The three laws of behavior

Three vital questions

Awareness practice guidelines

This section begins with the three laws of behavior, and then provides specific practices for each type that arise from the basic propositions presented in Key Themes of the Types. You may want to review the themes to understand the basis of the practice more fully.

The three laws of behavior

Your awareness of three laws of behavior can help you better understand why you think, act and feel the way that you do, and empower you to lead a more meaningful and fulfilling life. By developing understanding and self-observation of the limiting nature of your habitual personality reactions, you’ll be better equipped to overcome conflicts, suffering and even failures in your personal and professional relationships.

Experience how the following principles highlight the core tasks of your personal development. To achieve lasting change and a new mastery over your everyday life, make these simple yet profound ideas part of your thinking and your self-observation practice.

Law 1 Wherever your attention goes along with your driving energy, behavior follows.

Law 2 Managing your attention and energy requires self-observation. The skill of self-observation is essential for altering your attention, energy and your behavior, as desired.

Law 3 Although self-observation becomes easier with practice, it never becomes habitual. Self-observation requires continuing practice.

This section summarizes key truths presented in David Daniels’ best-selling book, The Essential Enneagram. To explore these principles in more depth, you can buy the book now or attend a transformative workshop.

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Three vital questions

Take a few minutes at the end of the day to review the following
questions related to the three laws of behavior. Record your responses in a journal, if you like.

• How did I do today at staying aware of where my attention and energy were focused?

• When I reacted automatically to someone or something, how well did I bring my awareness back, and redirect my attention and energy?

• How can I practice managing my attention and energy tomorrow?

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Awareness practice guidelines

The links below lead to awareness practices specific for each personality type. In these practices, simply pause several times a day to notice where your attention and energy are in the present moment, and to recall what they have been focused on during the time since you last stopped to self-reflect.

It is especially useful to practice observing a specific habit of mind or focus of attention for your type. For example, a Type One, the Perfectionist, develops a relentless inner critic to support the perceived need to always do the right thing. So a Type One might want to self-reflect on how persistent is this inner critical voice. “How have I been judging myself? Berating myself? Worrying? How constantly was the voice of judgment present? How did I treat situations as good or bad? Right or wrong? How did my inner critic make me feel?”

Here are the steps:

1 Select a time interval to stop and observe: every 30 minutes, every hour, or four times a day. You might want to wear a watch with an alarm or place a sticker on it (such as a green dot) to remind you.

2 Select a length of time to observe for each interval: 30 seconds, one minute, several minutes.

3 Decide on a specific habit of mind of your type to observe.

4 Then, at the given time internals, self-reflect on the habit of mind you selected. Ask yourself the awareness questions described in Practices for Growth for each type. Notice your responses, especially your emotions and body responses, and how these change during the day. There is no action agenda in this exercise, only observation with as little judgment as possible. Still, notice that positive action often springs from awareness alone.

5 Do this awareness practice for several days on one particular focus of attention (from the link to your type below) before switching to another facet. You might want to write the questions on a card so they are readily available to you as reminders.

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Next: Type 1

Practices for all types: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9