On this special occasion of International Yoga Day (21st June 2023), I would love to introduce a new divine concept to the world – PERSONALITY KRIYA YOGA – Personality Specific Journey (roadmap) for Self-Actualization!!
(Yoga here means a roadmap or a process to reach the destination and Kriya means actions taken to reach the destination)
When I first came across MASLOW’S hierarchy of needs, I always used to ponder about how to reach the top of Maslow’s pyramid and why only 2% of the human population reach the state of SELF -ACTUALIZATION according to his estimate at that time.Over the years, I used to think it might be a combination and recipe of our luck, passion, efforts, skill, experience, self-belief, karma, 4th factor (divine grace), attitude, beliefs, actions, habits, personality etc.
I missed one very key important ingredient in the recipe – NATURAL TALENT to EXCEL and not just to PERFORM! Many times, to many people across the globe, it is pretty hard to know all our natural talents and build skills/experience around those gifts to make it our GREATEST STRENGTHS so that we could EXCEL in our professional and personal life.
Thanks to the advancement in personality psychology, we got many tools like MBTI, DISC, STRENGTHS FINDER and ENNEAGRAM to discover all our natural talents and the blind spots for our development. Is it an irony that we need the above external tools for our own Self–discovery of our natural gifts? Yes, we need them since we all operate on AUTOPILOT mode many times and it is very hard to recognize our own hidden talents! Many of them have become our habits/unconscious drivers and very subtle to identify them without much of our self-awareness. But many of us might think that we know about ourselves 100%.
Many people in the world try to identify and focus on their weakness vs finding their natural talents/birth gifts. We also fail to understand the below equation.
When I got introduced to ENNEAGRAM, I was really intrigued with the accuracy and the depth of insights it provides about our NATURAL TALENTS/GIFTS, and different levels of development path for SELF-ACTUALIZATION. A very profound fact is that, it is not ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL path for all of us but 9 PERSONALITY specific development paths for SELF-ACTUALIZATION (BECOMING BEST VERSION OF OURSELVES). This is so great isn’t it?
Not sure if Maslow encountered Enneagram tool during his era. If so, he would have increased his estimate for people reaching self-actualization from 2% to 20% ! (May be it is on the rise now in the 21st century with so many new breakthrough innovations and unicorns)
Here is a glimpse of how the 9 levels of vertical & 2 levels of horizontal development looks like to unleash our potential for ENNEAGRAM TYPE-1 Horizontal growth path for type-1 are the lines of integration connected to type-4 and type-7.
One of our extraordinary role models and legend STEVE JOBS was ENNEAGRAM TYPE-1 who created the revolutionary products to the humanity !
Many of us aspire to become legends like Steve Jobs. One starting point is to find our NATURAL TALENTS/GIFTS and convert them to our core strengths so that we could EXCEL in our own areas and reach the self-actualization.
ENNEAGRAM tool provides us the GPS and the development path to embrace and unleash our potential /become the best of ourselves.
Enneagram SELF-DISCOVERY along with the above list of recipes for SELF-ACTUALIZATION might take us forward in the right direction.
In summary, PERSONALITY KRIYA YOGA using application of ENNEAGRAM gives us a clear roadmap (GPS) to unleash our potential and reach the desired destination.
Let us all start our journey of SELF-DISCOVERY to become the BEST VERSION OF OURSELVES and embrace our NATURAL DIVINE GIFTS/TALENTS to create a better world and solving all human challenges.