From San Francisco to Greece – How My Enneagram Type 7 Personality Was the Passport to My Boldest Adventure Yet

As I boarded my Lufthansa flight at SFO, I knew I was leaving more than just San Francisco behind. After 15 years working in finance in Silicon Valley’s fast-paced tech world, I was trading spreadsheets and meeting rooms for a nearly blank slate in Athens, Greece. 

No one would be waiting for me when I landed because, well… I didn’t know anyone in Greece. But instead of fear, I felt excited. The world stretched out before me, brimming with possibility. Anything could happen, and that was exactly what made me feel alive.

People say I was brave to walk away from a stable life to step into the unknown. But the truth is, I wasn’t brave at all. I’m an Enneagram Type 7, and the unknown is something we crave.

The Type 7, called the Enthusiast, has a habit of attention that points to the positive. It is easy for me to imagine what could go right in a situation, and this is almost exclusively what fills my mind. That new restaurant in my neighborhood? It will be amazing, we should try it!  That new airline called Norse? It’s brand new, it must be good, I’ll book it for my next flight!

While some people find comfort in routine, I thrive on possibility, and that energy became the rocket fuel for my boldest adventure: walking away from my established life in San Francisco, California to do a complete life restart in Athens, Greece. 

But it wasn’t just my tendency to reframe negative things as positive ones that made my move possible. The whole Type 7 personality structure includes a natural thirst for variety, a planning fixation, and an ability to focus and get organized when necessary. If you have ever wondered why Type 7s are sometimes called the Adventurer, my story might explain why.

The Restlessness of Type 7

Back in California, I had what externally looked like a successful life. My career in finance was stable and lucrative. I had a solid network of friends. I owned a San Francisco condo in Hayes Valley, an area I loved, and my life had a comfortable routine. But as any Type 7 knows, comfort isn’t the same as fulfillment. I felt restless and a bit bored, like I was living my life in dull black and white when I wanted vivid technicolor. 

For many years, it was hard for me to discern if my restlessness was actual boredom or if there was anxiety lurking beneath the surface. In the lower levels of awareness, Type 7s are driven by anxiety and an attempt to avoid painful feelings. We underprocess negative emotions, preferring to make external changes instead of dealing with internal pain. The restlessness of a Type 7 can manifest as a drive to go out every night of the week, to chronically start new hobbies, to move geographically, to change jobs, to change romantic partners, the list goes on. I had experienced most of these impulses so I knew them well.

But in this case, I had been living in the same situation for almost 15 years. I had done a lot of work on my anxiety, including somatic work to strengthen my nervous system and breathwork to calm my racing mind. When the urge to change my life came, this time it didn’t feel anxiety-driven. It felt like a true call to adventure.

But..Will This Make Me Happy?

In trading my San Francisco life for one in Greece, I was cautious. I was leaving a good situation, and I wanted to make sure my choices didn’t lead me off a cliff. So to hedge my bets, I took baby steps. 

Type 7s can have a reputation for being impulsive, but this isn’t usually the full story. I am driven by a deep desire to be happy, and almost all of my decision-making centers around the question: will this make me happy? When it came to living in Greece, I wasn’t sure it would, so I started small.

My draw to Greece wasn’t for the usual reasons. I had no Greek heritage to explore, no man waiting for me, nothing at all really—just a clear sense, like a calling, that I should go and explore this tiny Mediterranean country with ancient roots. So as my first baby step, I booked a one-month trip to Athens, enrolling in a Greek language course at the Athens Centre, renting a tiny apartment in downtown Athens, and continuing my finance work with my California clients online in the evening, since Greece is 10 hours ahead of the West Coast. 

The 30-day experiment was a huge success! I made friends at school, I started dating a guy, I learned a bit of Greek, I traveled around the islands, and I relaxed into the Mediterranean lifestyle, which is quite different from the pace of the San Francisco Bay Area. The trip went well, but it felt like a fun holiday. I still wasn’t ready to move. I returned to San Francisco to think about the whole situation and decided that I would go back again, this time for a two-month stint.

How the Bad Becomes Good: The Type 7 Reframe

The two-month trip, oddly, was completely different. When I returned to Athens a few months later, my friends had left for their summer jobs, the guy I had met before had moved to Paris to find work, and my new Greek language schoolmates didn’t become my friends as they had in the previous class. The trip wasn’t nearly as fun, and I recognized it was more what “real life” in Greece would be like.  And this is where my Type 7 personality helped out again.

Rather than be deflated during my second trip to Greece, my mind reframed the experience as a positive thing. I decided it was a blessing in disguise because I would have fewer temptations to speak in English so I could  focus more on learning the language. I doubled down on my studies, spent more time on my remote finance work and settled into a normal daily rhythm. And I found I still loved being in Athens. I was fascinated by the swirl of languages all around me, I liked the challenges of trying to function in a new culture, and I found the city beautiful and exciting.

After the end of the second visit, I felt like I knew enough to make a bigger leap. I wasn’t sure I’d stay forever, but I thought I might move to Greece. I began my research and found a visa I thought I could qualify for. I explored options for working remotely. I started looking at housing options. It all seemed possible, and so I began planning.

Details, Details, Details… How The Perfectionist in Me Planned My Move

Moving to a new country isn’t easy, and there are lots of technical and administrative details that require full attention. In my case, I had my own individual visa to apply for, and I decided to move with my dog and two cats so I had all the paperwork for them as well. But once again, my personality served me well because students of the Enneagram know that Type 7 has a connection to Type 1, the Perfectionist.

In the Enneagram, a concept called the arrows recognizes how we behave under stress is different from how we behave when we are relaxed and expansive. Under stress, Type 7s move to Type 1, adopting some of the behavioral traits of the perfectionists of the Enneagram. For me, this manifests as extreme organization and structure, and these traits became huge assets during the preparation for my move. 

I had spreadsheets, color-coded binders and project plans for the relocation. I normally hate focusing on details but during this period, I was extreme. No stone was left unturned. I triple checked my paperwork. I did dry runs to the airport with my dog to get her mentally prepared for the trip. I even bought a special backpack for my electronics since I would need both my hands to push my suitcases and two crates of pets through the airport. All of this planning served me well because on the day of the move, things went smoothly and 16 hours later, my three pets, my two bags, and I arrived in Athens. And so I started a new life. 

A New Life Fueled by a Planning Fixation

It’s not easy to begin a new life from zero, but I’m social and extraverted, and both these traits helped build my foundation. Type 7s have a “planning fixation” which means we get a lot of pleasure in planning an enjoyable future. In my first months in Greece, I had an almost unquenchable thirst to go to new places and meet new people. I joined groups like Meetup and InterNations and went to many of their gatherings. 

For me, it was no problem to go to activities where I didn’t know anyone because in my mind, each event held endless possibilities. Whereas some people might feel awkward and shy, I didn’t. I felt hopeful and filled my calendar with events. Just studying my full program made me happy. Some of the events were good, others less so, but it almost didn’t matter. If one event fell flat, I knew I had others lined up. 

While it took time to build authentic friendships, I met lots of people in the first months and didn’t struggle with feeling isolated.

The Keeper of the Castle: How a Fellow Type 7 Became My Greek Guide

But in the end, it was another Type 7 who was the most instrumental person in helping me build my new life in Greece. I moved into an apartment in the Acropolis neighborhood, and my next-door neighbors are a family who own a touristic souvenir store. During my first year of living in Greece, I was traveling a lot and needed someone to stay in my home and take care of my pets while I was away. The family’s daughter, 25-year old Maria, volunteered and came to stay at my house, caring for my pets, relaxing on my roof deck, and reading my yoga and Enneagram books. 

When I returned, we did an Enneagram typing interview and learned she is a Self-preservation Type 7. In the Enneagram, self-preservation is one of three main instincts or drives—the others are social and one-to-one—that describe what people focus on to feel secure and fulfilled. Self-preservation means paying special attention to health, comfort, practical needs, safety and having enough physical, mental and other resources to avoid being stressed or overwhelmed.

As a Self-Preservation Type 7, called the Keeper of the Castle, Maria is the ultimate networker of the Enneagram. Her mind is primed to see opportunities, and she loves connecting people and surrounding herself with a network of friends who will help make her life enjoyable.  She became very enthusiastic about the fact I was a yoga teacher. She directed me to places I could teach and started a Facebook page to promote my classes. Equally enthusiastic about the Enneagram, she began sending all of her friends for typing interviews. Soon, I was teaching yoga to large groups of people on my Acropolis roof deck. With Maria’s help, I began hosting Enneagram workshops, and Athens developed an Enneagram community. And many of the people who came for my classes went on to become my friends, and this is how my social network was formed.

Maria and I developed a close friendship and mutually supportive dynamic, one in which I brought new ideas and an international way of thinking, and where she created a local community for me to share my Enneagram and Kundalini Yoga teachings.  Despite coming from different cultures and having a 15-year age difference, our bond is deep, and we’ve crossed lots of life’s milestones together. She was single and living at home when I met her, but these days Maria is married with three children, and I’m the godmother of her first child. The thing I missed the most about leaving San Francisco was my long-term friendships. But now in Greece, I have new close friendships.

In Closing

My Type 7 personality made my move to Greece easier but the truth is, every Enneagram type has natural gifts, and no one personality style is more or less likely to be successful in making major life changes.  The key is always self-awareness and learning to leverage your strengths while minimizing your weaknesses. This is where the Enneagram can be a powerful tool and map.  Are you ready for the biggest adventure of your life? Learn your type and let the Enneagram be your guide.