In my post yesterday, I confessed that I was a misaligned Enneagram Three. If you don’t know anything about the 
Enneagram, you may think it is just a weird word. But for those of us who have found it to be unusually enlightening, it might sound more like I’ve joined a cult than merely read a book.
Enneagram Threes are overachievers who find their worth in their performance. The lie an Enneagram Three believes is, “I am what I do.” This makes for all kinds of mental nonsense, performance anxiety, and the need to put forth the image that they have it all together (coupled with a major fear of what others would think if they really knew them).
This was me. Until six months ago.
I wasn’t always this way (or at least I don’t think I was!). I lived for several years in a pressure cooker–a perpetually stressful situation where every decision and action had major ramifications and ripple effects. As the fear of making the wrong move began to overtake my heart like moss on a tree, the need to keep up appearances grew as well. Suddenly, I was no longer living from my true self. I was putting forth a “polished persona for everyone (including myself),” and “doubling down on my efforts to appear successful” (McCord, p. 46).
More than anything, I was creating an image that was just a mirage.
And when the mirage faded, I didn’t know who I was.
Fast forward to present day. I am not the same person. I’ve experienced a transformation like never before and in a relatively short period of time. I feel more alive and more like my true self than I have in years. I am grounded in my identity in Christ, and I have a tribe of people who know me well and love me anyway. And the message I so needed to hear is now rooted in my heart and mind: “You are loved for who you are–not what you do.”
Until…something knocks me off my feet, and I start to fall backwards. Slowly, I start to hear that familiar whisper in the corners of my mind…
“You could have done better.”
“You should have done more.”
“You’re not good enough.”
And on and on the lies call out, “You are what you do…and it’s not enough.”
I had that moment today, and I could feel myself falling.
Falling back into the temptation to put on the persona of perfection.
Falling back into the feelings of defeat and despair.
Falling back into the lie that I am what I do.
Thankfully, my hang time for wrangling those lies is much shorter than it was six months ago.
In her book, Get Out Of Your Head: Stopping the Spiral of Toxic Thoughts, Jenny Allen says that you can interrupt toxic thoughts with one statement: I have a choice.
Maybe you’ve been knocked off your feet and suddenly you find yourself falling backwards after feeling like you’ve made exponential forward progress.
Below are three things you can do immediately when you start falling backwards:
1. Tell somebody. Today, I walked right through the door, and I told my husband exactly what I was thinking. I named it. I didn’t sugarcoat it. I didn’t try to hide it. I just said it. You know what happened next, those lies didn’t hold the same power over me anymore. They were out in the open and the good news is, lies don’t survive in the light.
2. Tell yourself the truth. Although I didn’t do this today, in the past I’ve taken my journal and divided the page into two columns and labeled one column “Lies” and the other column “Truth.” On the one side, I would write down all the lies I believed (see above). On the other side, I would write down the counter to the lie: what God says is true about me. At that point, I was armed with truth and ready to fight when the lies tried to creep back in (this might be a good use for those notebooks I mentioned in my post on Tuesday).
3. Find your mantra. For me, my mantra was “You are loved for who you are, not what you do.” I said it over and over and over until I believed it, and I’m still saying it today.
Falling backwards is inevitable. Falling down is not. You have the power to break your fall, stand up straight again, and start moving forward.
So, let’s get on with it.
