Rochelle Seltzer is an author and coach who uses her intimate knowledge of the Enneagram to help her clients tap into their personal creativity to become their best possible selves and to live fulfilling lives. You will really enjoy the insights Rochelle shares as a creative Enneagram Type 1 leader.
Find Rochelle here: https://RochelleSeltzer.com
Check out Rochelle’s book here: https://thelivebigbook.com/
[Video Transcript]
Matt Schlegel:
Thanks for joining me in conversations with leaders who are using the Enneagram as a leadership tool and a tool for personal growth and development. Today, I’m speaking with Rochelle Seltzer, an author and coach who uses the Enneagram to help her clients tap into their own personal creativity to become their best possible selves. You’ll really enjoy the insights Rochelle shares as a creative Enneagram type one leader, and now for the conversation.
Matt Schlegel:
I’m so excited to be speaking with author and coach, Rochelle Seltzer. After a successful career as a creative and a leader in visual branding and marketing, Rochelle focused her creative and intuitive energies towards building a program called Live Big Live with which she coaches women leaders to tap into their own creativity to envision and live life at their best, most fulfilled selves. Rochelle uses the Enneagram in her role as a leader and a coach, and I’m eager to hear both how her own Enneagram style influences her leadership and how she uses the Enneagram to impact the lives of her clients. So thank you so much for joining me today, Rochelle.
Rochelle Seltzer:
It’s a pleasure to be here. Thanks, Matt.
Matt Schlegel:
Yeah. So why don’t we start off with how and when did you first discover the Enneagram?
Rochelle Seltzer:
So I was working with my first coach. I started working with him in 2009, and I think it was probably two years or a year and a half into that work with him that he started studying the Enneagram, and he wanted to help me identify my style and he was being guided by a teacher of his. And the irony is that I was mistyped by both of them for a couple of years in fact, so they thought that I was a seven. And I later came to realize in starting to work with somebody else who was a brilliant Enneagram expert and we didn’t really go into my Enneagram stuff for a while, and I made a statement to her one day and she said, “Let’s look back at your Enneagram style. I don’t think that you’re a seven.” And that’s when sort of landed on the truth that I was a one.
Rochelle Seltzer:
And I think what happened is that my coach saw me on the high side of my type, which showed up as a seven. He was not nearly as expert as he has become in working with the Enneagram at the time. And I didn’t really dive into learning that much about it. He had sent me a particular book, a well-known book that was so big and so over overwhelming to me that it wasn’t the right book for me and I hadn’t really done the reading and really exploration. But it was when I landed on my actual point of type one that I started really getting more interested, learning much more, and for me, excited enough about it to bring it into my coaching work, which was my second career, which came out of having sold the business that I ran for 27 years and making the change. And I realized that this is something I wanted to learn about and bringing to my work, which I started studying in 2015.
Matt Schlegel:
Okay. Yeah. Well, that’s fascinating in so many ways, right?
Rochelle Seltzer:
Yes.
Matt Schlegel:
Right? First of all, you were showing up in that type seven energy, which is the integration point for the one, so just living in that integrated state is remarkable even in itself. But obviously, it wasn’t completely resonating with you, and it wasn’t until you realized that your real starting point was type one where things, sounds like, it really started to click. It started to-
Rochelle Seltzer:
Oh, it totally opened my eyes.
Matt Schlegel:
Right. Right. And I think it’s such a powerful story because there is a journey to you go through to really understand yourself and get to that starting point for you, and when you land there, it really opens up so much self-realization, which leads me to my next question. What did you discover about yourself that you didn’t appreciate before landing on that type one dynamic?
Rochelle Seltzer:
Well, I would say that everybody who identifies their Enneagram type sees the parts that they don’t like. It’s like, “Oh, I don’t want to be that way.” So of course what really showed up for me was how hard I was of myself, but also that I was pretty hard on other people sometimes, that judgment for myself and the judgment of others, and my children used to say, “Mom, you’re so picky.” And I don’t think I was judgmental of my children, but they could see how particular I was about things and what was a little sort of family joke was like, “Ooh.” That was based on where that motivation is in me to the standards that I had that were so impossibly high for myself and really expectations for others.
Rochelle Seltzer:
And I think that the voice of the self-critique is in all of us, but the flavor that ones have is really a particular voice, and I started to realize just how much it had ruled me for a long time and limited me the goal to get everything perfect was… I mean, my husband used to say, “You’re striving for perfection, you’re missing the good.” The process is not always the product and all sorts of things that I had heard about and thought about for years, but the clarity with which that was my particular lesson to learn became really, really, really clear. Yeah.
Matt Schlegel:
Right. Oh, yeah. That was beautiful. It’s so, I guess, relieving to know that, “Oh, that’s just the way I am and it’s part of who I am, and how I should be, and how I show up.” And then once you have that understanding, it’s like, “Oh, okay. Well, that’s me, and that’s not necessarily the way that everybody else is showing up and contributing, and maybe I am missing the good in pursuit of the perfection.”
Rochelle Seltzer:
I think that’s the gift to me is the sort of insight that, “Oh, here I go again,” and I can choose otherwise.
Matt Schlegel:
Exactly.
Rochelle Seltzer:
And I’m not sort of a victim to this or I’m not so hardwired that I don’t have choices.
Matt Schlegel:
Right.
Rochelle Seltzer:
So it builds the self-awareness, and that has been a huge gift. Huge, huge. Yeah.
Matt Schlegel:
Right. Yeah. Just having that self-awareness just allows you now to better, I guess, control… But not even necessarily control, just understand what you’re doing and then choose to make other choices rather than just be guided by that inner voice all the time.
Rochelle Seltzer:
Right. And that’s, I think, the gift of the Enneagram for every point is that it really shows us our path, our path to a higher way and better way of living.
Matt Schlegel:
Exactly. Exactly. Well, now that you have all of this information both about yourself and the tool, how have you started to use the Enneagram in your role as a leader?
Rochelle Seltzer:
Well, I’m going to start with how I work with my clients as a coach because helping each of my clients to know their Agram style, and for some, it’s very easy and sort of falls right into place. And for some, not always so obvious at first. It’s a great tool for me. It helps me to coach them with so much more insight.
Rochelle Seltzer:
The thing I love the best is how much they get excited to have this insight, and it helps them because I help people step into all of their power and live their best lives, create their best lives. It helps them to do that with so much more insight and agency. I mean, I really don’t think I could work the way that I work as effectively as I work without the Enneagram. It’s incredibly valuable, and I love that my clients love it so much. Yeah, it’s a gift that I can give to them.
Matt Schlegel:
Right. Right.
Rochelle Seltzer:
And then I think that as a leader, it helps me to appreciate, first of all, my gifts and share them more wholeheartedly than I might have before with less second guessing, right? Show up in just in a more effective way, a dynamic way, than I think I did years back when I was always concerned with what would others think of me instead of standing in my own authentic power. That concern with the judgment of others, letting go of that has been a huge asset to being a leader. Yeah. I don’t know. I don’t know. I think it helps me to own what I have to share and not even judge myself on it, say, “This is what I’ve learned so far. This is what I know I can do now.” And I keep learning and growing, and not feeling like it has to be perfect or I have to know it all to be able to share my gifts. Yeah.
Matt Schlegel:
Oh, that is great. Yeah. That’s so powerful just coming from that point of self-realization and then applying that to how you guide your path and your leadership, and I love how your clients are so engaged with the Enneagram as you take-
Rochelle Seltzer:
Oh, yeah.
Matt Schlegel:
… them through that.
Rochelle Seltzer:
It never fails to happen.
Matt Schlegel:
Right. And it’s so fun, right? And you get to kind of relive that whole feeling again yourself of when you first discovered it.
Rochelle Seltzer:
It feels like such a gift that we can give to people. Yeah.
Matt Schlegel:
Right. Right. Well, yeah, that’s great. Boy, I have so many more questions for you, but let’s just wrap up with what advice would you give to other leaders of your Enneagram type, Enneagram type one?
Rochelle Seltzer:
Well, depending on where they are in their journey of self-discovery through this tool, I think that appreciating your gifts, appreciating the greatness that we all have. We all have our special form of genius and that we don’t have to be perfect. And that when we show up and we really generously and genuinely share what we have without fear of judgment, without the self-critique beating at us that it’s not good enough, when we can really let ourselves shine, I think that we give a gift to ourselves and to everybody that we’re leading, teaching, inspiring, whatever that moment is. When we can show up that way, it’s quite extraordinary and I would say to just own that greatness, own the great that you have, and don’t fall into the comparison trap, and don’t fall into the distraction of concern about others, and really just stand in your own power.
Matt Schlegel:
That is fantastic. Wow. I can just tell your enthusiasm both for working with Enneagram, but also the joy that you get in helping your clients on that journey and how powerful that must be. So thank you so much for sharing your stories. And like I said, I do have a lot more questions for you because I’d love to dive into the path of integration and disintegration for you as well at some point, and I hope we can make some time in the future and come back to that topic.
Rochelle Seltzer:
That would be great. That would really be fun.
Matt Schlegel:
All right. Well, thank you again, Rochelle. This has been such a delight.
Rochelle Seltzer:
Oh, it’s a pleasure. It was all mine. Matt, thank you for inviting me.
Matt Schlegel:
Thanks.
Matt Schlegel:
Thanks for watching. I appreciated Rochelle’s story about how she was mistyped when she first started working with the Enneagram, but once she landed on her dominant type, so my much self-realization occurred. She’s been able to use her self-awareness to have more control over how she shows up rather than simply being guided by her inner voice, and I also enjoyed hearing how her clients embrace working with the Enneagram and the enthusiasm enjoy that they get out of their journey of self-realization as they discover their own personal genius and greatness. The Enneagram is truly a gift that we can give ourselves and others.
Matt Schlegel:
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