Develop and enhance your natural gifts: composure, peaceableness, love

Work on your main problem area: resisting being affected by your experiences

• journal about your life calling;

• reflect on times when you have gone along with others’ plans even if they were of no interest to you; what were you trying to accomplish? What price did you personally pay?

• Make a list of things in your life that excite you. Don’t edit yourself. Does anything on that list give you energy to make some small change in your life so that you can do some of those things?

• hold yourself accountable to a to-do system;

• practice saying no;

• be aware of numbing strategies; note when you “check out”: what triggered it? What seemed to be threatening you that made you want to remove yourself from the scene?

• When you find yourself scrambling for your Inner Sanctum, stop for a moment, and figure out what triggered that reaction; how much would you gain if you stayed engaged in the real world rather than seek sanctuary

• spend some time understanding your procrastination: what do you gain by procrastinating? What do you lose? What purpose does procrastinating serve in your life?

• Pay lots of attention to your energy: when do you have energy? For what? What drains you of energy? What gives you energy? How might you use that energy to overcome your inertia?

• express your opinions;

• be honest with your anger; practice using anger in ways you feel are constructive; in particular, note if anger can be a source of energy for you

• don’t shy away from conflict.

• Spiritual practice:

  • Follow Jesus as patient

  • As a NINE you believe that the world requires you to blend in. Consequently, your attention goes to others’ agendas so you lose sight of your own priorities and goals. You then become slothful to your own interior agenda. In Luke 14:16-24, the NINEs hope, but they are convinced that no call has been issued for them. They need to hear that the Messianic banquet, which really means having a relationship with God, is important to them.

  • meditate on the Beatitude “Blessed are the peacemakers…”

  • In Gospel contemplation, follow Jesus’ advice around making up with your sibling

  • Spend time with Jesus’ vision of what it would be like to live in a community where God was Lord; what are the characteristics of the Kingdom?

  • As Gospel contemplation, watch Jesus “lose it” with the money-changers in the temple.

• watch out for warning signs that you are too stressed as a NINE:

  • you find yourself denying that you have serious health, financial, or personal problems

  • you resist getting help

  • you are increasingly aware of dampened and repressed vitality

  • you experience a sense of inadequacy

  • you allow yourself to be too dependent on others, who risks exploiting you

  • you feel chronically depressed and emotionally flat

Examples to emulate: Whoopi Golberg, Walter Cronkite, Ingrid Bergman, Abraham Lincoln, Carl Jung, George Lucas, Queen Elizabeth II