldn't learn to read, it just, it woke me up in places. It was, it was a, it was a trauma, you know, it was a, and I thought we were homeschooling. So I thought totally my fault, you know, and she thought totally her fault. And the word dyslexia came into our vocabulary and our world. And she was nine at the time. And Having her tested, finding out that she had a specific learning disability, because she's so bright, nobody expected this. So that launched me into this world of literacy that I just, God absolutely did it, you know, and that has been my passion. So that love of reading and then living through the pain and challenge and heartbreak of having a specific learning disability totally changed me. So she met with a therapist who, a reading therapist who totally taught her how to read and she became a Fulbright Scholar. And so that idea of a child with a learning difference, given what they need, In terms of instruction and support to deal with the shame of being different. Helping them achieve their dreams that that became my passion. So, at 50, I went and got my graduate degree in education. I'm working on a doctorate now, and I have recently become a certified academic language therapist, which have like 5,000 plus hours of teaching dyslexic children to read, of all ages. I've moved into the adult literacy field, and I love that. Just in the last year, being able to take this knowledge that I have, In two different situations, one in the spring and one now, working with men who have been incarcerated or who have had drug addictions, who are living in homes where they're really turning their lives around. And I go in with a with some wonderful people and we teach reading and teach the idea of the joy of reading and the joy of learning to read. Frederick Douglass said, once you learn to read, you will be forever free. So not only can you read and learn about all the people who came in history before you, but you can impact all the generations that are coming in front of you. And we need, we need to hear stories. We need to know what the other humans who are alive right now are going through and be there with them. And to walk into that room at a rehabilitation center in Birmingham is the highlight of my week. And I can take a little bit of this knowledge and consciousness to them and help them see themselves with success and let them see themselves the way I see them, you know, as beautiful creations. And I also work with third graders and high schoolers right now, and helping them see who they are. And I can really see my nineness working. I knew just so many different people who had different experiences in this world, from parents whose children weren't receiving what they felt like they needed, to administrators in the system who didn't feel like they could do what needed to be done. And so I just invited them to lunch. at a restaurant in Birmingham and said, y'all are all going to love each other. You don't think you do right now, but you really are. I had everyone stand up one by one and tell their story. And by sharing those stories, we started working on legislation that afternoon. at the hotel, in the bar. We started writing it because nobody was in the bar. So we just took it over and started writing our dreams. And many people, and that effort, other people in the state had done that. But now we have a Literacy Act where we're doing something to move from almost last place in reading to try to move us up. Because Mississippi has done that, believe it or not. They were last. And then they moved to the first, the top of reading. And we're patterning it after that. So working with organizations in Montgomery, some. So we have that now. And that's been very exciting. So seeing that conflict, seeing that not being at peace, and then doing to bring people together.

Nanette: And you did what your ego would normally avoid, which is you saw this brewing conflict amongst administrators and parents and, you know, somehow you avoided the frustration and overcame your ego to say, I can bring this group together. That's so compelling.

Gladys: And it was just part of many people who were doing that, I think. And that is some self-abasement right there. I'm not the only person in the state who cared about this, you know, but there are many people who came together to do this. And I could sit here and, you know, name a hundred right now. But the focus, it was worth it. It was worth the pain. And I think that's what diligent action does when what you've been called to do is worth going through the pain that a nun's going to have by living in that area of conflict. And some things are easier to do in our lives than others.

Nanette: Can you talk about diligence and energy? And by that, I mean, maybe the lack thereof? Because, you know, our virtue can energize us, especially as in this field, you feel very compassionate about it because of your daughter. and a passion is a motivator, it gives us momentum. But that is something like nines need a little kick of that. So, talk to me about how you maintain diligence with maybe not optimal energy levels.

Gladys: Lots of organizing the closet you made. I am so envious. Sometimes when I grow up, I want to be a seven or an eight, which is a joke because that's not who I am. But I love their assertiveness and that they just seem to, and the threes have energy to do things. And sometimes I can see a problem and I can see all the way through it too. That is going to cost me so much energy. And the wisdom in that right now is there's some things that are not worth doing. Like if there's a conflict, you know, among a faculty group because of something that's not a big deal, I can see it, where before I was compelled to go be sure everybody was happy, I can just stay at my desk, realizing that's not mine to do. Because it is going to cost me something. And so picking those battles, those decisions of what to work on, and also the self-compassion that everything's not going to be an easy fix. There's some things that are wrong, that are going to cost me energy, and I can fix them. Other things are going to take everything I have. And trying to stay with those things is a challenge. But the secret Would you like to know the secret? I definitely would. For me, it's doing those things in community. Okay. I have observed, I'm working on a doctorate and it's very isolating. I'm at the dissertation phase. And what I've realized is I am not in community on this. And I need to find a community because what ICB has done is it gives me a community to grow through life with, you know, to learn more, to come back three times a year to our weekend intensives and to continue to grow. And those areas bring some self-awareness to those areas where I'm not spending the energy. So, if I can build community around those things.

Nanette: Well, it is obviously so easy for nines to isolate. We're good at being alone, even as a social subtype. Would you agree with that? Is that true, even as a social subtype? As Gladys is, and I am not. But there is always wisdom in being in a community. That is where love and energy come from very often. It grows in community. Outside of ICB, is that community, is it the fellow teachers? Where would you find a community when you're working on a doctorate? I mean, that's kind of a lone break.

Gladys: I've recently found a fantastic church, which I realize the structure of doing something regularly has helped. But we have a writing class that just met for a month. And I found other people in there and we've liked each other so much. We're going to start meeting regularly. So looking for and finding it. But that is a challenge today. It'll be interesting to ask me in a month if I found that specific dissertation community or maybe a coach or something. As a nine, I find that being in community, it's hard sometimes to get to it. I don't want to. I want to stay in my comfortable, cozy place in my soft afghan and not do it. And soft clothes. And soft clothes and a cold drink, you know, and some water and maybe some coffee. And look out at the cathedral out of the window of the loft and just, I'm just happy. And it's like, but I know once I get there, I'll be happy. I mean, I'll be, it's not just happy, that's where I need to be. And once I'm there, I love it. So there is that little nudge of the nine to the three, you know, the soul child three. It's social, especially getting to that place. And then I'm there and I feel alive. And when I'm really deep in research, I feel alive because I think I feel connected to those minds and those people who did all the work to get all of that information together.

Nanette: And it's beautiful how so much of what you've sent, Gladys, is a connector. You can see that you are looking to connect people, whether it's students or parents or administrators, that you're seeing the group as a whole, which is the gift of healthy nines. That's where we always want to bring the gift of our ego to our soul child, to our soul, that there is healthy lessons that we've learned as being a nine that we don't have to be ashamed of. I think when we really start to do this work, we can always see that we're avoiding that bad word for us, it's lawfulness, you know. But when we recognize like a healthy ego type 9, that in it, you're really mediating between groups that need mediation. And that's such a beautiful thing. Not to give a shout out to the 9, but we have quite a few in our institute. I would say that as a whole, that we are people who want to do, we want, we know something's wrong with us. Right, exactly. And we want to do something to get better. And so I appreciate the nines that really study with us. And so Joe's smiling at me because he integrates to nine. So I know that he, I know he's got a special place in his heart for us, don't you Joe?

Joe: I love nines.

Nanette: So, tell me Gladys, how you said, it's interesting and I wanted to circle back to this, you said that twos need love and I thought it was kind of ironic and I didn't want to miss the point that is our holy idea is unconditional love because we generally don't love ourselves and that's what people really don't know about nines. They just think we're pretty laid back and pretty even keel most of the time. And we pretty much accept other people, like it doesn't matter who you are, I'm pretty good with you, you know, unless you're just downright offensive, I'm pretty okay. But I really have a hard time loving myself. Would you say that, how have you experienced that?

Gladys: I think it plays very heavily into the diligent action because I can take care of other people's needs without taking care of my own and value what other people need to be at peace than what I need. So that is where the unloveliness about myself, not loving myself, not treasuring what I need are valuing that. And again, that's still something I struggle with. That my needs are at least as important as everyone else's. That's really a place of growth that I need to continue to grow in. Again, bringing awareness to it. That that's where I see that I'm not loving myself. And I've grown, I've grown in it especially since ICB, but learning that I am of value and that I am worthy of doing what I need to do.

Nanette: And you've said the word self-compassion a couple or the two words self-compassion a couple of times and I thought it is so interesting that we can be so hard on ourselves internally without people knowing that. And very often maybe don't know what it is that we need. Maybe we haven't asked ourselves that. So, coming to that clear idea of who we are. And I think, I don't know any nines who've done that kind of work who haven't. When you start to do that diligent action, just it's automatic and whatever field or whatever work people do, whatever their careers are, education, whatnot, that you will see this automatic path that just speaks to the universal truth of the Enneagram, that you can do this work and it will always lead you in this way. And so, I really just appreciate you sharing your story with us today. Well, thank you, Gladys. It's been a beautiful pleasure to have you here with us today, and I thank you for studying with us and for being my friend and for being part of the Institute for Conscious Being. Thank you so much.

Gladys: It's a treasure being with you, being with Dr. Howell, and being with this community. I encourage everyone to join because it's life-changing.

Nanette: Yeah, definitely. Thank you. Good to be with you, Gladys. Thank you.

Scott: Thank you for listening to The Real Enneagram, a podcast by the Institute for Conscious Being. To learn more about the Institute and its offerings, visit theicb.info. That's T-H-E I-C-B dot I-N-F-O. The music for today's podcast was composed and performed by ICB faculty member Drexel Rayford.

Nanette: Thanks for listening today. We hope you liked what you heard. If you did, please subscribe, leave a review, and share this with your friends and family.