Chapter 8
From South Side to Six Figures
The Felicia Yoakum Story
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| Felicia with her daughter and son. Circa 2015 |
These impressive life and career successes were by-products of Felicia's ongoing commitment to Self-Action Leadership. Even more impressively, Felicia has demonstrated that SAL is possible even in the midst of challenging environmental, familial, and social circumstances.
Before she became a successful college student, Naval Officer, and rising star for multiple Fortune 500 companies, Felicia was born "poor and Black" on the infamously poverty-stricken and often violent South Side of Chicago.
Felicia's life is dramatically different now than when she was growing up, and not because she won the lottery or otherwise lucked her way into prosperity. Her life is different, and better, today because of her effective and consistent practice of SAL over long periods of time, which has, in-turn invited a great deal of Serendipity into her life and career as well.
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| Felicia as a baby growing up on the South Side of Chicago. |
As a result, her life and career have consistently taken very inspiring turns, to say the very least.
Growing up on Chicago's South Side, Felicia spent the first 18 years of her life in a small house with her parents and two siblings (an older sister and a younger brother). The neighborhood in which her home was located was one of the most dangerous in all of Chicago, and her first elementary school was situated right in between two government project buildings.
Despite these and other infelicitous realities of her upbringing, Felicia began exercising SAL principles and practices from a young age. These early seeds of SAL would eventually grow and mature into a rich education and career harvest down the road.
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| Felicia and her mom at their home on the South Side of Chicago. |
Building on these successes of her early adolescence, Felicia began applying to choice program magnet and charter schools in order to avoid having to attend the much rougher public high schools near her home, which, in her words, "were usually really bad high schools."
Her outstanding grades and high test scores earned her admittance to the prestigious Whitney M. Young High School, which consistently ranks among the top-rated Magnet high schools in the United States.
In addition to her academic ambitions, Felicia also found time to excel at athletics, competing in cross-country and track & field all four of her high school years.
During her senior year of high school, she became interested in computer programming. She also wrote a report on a piece of equipment used in World War II that piqued her interest in the military. This led her to apply for a full tuition scholarship to Purdue University through its ROTC program. She was unsuccessful in this attempt; however, her diligent efforts enabled her to procure some smaller scholarships—ensuring her entrance to Purdue.
Before being accepted into Purdue, Felicia had set her sights sky high and seriously considered applying to the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the California Institute of Technology (Cal-Tech), and the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech).
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| Felicia as a Commissioned Officer aboard a naval vessel. |
After serving her country for a few years and fulfilling her commitment to the Navy, Felicia was hired to work for ExxonMobil, an energy giant and Fortune 100 Company headquartered in Texas. Her work with ExxonMobil also took her to Japan for a two-year assignment.
It was through Felicia's association with my wife, Lina, at ExxonMobil that we first became acquainted in the Houston, Texas area, where a significant chunk of ExxonMobil's workforce resides.
Felicia served as one of Lina's earliest mentors at ExxonMobil immediately after she began her post-collegiate career with the energy giant. How fortunate Lina felt to be mentored by someone as accomplished, capable, intelligent, and kind as Felicia!
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| On the job with energy giant, ExxonMobil. Houston, Texas Circa 2010 |
Felicia attributes her life and career success to working hard and staying focused as a student. Her academic performance empowered her to receive educational opportunities beyond what was available at the public schools in her poor and sometimes violent Chicago neighborhood. According to Felicia, "anyone can go to the [academically superior] magnet schools if you have good enough grades."
Felicia was determined to get the grades she needed to expand her future educational and career opportunities.
Thus, SAL empowered her to earn the grades required to attend these better, safer school. And Serendipity further favored her with wonderful opportunities that had been opened up by virtue of her outstanding personal efforts.
Growing up on Chicago's South Side gave Felicia opportunities to witness the structural inequities that existed between different schools and communities in the greater Chicago area.
"Chicago is very segregated. The South Side of Chicago is about 95% African American. When I was in middle school, I competed in a math competition that gave me an opportunity to see other schools. That is where I started seeing white students and students of other races. In that interaction, I discovered that other kids often had access to more and better resources than I did. For example, the white teams would have matching jerseys and clothes, and food that was provided by their school. You could also tell that they were more groomed than we were. We had practice, but that was all we had; there was no extra stuff.
"We had much better facilities at the magnet school (Whitney M. Young High School), and parents were much more involved in their kids' education. The main difference, however, between magnet school students and regular public school students was not race or a lack of intelligence; it was a lack of focus and parental involvement. Other than that, there wasn't a big different in the demographics of the students at the magnet schools versus the regular public schools. There were a few students who you could tell weren't from around the neighborhood, but most of us were locals, and most of us were Black—just like at the regular public high schools."
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| In addition to building healthy relationships with others, self-action leaders are careful about cultivating a rich inner life and positive relationship with oneself. |
"I pretty much kept to myself, and my family always made fun of me because I would talk to myself. Don't get me wrong; I was a friendly person, got along with people, and was never an outcast; but, I was not into the typical teenage socializing scene—it just wasn't for me. I'd talk to people and occasionally hang out, but I rarely went to parties. In fact, I can probably count on one hand how many parties I went to my entire life growing up."
Felicia attributes her unorthodox, intrapersonal social approach to helping her resist many temptations common to adolescents and the tremendous peer pressure faced by inner city youth in the Black community.
"Peer Pressure is a big problem with inner city youth. Of course, it is likely a problem with all youth, but I think it's more intense in the inner city because there is a lot of pressure to be "Black." The Black stereotype is: you don't care about work or anything else except clothes and the opposite sex.
"These attitudes are perpetuated throughout the community, so if those things aren't a high priority, people think there is something wrong with you. Worse still, if you aren't focused on those things you get talked about; and when I say talked about—I mean YOU got TALKED about—you got reamed. Another part of being "Black" is that you can't talk about college and you're not supposed to like school. My peers would make fun of me for being smart, and they would call me "White Girl" because I talked proper and I liked the television show, Seinfeld."
Felicia utilized SAL principles and practices on many occasions to avoid growing angry or bitter at peers who would verbally jab at her. Fascinatingly, the more her peers sensed her inner security, self-confidence, and self-worth, the more they left her alone.
"I did not get made fun of a lot because they could tell I wasn't ashamed of who I was. My idea of what to do and what was right was mostly developed internally. I also wasn't really involved with other people who were concerned with making sure I looked cute for the boys. I didn't really hang out with people like that, which helped me avoid the peer pressure that so strongly pushed other people in my community to focus so much on clothing and image and prioritize it above education and inner security."
Felicia also discovered that negative reinforcement doesn't always come from peer pressure only. Sadly, parents and other family members can sometimes be a big part of the problem as well.
"One of the things I've seen hurt many people in the inner city is the pressure to not be successful. You would be surprised at how many parents will jab at their kids and say things like: "you're never going to be anything, so why do you even try?" Tragically, that kind of stuff is said in a lot of households; and there is a lot of negative reinforcement to not achieve goals. The aim is to maintain the status quo, which isn't anything to brag about. My advice to everyone who faces that kind of pressure and negative reinforcement is to not let other people bring you down. And believe me, they will try! Some people will even make it their goal in life to bring you down. Do not let them do it!"
Developing inner security and esteem is an important element in SAL development. But where does it come from and how is it developed?
Felicia's actions and habits give us an important clue.
To compensate for the lack of meaningful relationships with her peers, Felicia developed a friendship with herself that emboldened her sense of internally-located self-worth.
Stephen R. Covey effectively corroborated the importance of self-worth when he wrote:
"Intrinsic security ... doesn't come from what other people think of us or how they treat us. It doesn't come from the scripts they've handed us. It doesn't come from our circumstances or our position. It comes from within. It comes from accurate paradigms and correct principles deep in our own mind and heart. It comes from inside-out congruence, from living a life of integrity in which our daily habits reflect our deepest values." (1)
In Felicia's own words, this is precisely how she developed the kind of internal security spoken of above by Covey, which helped her to repel negative influences in her social life.
"When you're a kid, you want to play, so you seek other people to play with, and that's how you develop friends, but when I wanted to play, I would just play with myself. I didn't look to other people as much because I had myself. I realized over time that I didn't really care much if other people thought I was cool or not. I discovered that I was perfectly okay with being alone, and that I am capable of being happy without doing things that other people think or say I should do."
Felicia also discovered she could use HUMOR as a defense mechanism for bearing up under the sometimes scathing verbal salvos of her more sophomoric peers.
"Rather than get angry or upset, I would just laugh at their mocking comments. It never really upset me because the things they would make fun of me for (e.g. being smart) didn't bother me. I liked the fact that I was smart, so when people would call me names, I would just smile and carry about my business."
Though she may not have been fully conscious of it at the time, humor can definitely be a valuable asset in SAL development, as well as an effective communication technique in your toolbox as both a self-action leader and leader.
For example, a twice-elected President of the United States—George W. Bush—has written, "I often use humor to defuse tension." (2) Viktor Frankl put it another way when he wrote: "The attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of a trick learned while mastering the art of living." (3)
"I am not religious, but I am spiritual. You might say that my God is the same things as my conscience. I can feel in my heart the difference between right and wrong, and I try to follow that inner compass. I also feel that I have a high level of self-awareness, so I know when I do the wrong things, but I also know when I do the right things. I also know when I'm achieving things that make me happy. I know when I'm being myself, so that self-awareness keeps me from being influenced by negative peer pressure because I know I don't want to do things just to please other people or look good in their eyes. If I don't want someone in my life, I really don't care what that person thinks about me. I also question things before I act. I conduct an immediate subconscious evaluation of what I am planning on doing before I do it."
"The first time I remember really noticing it was on the trains. The Red Line and the Green Line runs to the South Side of Chicago, but the Brown Line doesn't even come near the South Side; it runs pretty much from downtown to the northern suburbs. So, I always rode the Red and Green Line trains. One day, by mistake, I ended up on one of the Brown Line trains. It felt like I was in another world because it was brand new and impeccably clean. The Red and Green Line trains are filthy. They smell like pee, the seats are torn up, and graffiti is everywhere. But the Brown Line train looked and felt like the First Class train.
"As I looked around, the metal was shiny—like chrome—and I just figured it must be a new train. Later on, I found out that this was how all the Brown Line trains were because the Brown Line went to the North Side, where the white people lived, and where the money is. It was definitely the "White Train." Chicago is unofficially segregated. I can tell you what area you are in based on who gets off at which train stop."
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| The North Side of Chicago, including Wrigley Field in the forefront, downtown in the top right, and Lake Michigan in the top left and center. |
A natural self-action leader, Felicia is always seeking out insights about the way things really are in the world in an effort to reject victimization and become all she is capable of becoming as an ambitious, creative, intelligent, and savvy human being and self-action leader. Her desire to access and apply nuggets of insight and wisdom in her life is illustrated in a conversation she once had with a friend.
In her own words:
"My friend and I were talking the other day and he made an interesting observation. He said that unsuccessful people tend to see freedom as being from something. For example, some Black people view freedom as being primarily from slavery, an attitude that adversely affects them 160 years after slavery was abolished. Successful people, however, tend to view freedom as being for something, or freedom to do something.
"People often refer to freedom as being all about having less restrictions, so that a given person or thing is no longer holding them down. But that really isn't what freedom is about. Freedom isn't about having less restrictions, it is about focusing my energy on what I can do, what I can accomplish, and what I can become.
"We are talking about two totally different outlooks on life, and there is a big difference between the two in terms of the personal results you are likely to get."
Felicia's conversation with her friend is more than just a token exchange of passing thoughts. It is the reaffirmation of powerful concepts iterated and affirmed by some highly intelligent and sophisticated authors and scholars. For example, consider the words of Haddon Klingberg, Jr., and Dr. Stephen R. Covey, respectively.
"Spirituality is in its essence self-transcendence [and] it brings with it human freedom. But it is not freedom from as much as [it is] freedom to. We are not free from our biological nature, whether instinctual drives, genetic legacies, or the functions and malfunctions of our brains and bodies. Nor are we free from the grasp of social, developmental, and environmental influences. But we are free to take a stand towards these, even against them. We are free to do what we will with the cards we are dealt, to choose what response we will make to fateful events, to decide what cause or persons will receive our devotion. And this freedom to carries an obligation to." (4)
"Even if you live in horrible circumstances, it is in those circumstances that you will find your call to choose your own response. It is then that "life calls out to us" to serve those around us whose needs we become aware of; it is in so doing that we find our true "voice" in life." (5)
Passionate about her freedom to grow and succeed, Felicia has achieved much in her life, and one of the secrets of her success involves mentally turning negative experiences into positive learning opportunities.
"I have been able to view almost all of the negative things I've experienced as an opportunity to grow. For instance, when I've met someone that I didn't really like, someone who was a total asshole, I think, "well, you know, he's not a great guy, but now I've learned about him, and I've gained experience how to deal with that kind of person. So, the next time I meet someone like that, I'll be prepared."
"Experiences make up life, and you can either make them ruin your life or help your life, so I just allow them to help me in some way."
"In some cases, if you just walk away like I did, they'll hurt you. Take gangs for instance. If someone proposes an opportunity for you to join a gang and you say "NO," you could be badly beaten or even killed. It can be difficult to walk away.
"But, the good news is that you can claim a lot of personal power if you demonstrate belief and confidence in yourself. I credit my personal belief and self-confidence with repelling those who might have otherwise pushed too hard. If those people had at least tried to get me caught up in the wrong things—especially when I was younger—I probably would have said "YES" to doing whatever, but as I grew older and more confident, the way I felt about myself seemed to turn them off, and they ended up just leaving me alone.
"It sent the message to them that I wasn't weak enough to infiltrate or trick."
Her comment about gangs roused my curiosity, so I queried further if she had ever been approached to join a gang herself.
She replied:
"The gangs weren't that big with girls, but for me, they knew I was different, so gang members' interest in having me around wasn't that high.
"I really can't describe it, because it's not like I was an outcast. I still hung out with some people who were either affiliated with gangs or in gangs themselves, but I just wasn't that close to them. We'd hang out at the park and we'd talk.
"For example, when I was 14, I technically had an 18-year old boyfriend, yet this boy never tried to do anything [sexually] with me—never. And it wasn't because I was literally saying "NO." He was definitely not a virgin, but he just seemed to sense something about me that communicated to him that I'm not that kind of person."
To better confront the many challenges faced by inner city residents, Felicia believes leaders should focus on education initiatives, including after-school activities that provide young people with something to focus on and do in between the end of school and bedtime, which is the time of day when many youth-aged persons are most likely to get into trouble.
"In the schools, we need an increase in the availability and advertisement of after-school activities. Being on the track team is probably something that kept me out of a lot of trouble. I think they should start such opportunities in elementary school. That way, your children are in school, they attend after-school activities, they come home, they eat dinner and do their homework, and then they go to bed. They have no time to get into trouble. They have no time to be negatively influenced."
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Her force of character and sense of self are inspiring and contagious.
She is a remarkable self-action leader and a beautiful human being both inside and out.
And her intellect speaks for itself. In fact, later in life as an adult, she earned a MENSA membership by scoring an impressively high IQ of 130.
Her capacity for, and dedication to, SAL has empowered her to to achieve many impressive accomplishments in both her personal and professional life. At Freedom Focused, we greatly admire who she has become as a by-product of embracing SAL principles and practices over long periods of time—and thereby opening her life up to Serendipity all along the way.
It is our sincere hope that many people throughout the United States and World will likewise be inspired by Felicia's tremendous personal example and journey of professional success. I further hope that her story will influence many others to give it their all to rise above the pressures, temptations, and circumstances of their lives to make the most out of themselves and take full advantage of every opportunity with which life has blessed them—regardless of where they were born or what obstacles may currently stand in their way.
Why do you think Felicia was able to rise above the challenges in her neighborhood, community, and schools when many others around her did not?
What background or circumstantial challenges do YOU face that were not of your own making?
What is something you could do beginning TODAY to begin to transcend a background or circumstantial difficulty that you presently face?
What have you learned from Felicia's story that could help in battling structural inequalities in your nation, community, organization, or school?
—Dr. JJ
Author's Note: This is the 486th Blog Post Published by Freedom Focused LLC since November 2013 and the 276th consecutive weekly blog published since August 31, 2020.
Click HERE for a compete listing of the other 485 FF Blog Articles
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Click HERE for a complete listing of Freedom Focused SAL POEMS
Click HERE to access the FULL TEXT of Dr. JJ's Psalms of Life: A Poetry Collection
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