Enneagram, Pinnochio, and a life-changing stop sign
Jordan Raynor sits down with Ian Morgan Cron, Author of The Road Back to You, to talk about 3 ingredients to creative breakthroughs, the incredible story of Ian “betting the farm” on his career as a teacher of the Enneagram, and how the Enneagram can serve as the road back to the gospel.
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[00:00:04] JR: Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Call to Mastery. I’m Jordan Raynor. This is a podcast for Christians who want to do their most exceptional work for the glory of God and the good of others. Each week, I bring you a conversation with a Christian who's pursuing world-class mastery of their craft. We talk about their path to mastery, their daily habits, and how their faith influences their work.
If you've been following the rise of the Enneagram over the last five years, today's guest needs absolutely no introduction. Today we're talking to Ian Morgan Cron, widely regarded as one of the people responsible for the explosion of interest in the Enneagram over the last five years or so. Of course, he's the author of the phenomenally successful book, The Road Back to You, which has sold more than 750,000 copies. He's a world-class teacher and communicator.
Ian and I sat down and had one of the most fun conversations we've had in the Call to Mastery in a long time. We talked about the three ingredients to creative breakthroughs like the one Ian had sitting at a stop sign when he had a vision for this book, The Road Back to You. We talked about the incredible story of Ian betting the farm in his career as a teacher of the Enneagram, moving his life from Connecticut to Nashville to do this work. We talked about how the Enneagram can serve not just as the road back to you but also as the road back to understanding the gospel at a deeper level.
I loved this episode. I think you guys are going to love listening to it. Please meet my new friend, Ian Morgan Cron.
[INTERVIEW]
[00:01:55] JR: Hey, Ian. Thank you so much for joining us today.
[00:01:59] IMC: Thank you. It's a joy to be on.
[00:02:01] JR: You're famous for making the Enneagram famous again, which we'll obviously talk more about in a minute. But you've been publishing books for a long time, right? You published your memoir in 2011 called Jesus, My Father, The CIA, and Me, which may be the best memoir title of all time. For those who haven't read it, what's the quick summary of your backstory, Ian?
[00:02:23] IMC: Well, that particular story is an examination of my relationship with a father who died from chronic alcoholism at 63. And unfortunately never knew a season of sobriety in his life, and so obviously it was a very complicated relationship. It was really an exploration of that and how I made sense of it in my life, which I think is what all good memoirs do, and I hope that was one.
[00:02:50] JR: What's the path from you early on to now, the work that you're doing today, championing the Enneagram? What does your professional journey look like?
[00:03:00] IMC: Chaotic.
[00:03:04] JR: The opposite of linear.
[00:03:06] IMC: Yes. Circuitous but let me put it this way. I’ve had a real portfolio life, and that's been perfect for me as a person. As I’ve gotten older, I see that there is a real coherence to it. I’m an episcopal priest. I’m a professional songwriter, an author, a speaker, a trained spiritual director, and a trained psychotherapist. I’ve kind of been all over the map, but what I’ve realized as I’ve gotten older that all of those different occupations are really tied together under a larger purpose, which is helping people make sense of their lives. That's been my passion and my joy and my calling for my whole life.
All to say, though it looks like disparate professional pursuits and perhaps even vocational ADHD, that's not the case. In fact, all of those are like streams pouring into a larger mission and one that I can easily get out of bed for in the morning.
[00:04:20] JR: Yeah. That makes sense. In retrospect, it's easy to see that. I was talking with C.S. Lewis's stepson here on the podcast about Lewis and about how from the outside in he looks like he had professional ADHD. He taught at Magdalen College. He wrote fiction. He wrote non-fiction. He was a radio broadcaster but his stepson was quick to point out. It's like, “No. There was one unifying theme throughout all of that, which was teaching.” I would argue that's a big part of your story. So, yeah, you're helping people understand who they are, but it's really through the art of effective communication and specifically teaching. Would you agree with that?
[00:04:56] IMC: Yes. I love to teach. And I love to teach — to actually smaller groups, which is funny because often I’m asked to speak to thousands of people at a time. And though I like it and I think I do a good job at it, what I really love is to be in a room with 20 to 70 people. And I do that actually more often than not in the corporate sphere. I do a ton of corporate consulting and presenting the Enneagram as a useful tool for developing self-awareness among leaders.
[00:05:33] JR: I don't know this part of your story. I read your book. I loved your book. It was very helpful a couple years ago, but I can't remember how you got into Enneagram. What brought you here?
[00:05:42] IMC: Well, I was in graduate school at the time, working on my Master's in psychotherapy, and I just happened upon a book about the Enneagram, and I thought to myself, “Where the heck has this thing been?” I had been obviously studying things like abnormal psychology and human development and all very important things, but I remember coming across the Enneagram and thinking, “Well, you know, this is a very, potentially valuable tool in helping people unlock their lives to understand who they are.” It’s not perfect and it's not the only great tool available for that, but it's actually the most useful one that I found.
[00:06:26] JR: Before we go any further, I want to break down a real crystal clear definition, just overview of Enneagram. I live in Tampa. And when I travel to Nashville, I find that Nashville is this beautiful Enneagram bubble where everybody assumes that you know the intricacies of the Enneagram. People outside of Nashville are like, “We have no idea what you're talking about.” How would you explain Enneagram to my six-year-old, Ian?
[00:06:50] IMC: Well, I don't know how to explain it to your six-year-old but I can explain as succinctly as possible. It's a personality typing system that teaches there are nine basic personality types in the world. One of which we gravitate toward and adopt in childhood as a way to cope to protect ourselves and to navigate the world of relationships. Now, if I was going to say it to your six-year-old, I would say something like — it's a way to understand how you show up for life. That might still be a little difficult for your six-year-old, but it's maybe a more simple way to define it for your audience. How do you show for life? What's the effect of the way you show up for life on other people? How can you mitigate or shed those shadow aspects of your personality that helped you to survive in childhood but now work against you in adulthood?
[00:07:56] JR: That's good. What in your opinion makes the Enneagram different from other personality assessment tools, right? There's no shortage of these tools today. Why is Enneagram different?
[00:08:08] IMC: Well, for a whole host of reasons really. I do appreciate tools like Myers-Briggs and Hogan’s, StrengthsFinder, and DiSC, and the plethora of personality tools that are out there because I’m in favor of anything that helps people increase self-knowledge and self-awareness. That said, why I prefer the Enneagram is, number one, it recognizes that the human personality is adaptive and fluid. In other words, who I am right now, the way that my personality is operating right now is very different than it would be if I was on a battlefield somewhere in Iraq. You know what I mean? Human personality has to adapt to differing circumstances. In fact, if you have a personality that you come across that's very rigid and resists adapting, usually there's a pathology present.
The other reason that I like it, therefore, is because it reveals how we operate under stress and how we operate when we're feeling secure and safe and everything in between. Then it offers a transformational path. A lot of these other systems tend to feel boxy, like this is the way you are. They don't recognize that we're dynamic. We're a process actually all the time. The word ‘self’ is not a noun. It's a verb. You're always selfing. Through the course of this day, you're going to be selfing. You're going to be different at the end of this day than you were at the beginning. You're going to know new things, and it may be incremental or something really big happens today. It may be evolutionary, like leaping forward in your self-understanding, self-knowledge. We are always in process, right?
The right, the last thing I would also say is, I like the Enneagram because who doesn't want to take StrengthsFinder? It's like, “I want to know all about my strengths.” The Enneagram also reveals that what's best about you is what's worse about you, and that what's worst about you is what's potentially best about you. But it's going to require self-knowledge that is rigorously honest. And so that typically the Enneagram, the first time people learn their type and begin to investigate it, it's not a comfortable exercise. As one person I know says, “If what you're looking for is flattery, don't mess with the Enneagram.” It actually is going to work on you in a way that won't feel great in the beginning but ultimately is going to lead to really good stuff in your life.
[00:10:46] JR: Yeah. I think that's because — tell me if I’m reading this wrong, but what I took from Enneagram was that it told me not just what I do but why I do it and my motivations for what I do in life. Myers-Briggs will tell me that I am an ENTJ. Great. The Enneagram really helped me uncover, as a three, why I am an ENTJ. I need the approval of others essentially, which can be a good thing, but it could be a very dark thing. Speaking of numbers, what is your type?
[00:11:19] IMC: Yeah. I’m a four, the individualist. The unconscious motivation, I’m glad you raised that topic, of the four is to be special and unique in order to compensate for what I perceive is a missing piece in my essential makeup that there is some fatal flaw that renders me different and unworthy of belonging to another or to community. Now, fours are disproportionately represented in the creative arts. You can write a lot of great songs from that space. People always complain about our podcast typology because we always have so many fours on because we live in Nashville. I mean, there's just a million songwriters here and artists. Heck, I can go outside and ring a bell and yell four, and I’ll have a line at the door because I know that about myself now.
I could monitor my thoughts, feelings, and actions in real time. I can make different choices before I knew what the unconscious motivation that governed my life, the way that I act think and feel, the way I show up. I didn't used to know that, and so I was kind of living on unconscious autopilot for years and years. Yes. Each type has an unconscious motivation that powerfully influences how that type shows up in the world. Once you know what it is or a piece of what it is, you can move through the world with a lot more emotional and intellectual wisdom.
[00:12:57] JR: I discovered my type by reading your book, The Road Back to You, a couple years ago. Is that still the resource you point people to if they want to find their type or their number? Don't you also have your own assessment now to figure this out? Talk through the tools that are available to discerning your type.
[00:13:14] IMC: It really kind of depends on the person, right? And a little bit on economics. I love the book because we wrote it as a primer. And there was no primer on the market that in a succinct, accessible, hopefully entertaining way presented people with what the Enneagram is and an introduction to how to use it. Most books about the Enneagram are 500 pages at least, and oftentimes very technical. We just wanted to write one that was available, accessible, practical, easy to apply right away. So I do often tell people — “This is a great place to start.”
That said, especially with corporate clients, I encourage them to take my iEQ9 test, which is on my website, iancron.com, because it is a personality typing systems go, the most reliable and valid one on the market in terms of its accuracy. You can go either way, but I would say I would do both. You can take a test and get some information about your type. But really digging into my book, and there's plenty of others, will really round it out for you.
[00:14:27] JR: And it gives you an appreciation for other types that you're working with at the workplace. This podcast is all about how our faith connects to our work. I’m curious, with regards to the Enneagram. When you understood your type, who the Enneagram said Ian was at your core, how did that shape your decisions on where to focus your professional energy? We've talked about your chaotic vocational path, but did your understanding the Enneagram help you focus your vocational time and energy?
[00:14:57] IMC: Totally. That's what I spend all my time on now. It’s in my corporate work. It's what people hire me to bring to their teams, their senior management teams, and I love that work. I mean, I just — I love it because you see the light go on in their eyes so quickly. It's like, “Oh, that's why this relationship isn't working on my team. Oh, that's why we have so much internal conflict or miscommunication. That's why we have such a drag coefficient on our getting things done, where we just haven't understood ourselves or each other and baked those differences into our calculations as we've gone through the day working towards some preferred future as a company or as a team.”
That's really fun. I love it. It works incredibly well with faith communities as well because I find that the Enneagram feathers beautifully with the gospel. By the way, it can be incredibly valuable apart from it. Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to do it in corporate settings. That's what my life revolves around at the moment. To tell you the truth, I had no idea that the book would be as successful as it has been.
[00:16:19] JR: What were your expectations?
[00:16:21] IMC: Nowadays, typically any book on any imprint sells about 5,000 units on average, and a disproportionate number of those are sold to the author.
[00:16:33] JR: Yeah. Right.
[00:16:36] IMC: For us, probably bumping 750,000 units. What that means is that, number one, there was a great need — unexpressed need in the marketplace for a book like this. A little bit of it is luck, if you want to use that as a term or not, because you know to break through the noise, timing, all those things. I don't want to take a lot of credit for being a genius here because, as you know, lots of bad books break through and a lot of good books do not. I feel fortunate, and it has given my life just incredible focus, and it built a whole business.
We just had our team in last week, and 11 people were there between Zoom and in person. I look back five years and I think to myself, “I never would have predicted it.” Life oftentimes reveals the plan. You can have all the plans you want, and some people do, and they have goals, and they reach them. Others find that life resists their plan. This one was a matter of sort of putting our ear to the ground and listening to what was being expressed, either overtly or implicitly in the marketplace, and we just happened to hit it.
[00:17:55] JR: I want to give you a little more credit than you just gave yourself though. The Enneagram's ancient. I largely credit you and others, but you really led the way to this massive renaissance of interest in the last five or so years. I think what really caught my attention with that book is you're just an exceptional — you and your co-author, Susan, exceptional teachers, exceptional communicators. I’m curious. It’s a podcast about mastery. What do world-class teachers and communicators do that their less masterful counterparts don't do? What's the delta between good and great?
[00:18:27] IMC: One of the things that immediately comes to mind is they do a lot of reading, and they do it across disciplines. They don't simply sit in their silo, and they are able and make a point of consciously looking for patterns and overlapping ideas that oftentimes have not been explored. In those overlapping ideas lie a lot of opportunity.
[00:18:57] JR: Give us an example of that from your work, some of those overlapping ideas.
[00:19:01] IMC: I get up every day about 6:00 AM, 6:30, and I read at least for an hour and very often two hours in the morning, among other things. I read things like psychology, lots of psychology books, theology books. I just read a book called Exercised, which is a book by an evolutionary anthropologist from Harvard about exercise for the last several thousand years. You think, “Well, what does that got to do with your work life?” Absolutely nothing and absolutely everything because I guarantee you at some moment, my mind is going to think, “Hey. You know that idea from that book actually collides with this idea about a book on economics in such a way that it gives me a teaching point or it may be an idea for a book.”
Or other times, I’ll come across a phrase in a book and underline it. It becomes a song. So all I’m saying is that leaders need to be well read and rounded. I think the person who exemplifies that well is Bill Gates who spends hours and hours reading. His book list is incredible, and he's all over the place.
[00:20:15] JR: Yeah, very diverse. I want to ask a really selfish question as an author because I do believe. I do believe in this idea of reading outside of your lane. I mean, creativity is just the connection of disconnected ideas, so you got to find this connection of ideas to be creative. When the options are endless of books outside your lane or material outside your lane, how do you choose? Do you just follow your own personal interests? How did you land on a book about exercise?
[00:20:43] IMC: Well, I heard an interview on NPR, and I was like, “Now, that sounds fascinating.” I just followed my nose. Sometimes, I’ll hear a podcast and I’ll go with an author and I go, “Hmm. That smells good,” and I’d chase it down. Or I walk around Barnes & Noble. I mean, Anthony will tell you, I mean, that we've got a book on Barnes & Noble. I’ll tell you something funny about that too. Anthony's and my producers in the room with me, who is a very accomplished successful songwriter, and he'll tell you, “Man, we go to Barnes & Noble. You just look at book titles. You'll find a lot of song ideas.” There are some book titles that are really like, “Dang. That's going to make a song line there.”
For me, it's like, be curious. Hunt things. Talk to interesting people. Ask them questions. Be looking for connections that will help you and others to go, “Oh, that is a wormhole worth diving down.” All those ideas show up on podcasts, in my books, in my talks. Frankly, when you do it, you're going to bring insights that a lot of other speakers and communicators won't. That becomes your value proposition in the marketplace. It's like this person is thinking outside the box and seeing things other people aren't seeing and articulating them in a way that's compelling. The Enneagram was an example of — “I am now sitting about 500 yards from the stop sign where the idea for writing that book came up.” Anthony's laughing because he remembers that day about five years ago where I was like —
[00:22:15] JR: Tell us that story.
[00:22:16] IMC: At a stop sign and my literary agent had been pressuring me to write another book. I had taken a couple of workshops on the Enneagram, I read books, and I’ve heard people talking about it. Sometimes, the idea is so close to you that you can't see it. I couldn't think of a book, and I was feeling pressured and anxious, and I needed to write one, and I got to the stop sign. I went, “Wait a minute. Nobody has written a primer on the Enneagram.” Everybody talks about the Enneagram. You go to a party or somewhere, “What number are you?” I was like, “That is a big hole in the line, and nobody has run through it.” I literally was at the stop sign. I went eureka. Now, interestingly, I told my agent this, and she said, “That's a terrible idea.”
[00:23:08] JR: Nobody knows anything.
[00:23:09] IMC: No, no. She said, “Okay. First of all, it's completely off-brand.” Then I reminded her I didn't have one. Then I said, “I just have a hunch that this is a great idea.” She said, “Well, publishing companies actually don't like hunches. They like data.” I’m like, “Well, someone's got to break an idea before data can be hit, right?” I’m like, “You gotta trust me. You gotta trust me.” I did say to her, I said, “If this book sells 100,000 units in the first year, you have to buy me a steak dinner at the most expensive steakhouse in Nashville.” She said, “If it sells 100, 000 units, it'll be a miracle of God. So, yes, I will do it.” By golly, I got myself a steak.
[00:23:47] JR: That’s amazing.
[00:23:480] IMC: Yeah. I mean, again, and I do credit just being a person who loves to hunt down ideas with coming up with a dumb idea like that that turned out to be a smart idea. And one that has brought me tremendous satisfaction and joy. It goes to show you that if you orient your life in the right direction, you'll see stuff.
[00:24:10] JR: Hang on a second. Go back to the stop sign. Was there anything about the stop sign? Was there anything you saw? What were the rocks rolling around the tumbler of your brain that you think led to this aha moment?
[00:24:21] IMC: Okay. Well, you just gave me an idea that's going to show up in a talk, man, which is I was at a stop sign. It wasn't a yield sign. It wasn't a ‘you're going the wrong way’ sign. It was a sign stop. I just think there are inflection points or moments where you do have a eureka idea. It's happened to me in song writing before. It's happened in different settings where ideas have come, and you're like, boom, mic drop. Chase it, and they've worked out. I’ve had maybe three experiences like that in my life where I can really point to and go boom right there, and the doors opened, and it was very little effort.
[00:25:04] JR: I’ve had a few of these moments and I find that one of the common denominators is solitude, like nothing playing to my ears, no podcast, no noise. I’m not on my phone. I’ve just made space in my brain to make creative connections. Have you found that to be true for you as well?
[00:25:24] IMC: Totally. And I do spend a lot of time alone. I’m a very social person. I love people. I have a very strong introvert side. Even though I’d say I was an extrovert, I feel very — so I’m not such an expert that I don't feel comfortable alone. I feel very comfortable alone. I would say that I just wrote something down here, which is how do these things happen. Well, I think one is that you're ready. You're just in a state of readiness. You have tilled the soil, doing some of the disciplines I mentioned earlier. Secondly, that you're available to it, and that would include solitude. It would include being still long enough and doing things like — I don't know. These things come to me on walks, long drives. Just being available for the idea and then a little heat doesn't hurt either, like your agent.
[00:26:17] JR: Your literary agent, “You have to write another book.”
[00:26:20] IMC: Yeah. You're running out of money or you don't have any purpose and you're 50 some odd years old. It’s like, “Okay. A little heat doesn't hurt.” Let me give an example of heat. Before I wrote the book, I was short on money. I wasn't sure what the next chapter in my life was. I was eager to know what that was. I was also aware that you can't manufacture this stuff. You just can't go out and buy some fancy planner and take a course on the five steps to figuring out what you should do. I’m not saying those things are bad. I’m just saying they're not enough. There's a soulish quality to understanding who you are and what is the errand upon which God sent you here to complete. You have to begin to ask yourself really important questions.
I did what I call a punk move. I wrote this book and then I said to my wife — we had a home in Nashville. We were living in Connecticut at the time, and I said, “Okay. This book is coming out in September. We got to move back to Nashville because we can't launch a book from Connecticut. It’s not — you need to be in the stream of ideas and thoughts and with other influencers and trying to hustle your thing.” She looked at me and said, “You're nuts. We have an income here.” We have this. We have that. I’m like, “We got to go. And, yes, we got to bet the farm.” We did, and it was great. That actually made me feel like I was 28 and starting over again. You know what I mean?
Sometimes, I’m like, I think to myself, “Maybe I should just give all my money away and start again,” because it's like, “Well, if I did that, I’d feel the heat.” I mean, think about great artists or songwriters. Anthony will appreciate this. Sorry, you just got two guests on your show but [inaudible 00:28:07]. Yeah. I bounce ideas off Anthony's face when he smiles or nods at me or laughs. I’m like, “Songwriters who are hungry, they're living in some horrible apartment. They are working two jobs. They're writing songs. They're having breakups. Who knows what? I mean, they're developing drinking problems. I don't know. You just have all these things happen in life. Then they get a deal, they get a great record out, they make a lot of money, and then they have nothing to say.
[00:28:41] A: Second record is always the hardest.
[00:28:42] IMC: The second record is — yeah. The sophomore record is always the hardest because suddenly they're not facing life pushing back on them. They're not having enough experiences that are trying anymore. They're not having to hustle, so they don't have anything to write about. I even think for great leaders, throwing yourself into situations that are what we would say in extremis, like situations where there's a lot on the line, isn't such a bad thing because sometimes when you're just comfortable, everything's working.
This is why COVID has been in some ways — I mean, I’m obviously appalled by the loss and sorry for the pain. I’ve had it. Not a great thing to have. But at the same time, for us, it made us rework our entire business plan. Everything changed, and it was actually fantastic. No small amount of anxiety but anxiety can work for you, not just against you.
[00:29:34] JR: There's an advantage to having that heat turned up on yourself. It reminds me of — I can't remember if it was Kennedy or Roosevelt, the quote about throwing your cap over the wall to where the only option is you got to chase it. You got to go chase it. You moved to Nashville. You left Connecticut. Now, granted you're leaving in September when it's pretty easy to leave Connecticut, but still. You're betting the farm and turning up the heat. I love it.
There's also this image you mentioned you having no brand. I think a lot of people can be really discontent in those phases of their career. It's like, “Oh, man. Nobody knows my stuff,” whatever. But there's huge advantages to that because you can take a big risk. When you have no brand, you could take big swings. Once you have the brand, now you really got to think about being risk averse, right?
[00:30:18] IMC: Yes, yes. In fact, just yesterday I was walking with a friend of mine who used to be a — he’s a fantastic editor. He was the guy who found the book Bonhoeffer and edited it. He took a huge risk because he wanted to buy a 700-page book. Virtually nobody — everybody was passing on it. Talk about good risk. I said, “I’ve always had this idea for this book, which is completely off the topic of the Enneagram.” He's like, “Well, you should write it then.” I’m like, “Yeah. I probably should.” But I’m setting up a business where that's going to actually free me up to do more things that are risk-taking enterprises.
[00:30:54] JR: I love that. I think the same way. I’m doing a very — I wouldn't say very offering project but pretty different for me right now. Yeah, it's fun. It's put more weight on the bar for me as a writer.
[00:31:03] IMC: I want to just say this. I couldn't agree more. There is a danger in becoming a prisoner of your brand and platform. When you do that and you're going to get a lot of pressure from people who work for you or around you who say, “Well, my paycheck depends on you staying on brand.” It's like you start to feel that heat. This is why when I see an artist like Taylor Swift — now, I don't necessarily go out and buy every Taylor record. However —
[00:31:32] JR: — I do. I do. Let's talk about this. I love this analogy.
[00:31:35] IMC: Okay. Well, look at how she's reinvented herself time and time again. She has — not in an unhealthy way, glued herself to a sound and a brand. Now, again, you better have the competency and the talent to pull it off. However, if she had stayed in her lane, we wouldn't be talking about her right now.
[00:31:55] JR: She's a genius. She reinvents herself every album. By the way, she's had a loss. Reputation a few years ago was a hit and a miss. But she came back with, what was the next album, Lover, and it was incredible, and she keeps taking big swings. Yeah. That’s such a good example. I love the way Taylor Swift thinks about brand and strategy and all that good stuff.
Hey. So, Ian, you mentioned starting your day with a couple of hours of reading. I love that. Typically, your day is starting 6:00, 6 30-ish AM. Talk us through the rest of a typical day for you.
[00:32:29] IMC: Well, because I have a portfolio life, it changes all the time. The rhythms of it change all the time. Yeah. I start with reading and thinking, praying. I have a habit every morning of spending time 10 to 30 minutes in mindfulness meditation, which by the way is — I do that, of course, from a more sort of the research-based evidence that a regular mindfulness meditation is a way to begin to make yourself available to ideas, to clear the mind, to sit, to discipline the mind. Also, evidence-based research shows that it awakens empathy, compassion, and to live in a posture of responding to life, rather than reacting to life. I think that's a very important discipline to cultivate.
[00:33:23] JR: Go a level deeper. What exactly does that look like for you, those 10 to 30 minutes?
[00:33:27] IMC: Okay. This could be a little boring, but meditation is so simple. People make it hard. I have a cushion in another room. I sit on it. I begin to follow my breath. It’s as simple as sitting and focusing my attention simply on my breath, and I do that for 10 to 30 minutes. It's a real discipline. When your mind begins — your brain secretes thoughts the way that your glands secrete endocrines. The goal is to discipline the mind. Your thoughts aren't an enemy. They're not a bad thing. They're a human thing. But we don't train our brains where we have some measure. I want to, say, control but exercise over them. What the research shows is that when you do that, you strengthen the muscle in the brain that's able to self-observe and make freer choices about the way you're going to think, act, and feel in any given situation.
For example, let's say somebody cuts me off on a car on the highway. Instead of reacting, I have an extra second that I have learned in meditation to pause and respond and go, “Hmm. I wonder if that person is driving to their wife who's having a baby in the hospital right now.” You know what I mean? It's like I just don't get hooked by as many things, and I can just be wiser. Not to mention the fact that I’m calmer, more focused. I have more discipline about the things that I do as a result. It just has incredible benefit all the way around.
[00:35:12] JR: I love that. You do this meditation. You do your time of reading. What does the rest of the day look like?
[00:35:17] IMC: Well, it depends. I have a lot of interviews during the week, so a lot of times like this one. I might have — I have two of these today. Come Friday I’m recording podcasts all day with Anthony, by golly, who's here in the room. Then obviously, I do travel. I do a lot of speaking dates. I do a lot of speaking dates now on Zoom. We bring in a film crew. I’d be speaking to some management team in London or New York or wherever that may be because I’m not traveling right now. I may be editing a book on another day. I wish I could say for eight hours I do this.
It’s really all over the map and it's also a matter of I spend a lot of time probably every day making sure that the people who work for me know what they're doing. Because I got to say, virtually everything I do is managed by somebody else. So keeping their wheels on as best I can and because they keep my wheels on and keeping the ship moving forward is important. By the way, I never work after six o'clock at night.
[00:36:17] JR: I love it. Yeah. I never work after 5:00. That's my cutoff.
[00:36:19] IMC: I just. I won't touch it. Because I read in the morning, I tend to really goof off at night.
[00:36:24] JR: Yeah. I’m the same.
[00:36:25] IMC: And I eat a lot. I eat a lot.
[00:36:30] JR: I like that. That’s something we could share in. Ian, this podcast is all about how our faith in Jesus Christ shapes the vocational work we do in the world, whether we're doctors, writers, entrepreneurs, marketers, whatever. You're an episcopal priest. I’m curious. I’ve never studied specifically what the Episcopal Church says about a theology of work. But what does the Episcopal Church teach us about how our vocational work connects to God's work in the world?
[00:36:56] IMC: Well, there's an inextricable link, and there are books about theology of work among Anglicans. I think about — there's actually a book. I can't remember the name of the woman who wrote it in the 1950s now. Gosh. That’s a shame. I need more meditation today apparently.
[00:37:14] JR: Dorothy Sayers?
[00:37:15] IMC: Yeah. Dorothy Sayers’s work on theology, basically a theology of work. For me, work is an expression of, hopefully, who I am as a human being. That it's aligned to what I believe to be true about me and about who God is. And really experiencing the pleasure of God as a result of what I do. At the same — work is very, very important and so is leisure. There's a wonderful book, it's very obscure, by — actually, it was a critic for the New York Times. His name was Graham Kerr, K-E-R-R. It's called The Decline of Pleasure. It was written in the early 1960s. It's not super easy reading but it's rich about, you know, work has its place. But unfortunately, our culture is so obsessed with productivity that it has forgotten the importance of pleasure.
I try to bring pleasure to my life as well as work as a counterbalance. Well, fortunately a lot of what I do for work also brings me — I derive pleasure from reading. I listen to a ton of music. Anthony never gets in my car without me saying, “Have you heard this song? This song is unbelievable. You got to hear this lyric.”
[00:38:37] A: That's right.
[00:38:38] IMC: I can't wait for live music to begin up again. It's something I desperately miss. Actually, right now I’m spending a lot of time thinking about this idea that I don't really have a passion or a hobby, and I’ve been challenging myself to think about, “Well, what's your plan. What are you going to do?” I have a couple of areas of interest that I’d like to pursue because I think when you're doing those things, again, it serves your work. Because when you focus your mind on something other than your work, when you return to it, you'll be surprised at how many ideas and connections you have made in your leisure that bring together some idea in your work that would not have come otherwise. That's a fact of science. It's not even just a spiritual observation. It's also a science-based observation. If you get stuck on an idea, go for a walk and don't think about work.
[00:39:38] JR: There's so much evidence for this. I was just writing about this in my next book, which is about productivity. It's about time management from a gospel-centered perspective. And talking about the counter-intuitively productive rhythms of rest throughout our workday. Sleep. Sabbath. These things, for the people who are obsessed with productivity, actually do make us more productive. Your comment a minute ago reminded me of Churchill, who was obsessed with painting and laying bricks. I mean, he was a prime minister. He'd be like, “Hey, ideal day; 2,000 words and laying 200 bricks,” because he knew he was going to make connections in his head while resting with his hands, right?
[00:40:18] IMC: And there are unconscious connections that don't come out until later. There's an element of faith that you're going to have to do this stuff and your unconscious brain is going to be doing a lot of lifting while you do it. It’s interesting when I’m working, when I used to work with clients. I still do this with people when they come to me with a problem or they're suffering something. They'll say, “All right. Let's begin with the basics.” I’ll say, “Tell me about your sleep.” “I’m sleeping four hours a night.” “Okay.”
[00:40:43] JR: That’s the problem. There you go.
[00:40:45] IMC: Yeah. Or I’ll say, “Tell me about your exercise regime.” Then I’ll say, “Tell me about your hydration. How much water do you drink every day,” which sounds silly but it's not. Most emergency room visits are solved with a drip bag of water. More people show up at emergency rooms for being dehydrated, and then think they're having a heart attack. No. I mean, I’m not saying don't go if you think you're having a heart attack. I’m just saying most people would not develop symptoms of a lot of problems if they would just hydrate.
By the way, I was just in Arizona speaking at something. By the way, I feel relatively safe traveling because I’ve already had COVID, so I’ve been freed up a little bit to feel like I can get out and do some things. But I was in Arizona and I was like, “Oh, I got to speak tonight,” and I just started pounding water about noon because I was like, “My brain will not work as well here, unless I am drinking water and so that when I get there, I’m juiced and ready to go.”
I ask things like sleep, hydration, exercise. Tell me what you're eating and what your rhythm of eating is. I just say, “Look. This sounds silly.” But people go looking for hard complex answers to things that often have very simple answers. Well, you may be feeling – I’ll say to a person, I’ll say, “Hey. Do me a favor. Go eat a healthy lunch, drink two bottles of water, and call me this afternoon, and tell me how you're feeling.” Oftentimes they'll come back and they go, “Much better.”
[00:42:10] JR: Love it.
[00:42:10] IMC: I’m like, “I could charge you $150 for that.” [inaudible 00:42:13].
[00:42:14] JR: My hourly rate is $300.
[00:42:16] IMC: That's right.
[00:42:18] JR: I want to go back to something you said a few minutes ago about this connection you see between the gospel and the Enneagram. Explore that a little bit for us.
[00:42:25] IMC: What the Enneagram helps to reveal is who we are at our core — and exposes the adaptive stratagems that we picked up as little kids to make our way in the world. That really helped us back then but no longer service as adults. You're a three on the Enneagram, the performer. The unconscious motivation of the three is a need to succeed to appear successful and to avoid failure at all costs.
[00:42:53] JR: Story of my life.
[00:42:54] IMC: Okay. Now, do you see how damaging — now, that probably helped you as a little kid. You picked up real or perceived messages from the important people in your life; parents, teachers, coaches. That if you wanted love and to get your needs met, you needed to succeed. I’m not parent bashing here. They came into the world getting broken messages, and you got a broken message there. Do you see how later in life — if you're running on autopilot and that's the motivation that you are unaware of that is driving your behavior, well, we've seen the results of that over and over again in our culture, where people work themselves into a divorce, into an addiction, into exhaustion, into burnout, into hitting 50 and going, “Really, I’ve got $10 million in the bank. Is this all there is?” On and on and on.
What I’d love to see happen is for people to realize that these self-sabotaging beliefs are floating around in their ecosystem. How can they expose them? How can they live — you’re probably never going to get rid of that message but you can become aware of when it starts to operate and say, “Uh-uh. I don't have to live out of that anymore.” Where that fits in the gospel is, I think about Thomas Merton, who's a hero of mine. Merton used to say that, “To become a saint means to become myself.” So many of these messages prevent us from — how do I say it? They veil who we truly are. I think part of the sanctification journey is removing the veils and finding to be more in touch with — Richard Rohr calls it the immortal diamond. Some would call it — Merton would call it the true self.
There's countless ways the Enneagram overlaps beautifully with a spiritual formation program. And we don't have the time to go into all of it. But there's nothing in it that is discontinuous with the gospel. And in many ways offers us a path toward living more true to who we are. By the way, let me just put it this way, how does a horse bring glory to God?
[00:45:04] JR: By being its truest self as a horse?
[00:45:07] IMC: By being a horse. How does this oak tree bring glory to God? By being an oak tree. Now, human beings are the only creature in all of creation that can wear a mask that obscures who they are. We call it a persona, from which we derive the word personality. Knowing that and knowing that part of the sanctification journey is eschewing or removing masks that obscure who we really are from ourselves and others, that's a pretty good spiritual formation goal. By the way, when you begin to do that, you start to realize, “Well, this is what I’m made for. This is what I’m supposed to do. I’m not going to do what my parents implied I should do or my culture implied I should do. This is my path. This is how I become an oak tree.” Find the path that brings the most glory to God, and that's a lifetime adventure. You never wake up in the morning and go, “Ah, my true self.”
[00:46:11] JR: Right, exactly. About eight years ago, I never heard the word Enneagram before, but I read Tim Keller for the first time, and it helped me understand that what I would later call my personality as a three, a performer, was a means of getting something that only the gospel would ever satisfy. I would call myself [inaudible 00:46:31] before I discovered that, but it is through the gospel that I don't have to be a performer. I don't have to be any other number on the Enneagram to have an identity, my identity is as a child of God. The Enneagram now becomes this beautiful tool of recognizing specifically how God has uniquely designed me. So I can live truest to that and be the best God glorifier, God image-mirror in the world, right?
[00:46:58] IMC: Absolutely. By the way, if I were to give a one-sentence précis of each of the unconscious motivations of those nine types, here's what they would all have in common; they are completely contrary to the gospel. If you know what the lie is that's driving your behavior, “Oh, I have to succeed,” because people only value you for what you accomplish and not for who you are. Until I can expose that lie, what am I going to do? I’m just going to follow its instructions every day. Gosh. That will just cause you and other people a lot of misery and wasted time.
Perfectionist, the one on the Enneagram who believes I have to respect myself, others, and the world, avoid mistakes at all costs, follow the voice of my inner critic in order to find love and a sense of mastery and control in the world. Is that the gospel? I don't think so. I could go through all of them. By the way, when I was talking earlier about a regular meditation practice, if people want to call it a centering prayer practice, that's fine. It would be the same thing, just a different method. What it does is it strengthens the muscle that then makes it possible to observe yourself in real time. You will begin to recognize, “Okay. Right now, I have fallen back into the pattern of the lie. I have begun. I am working like a madman because I guess I have fallen back into this belief that unless I’m successful, I won't be loved.” Then you can make different choices than you did before you knew your type. That's the connection.
[00:48:40] JR: I love it. The Enneagram can be the road back to you but also the road back to the gospel, I think, for a lot of people and really what the heart of the gospel is. Ian, three questions we love to wrap up every conversation with. Number one, which books do you tend to recommend most frequently? I know that varies based on the person. But just across the board, which books are you recommending the most?
[00:49:02] IMC: This is always a hard question.
[00:49:04] JR: Yes, I know. That's why I ask it.
[00:49:06] IMC: Maybe Anthony can help me because I usually go around sometimes rattling off books that I encourage people to read. I think that one of them is a book called Self-Knowledge. It's written by Alain de Botton’s team at The School of Life. It's a very short little book that sort of tells people why self-knowledge is important and also how to cultivate it and make it something that is useful in your life. I try to think of all the books that I tend to recommend to people because it just depends so much on the person and the situation that they're in.
There's a book by a therapist named James Hollis who's brilliant. It’s called Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life, and it is one of the best books about many of the things that we talked about here. I’ll tell you a funny book that I could recommend to people is Pinocchio. I mean, I’ve actually been toying with writing a book about sort of an exploration of it. Here's why. If you think about, here's, Pinocchio, he's born. He wants to be a real boy but he's not, and he goes on all these misadventures. At one point, he's got to go into the monster of the whale who is his shadow. He has to come out. He has to begin to live an other — I don't want to say other center of life, other reference to life, but he does. Then he dies at the end of the book and comes back to life a real boy. I just think that's the gospel journey. Lewis would say it's the journey from noose or bios, I should say. Just a physical life without spirit to a life of noose, a spirit-filled life, but first you got to die.
[00:50:52] JR: Now that’s beautiful. I didn’t think about that parallel. You guys can find those books as always at jordanraynor.com/bookshelf. Who would you most like to hear on this podcast talking about how their faith influences their work?
[00:51:03] IMC: Oh, man. That is a fascinating question. I could think about a lot of Christians, but one of the things that I find really helpful —and I know that this answer is going to maybe scare the bejesus out of some of your listeners [inaudible 00:51:16] because I’m not necessarily in the keep you comfortable business. I find that a lot of Christians are very threatened by leaving the Christian world to learn what they can from people outside it, and that actually reflects an anxiety that I think is super unhelpful. So I would say I would love to hear you talk to a Buddhist or to a Jewish rabbi or to somebody outside the Christians world. Why? Well, as Luther would have said, I think it was Luther or maybe Calvin, “The idea that wherever truth is found we should avail ourselves of it.”
For example, one of the great gifts of the Buddhist is that they talk about compassion in a way that's very different, and they're very good at it in a way that really enriches your understanding of the gospel. We just shouldn't be afraid of it. It’s like go find out interesting things and make connections of your own and keep your mind alive. Because here's what happens in the Christian world a lot. People only want to hear things that massage beliefs they already have. It’s like, “That ain't going to help you. I want you to have a good theology, and the holy spirit will lead you into all truth.” It’s like, “Don't get so anxious. Go learn from other people and import it into your world view. Be a critical thinker.” Meaning — I can think of a bunch of authors that I disagree with 60% of what they say, 70% of what they say. I read them anyway because that other 30% is worth the whole price of admission.
[00:52:45] JR: Yeah. One idea can make a book worth it. All right. Last question, Ian. One piece of advice to leave this audience with, an audience of people who love Jesus and because of that want to do great work for God's glory and the good of others. What do you want to leave them with?
[00:52:58] IMC: How about this? Again, I’m riffing here this morning. I’m —
[00:53:02] JR: This is great. This is fun.
[00:53:03] IMC: I’m playing jazz and not the classic. I guess what I would say is resign your position on the outcome committee. Do your work and release your arthritic grip on outcomes.
[00:53:16] JR: We don't control the outcomes anyway, so why try to grasp them?
[00:53:20] IMC: Yes. Actually, what you ought to do is disabuse yourself of the idea that you're in charge of the outcomes. Do your work, enjoy your work, and don't get yourself all enmeshed with the outcomes.
[00:53:32] JR: Hey, Ian. I want to commend you for the exceptional work you do, helping everyone discover who God created them to be. Thank you for your commitment to honing your craft and communicating really complex ideas simply, elegantly. Hey, real quick. You have a new course on your website. Can you give us the 30-second pitch of that course?
[00:53:50] IMC: Yeah. I have a course called True You. True You is kind of — I would recommend you read my book first before you take it because it's kind of a part two for the book. If you're familiar with the Enneagram, if you have a basic understanding of it, it would be really, really great. We'll be doing more courses this year.
[00:54:06] JR: You guys get the book. You get the podcast, Typology, everything at ianmorgancron.com. Or is it iancron.com?
[00:54:14] IMC: It will both take you to the same place. But for Ian Cron, I-A-N-C-R-O-N.com.
[00:54:19] JR: Ian, thanks for joining us.
[00:54:20] IMC: My pleasure.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[00:54:22] JR: That was a lot of fun to record. I hope you guys had fun listening to that episode. Hey, do me a favor. If you're enjoying the Call to Mastery, you know what I’m going to ask you to do, so please do it. Go take 10 seconds and rate the Call to Mastery on Apple Podcasts. You don't even need to leave a written review. Just give it a rating; five stars, four stars, whatever you hope is fair, whatever you think is fair. I hope it's five stars. Leave a rating. Those ratings help us convince guests like Ian Cron to come on the podcast because it shows them that you guys are out there listening. But they don't know if you're listening unless those numbers keep going up. Help us do that, so we can get incredible world-class masters of their craft like Ian on to the show.
Hey, thank you for listening to the Call to Mastery, you guys. I love making this show. My team loves working on the show week in, week out, and we love that you guys are here joining us for this journey of exploring what it looks like to do our most exceptional work for the glory of God and the good of others. I’ll see you next week.
[END]