A few months ago, I was preparing to lead a CliftonStrengths discovery session with some college students, and I needed to run a quick errand. While in the car, I heard these lyrics: “Have you ever felt like being somebody else? Feeling like the mirror isn't good for your health?”

“Let your ‘yes’ mean ‘yes’ and your ‘no’ mean ‘no.’” (Matt 5:37) I’ve been thinking about writing a blog about the challenges of those two seemingly simple words – yes and no – for a few weeks. So it was not really a surprise for me to hear that line from the Gospel of Matthew at Mass on Sunday. God has a way of nudging me and winking at me when I’m dragging my feet.

In my last post, I shared an overture of the Enneagram personality model. But it’s time to get real and get personal. The truth is, I sometimes struggle with this tool because in studying it, I learned that I’m not who I thought I was.

In some circles, when the topic of the Enneagram comes up, people get all excited and start to rattle off numbers. With others, there’s a quizzical and skeptical look that emerges, and they might ask “Isn’t that a personality-cult-thing?” And still others respond with a blank look that tells me they have no idea what it is. So let’s give some basic info, dispel some myths, and start to build a common understanding.

I’ve never done a “word of the year” before. Each January, Facebook friends far and wide post about their words, but it wasn’t until this year that I finally decided to try it out. I guess I just got around enough people who use this practice that I wanted to be like the cool kids.

Boy, was I surprised by my word!