Explore Identity

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• Identify how aspects of your identity influence your perceptions of the world.
  
• Describe aspects of your own identity.
  

Explore Your Identity

Every one of us has a unique identity. Your identity is made up of many complex components that you don’t often think about. You simply are who you are. But if you take a step back and take inventory of the things that make up your identity, it would reveal a lot about how you view and interact with the world. One of the tools you can use to take an inventory of your identity, and how it works, is called an identity wheel.

The identity wheel is a tool designed to help you name the many aspects of your identity and to understand the role they play in your lived experiences. It’s important to note that this wheel in no way reflects an exhaustive list of all of the vast components of any individual’s identity, but it does provide a pretty good starting point.

Your identity is made up of many components. Some of these components can be changed, and frequently do change, throughout your life. For example, you can change your appearance pretty much whenever you want to. Your political ideologies, your job classification, and even your socioeconomic status can fluctuate. These things can change from time to time based on your life experiences. Components of your identity that are fluid or change frequently throughout your life are listed in the outer circle of the identity wheel.

There are components of your identities that are a little more rigid and don’t change (or, at least don’t change frequently) no matter what your experiences are. You can't change your age (become younger or older at will), nor can you change your race or ethnicity. Components of your identity that more or less remain the same throughout your lives are listed in the center circle of the identity wheel.

Looking at the components in the center circle, you might ask, “Well, don’t some of those things change? For example, what if I suffer a major injury? Couldn’t that change my physical ability in some way?” And the answer is, Yes, some of the aspects named in the core of the identity wheel can, in fact, change. However, the idea here is that they don’t change frequently. Unlike the aspects of identity listed in the outer circle of the identity wheel, the aspects of identity that make up your core tend to stay pretty consistent, with few exceptions, especially once an individual steps into their true, authentic self.

Having a better understanding of the components that make up your own identity can help you understand how you interact with the world. For example, your life can change based on your geographic location, and where you live and work. For example, some individuals might choose to live and work close to where they were born. As a result, they have a deep sense of familiarity with the world around them, built over an entire lifetime.

Similarly, moving to a new place, even within the same region of the world, where things are different and not as familiar, can result in major lifestyle changes for those individuals. Suddenly there are new restaurants to eat in, places to shop, and new communities and cultures to explore. When even one thing that makes us who you are shifts or changes, you might find that you’re exposed to whole new ways of living. Your identity shapes the way you view the world, and, in some cases, how the world views you.

Take an Identity Inventory

On a sheet of paper, list the specific aspects of your identity that align with the various categories in the identity wheel. If you can think of other things that make you who you are, even better. After you’ve listed the parts of your identity that align with these categories, reflect on how those parts of you shape how you see the world, and how the world sees you. After reflecting, challenge yourself to answer these questions.

• What part of your identity is most important to you?
  
• What part of your identity do others notice first about you when they meet you?
  
• What part of your identity most influences your interactions with people at work? Why?
  
• In what ways might your identity make your experience at work different from those whose identities differ from yours?
  

Now that you have a better understanding of how aspects of your identity shape the way you view and interact with the world, let’s take a deeper dive into how your perceptions can influence your behavior. In the next unit, you explore the concept of implicit bias.