Thinking Inside the Box

"What Is Your Box?" Assignment

My “box” has been something that I’ve struggled with pretty much for the greater part of my life. However, it wasn’t something that I could ever put a finger on until this year. Even though I’ve always been an introspective person, this past year I’d gotten into some pretty hefting soul-searching. I wanted to understand myself and my purpose in the world a little better. So I took to tools such as the Enneagram, to help me understand the lense in which I see the world through. It wasn’t until I discovered my Enneagram type that I was finally able to understand this suffocating box that I’ve been living within.

To be honest, up until this year I was kind of blind to the fact that not all people think like I do. Not all people have the same motives that I do. Not all people struggle with the same things I do. I’m not really sure what I thought. But what I will say is that the enneagram has allowed me to put a name on the demon that’s cornered me in: envy. The summer of 2019 was the first time this word “envy” ever really crossed my mind. I thought “Me? Envious? Pshh, yeah right!” I definitely didn’t think I was an envious person because when I thought of envy, I had equated it to jealousy. It wasn’t until I googled “the difference between envy and jealousy” that I realized how wrong I was. According to Diffen.com “The main difference between envy and jealousy is that envy is the emotion of coveting what someone else has, while jealousy is the emotion related to fear that something you have will be taken away by someone else.”

I still didn’t want to believe that what has ruled the entirety of my life was envy. It took some time for me to actually acknowledge and dive deeper to understand what envy looked like for me. Then it clicked. Growing up, envy looked like me trying so hard to follow in my big sister’s footsteps, because I wanted to be as popular as she was. Envy looked like me acting out so that I (the middle child) could get as much attention as my younger brother. Envy looked like me making myself physically ill due to stress before math tests because I knew I wasn’t as naturally gifted in that way as my peers.

In recent years, my envy now takes the form of questions that constantly plague my mind. Why didn’t I think of that? Why is her idea so much better? How are they so confident? How come they know what they’re doing? Why are they better at speaking than I am? Why don’t I look like that? Why didn’t I get that opportunity? These thoughts are usually followed up with feelings of inadequacy as to why I’m not enough.

As one can guess, these never-ending pings usually leave me feeling like I’m not quite good enough. I lose the ability to believe that I have anything unique/worth offering to the world and that my ideas/opinions are as valid as the next person.

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I need to make some changes to this kind of negative thinking because it is not serving me well. However, I struggle with practical ways to do so. One of the ways that I am going to commit to combatting my envy in the weeks ahead is by writing down the truth in the form of scripture. There are many verses about who God says I am, so before I let the world tell me who I’m not, I need to let God’s truth wash over me and tell me who I am. Another thing that I learned about myself through the enneagram was that I am not my feelings. Every emotion that I have does not indicate the truth in my circumstances. In fact, my wayward emotions tend to be very misleading. I will make a daily commitment to apply logic (which I stress 0 to via HBDI) instead of going straight to my emotions (I stress 128 in red).

Now for a more obvious answer, sometimes I just need to put my blinders on and stay in my lane. Not looking left or right. Not paying attention to who’s doing what. But being fully confident that I can and I will do the things that God made me to do. I just need to focus on making my goals and dreams a priority.

Click here to see the behind the scenes of how I discovered my box.