Winning at the Inner and Outer Game of Thriving as a Person of Color
Image courtesy of The Jopwell Collection
If you were going to help people live happier, more fulfilling lives to the best of your ability, what would you do? Where would your focus lie?
I have been obsessed with these questions since the age of nine. They drove me to attend a magnet school for students gifted in math and science, to enroll at Brown University, to change my major from electrical engineering to international commerce, to pursue my masters in counseling psychology, and to accept a position at a business consulting firm, where I learned how to begin to address the financial changes that must occur for our people to thrive.
I recently learned that African Americans are the only group whose median income has decreased since 2000. The average White American who dropped out of high school has more in savings and other assets than the average black American with a college degree.
How can psychological well-being exist in the face of accelerating physical hardship? You may not personally be among those whose finances are in trouble, but if you are a person of color, and particularly if you are a descendent of those who were once enslaved, you live with an increased vulnerability to financial hardship. Whatever financial well-being you do achieve is likely to be more insecure.
To thrive, you must play both your inner game and your outer game well.
The inner game is about what happens inside of our minds. It’s about how we skillfully reclaim what has been lost and uproot the dysfunctional patterns that our families had to adopt just to survive under unfair conditions.
The outer game is about learning the rules of financial well-being. These rules aren’t taught in school, and because for many of us that knowledge does not exist in our families, we never learned them. For example, do you know the leverage your family can get from life insurance? Did you know that for about $75 per month you could invest in a quarter of a million dollar policy? Do you have a will, and if so, have you considered forming a trust to save your family money down the line? And I’m just talking about what passes from one generation to the next. We also have to look at how we win at the outer game of thriving within our own lifetimes and for our own well-being.
If you want to start playing to win, which you can do despite the deck being genuinely stacked against you, follow these two game plans:
Inner Game Action Step
Problem: A key part of creating the life you want is understanding how you are currently undermining yourself. There is simply no substitute for learning to recognize dysfunctional psycho-emotional patterns that continue within you.
Solution: Psychotherapy was once seen as something only weak or overly self-indulgent people used. Thankfully that viewpoint has mostly changed, but it is still the case that people of color access mental health services at far lower rates than Whites do, even if they have the same insurance. Getting help isn’t weakness; it’s intelligent.
To address some of the dysfunctional patterns left over from slavery and the Jim Crow era, I’ve created a free one-hour training. This includes the five poison seeds that we must uproot if we are to truly be free. They are:
- Filtering perception to notice the worst
- Persistent low-grade aggression
- Expecting mind reading
- Expecting loss of anything gained
- Belief that anything good must be earned through sacrifice
If you recognize any of these from your childhood upbringing or within your current belief system, consider how each of these patterns would make truly thriving unlikely. How important might it be for you to truly uproot everything that has grown out of these poison seeds? As part of unwinding these dysfunctional patterns, we must adopt new, healthier habits in their place. It’s the only way to become free of what doesn’t serve us.
Outer Game Action Step
These are two key steps for you to take in increasing your skill at playing both the inner and outer games of thriving as a person of color in this country.
Problem: People of color are too often dependent on Whites for our paychecks. We cannot achieve financial security when the keys to every door of opportunity are held by someone with a vested interest in the systems of our oppression. That isn’t to say all White people are racist, but rather that they, often unconsciously, benefit from racism. As such, our economic empowerment and security must come from our own community.
Solution: If you’re an entrepreneur, stop trying to learn a body of knowledge by cobbling together your syllabus from among what’s showing up in your social media feeds. Instead, study what I call “the business of business”—and you will reap benefits. That doesn’t mean getting an MBA, but it does mean entering a step-by-step program with a syllabus to guide you. Fair warning: You should expect it to take about a year, even two or three, before your new business can fully support you.
If you’re someone who aspires to be a part of an endeavor that you don’t create or run yourself, you need to set yourself up to be offered jobs instead of having to hunt for and apply to them. In order for that to happen you’ll need to increase your reputation as an authority in your field. No matter how young you are, it’s not too early to begin doing this.
Write articles for publications, appear on podcasts, or serve on a nonprofit’s board of directors. These are the sorts of things that you volunteer your time for that ultimately lead to your delivering Commencement speeches, sitting on panels at prominent industry conferences and accepting awards. Those are the things that lead to positions being created for you and the security of knowing there will always be demand for not just your skills, which others may also possess, but your brand, which is completely unique to you.
Images courtesy of The Jopwell Collection
