Just last week, I finally finished watching Inventing Anna. If you haven’t heard about it, it’s a tv show based on the true story of Anna Sorokin, a German girl in her mid-20s who pretended to be a German heiress between 2013-2017 in New York under the name Anna Delvey. She managed to defraud people, businesses, and banks out of hundreds of thousands of dollars but eventually got caught and is currently in a New York prison. And Anna Delvey is an Enneagram Three.
Who is Anna Delvey?
Although I think any con-artist story is interesting, what makes Anna Delvey’s story so captivating is that Anna doesn’t appear to be malicious. She’s undoubtedly a narcissist and a liar. But she’s no evil genius, robbing innocent people. Instead, she simply appears to be a broken person, trying to forge an identity and build something she can call her own (albeit wrongly). At the end of the series, her lawyer in court tells the story of the legendary Frank Sinatra. Apparently, he hired women to faint and throw themselves at him when he would get out of a limo or during a performance. He strategically crafted a narrative that led people to believe that Sinatra was more popular and desirable than he quite frankly was. In light of Sinatra’s “lies,” her lawyer says,
“Anna came to New York just like some of you did. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, excited by the opportunities. A mere 25 years old. No rich parents. No connections. No fancy school pedigrees. Anna couldn’t wait around for opportunities. She had to create them. We can all relate to that. There’s a little bit of Anna in all of us. Everyone lies a little bit. Whether it’s on a resume, or a sales pitch, or on social media. We think the world has changed with social media. Every person has become a brand. An image fed out into the world. A lie. But what was true for Anna was true for Sinatra. Sometimes you’ve gotta fake it till you make it. So, Anna followed suit and became the person she wanted to be.” (S1E9)
And what’s true for Anna, I think is true for us. All of us have to lie a little get ahead. We all have to hide parts of ourselves. This is why therapy, or simply friendship, is so important. It’s a relationship, a place where we can be our authentic selves without fear of negative consequences.
Related: Being a Successful CEO (or Psychopath)— 3 Must-Have Characteristics
Anna Delvey the Enneagram Three
If I were to guess Anna Delvey’s Enneagram type, it would have to be a Three. Enneagram Threes can powerfully silence their inner critic and outer critics and focus themselves on the task at hand. They are ambitious and will not let anything get in their way. This is why I like to call them, at times, the Ambitious Architect. Three’s are ambitious about building something of meaning, be it their lives, careers, or even families. However, the gifts of the Three do come with their own set of faults.
Each Enneagram type is characterized by what is known as a passion. Passion comes from the Latin word passio, meaning suffering. Each Enneagram type is motivated and led by a particular desire and suffering. For Threes, it is deceit— the ability and desire to deceive others and themselves of their pain and feelings.
According to a recent study published in the British Journal of Social Psychology, women who self-objectified themselves felt warmer when wearing the typical nightclub attire than those who did not. Meaning those who cared a lot about how others saw them and saw their bodies as something to be seen and appreciated were physiologically able to feel less cold. You can read the explanation of the article here.
Related: Groundhog Day Analysis: What Every Enneagram 3 Must Learn About Life
Embrace Your Inner Anna Delvey, Your Inner Enneagram Three
Although lying and stealing are wrong, isn’t what Anna’s lawyer said true? Isn’t there an Anna Delvey, an Enneagram 3, in all of us? Don’t we all want to build something in life, without the opportunities for them and feed an image, a lie, to the world of ourselves? Are we not all in some way faking it until we make it? Surely every parent can tell us that’s how you raise a child. No one knows how to raise a child. They just do it.
Sometimes in life, we just have to wear something or be somebody that makes us a little uncomfortable. Because that’s just life and life doesn’t just give us everything we need. Sometimes, oftentimes, we have to work for those things. For that’s what Anna Delvey, and every Three out there, instinctively knows: that sometimes, we just have to fake it until we make it. We have to push through the pain and push through the cold until we make it to the other side.
Call to Action
If you’ve followed my teachings on the Enneagram long enough, you know that although we have a particular type that never changes, each of us also has every other Enneagram type within us. And the goal of our life is not to simply know our type or even embrace it but to learn from every type and lean into that type when life needs and calls for them.
If you’re interested at all in exploring what it would look like to tap into your inner Three or any of the other types in your life, to explore a more balanced, a more whole, a richer life, then I would love to chat. Just email me at hello@ryanlui.com to begin the conversation.
