They may appear weak on the surface to get someone to protect them. 
They like crying, appearing vulnerable, and playing victim to look pathetic when you disagree with them.  You don’t need to jump out as a rescuer.
You may not know that tenacity is their core trait to withstand difficulties for chasing advancement to the next level.

Jealousy for comparing with others is frustrating.  Ever wonder it is ridiculous to find someone to embarrass yourself.  Chasing is the core trait for Four.  Very often, you will never know the value of the moment until it becomes a memory.
 
The mountain has its height
The sea has its depth
The wind has its freedom
The cloud has its tenderness
 
How can you compare the mountain with the sea?
Or compare the wind with the cloud?
Not everything can make a comparison.  Stop and smell the roses.  Live only at this moment where everything takes place. 

​​If you are a tragic romantic (Enneagram of 4), what is the emotional drive for acting the way you do?

​Worldview and drive
The drive is jealousy.
They have a lot of questions in their minds and want the answers.
 
They are self-aware, sensitive, moody, and attached to emotional needs before attending to anything else.  They want to maintain certain moods to create and pursue beauty surrounding themselves.  Also, they used to express their individuality and withdraw to protect their self-image with a distinctive persona.
 
They embrace intensive feelings and intuitions without rational explanation.  But this makes them easier to connect with others with emotional attachment.

Communication Tension 

What do they want to focus on others that provoke conflicts?
 
As the drive is jealousy, they get used to chasing something they regard as beautifully romantic, something better, with tenacity. Unlike most people, there are many “why” in their minds who deliberately search for the answer.
 
Why can't you keep your promise?
Why do you suppose to work in this way and turn out to be another way?
Why do you disagree with me?
Why can’t you make the result like that?
 
Four looks picky, ridiculous, and self-centered.
Thus, they tend to drag down their mood to the level of sadness, like to make stories and ponder why people are shallow to understand their feelings. 

(Continue the communication series. Starting from here)

Amy is a tragic romantic woman (type four of Enneagram). 

Amy and Vivian are close friends.

​Vivian: Where do you want to go for dinner?
Amy:  Let’s go to Jen restaurant.
Vivian:  Oh no! It is too far away. Driving there take 2 hours and almost always no parking is available.
Amy:  I find no other place that can match this place for eating steak. The origin is Italy of Jen family. The cows eat high-energy grass, the love of the Jen family, and all those natural wonders. I won’t go to another place to eat steak.
Vivian:  Then don’t eat steak. I know a place in downtown with great Sushi.
Amy:  I don’t want to eat anything tonight except steak.  It is not only the steak. This restaurant is where I met John.  Today is my birthday, and John is not with me.
Vivian:  Who is John? Your new boyfriend?
Amy:  We are together for two weeks.
Vivian:  Why is he not with you on your birthday?
Amy:  His wife is sick and needs him in hospital.
Vivian:  Are you kidding? Do you have an affair with a married man?
Amy:  We love each other and are happy together. Nothing is more important than that.
Vivian:  You have to stop this. Does his wife in the hospital relate to you?
Amy:  You don’t understand. I feel like this could work.. you know.. we’re a lot happier with each other than with anybody else.
 
And then she burst into tears.

Amy is hysterical to feel up and down out of nothing.  She falls in love with a married guy.  While most people would think it’s wrong to have an affair with a married man, she would probably ponder it doesn’t matter as long as they love each other.

​She is moody and affectionate.  One day, she saw a white paper falling to the ground, and she burst into tears as this reminded her that her white cat had passed away. 

How does she act around someone she does not like?
What is the core drive of her emotion?
How does her emotion affect the way she treats others?
What is her expectation of others?   
What is her expectation of herself? 
What is her worldview or core belief?      
What is the lesson for a breakthrough to reverse the repeated setback tendency?

​Ever wonder if there is a discrepancy between what we see of people on the outside and what they are experiencing on the inside?  Relation with others is about communication.  Communication can generate good or bad moods.

​By using an enneagram as a tool, observing the finding from my experience with the real stories, that help me to come up with the insights that work for me to build great relationships with others.

How do you act around someone you do not like?
What is the core drive of your emotion?
How does your emotion affect the way you treat others?
What is your expectation of others?   
What is your expectation of yourself? 
What is your worldview or core beliefs?      
What is the lesson for a breakthrough to reverse the repeated tendency?     

If you are a perfectionist (part 1 and part 2)
If you are a giver (part 1 and part 2)
If you are an achiever (part 1 and part 2)

The kids spend so much time on web browsing, online games, and social media that it inhibits their ability to carry on a face-to-face conversation.  Even worse, some kids get used to hiding behind the screen to intimidate others without any sense of responsibility.  Everyone requires working with people.  The school hasn’t taught the students how to clearly and effectively communicate with each other.  Communication is a two-way interaction for telling and listening.  Words carry weight.  You can use the words carelessly to hurt, slander, and wound others, or use the words wisely to heal, encourage and love others.
 
Change the perspective and then change the words.

It’s not funny a child will struggle with money after he becomes an adult.  However, the school rarely teaches the children financial education as if money is a scary evil thing.  I like to ask the kid to make a graph to examine his financial habit.  It is helpful to educate them about the money concept: earn, save, spend, share, and growth money.

Technology is not merely about online games, social media, web browsing, or Zoom meeting.  Consuming less time to do more work is what technology supposes to do for us.  How unlikely can the kid win over a computer for counting and memorizing?

Technology is a foe if you allow it to hijack how you perceive your choices and replace them with new ones that don’t align with your needs.  It is easy to lose track of the difference between what’s happening in the world becomes a manipulated menu of news feed stories.

Ever wonder if we wake up in the morning and turn our phones to see a list of notifications, it frames the experience of waking up around a menu of all the things I’ve missed since yesterday.  News feeds are designed on purpose to auto-refill with reasons to keep you scrolling and purposely eliminate any reason for you to pause, reconsider or leave.  A large portion of traffic on these websites is driven by auto-playing the next thing for increasing “time spent” is the currency they compete for.  They design their messaging system to interrupt recipients immediately.

​Never allow technology to ruin your attention spans and cause millions of unnecessary interruptions.

The kids love snacks, chips, soft drinks, burgers, bacon, cakes, and biscuits.
We are what we eat. No one in school teaches the kids about nutrition, trans fat, blood sugar, gluten, preservatives, coloring, artificial flavoring, or emulsifiers of any kind. 
It is not uncommon the kids are overweight. 
 
Food, recipes, and health benefits

The world of a child is amazed at the discovery of new food, new games, new people, and a new environment.  Every student learns to memorize the lines in the textbook instead of creating new ways to solve the problem.  The schooling system teaches children to do what other people say so.  They learn technical mechanics rather than creativity. It would be great if the student is a sculptor who questions endlessly for new ways to make his piece of art look perfect.
 
Curiosity for the exciting adventure

Schooling tries to feed the kids with questions and programmed answers for higher scores, faster calculations, and competitive ranking.  
​
There is no time to understand because to understand means to lose.    The students can answer the examination questions but can't apply the knowledge to the real world.  When you ask them to create something, they can do nothing.

It is more helpful to train the kids how to solve interesting problems in their daily life.

The kids thirst for attention and affection from parents, teachers, and peers to ensure their self-worth.
How did my mom praise me?
How did the teacher blame me?
Did my classmates accept me?
The children thirst for approval to assert their self-worth. 

Everyone is a combination of strengths and limitations. We, as parents, help them on the journey to take the responsibilities in which they excel and ask for help when they are struggling.
​
We help them to build the courage of self-reinforcement with a belief in themselves that is strong and unwavering. No one needs to do groundbreaking things to live a meaningful life. 

Be your own fan.

Have you ever seen a child who tries to climb a high fence?  If he can't make it, he will do it again!  However, traditional schooling tries to tell the world is operating in the way of certainty by avoiding failure. 

In school, the kid knows what’s in the syllabus, and there is going to be a test;
He knows that if he passes the test, he will surely go to the next upper grade.
Who’s teaching the child what to do if a sure thing doesn’t happen? 
The kid learns in school to regard failure as stupid, losing, and wasting time. 

What if teaching the kid to be resilient with a mindset:
It is difficult and a bit complex, you may encounter numerous failures, but you can handle it, and it is more likely to work.​

Be resilient to overcome obstacles. 

It is not uncommon the children to get the behavior that when they desperately want a specific toy, their whole world revolves around getting this one toy, or they will feel like they lose their universe because they can't get it.   They vent their emotion through yelling and crying until they get what they want.  The kids have to learn that no one has the liability to treat them nicely. 

There are good guys and bad guys in any movie.  
So do the people who surround us are friends and bad guys. Those hateful guys can be our bosses or our co-workers. The school never teaches the kids how to handle their emotions when they encounter those guys who are ambitious, throwing tandem, or bullying.

Three sentences to transform emotion

The schooling system trains the kids to study the answers, not to find the reason behind them to presume all the answers are out there.  The job is memorizing the answers, doing tests, taking the exams, getting the marks, moved on to the upper grade in certainty.  Compliance is more important than asking questions.  It is more helpful to teach the children to ask the right questions for exploration, fulfill curiosity, make discoveries, and always sake for change and progress.