- Home
- Preface
- Introduction
- Three Zones and Nine Sectors
- Wings and Moves and other functions
- Wings and moves – introduction
- The wings – the neighboring sectors
- Moves across the board
- No better, no worse
- A chosen move
- Life on the axis
- Lost FOURs and false TWOs
- Access all areas
- Longing for the opposite
- Colleagues of the opposite type
- Discerning home base part 2
- Couples
- Colleagues and friends
- Age and the journey
- The path to redemption part 2
- Biblical Journeys
- Prayer
- The Enneagram
- From the Enneagram to the Strategy Board
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Discerning home base – Part 2
Discerning home base can be a complex process.
Choices being made ‘live,’ ‘right now,’ may be influenced not only by an individual’s current place on the board, but also by the two wings of the current place on the board.
And the current place on the board may be home base – or it may be the stress type, or it may be the security type.
The full life story of ‘who I am’ will include stories of time spent elsewhere on the board in the past – and the influence of those times on the present.
And longing for the opposites can become such a significant part of a person’s self-image that they may claim more affinity with the opposites than with home base – against which they ‘rebel.’
To identify home base correctly is to identify not just one significant sector, but this whole pattern of wings and moves and opposites – and in the infinite diversity of humankind, the details of the pattern will be unique to each individual.
Each individual will have a unique life history of time spent at different places on the board – at home base and in the stress and security sectors. The frequency and timing of the moves – in hours or in decades – will be unique. The reasons for the moves, and the experience gained, will be unique.
Each individual will have a unique way of relating to the opposites: the advice of the opposites, the temptations and gifts of the opposites, and colleagues or acquaintances of the opposite types.
And the experience of home base and its wings will be unique to each individual. There will always be at least some experience of all three sectors – home base and the two wings – but each individual establishes their own unique mix of characteristics from the three. They can be used in almost any combination: all three strongly, any two of the three strongly, or any one of the three dominating – although the best gifts and the true vocation and the sense of home will only ever be found at home base.
The process of discerning home base involves identifying a whole pattern of influential sectors – in which the key elements are generally home base, its two wings, the stress type and the security type.
The relative strengths of these five can vary greatly – and home base is not always the most obvious. There are ‘lost FOURs’ and ‘false TWOs’ and the rest. ‘Chosen wings’ and ‘chosen moves’ cry out for attention – often louder than home base. And some sectors – often the opposites – will be more ‘desired’ than actually influential. Identifying a whole pattern of influential sectors can be essential in determining which one among them is the true home base.
Within that pattern, the various influential sectors will not be experienced as ‘neutrally interchangeable.’ Being at home base and using the home base strategy is a very different experience from being ‘away from home’ in the stress or security sector or using the strategy of one of the wings. Part of the process of discerning home base is to consider the various influential sectors in terms of which seem the most natural and which seem more artificial or strained. For each influential sector in turn, it is worth considering whether the individual seems comfortable and at ease with that sector and strategy – or whether it might instead be the result of a conscious choice, or a response to circumstances, or the consequence of security or stress. The home base strategy is ‘what comes naturally’: the rest may have a role, but none will feel like home.