Shownotes

In this thought-provoking episode, join host Lesley Logan as she delves into deep conversations with Erin Baute, a seasoned behaviorist with a wealth of experience in behavior change. Erin’s profound understanding of the Enneagram framework brings forth enlightening perspectives and fosters transformative discussions, offering listeners a rare and illuminating exploration into the depths of personality and personal growth.

If you have any comments or questions about the Be It pod shoot us a message at beit@lesleylogan.co. Or leave a comment below!

And as always, if you’re enjoying the show please share it with someone who you think would enjoy it as well. It is your continued support that will help us continue to help others. Thank you so much! Never miss another show by subscribing at LesleyLogan.co/subscribe.

In this episode you will learn about:

• The importance of understanding behavior as a learned skill.
• Why Enneagram requires a deeper level of self-reflection.
• The pitfalls of overusing coping and personality strategies
• The Importance of self-awareness in building a life that works for you.
• How to nurture habit change without overload.

Episode References/Links:

• Dr. Bruce Perry’s https://www.bdperry.com/
• Erin Baute Website: https://www.livingtheenneagram.com
• Erin Baute Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/livingtheenneagram/
• Erin Baute Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@livingtheenneagram3952/featured

Transcript

And that’s exactly what you’re helping people do. It’s like, just get in and logged in and hit play. Don’t worry about being a Pilates pro in 30 days. Like just get in the system. Um, but so many people look at, you know, the Pilates Pro and are like, oh, I’ll never be there, so I just won’t start in the first place.

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INTRODUCTION

Lesley Logan
Welcome to the Be It Till You See It podcast where we talk about taking messy action, knowing that perfect is boring. I’m Lesley Logan, Pilates instructor and fitness business coach. I’ve trained thousands of people around the world and the number one thing I see stopping people from achieving anything is self doubt. My friends, action brings clarity and it’s the antidote to fear. Each week, my guests will bring Bold, Executable, Intrinsic and Targeted steps that you can use to put yourself first and Be It Till You See It. It’s a practice, not a perfect. Let’s get started.

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Lesley Logan
All right Be It Babe. So I’m really excited about today’s guest. Okay. First of all, I know I’m excited always, but really this is really fun because, first of all, this is a divine appointment that goes way back into a day that I was listening to a podcast I don’t normally listen to when it drops, I usually listen to it like over like a long drive, and I heard this woman and I was like, oh, I love this person. I have to have it on. Remember Melissa Doman? She was on while back and I loved her. And then, I emailed a bunch of guests and I said, Hey, I love your recommendations because we’d loved your episode.

I’d love to hear who you think should be on the podcast. Melissa was the first person to respond, and she responded with today’s guest, Erin Baute. And when I saw what Erin Baute does, I was like totally all for myself very intrigued. Okay? Because I was like, I have heard about this personality quiz test.

I might be calling it the wrong thing, but I’ve heard about this and I’ve never dove into it. Um, because I was just like, I don’t wanna be overwhelmed with all these things, but I have been intrigued. Right? And so I was like, of course I’m gonna have her on. So it is the Enneagram the reason why we started this conversation.

However, when you get into this episode, if you’re like, I don’t wanna learn about Enneagram, I don’t care, I want you to listen to this episode because Erin is incredible. She has decades of behavioral science education, and then she discovered this, the Enneagram and she, it really flipped on its head what she does for living.

And then we go into how her firstborn child actually changed things even more for her. So this interview has a lot of turns to it. It is very enlightening. Ship it up one of my favorite authors that I’ve ever read that really explains who we are and what we do. So we go into a lot of things.

I promise you this is gonna be an episode that helps you understand yourself a bit more. I think sometimes we, like, we, we just wonder is there something wrong with like, what’s wrong with me? And there is not anything. But also she’s gonna give you the keys to the kingdom of understanding why you do what you do in this episode.

And so without further ado, well, you know, as of course we do a little ado, and then Erin Baute

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Lesley Logan: All right Be It babes, I’m super excited. I have an amazing guest actually, when I read about her, I was super intrigued by something that she does, cuz I actually have not dove into this topic, into this personality thing, believe it or not there. But I’m just so excited. I’m gonna let her tell you what it is.

Erin Baute thank you for being a guest here today. Can you tell the Be It listeners who you are and what you’re rocking at?

Erin Braute: Yeah. Thank you. I’m so glad to be here and chat with you today. I am Erin Baute. I’m a behaviorist by trade, so I’ve been studying, working in the field of behavior change for over two decades, and in that work I was introduced to the Enneagram.

It’s a personality model about 13 years ago, and it took what I understood about behavioral theory and sort of hit fast forward on it when we could go deep into the constructs of personality as a way to create lasting change. Right? A lot of the coping and habits that we’ve developed are birthed out of our personality framework in childhood, and they sort of get ingrained in the unconscious and subconscious minds.

And so in order for us to sort of break through some of the places, we get unst, we get stuck. We have to understand how it connects to our identity and our coping and the things that we do to keep us theoretically safe in the world. Right. Like we don’t have the same threats as maybe we’ve had in the past.

And so I find it really, really fascinating work. Everybody is really, really different. And so the Enneagram allows us to uncover the tools around change and systems and new habits that maybe don’t work for everybody the same way. Right? And so I just really love this work of individualizing change. To the person and their unique identity. And so, yeah.

Lesley Logan: Okay. So this is interesting because like obviously like I’ve done human design. Thank you Kareen. Shout out to her. That was a great gift. Done Strength Finders 2.0. Super awesome. That’s how my husband and I even got together cuz we’re like, what are your top five?

But what I’m gathering from you on the enneagram is it’s more like how you handle change habits and like, It’s a, it seems to be a little bit more nuanced in that way versus like, this is how you like string finders. Like this is what you really like thrive in as far as like leadership or showing up in the world.

Human design kind of makes me realize, like, that’s why I get so much shit done, but like how I get shit down is like the Enneagram thing.

Erin Braute: Yeah. It, it really helps us uncover our motivations, right? So behavior is often a learned skill that we develop out of previous habits, previous coping, or ultimately, you know whatever the context or the environment is asking of us, right?

That’s why people can say like, I’m at different at work than I am at home. I’m different with my friends than I am with my husband. It’s because we don’t take into context that we’re really adaptable. Oriented learning beings. And so oftentimes, and, and I’ve been trained in the DISC assessment by Eric Briggs, the color profile, strength finders, you know, all of these tools that capture behavior in a context, but you change the context and you change the behaviors, right? We would see people who would go through major life changes, have a different DISC profile before a divorce and after a divorce, right? Yeah. And it was really hard to create sustainable change systems that work for folks when you’re only looking at the behavior, the behaviors are really important, but they are last, and the Enneagram allowed me to get underneath the behavior and say, why did I even develop this need to do this thing in the first place?

Lesley Logan: This is insane. Okay, so it’s, okay, so, so essentially it’s kind of like, it’s like. It’s like the, you know it’s behind the curtain as opposed to like what, like what’s on stage.

Erin Braute: Yeah. Yes. We are the Wizard of Oz right now.

Lesley Logan: So for people who, I’m sure my listeners, you know, please, when you show this episode, tell me what your Enneagram number is, because I find like anyone who knows it, like they know it, right?

They know it really well. I will be, I took this, I took the test before I could get on this call with you and it gave me like, It looks like I could be three numbers, so now I feel like I have to, as a recovering perfectionist, overachiever, I feel like I have to do it again.

Erin Braute: Well, and that, here’s another great thing, right? The tests are really inaccurate because they’re trying to create a formulaic algorithmic experience around motivation. And motivation is rooted in things like coping, it’s rooted in things like safety. It’s rooted in things like access and socioeconomic status and education and trauma and neuro divergence and, you know, oppression, and our personality is so much more complicated than our behaviors. And so these online tests are trying to take the same formula and they just don’t work. The only test I recommend is called the RHETI . It’s r h e t i. It’s an acronym. And I can give you a link for it. It is the only test that has been empirically studied, and it is only about 46% accurate.

And so our, yep. Our job as people is to fill in the rest and really push in. So the Enneagram, unlike StrengthFinders, where I can read a book and take a quiz and it gives me the results, requires a deep level of self reflection, which not everybody has access to or the time for. And so it might work well.

And that’s where the enneagram is really strong in training situations. Lots of people are in their type in like a work training or with a professional or listening to a podcast or reading a book. Right? It’s a deeper reflection because I wanna understand why. Let me give you an example, right? People learn the art of perfectionism and high achievement for multiple reasons, right?

And so there’s several different archetypes in the Enneagram. If people listening know it, the type one, the type three, they’re all sort of high achieving perfectionist types. But we wanna understand why the type three archetype is the driver around high quality and high achievement. High achievement.

Like, let’s do all the things on the list and let’s keep going, and has a really hard time somatically in my nervous system doing less because I’m geared to doing all this stuff as the way to earn my love and my recognition. That’s how maybe my parents saw me as a kid. I got good grades, I followed the rules.

I was captain of the cheerleading team, and oh, mom and dad said, good job. Good job. Right? That’s how I got seen…(Lesley: Yeah. Yeah. No, I’m, I’m definitely feeling that) the type one, the sort of, I don’t like the word perfectionist. I like the word reformer, the person who never feels like anything’s good enough, right?

It’s just never enough. And so we learn perfectionistic tendencies by learning that I’m, I’ve learned as a kid, I’m not enough, right? Maybe I had a critical parent or a critical caretaker growing up. And so I learned that I always have to be better and better and better just to get ahead of the criticism.

Right? And that’s how I’m protecting my worthiness. And so they look the same behaviorally. They would maybe get the same scores on a disc assessment or you know, something Myers-Brigg. But underneath one is striving to control their worthiness, and one is striving to control how they’re loved or seen or known.

Right? Hmm,

Lesley Logan: that’s so fascinating. This is really cool. So, so basically like for those listening, obviously we’ll put the link below and they’ll have a 46% chance of being accurate, and then the next step is, is to work with someone like you or to like read into it and kind of like go, oh, that seems like more like me and less like me. Obviously that requires self-reflection, as you mentioned earlier.

Erin Braute: Yeah, I created a free typing guide. It’s a digital download to walk people through. Start here. I have a YouTube site with panels of all of the types, resources, educational information. So if you’re not the type of person that wants to read a book or to do this, you could do this by listening to some of these conversations or some of this theory and figure it out.

My hope is to make typing accessible to folks, right? Yeah. So I give all of my secrets away, you know, in, in how I approach typing in this document in hopes that folks, you know, can fill it out. Or can find their way through and the link to that test is in there. Some people just wanna hit fast forward.

Some people are more assertive. (…) Yeah, it, you’re right. It’s, it’s, um, and they can do a typing interview. I just highly recommend that people work with folks who are practiced in typing at pulling out their own identity and their own bias, because we get a lot of projection that happens in typing. I’d say about half of the people I type are sitting in a, in the wrong bucket, either because a therapist or someone or a friend, or we self-identified. It’s complicated understanding. Our subconscious motivations are hard.

Lesley Logan: Yeah. I mean, and that’s like, and the, the, the reason I’m interested in this whole thing is cuz like, I believe like doing something before you’re ready is important to actually doing the thing you want to do. Like waiting for someone to walk up and like deem you worthy to do the thing is like, not gonna happen. Like, just like it’s over. Right. And by the time it does, you were ready already. Like you were ready. You were on a meeting list a year ago and they didn’t have a budget for you.

And so they’re just wait like you were ready already. And so like, I, I really wanna encourage people listening to act as if they’re the person already making the money. Or doing the thing because it helps you make decisions from a different place. That being said, easier said than done. And also I feel like that that comes with the type, it’s easier for some or versus others.

And so kind of wanted to think about like how having these results can help people be more of themselves or do the thing that they’re, that they have goals for.

Erin Braute: I love that because I think the Enneagram is perfectly in alignment with your sort of mission, vision, values around this work, right?

Because the Enneagram is a model of practice, it is not meant to be a typology where we sort of learn who we are. We sit in a box. It’s a practice of returning to our whole selves. When we are kids, we don’t have a distinct personality. We’re a blank slate. We’re all of these things. We’re all of the types, we’re all of the archetypes.

We do all of the things, and we learn as we develop that if I make myself smaller and I use a smaller subset of resources, I get to my safety or my contentment, or my happiness or my love faster, right? And so I shrink those coping. And so here I am a grown adult and I’m using outdated or narrow resources to move around the world, and the Enneagram just tells me where I am in the model and the resources I’m currently using.

And then my work becomes a practice of how to add in and integrate these other tools. And it’s centred in the integration of our head, heart, and body. And that’s ultimately how I fell in love with it because it was such a holistic approach. Unlike all of these behavioral models, which trust me, I love as a behaviorist, which helped me understand what I do.

The Enneagram fed into all of that with the why I do it and where I might be limited and how I can expand and grow so that I can get back to, oh, this is the, who I already am. I just kind of lost my weight to her for a while.

Lesley Logan: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, so interesting. Now of course, obviously Brad and I are gonna have to do this and then probably, and, and it will be interesting to see how each one of us decides to go about doing it because …(Erin: Exactly.)

It’s so different. But it might explain, you know, um, uh, if you, obviously you’re, you know, the four tendencies, like, so like, um, I love those because I think it’s an easy way for people to understand like why they do what they do. And like a short snippet, I’m an upholder 1000%, my husband has a true rebel, and then the book, it’s like these two do not.

Go together. And I’m like, somehow we do, somehow we go really well together. So like there’s there, there’s a limitation there. And so I think it’s really, um, I think this is really cool because not to like knock therapy, because I think therapy, whether it’s talk or somatic, whatever it is, it’s like very essential for all of us.

But it almost allows people to go inward on their own and kind of, and kind of figure themselves out in a way. And, and am I right or is it, is that? Yeah.

Erin Braute: Yeah, you’re totally right. And, and it, I think it allowed, at least for me to flip all of my work on its head, right? So I, before I was introduced to the Enneagram, I had a master’s in public health and was focused on community behavior, right?

Community wellness, community behavior. And I worked for almost a decade in developing educational information and behavior change around women in sexual health, and I was introduced to the Enneagram and it sort of blew the lid off of it for me of, oh, I’m missing parts. There’s more to this than just like cognitive knowing and intellect and studying and theoretical foundations.

And it allowed me to evolve in my career. But it wasn’t until I had kids, my daughter was two, my son was a newborn, where we started to recognize that my daughter had some differences, some challenges. She ended up being neurodiverse, she’s on the autism spectrum. We have a lot of sensory issues, OCD, anxiety, emotional regulation, and it was so, so like, it kicked the door open for me and recognizing that I had all this knowledge around what it took to be present and to shift and to build systems.

But it wasn’t until I had this little being in my life who kicked against everything I knew that I actually learned to integrate what I knew into what I do, what I did. Hmm. And I had all of these things that I had to contend with around my personality that made it hard and also made me a fantastic mom for her. And so it wasn’t, and at the same time, I’m getting my PhD in organizational psychology when all of this is happening and I’m like, okay, I have all this knowledge and this little girl is teaching me how to be in my body in a way no one had ever showed me in all of my expertise, and I’m like, here I am.

I have all this knowledge and all this access, and all this privilege. And this isn’t just core basic information that’s available. And it was something that I learned in her Neurodivergence work from Dr. Bruce Perry. I don’t know if you’re familiar with him.

Lesley Logan: I have. I’ve heard of them. And I just wanna take a pause because (Erin: Yeah) This might be the first time people are hearing about Neurodivergence. I know people have heard about autism, so can you just take a brief moment to explain what Neurodivergence is?

Erin Braute: Yes. It’s a more inclusive terminology that holds any, any differences in how the brain processes, right? So someone might say, I have ADD or ADHD or OCD or some of these other disorders that change the way my brain functions from a neurotypical, that’s me.

My brain works exactly how it’s intended, right? So, I’m neurotypical and the whole world is built around my neurotypical needs. Right? So neuro divergence is a really inclusive way to say anyone who doesn’t fit that norm. And my daughter just happens to have multiple things that impact her fitting that norm.

Lesley Logan: Got it, got it. Thank you for, thank you for sharing that. Cause I think, um, I only recently heard that word a like a year ago. And, um, I was very enthralled, but, and like, and excited about it because, There was, there’s also like a neuro divergency with like hypermobility, like hypermobility can be a symbol of that.

And I was like, cuz I as a pilates instructor have a, gosh, there’s just like a, a significant number of people who seem to be hyper mobile, but they’re very tight, but they’re very, they’re hyper mobile. You know, when you’re just like, what is going on? What is this thing? And so I’ve been wanting to, to go down that rabbit hole.

But anyways, I wanna go back to you, um, and your daughter, because I, first of all, like, like, if any, this is like such a, a cool. Not that it hasn’t come with its own hardships, but like what a cool opportunity for your daughter to be, your daughter and for you to get to in integrate all this knowledge you have because otherwise it’s just in your head and you’re just like, I don’t know, writing a paper or like observing things. But yes, I wasn’t able to like take this knowledge you have and like see how you can work with it with your daughter.

Erin Braute: Yes, that’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. And it, it brought it to a level of integration that I just recognized, especially in the personal professional development field, especially in corporate America and industry and entrepreneurs was missing.

Right. We, we over function and intellect, which it overuses our coping, it overuses our personality strategy and we get burnt out and we don’t understand why. And then we wonder why can’t I make change? I want to work out more. I wanna eat better. I wanna sleep better. But there’s all these things that get in my way and I, I don’t know why.

And then we go back to that, that coping strategy that says, well, it must be that I’m not working hard enough. Hey, type one, right? Like, I should just, I’m not good enough at it yet. And I use my critical voice and shame to push myself harder. Or the type three that’s like, I just need to have more hours of the day. And I use the bootstrap strap mentality and I, and I just push through.

Lesley Logan: Wait, is that the type right three? Is that, did you say the type three? Yeah.

Erin Braute: Yep. Yep. And so all of that just lifts us even further into the habits that aren’t serving us. And so it was trauma informed parenting through the lens of Neurodivergence that I learned Dr. Bruce Perry’s work around, it’s a, I drew up for you cuz it’s sometimes easier to see. It’s a, it’s a triangle and he talks about it in terms of being able to regulate, reconnect reason, and in society we focus solely on this top model. The reasoning, the problem solving, right? And that’s a lot of what we do.

In therapy or in that kind of work where in trauma informed work, it’s all good in the body, right? The, the somatics and some of the beautiful things I’ve already heard you talking about in other episodes and I’m like, oh, I love this. But it’s often overlooked. Most people I talk to don’t even understand about how to get in their body, let alone to do the next work around reconnecting with myself and my belonging before I get into the problem solving.

Lesley Logan: You were 100% correct because I had a somatic therapist and she kept saying like, where do you feel this in your body? I’m like, are you, where do you want me to feel it? Like, yeah, right. What do you want me to, I don’t know, I’m, I don’t, I feel the chair I’m sitting on, like, I’m not really sure. And it took me forever to like, actually, and, and it was frustrating cuz as a implies instructor, of course the whole thing is connection, which of course is why I’ve been like, got so obsessed with Pilates, like my story, that I didn’t know at the time, but like years later when I looked back I’m like, why did I fall in love with this so much? It was because the first moment I did Pilates was the first time I actually felt like I was inside my body. Like it was the only time, right. That I’d ever felt that.

Right. Because I remember like going, I’m standing here, I’m like, what am I standing on? Like, am I standing in my feet? Like do I feel the ground? You know? And so it was this way, it became this like mission for me to figure out, cuz it helped me connect to myself. So I find this, I just looked up, um, Because I knew the name.

I’ve read what happened to you. I think that is one of his most accessible books for people to understand. Yes. The work that’s right. That he does.

Erin Braute: That’s right. That is absolutely right.

Lesley Logan: So, um, what, so obviously how old is your daughter now?…(Erin: She’s eight.) She’s eight. Okay. So six years of this. But like, I wanna go back to, you know, a couple years, a few years back when you were like figuring this out and you’re seeing these signs, like what did it take for you? Like, how did you become the mom that could, you know what I mean?

Because like, there’s so many parents listening to this and maybe their kid is somewhere on that spectrum or, and if I use the wrong words, people please, like, you can correct me, but don’t be mean to me. Um, I, I wanna learn, but like, That may not under, like, they know that they need to do something different, but like where do they go and how did you Be It Till You See It, cuz now, I mean obviously it probably feels like it’s not easy to be a parent to, to someone, but at all in, in any way.

But as, uh, the, a parent in this world where the world is meant for people like you and not your daughter.

Erin Braute: Yeah, I think that’s a really beautiful question. And whether or not you’re parenting a neurotypical or a neuro divergent kiddo, we run through the same challenges because they’re a reflection of our own pinches, our own agitators, our own triggers, the things that hit the parts of our identity that are trying to protect us, but don’t serve us.

And that’s why the Enneagram, for me, becomes the thread through all of this. How I regulate, how I reconnect, how I reason is reflective of my archetype, my personality, my motivations. So you and I wouldn’t do this work the same way, but often behavioral work is given this sort of big umbrella that says, do these things right and it should work.

And then we go back into, some of them do and some of them don’t. And when they don’t, is it me? Am I doing something wrong? Right? And so I think about this like trying on jeans, right? We’re not the sisterhood of the traveling pants. The same pair of pants don’t fit us. Yes, we have to be empowered to go in the dressing room and try them all on, and then we have to be empowered to take them off when they don’t fit.

And so the thing that helped for me was I had a lot of knowledge. I, I already had the muscles around self-awareness and that’s where I tell people to start. Always, I tell people to start with a noticing practice, and I have a free resource that I can link to folks that can help start. What does that mean?

Right? It’s just this practice of learning to pay attention to ourselves again, because so much of it goes into our subconscious, our habit, right? So I already had that deep knowledge. I was very fortunate in that what I didn’t have was the skills to self-regulate. Based on what I knew to be true about myself.

And so my agitators, my stressors as a Type seven on the enneagram was I wasn’t very patient. I didn’t like to be told no. I was onto the next thing. I had a really hot energy. And when you’re dealing with medical providers and evaluations and insurance companies and meltdowns that happen when you are in the middle of a grocery store and I can’t control it.

I had to work on those things that I wasn’t good at, right? Being patient, you know, managing the tenderness that came up for me all required my own self-regulation. So getting into my body, those grounding practices that were really, really important. And then I had to follow it with some good systems, some self-management systems.

How do I build the life? That works for us, right? And I had a big corporate job. I was running three divisions of a national health system, and I had to decide, do I go to work and live in their system? Or do I change my career trajectory after two decades and build a life that’s in service to my kid and my husband and my newborn.

And I chose that route and it was really hard

Lesley Logan: I think first of all, like super brave. I don’t know if your Enneagram puts you in that position to make that brave decision E more easily than others, but like, I, I just wanna say like, good for you. And also like to every woman listening, every, like, that’s a big decision and sure didn’t come lightly, but you did it.

And what was that? What was that? Did it, what, what were the struggles there and like, and how far on the other side do you feel you are on that, that you feel like you’ve gotten to where you wanna be at this point? Cuz it’s been about what, six years?

Erin Braute: It’s been about six years. I, I was really tender. I, all of my identity, I’m an over function and an overachiever.

All of my identity was wrapped up in that I was on a v I P track or a A V I P track, a VP track like I wanted ( Lesley: Yeah) the job,

Lesley Logan: vip, all the things. Yeah.

Erin Braute: And so I was tender and, and I didn’t, I don’t do this perfectly and I made a, a really dumb decision and enrolled in a PhD program cuz I thought, well I needed a story to tell the corporate world why I was taking a break from work and so I’m gonna go get this PhD.

Like it’s some easy thing while I’m managing a newborn, a two year old who was recently diagnosed with autism. Right? Smart. So we make mistakes and that’s. Honestly, it’s really typical, my personality if you, as you sort of get to know it, but the work becomes recovering from it, right? The work becomes how do I return to myself?

And so I made the commitment to do this, but I had to change about two years in of who I was doing it for. Um, I fell into coaching. I’ve been doing coaching for businesses and teams in corporate for a long time and I, I was doing it for myself and was really good at it and was really successful, so I was like, okay, I’m gonna finish this PhD for me, but not because I’m trying to prove anything to anybody.

So I take breaks whenever life is hard with my kids. I’ve taken six months off at a time. Finishing for me isn’t about crossing the finish line at any given time. It’s about finishing for myself and, and being proud of the work that I’m doing. And so it’s slower, it’s messier, but it’s, I’m not proving anything to myself anymore.

Lesley Logan: Well, and it sounds like because, because of your, obviously you have your amazing degrees, so let’s just be real, but also because of your knowledge of how, of who you are. First with this Enneagram tool, it’s helping you understand why you’re doing these things, like why it was so important to you, and then maybe also allowing you to give yourself permission to change the reason you’re doing it to, to reframe that.

Yes. And so I think it just comes, keeps coming back to like the more we know ourselves, and not just like what we do, but like why we do it. Yeah. The easier it is for us to show up in the world the way that we want to.

Erin Braute: You got it. You got it. That’s it. It sounds so simple. It’s the hardest work we will ever do because we’re undoing years and years and years of sort of born in habits in our body that are tied to the way we feel safe in the world.

Right? Yeah. So, Let me give your listeners a tangible example cuz it’s like, okay, what does this even mean? I was working with this woman who IDE self-identified as a perfectionist, right? And she was such a perfectionist that she struggled to use her voice at work and not using her voice at work. Got her to the point where she hated her job.

And so she came to me cuz she wanted to find a new job. She thought she needed to change careers. And I was like, okay, before we tackle this, right, that’s the behavior. That’s the action. Let’s come underneath that. Figured out that she connected to the type one that she was, had these perfectionist tendencies that she had, this deep, critical voice that told her that she wasn’t good enough, a lot.

And she developed this real inability to make mistakes. Right. Mistakes meant I was bad and that I might get criticized and that I was unsafe or unlovable, right? And so I don’t make mistakes. My whole body sort of freezes in these situations, therefore I don’t use my voice. Right. So you think logically the work is to say, let, let’s work on roleplaying and helping you feel more comfortable using your voice at work.

Absolutely not. That’s not what we do. That is the last thing we do. That’s why the behavior comes last. We have to feed the formula. So we found the safest place for her, which was at home with her kids, and we tried to figure out how. How she could make mistakes at home. She’s a perfectionist. She likes everything in a certain way.

And so she started letting her two and four year old help her put away the dishes and her, her four-year-old would take the dishes or take the silverware, open the drawer and just dump them in. And her work was to let the kid close the drawer and leave it, and she had to do all that somatic work. The grounding, the breath work, the laughing, the dancing, the playfulness, right?

All. All of this work to allow her to be able to self-regulate this mistake that was telling her body mistakes are not okay. And eventually she got to the point where she could live with the messes with the kids. She could leave the dishes in the sink overnight. She could let her kiddos help her. And more and more and more, her body started to feel safe around mistakes.

To the point where she could use her voice at work. Took her a couple of months. But she got there

Lesley Logan: That’s a be it till you see it kind of a thing. It’s like she’s practicing somewhere so she can do the thing. She went, oh wait, I love this.

Erin Braute: Yes, so excited. That’s her. That’s exactly what it is.

That’s exactly what it is. But we have to remember that we have to practice where we’re already comfortable, where we’re already safe, or where we already trust ourselves. And so much of habit change wants us to practice where we’re unsafe and all that does is ramp up. Are old coping, all that does is put into overdrive what’s already burnt out.

Yeah. You’re,

Lesley Logan: I mean, like, um, I did, I studied Tiny Habits with BJ Fogg and um, it is, and and I see it all the time. Like I’ll see it in like, you know, people, they’ll sign up for my Palis platform and then they don’t use it every day. Right, right. Because that’s what they said they do. So they quit it cuz they’re not good enough.

It’s like actually like, I really just want you to use it for five minutes. And in fact, if that’s too much, I just want you to log in and press play. Like that’s Yes. You know, I just want you, you are used to gonna the computer just do that. And like, we ha but we’re, it is, and I don’t know if it’s like, if it’s all the types of engram, but like majority of people, it’s like, oh, I said I’m gonna do this huge thing I’ve never done, I don’t do.

Mm-hmm. Or it’s been a long time. And then we get upset at ourselves when we can’t meet that because it is impossible to meet that every single day.

Erin Braute: You got it. You got it. And that is the difference between behavior and identity, right? Mm-hmm. Like behavior in so much of behavior change says like, we’re gonna go hike the Grand Canyon and, and we sort of, Look at the Grand Canyon and the vastness, and we get ready to hike it, but we sort of forget that in order to get to the other side, I have to look down and like take the first few steps.

And that’s exactly what you’re helping people do. It’s like, just get in and logged in and hit play. Don’t worry about being a Pilates pro in 30 days. Like just get in the system. Um, but so many people look at, you know, the Pilates Pro and are like, oh, I’ll never be there, so I just won’t start in the first place.

Lesley Logan: Yeah. Yeah. Oh my gosh, Erin, I could keep talking to you because I just feel like we’ve, like, only touched the surface and I, I feel like there’s some other topics I’m gonna have to have you back on. Um, so everyone listening, you’ll have to just like, let us know where you, where you want us to dive in deeper on the next time, cuz we’ll absolutely have our back.

We’re gonna take a brief break, find out where people can find you, follow you in just a moment. All right, Aaron, where do you hang out? Where can people work with you, coach with you, you know, all the things.

Erin Braute: You can check me out on living the Enneagram. Uh, on Instagram, I load up Instagram with, uh, concepts, content practices, journal prompts, free resources.

I want the Enneagram and behavior change and it’s roots and identity to be as accessible for. For folks as possible. So if you aren’t the type of person that likes coaching or can’t afford coaching, I want you to have access to be able to implement in, uh, the link in my profile on Instagram. I have tons of free resources, a YouTube channel, free typing guide.

Reading lists, all this kind of stuff to sort of get you going. And then if you’re somebody who does like working with someone, having someone sort of block the path or you wanna get there faster, you can check me out on living the enneagram.com. Uh, and about, uh, the coaching, the one-on-one or group coaching that I do with folks.

Wonderful.

Lesley Logan: Okay. Before I let you go, I mean, you, you’ve been in so many amazing words, but bold, executable, intrinsic, targeted steps people can take to be it till they see it. What do you have for us?

Erin Braute: Yes. I. I, I was listening and thinking about these and I was like, okay, there’s so many, uh, recommendations that I would give.

But the thing that I would recommend for folks to start practicing, its four steps and it’s a practice of recovery. Um, we know that in relationship research that 69% of the problems that we face with other people in life are unsolvable and. We spend so much time looking for fixes and not enough time learning how to manage and cycle through.

And so this is a practice of cycling, right? And the steps are to notice, to name, to recover, and to repair. And the noticing is paying attention to me. This is self-awareness. My Enneagram type, who I am, um, just even paying attention to the behavior that I have and naming it is making meaning of what I do.

Right. How does this tie to my identity? Maybe it doesn’t, but maybe it does. Right? Maybe I. I’m not using my voice because I struggle with making mistakes. And if I can’t change something tied to my identity, if I can’t name it. Mm-hmm. And then I have to recover, get in my body, be with myself. Meet my own needs and then I repair, I change the behavior.

I set a boundary. I use my voice. I, you know, have a conversation with my spouse or my kiddos that say, you know, I wanna do this differently and this is what it looks like. But this is a sort of cyclical of how I move through the things that I can’t solve. Because I am who I am. I’m not a problem to be solved as a human.

Uh, it’s moving through the things that, you know. Require us to sort of rub off our rough edges on other people. Uh, and so this notice name, recover, repair is really helpful in doing that. Oh,

Lesley Logan: I love that. I really do. I love it. I love because as soon as I heard you say 60%, 69% of the problems are unsolvable.

I’m like, oh, well that sucks. But, but thank you for this tool that can help us. And I think, um, it, you know, I’m sure you listened to a, um, a few episodes bef. We’re recording this on a different date, but from the recording. Date, um, Dr. Bender was talking about like, too often we try to reason. Mm-hmm. And this is very different than reasoning, cuz reasoning is like projecting looking outward.

Mm-hmm. Like trying to figure out other people. And this is more like going inward and trying to understand yourself and what you can do on, on naming it so you can get into your body and then repair it. I l. Aaron, you’re incredible. Thank you so much for being here. You guys. How are we going to lose this in your life?

What? What are your takeaways? Tag Living the Igram Tag the Be It Pod. Share this with a friend who needs to hear it. A and until next time, be it till you see it.

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Lesley Logan
That’s all I’ve got for this episode of the Be It Till You See It podcast. One thing that would help both myself and future listeners is for you to rate this show and leave a review. And, follow or subscribe for free wherever you listen to podcasts. Also, make sure to introduce yourself over on IG at the @be_it_pod on Instagram. I would love to know more about you. Share this episode with whoever you think needs to hear it. Help us help others to BE IT TILL YOU SEE IT. Have an awesome day!

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Lesley Logan
‘Be It Till You See It’ is a production of the ‘Bloom Podcast Network’.

Brad Crowell
It’s written, filmed and recorded by your host, Lesley Logan and me, Brad Crowell.

Lesley Logan
It is produced and edited by the epic team at Disenyo.

Brad Crowell
Our theme music is by Ali at APEX Production Music. And our branding by designer and artist, Gianfranco Cioffi.

Lesley Logan
Special thanks to Melissa Solomon for creating our visuals and Ximena Velasquez for our transcriptions.

Brad Crowell
Also to Angelina Herico for adding all the content to our website. And finally to Meridith Crowell for keeping us all on point and on time.