EP413: You are on the right track baby, you were born this way. Being Legendary - in all your divine ways

Okay, I know you may have heard about the Enneagram or someone told you you need to know all about it. So here you are. But what the hell do you do with it? Great news. You are in the right place. Lead with the Enneagram is the show where you will actually learn how to use this incredible growth tool and apply it in all areas of your life, personally and professional. Hi, I'm Tracy. And to be honest with you, I was a skeptic of the Enneagram before I started to actually integrate it into my life. In fact, in true enneagram 8 style, I told my therapist to F off when she wanted me to dive into it well over a decade ago. Now that I have more than a decade of experience using the Enneagram and working on myself in my family with those closest to me, building my own bulletproof leadership. Sales teams with one on one clients, couples, leading workshops for top Fortune 100 executives, and speaking to large audiences all across the globe about this powerful tool. I've got the proof and deep understanding of how to help you implement this into your life instead of it just being some fun thing you heard about. The Enneagram can be a complex model, but with me as your guide, I will show you how to first lead yourself in a powerful, effective, and compassionate way and then help you lead others that way in your life as well. This podcast will have powerful conversations with guests, live typing sessions, and as well as solo episodes of breaking down dynamics of the Enneagram and how they impact your life, career, and relationships.

So now let's dive in.

Hello. Welcome back to Lead with the Enneagram. I'm your host, Tracy o', Malley, and it is a solo episode day, and we are on the eve on an important day for me, it is my birthday tomorrow. If you're listening to this, the day that it gets released.

My birthday falls on April 3, and I am turning 52 years old, which is crazy to me. And I want to talk today about, like, being who you were always born to be. One of my favorite songs of all time is Born this Way by Lady Gaga. That's one of my dad's favorite songs, too. And if you knew my dad, like, that's surprising because he's just so. He was just so, you know, different. You wouldn't assume that he would like somebody like Lady Gaga, but he did. But that song, Born this Way is one of the greatest songs of all time. It doesn't matter, like who you are, I'm beautiful in my way Because God makes no mistakes and although we know that from the neck up, sometimes from the neck down, especially if you've got a lot of life like I have, and experiences and beliefs that have been ingrained in you, sometimes by what was taught, told and modeled for you, and sometimes by your own interpretation of that. And notoriously, my birthday has never been something I really talk about celebrate, not because of getting older. I am obsessed.

With the wisdom that comes with getting older. There's nothing about me that is like, ugh, I'm turning 52. Like, I freaking love that. However, the thing about my birthday comes back to kind of what I was taught, told and modeled my experience around my birthday. And I wanted to kind of talk today to those of you that whether it's a birthday or just owning who the fuck you are, because I know, you know, from the neck up, exactly like it makes all of this makes perfect sense, right? Like with the wisdom that you've gained in your life, no matter if you're 20, 30, 40 or 50 like me. Like, we have so much evidence around us and education and at our fingertips, so much, so many beautiful resources. And you know, we live in the land of personal development these days where if we choose at any moment, we can have the tools at our fingertips and really do the work that allows us to be who we were always, you know, designed to be. However, from the neck down, there's a conflict because our body, our nervous system is saying, what the are you doing? The people that have been in your life are looking at you saying, maybe what the are you doing? And there's this conflict because you know you're, you're supposed to, and you want to and you desire and you deserve to step into the most beautiful, authentic, true version of yourself. And part of you is resisting that because you know, there's a cost that may come with that and I am no different. And I'm going to take you back, like to kind of understand, you know, if you're somebody that struggles around celebrating yourself, whether it's a birthday or just in general, I have a very hard time celebrating myself in general. I will be everyone's greatest champion for them. And those of you that have worked with me know that like, and as a mom, like, I will celebrate everyone, but when it comes to celebrating myself, I really do and have struggled. And I'm working, working hard to change that because I know that I need to do that in order to step into, you know, the beautiful, God designed girl that I am and also to make the impact that I'm here to make and help more of you in this lifetime. It will require me standing up and saying, this is who I am, and I'm really proud of it, and I love it, and being a little more bold with that. But, you know, I was almost born early. I've told this. I've shared this story a few times with maybe people I've worked with privately. I was almost born when my mom was seven months pregnant. Her water broke. And this is back in 1972, y'. All. So, like, there wasn't the monitoring. I mean, my mom smoked, for crying out loud, the entire time she was pregnant. Like, this is just how things were 52 years ago. And my mom's water broke in my dad's car. And my dad was immaculate. Like, seriously. Definitely had Enneagram 1 tendencies, even though he was an Enneagram 8. Like, he was meticulous. OCD about cleanliness, and his cars were, like, everything to him. And he had this beautiful, like, beautiful Dodge Charger, like, with white leather interior. And my mom's water breaks in the entire thing. And obviously, I don't remember that because, hello, I was in utero. But I heard the story, right? I heard about the story and then couple with that. The day that I was actually born, I knew, you know, spoiler alert. I wasn't born when my mom. The water broke seven months in because I'm not an Aquarius. That's for sure. I'm an Aries. Like, God was like, no, no, no, no. This girl is not an Aquarius. She is not supposed to be born at this time. Aside from it being very scary, if I was, it was a miracle. My mom's amniotic sack just sealed itself back up. I'm stubborn like that. I'm not ready. When I'm not. Nobody's gonna tell me when I'm gonna come out. So fast forward to, you know, April of 1972, and my mom goes back into labor. And, you know, it was a couple days of labor. And back then, this is when the men weren't in the waiting room. My dad was out in the waiting room, or he wasn't in the delivery room. He's in the waiting room chain smoking. And after, you know, two days of this, my mom has me, and the doctor comes out to the waiting room and tells my dad, congratulations, Mr. O', Malley, you have a daughter. And my dad, you know, again, I don't remember this because this was the day I was born, but I heard the story of both of these times around the day I almost was born, and then the day I was born several times over the next few decades. But the first time I heard it was when I was 4 and when my dad told the story. And if you know the Irish, we are great storytellers and we're very charismatic and animated in our storytelling. And my dad absolutely is 100% Irishman. Fit that bill completely and very dramatically told the story. And when the doctor came out and said he had a daughter, my dad took a cigarette and put it out and he looked right at the doctor and he said, you know what you can do? You can keep her. I don't want her. And he was totally joking, totally joking, obviously, because the doctor didn't keep me.

However, I was four years old the first time I heard that. And if you know my dad, you know he was joking. If you knew my dad and my relationship, although it was very dysfunctional, functional and codependent in a lot of wicked, weird ways, I was the apple of his eye. I was his favorite person in the world, and I know that. But hearing that as a four year old really set the tone on the responsibility that came because my dad obviously kept me. And in order to be loved, appreciated, accepted, and get approval from my dad, I figured I needed to be everything my dad was wanted from me. Since I couldn't be a boy, I had to be as close to perfect as possible, right? And so then my journey began.

To maybe be an inauthentic version of myself. And I share this with you because so many of us come by it very, very innocently. We don't necessarily decide one day that, like, we're going to start filtering who we are. A lot of it's survival, a lot of it's to be loved. Or so we believe that that's what we needed to do to be loved. Couple that with the other story, you know, about me completely ruining the interior of my dad's beautiful 69 white leather Dodge Charger. I have inconvenienced my dad twice now in the, in my birth right. And my mom really wasn't somebody who celebrated me. You know, she was 20 years old, for crying out loud, when she had me. She was scared. My dad was very chauvinistic, you know, so there, there are a lot of things like working against celebrating this beautiful new life that was coming into the world and also the generations before them. You know, it wasn't naturally celebrated. So I've never been one that celebrates who I am because clearly I was an inconvenience, I was a problem. I was disruptive and I didn't want to be that. And although throughout my life I've been very polarizing in a lot of ways and stepped into lots of the authentic versions of myself when it comes to celebrating me and self promoting myself and really, really, really standing into my truth. And I know for some of you listening right now, you might find this as shocking because I am pretty bold, I am pretty transparent. I, I do have an intensity that is unmatched and I know that. And I haven't even gotten really started and I know this. And it was around my 50th birthday that I really, you know, two years ago that I was like, okay, what is really at the root of this? Not allowing myself to be celebrated, whether it's myself or even letting the people that love me the most celebrate me, you know, and my kids.

They'Re 26 and 27 now, they really didn't understand it. And I started telling them some stories and they obviously know the history and the biography and the story here. But when I really got to the heart of the stuff from the neck down around my birthday, first of all, I needed to really do some somatic work and nervous system regulation and reframing of the story and rebuilding beliefs and working through my inner child stuff continuously. That's an ongoing process, process until we're done here on earth and really letting myself be celebrated. And I have, and you know, the fact that I'm even acknowledging that my birthday is tomorrow is a huge step in of itself because it's not something I typically would do at this kind of transparent level. But I think that this can help you. And, and.

It'S still like an and situation because I don't have a relationship with my mom. She hasn't celebrated me at all. I don't get acknowledged on my birthday. My dad's been gone almost 12 years now and I grieve that. And we will celebrate, we will celebrate with my family and the beautiful one I've created. And even though it's still really uncomfortable for me and I'm still working through that and it will be a continuous process. I'm excited about it. I know this, this stuff from the neck down is really where we try to make sense of this. You know, this is the problem with personal development is a lot of it's from the neck up, right? Even some of the inner child healing and somatic work like they, they promote it like it's neck down work, but it's really kind of intellectualizing things too much. I'm not saying all of it, but, you know, to go from the neck down is really messy and a lot of people don't want to touch it with a 10 foot pole because it is hard, it's unpredictable, it's disruptive.

And all the things, but it's required. It's so required. It's so required. I can't even express that enough.

So when I was a little girl also like growing up in a situation like that and you know, there was alcoholism and emotional abandonment and just so much unpredictability. It was like a Jekyll and Hyde household basically. And I, I kind of was left in charge of playing chess with the entire family. And part of me really loves that role because I'm really great at it. And it's why I'm probably great at what I do today, honestly. And it's why I'm a hell of a mom today. I've been adulting since I was about 4 years old. And part of me is so t that for the longest time I wasn't a very good nurturer of myself and others. Right. And so when I was a little girl, I remember that I wanted to be a. I wanted to be a legend of some sort. I think we all do. We want to know why we're here and what we're here to do, but we got to figure out like, how, how do we get from here to there? And when I was a little girl, usually when the dust would settle in the household, I had this weird quirky thing that I've been made fun of most of my life for is reading maps. And when I was a little girl, I remember pulling out the atlas and it, it was like a yellow spiral bound thing and I would go page by page and read state by state. And obviously I wasn't consciously aware of maybe some meaning behind this when I was doing it, but when I was a little girl, part of me was like trying to make sense and, and they needed some kind of understanding and a framework and a system of like, how do we get out of here? Or how do we get from here to there? Or how does this all connect somehow, right? I think that's the beauty of maps. Navigation system. And you know, this is long before we had phones that could tell us how and where to go. We had to read maps to get anywhere. And I'm really good at. I don't need a GPS system. I'm never, I'm not somebody who ever gets lost because, you know, I've always read maps. But anyway, the the metaphor behind mapping and navigation came from that place of, like, how did we get here? Like, and how the do we get out of here? And, you know, I would go on for the next few decades and still reading maps. In fact, when I got married, my ex's family, they were. They giggled at me. They're like, you read maps? I'm like, yes. Numbers and maps. Numbers and maps. I'm like Rain man with numbers. And I'm obsessed with maps. And the fact that now here I am, you know, at 52, for the last over a decade, using the tool of the Enneagram, and I'm masterful in it. What is involved in the Enneagram? It's numbers and a mapping system and a navigation system to help guide you back to who you were always designed to be before life happened. Like, my life is coming full circle. And the fact that, you know, I have other tools in my toolbox that are navigation systems that I use when I work with clients and teams and things like that. Like, I bring the whole plethora of my toolbox into what I do. But using the framework of the Enneagram, it really helped me see very clearly the mapping system of who we are.

When we're at our best, when we're off roading, when we're taking detours, when we need to take a hard right or a hard left.

That's the beautiful gift that the Enneagram gave me, first and foremost. And then to be able to teach this navigation system to help you, it's been one of the biggest joys and ahas of my life, and I love it. And it's why I am so masterful of it with it, because I use it like a navigation system for you. And I teach that to you and to myself. And, you know, in moments like these.

When I do want to hide and take a hard left and go off roading and go into the places that nobody can find me on the map, right? And knowing my framework of the Enneagram, like, knowing I'm an 8 and where I go when I'm feeling vulnerable or weak, I want to go into a cave. And, you know, usually using my understanding and integration of this beautiful tool.

To know exactly where I'm headed, if I choose to do that, and I can choose to do that, and it's okay, and I have other, you know, reroutes that I can take to get out of it, right? But understanding exactly where I'm headed, where I'm headed, and to meet it with kindness and compassion and empathy. And love and grace. That is the beauty of the work that we do in this lifetime. To be legendary. And I always wanted to. We're all legendary. We all have a legendary leader inside of us. But how do we be it? How do we do it? And how do we have it in our life? Personally, professionally, for ourselves, for the people that we love, for the people that we lead. It's a constant, constant understanding of ourselves and navigating our biology and our home base and this divine, beautiful space that we've been given within ourselves. Then we have to understand all the paths we've taken through our biography and making sense of it. That's why mapping systems. I'm obsessed with it. To help you in the work that I do. I do a lot of timeline work and help you go back and connect the dots from place to place because they all fucking mattered to bring you here. And then some of the behaviors that came as a result of that divine makeup and biology and the biography that comes together, we. We have to see the patterns and the roads that we prefer to take when things get a little crazy for us. And then when we do decide to go off roading, understand way maybe why that is and connecting the backstory to all of that so that when we understand this and we meet it with those beautiful parts of who we are and we understand that this is how we are made up and we can leverage this for good. And we all. We can also use the parts of that that aren't so much of our favorites to become better, to become vulnerable, to lean into community and friendships and support love like all of it fucking matters. Every point along the way in the journey of this destination called life has mattered. And the ability to do that within yourself, to be able to get curious about yourself with kindness and empathy, to put tools in your toolbox like from a coach like me, using like the Enneagram and recovery and all the other masterful tools that I have in my toolbox that I can give you as well. To be able to walk alongside yourself in your story as well as others, to be courageous in and vulnerable in sharing this life with people. That's a scary one for me and honoring every part of the journey. When you can do that, you are legendary. You're legendary just because you're here. But you become a legendary leader when you have the ability, the willingness, the honest, the honesty, the openness. That's how you do it. Honest, open and willing. That is how you become a legendary leader. That's how you be it. That's how you do it, and that's how you have it in your life. And as I embark on number 52, that is my commitment to myself. Every day. I do this work. I run the maps, I work the maps. I'm checking my navigation system. I'm. And the ultimate navigation system is a divine order, Absolutely from above. Whatever that means to you, something higher, something bigger.

Something outside of ourself that is so beautiful and magical. God, good, orderly direction, whatever that means for you.

Is helping kind of lay the land, lay the land of your navigation system. And, you know, one of my favorite things to do is to help those of you that really want to step into that level of legendary leadership to be who you were always born to be. Like, you were born this way, and you're on the right track, baby. And I just want to thank all of you guys for allowing me to be part of your journey. Whether it's through the sound waves of this podcast. I know that many of you have told me that I am your mentor from afar, and that's beautiful. That's the beauty of doing a podcast is at any moment, you can tap into over 414 episodes now to maybe gather some of the wisdom of my experience of 52 years and my unconditional, unrelenting commitment to becoming better and to sharing that with those of you that are raising your hand and saying you're ready for that. But most of all, I just want to thank you for being with me on this journey and letting me know that the impact that I'm making matters. I know that God made no mistake when he made me. Even though, like, there are parts of me that believed I was a mistake and parts of me that believed I was nothing but a problem. I'm beautiful in my way because God makes no mistakes. And you guys really remind me, like, why I'm here. I know why I'm here. My kids know why I'm here, the people in my life. Like, I know why I'm here. But to do impactful work like this, when I was a little girl, sitting there wondering what all this meant and how is this going to matter? Someday I got the very big, huge, divine download that said, it's all going to matter for something very, very beautiful. Stay on the path, keep navigating all this stuff. I promise you I won't take you too far off course. You might have to go off from time to time to learn a thing or two, but I will always bring you right back to who I always designed you to be. And my goal is to help each and every one of you do that so you can become the legendary leader in your life too. I'm so grateful. Thank you for spending this special day. April 3, 1972 was a hell of a day and I'm excited to be here with all of you. Thank you for loving me. Thank you for allowing me to lead you and guide you, nurture and protect you on the way to becoming that legendary leader. We'll see you soon.

I'm so happy you enjoyed the lead with the Enneagram podcast. Please help us spread the word about this show and the Enneagram by sharing it with a friend and leaving a written Apple podcast review. If you have any follow up questions to this episode, you can DM me on Instagram at tracyomalley. You can also find additional resources on my website website@tracyomally.com I'm so excited to lead you into the next level of your life.