Exceptional Futures: The Power of Identity to Design Positive Change

By Victoria Shiroma Wilson

Everyone has an identity that is shaped by the world around them. 

Yet few are aware of the immense untapped power of all the social and cultural forces around them and how these forces can be redirected to create the change they want in life.

Exceptional Futures empowers readers to use the power

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Degree Press
• Release date: Oct 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9798885048484

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

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Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant.

—Joan Didion

Snow fell silently as I walked into a big-brand bookstore in Salt Lake City and made a beeline for the rainbow-colored display of blank journals, personal organizers, and calendars. I was wrapping up a temporary gig working for an international broadcasting organization during the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. Having been laid off a few months earlier by yet another failed tech startup, I found myself in a full-blown quarter-life crisis. I needed a job, so when a friend who worked as a sports producer with the previous Winter Olympics passed along my name to their human resources team, I agreed to answer phones for twelve to fourteen hours a day for six weeks. During that time, I experienced extreme bouts of boredom, interrupted only by yelling and harassment from an emotionally unhinged manager. It was a miserable existence in the midst of unparalleled ceremony, celebration, and controversy in the center of a global audience. Between this ordeal and being laid off from my previous job, I felt like an utter failure.

I felt paralyzed by feelings of despair and confusion as I had no idea about what to do with my life. As I pulled a simple red journal off the shelf, I began feeling a small glimmer of hope. I sat down in the bookstore coffee shop, and I began to craft a manifesto that would change the trajectory of my life.

My pen moved swiftly, filling the blank pages with statements that outlined what I desperately needed professionally. I outlined what working conditions I refused to accept—I do not work well when someone is yelling at me—as well as what I needed in order to feel valued in a role—working as part of a team and being recognized for my contributions.

I then began reflecting on points of gratitude. The highlights included my husband, my family, my friends, health, the ability to have my basic needs met, the privileges and experiences of education and travel—which was not even a consideration in my family in previous generations—and a unique perspective.

I stopped writing and put the pen down. How could I even be grateful for a unique perspective? At the time, my unique perspective hardly helped; in fact, I believed that it hindered my ability to be successful. As a child growing up on an island at the convergence of the Pacific Ocean and the East China Sea, I enjoyed looking out at the expanse of blue and imagining the possibilities of all the lands I had yet to visit and the cultures I had yet to experience. But being biracial in a country that prided itself on homogeneity allowed me to learn firsthand about the underlying fears that fed xenophobia.

Like many who are considered outsiders within our own community, I internalized my status as an outsider by trying harder. My parents routinely reinforced the notion that I needed to demonstrate that I was not a threat to the majority. I not only needed to stay out of trouble, but I needed to be exceptional in order to be considered passable. Insecurity and shame were my primary motivators, fed by a desire to be normal, to belong. I suppressed my natural creativity, my unique perspective. It was a painful discovery about my limited view of the world at that time. Yet, my childhood also allowed me to become adept at reading people and understanding their motivations as a means of social survival. Looking back, I realized that being an outsider also gave me the gift of perspective.

Another pause. Another question. What led me to make the choices that got me to this point?

As I scribbled furiously, I realized that I had been confusing some big assumptions with truth in my career journey. Many of these assumptions were messages imparted over the years by my family, friends, community, and society. They all had their own assumptions of what it meant to be successful in life, such as: Get a good education, then get a good job that you’ll stay in until you retire or die. Another culturally driven narrative focused on work hard and always do your best. In the event of hardship, just work harder because a benevolent manager will reward you for it. These well-intentioned bits of guidance left me completely unprepared for a world where conformity was expected for high performance. While chameleon-like adaptation had served me well up to a certain point, I realized the values that are central to my identity, such as loyalty, being of service, and empathy, had to be downplayed in order to fit in data-driven, results-oriented, aggressive environments.

I stopped writing when I had an epiphany: I loved working with people.

I began reflecting on all the signs that pointed to this epiphany. The psychology award in high school. The excitement of anything having to do with the social sciences in college. My cubicle at work, always filled with colleagues seeking guidance about their professional life. I realized I had always been interested in what makes people tick, and I had continuously ignored signals along the way about my interest in social psychology. Advice packaged as wisdom from well-intentioned friends and advisors included such hits as, You’ll never get a job with a background in psychology, or The ‘good’ jobs are in finance, tech, or science.

I paused and stared at all the revelations on the page. It all made sense. My interpretation of the world didn’t happen in isolation. My interpretation of the world was filtered through the collective. Was this true for everyone? How do these cultural assumptions form? How does a person make the distinction between what was an assumption and what was actually true? Sitting in that bookstore was the first time I asked myself these questions.

My curiosity to know more about how cultural systems influence our worldview drove me to take psychology classes at the local community college. This led to graduate school and a master’s degree in psychology and a doctorate in education, all the while studying the impact of culture on transformative change. This journey wasn’t always smooth. Through the years, I met with academics and practitioners in these fields, and I learned how the fields of psychology, and later professional coaching, have a fragmented view of culture. In some cases, it’s viewed as an esoteric sub-specialty, not to be taken seriously, or worse, that it is about working with marginalized communities from a deficit approach to assimilate and better align with a dominant culture.

That fateful snowy afternoon became the first step in my quest to better understand how society and culture impacts our identity.

The Philosophies Behind Identity and Change

There are several schools of thought when it comes to identity and change. The prevailing thought in Western society is that change is linear and rational, and our self-identity is at the center of that structure. Thus, if we just follow a specific formula, change is inevitable. Change is referred to as work. Identities are mapped in concentric circles, or icebergs, with the best parts of ourselves in layers or beneath the surface. Some big assumptions come with these methodologies based in this framework: we are acutely aware of our identity; change is always driven from an individual level; and we operate within a vacuum, meaning there aren’t any societal, cultural, or systemic pressures on our ability to change. There is a direct line between identity and behavior.

In my work and research, I see several challenges to this narrative around identity and change. Firstly, conventional wisdom in the self-help space claims that identity is fixed or stabilized by adulthood and often contributes to negative talk. Change is addressed in the language of gaps and goals. Top search results for identity and positive change focus on the individual and how to fix your negative self-image and replace it with something more positive.

Secondly, we don’t have a unified and accepted definition of identity. The language we use to describe topics like identity are often debated. There is a belief that identity is stable and there is an emotional burden attached with our identities.

A lot of the positive-change industry focuses on the beauty of the individual and how our potential shines through our uniqueness. It asserts if we want it (whatever it is) enough, we can manifest it. Goals are fixed. Success and failure are binary definitions, with the explanation of failure being attributed to motivation (You really didn’t want to do the work), or some illusive explanation of fate (It just wasn’t meant to be). It’s a strategy that focuses on the individual as the center of their own change. While I agree that each one of us is beautiful and unique, we’re missing a huge piece of the equation if we don’t understand and address the cultural, social, and systemic forces around us. A lot of our decisions are influenced by a desire to belong, and our identity does not operate in isolation.

Thirdly, our lives are not simple and linear. We are born into a world that is unequal, biased, and downright unfair. We operate in complex systems that feel chaotic and out of our control. Scrolling through social media, we feel terrible because everyone around us seems to have their act together, which perpetuates its own expectation of culturally defined success and subsequent guilt. We soothe ourselves with straightforward explanations like, The system is stacked against me, or Life is unfair, so why bother? But these explanations only offer half the story. The system may be stacked against us, but we don’t fully understand it, its force too powerful and scary to confront. Life seems unfair because elements of it are, in fact, unfair. However, rather than give up (or double down) in an unfair situation, getting clarity on what makes the situation unfair may help to actually level the playing field.

Understanding is vital to positive change.

Finally, a standard approach to identity and change usually involves a deficit, or gap, analysis. This usually involves setting clear goals in relation to an ideal state, often measured against the norms of a dominant culture. This is not what we hope to achieve; rather, this journey will involve a holistic, culturally sustainable approach to change