Friday, November 27, 2015
CEBU REGIS LEADERSHIP REFLECTION PAPER # 1 MY DEFINING MOMENTS GEN RAMOS
Reflection Paper # 1 by: Genevieve Ramos
Defining Moments
My Childhood
A very close family ties, religious parents with a very simple life back in Samar, is where my values rooted. Looking back and connecting the dots, my childhood experiences, how my parents raised with such culture and values of resiliency, God fearing, self-determined, and integrity molded me into who I am today, an experience that significantly influenced my guiding principle moving forward as I walk through this life.
The situation:
When my family business folded, I with my seven siblings were raised with my mom as the breadwinner, working as a teacher to support the family. Although my father didn't stop from pursuing other economic activities, his income was meager-not enough then to send us all to quality education in Cebu.
Life back then, I remembered it was practical and difficult without extra comfort as compared to that of my circle of friends and relatives and neighbors who were afforded with life's comfort and luxury. While the people surrounding us enjoyed having abundance and comfort, in our family we were able to learn the value of sharing and thrift, because of the lack. We likewise were able to value humility and hard work because of my parent's consistent teachings and sharing of experiences. This is how grateful I am to my mother and her great character showing us leadership in the most practical sense. She raised seven values oriented and professional individual, while difficult, in retrospect, many people appreciated and praised my mother on how she was able to successfully raised and sent us all to school with barely enough income as a teacher. In consolation of the difficulties in life I went through, many people including my teachers used our family as a case to inspire others. Today we are not only successful with each of us raising our own families, we managed to keep each of us closed at each other (families) and promoted the culture of openness and gratitude anchored with faith, as such allowed us to bring and walk with God specially on Sunday Mass where we used to hear mass together, have fun after and share situations and experiences.
My mom was literally a great teacher, she taught me many principles that guided me through in all my developing and progressive years. She strongly value the love for God before anything else, she encouraged me to be actively involved in the church, and some civic organization. She showed us the value of serving others, doing volunteer works, and being active in school activities.
All through the years - growing up with my siblings up to now, is my true foundation with my consistent Mom who has kept us anchored with work and honesty, and integrity. I recalled the favorite line she uses and I quote " With Honesty and Integrity, you will always be respected and trusted no matter what happens". Growing up, this principle has guided me all through the years and it helped me cross many difficulties in life, as such, made me appreciate life's mysteries into who I am today - full of determination to succeed to be able to serve others.
The years of Glory has arrived
Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude."
As I moved to the next chapter of my life, I went to Cebu after college to seek for greener pasture and explore new possibilities life can offer; different from the life I used to live back in our hometown but confident of the values that my parents armed me with, afforded me to pursue this journey with hopes. My working career begun with a school for about two years living on pay check to pay check and then I realized that this is not the life that I wanted to live, this is not aligned to my dreams and aspirations in life which is to become successful in helping others. So, I started looking for other jobs, and finally, I was introduced to a life insurance career and later on discovered that this is not just a career but also a milestone – a bridge to another chapter of my life that is marriage and family of my own. The recruiter on this career was the man whom I eventually founded and decided to live for the rest of my life. Truly a blessing that I am very thankful for connecting me to a fulfilling career, helping people achieved their dreams while I am fulfilling mine and to my husband and dad of my 4 kids today.
I never imagined how life had brought and afforded me to many great memories when I joined the Insurance career. I was able to reach at the top among financial advisors at age 24, earning my first millions, receiving multi-international awards, travels and of course the potential unlimited income that I enjoyed so much. I was so blessed and felt privileged that I earned and travelled abroad while many of my friends and classmates are starting to earn and even some of them were still looking for a career.
It was on this stage of my life and career that trainings were afforded of me through my insurance company, with such benefit, I realized that success does not come for free, the journey to get there while difficult is very fulfilling and i learned to appreciate and reflected the most valuable lessons that came with success. Life lessons has molded and shaped me into a much better person – to be a leader to myself, to my clients and to other people (colleagues) whom I have helped. Life insurance career is not an easy job. For many, it's the most difficult career in sales since, your selling a promise for a future benefits of which many people don't get the value of it yet, until when it is shared to them. The career has opened opportunities needed of me to be improved and embraced many working values such as patience, persistence, collaboration, listening, value of humility and love for learning- keeping up, become excellent and most of all work with all honesty and integrity are my ingredients to a successful career. Hence these are the values that I dearly believed to become a true leader..
When it rains, it pours
My lessons learned never stopped, victories and successes had passed and right at the smack of life, I felt emptiness inside. I was searching for something of which I am not sure then what it was, Am I in searched for meaning or something that will give me impact and value to what I am doing? It was one of my trips in the US, when I attended the Annual Meeting in Las Vegas of the most prestigious and elite organization in the Life Insurance industry across the globe – The Million Dollar Round Table. It was then that I realized first, I forgot to thank the Lord and acknowledged the exemplary blessings of success that he gave me. For many years of working it never came into my mind that I realized how blessed I am, that I have tremendously achieved something while others were still confused of what career they will pursue. I was so busy that my success totally reached into my head and wasn't able acknowledged that everything is a blessing from God. Being able to go to the US on my own, I was able to visit my relatives and friends were also a blessing. Second, it was in that meeting that I discovered and learned Personal Financial Planning process to be an effective tool, I was so thankful through this seminar workshop; I appreciated the work I do. I was able to connect the pieces from insurance product selling to needs based and life planning of which adds much value to my clientele.. After that meeting, I was inspired again and this time determined to practice the profession with passion to help families achieved their dreams and aspirations and journey with them towards achieving financial freedom.
The challenge
"Failing forward is the ability to get back up after you' been knocked down, learn, from your mistake, and move forward in a better direction.
"John Maxwell
Life then was very comfortable until an incident happened last 2009. Me and my husband founded a business after he was invited to open a community market model in one of the then newly opened arcade in Mandaue; Bridges Town Square. The work at hand was to run a Market-Market Concept on 3,500 square meter where freshness meets lowest price.. Since my husband grew up doing business in Carbon Market, one of the known market in Cebu, with his family business. Confident of his background and experience he then grab the opportunity, put the axe together and got the offer without thinking of the greater challenge and bigger responsibility ahead. The vision mission was very clear to help farmers directly sell their produce directly to the consumers market so it can benefit both the consumers and the farmers themselves, with the advantage of buying lowest prices of goods from farmers and producers. The concept did not work for long because of the location which lacks the foot traffic needed to pull the business in a year. So we did not prolong the agony, since we don't have that much appetite and capitalization to continue operating at a loss beyond a year, we decided to close down the business that left us with huge amount of debt and plus we lost our house. This was indeed a whirlwind and a devastating experience for us that humbled us and put us into a deep acceptance of faith as our only source of strength. So many lessons and insights I learned on this incident, a very expensive lesson indeed. However, this experience stretched us made us more stronger to face the next challenges, it molded us to be grounded all the time with humility as the powerful learning tool to overcome such tragedy. Hence, our faith and trust in the Lord encompassed all that there was to learn and improved. I remembered this quote from Jeremiah and became my source of hope as well as my favorite verse.
Jeremiah 11:5English Standard Version (ESV)
5 that I may confirm the oath that I swore to your fathers, to give them a land flowing with milk and honey, as at this day." Then I answered, "So be it, Lord."
What was i thinking that time was that, He gave us this challenge because He knew that we can handle this well and that He is just preparing us for the greater reward his will to shower upon us after.
What are my new learnings? / What is the relation to what I already know?
After reflecting the important events in my life, I am amazed of how my stories were unfolded and connected with who I am today. I started to connect the dots and led me to finding the path for the rest of my life after a long search. With the many failures I experienced, I never have failed to find ways to bounced back faster, and part of which was my decision to pursue my masters degree. This is God's way of making me discover more ways and tools to back me up to succeed on the plans he has for me and my family. My back-stories as I connect them made me understand myself better than before. Now I understand that with the challenges I fought and many victories I treasured, brought me to become more resilient and fear no more and be grounded with stewardship principle. This also teaches me to be more appreciative even on little things and to be grateful at all the times. As Melody Beattie once said and I quote, "Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.
I have come to realized that gratitude does not only operate on victories and triumphs, but more so even during the darkest moments of my life. I have learn to be grateful on each events unfolding in my cause whether on good or bad times. The good times makes me celebrate God's promises of abundance while the bad times makes me appreciate God's love where I learned my lessons fast most of the time from the mistakes, hence moved me to be better and better next time for a better future ahead of me. It also deepens my faith and made me reflective and sensitive to see the hands behind every events. Reflect to see through and be sensitive enough to see God's instruments and power to guide me in all my plans.
As I continue to reflect on my life, there are some values and principles of leadership that I was able to embrace that is very relevant to my experiences.
1. Humility is for me a key to great leadership, a key to be able to open up and hear the opinion of others, to seek advice from different perspectives to fill for instance the missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle that your solving.
Being humble is for me to admit that all that I have isn't mine but rather allowed me to use this as an instrument to add value to others, as stewards of God's blessings and wisdom, in the end, God is still my great master amongst all and therefore I will always reflect and ask for his blessings and guidance.
2. Leadership by example is another principle that I was able to relate in the process of my introspection. A kind of leadership that starts from within takes me to be more aware of myself and be transformed using my heart, soul and mind. A discovery of purpose and passion, after sometime I realized that after all the successes that I have been through in my early career in the insurance business, I felt empty inside because I never put my heart in it, the purpose and passion was never been their, it was a band aide solution of my dream to improved financially, until that story and seminar I attended on financial planning came where I was able to connect the significant and importance of planning ahead helping people achieve their financial dreams and aspiration. Moreover, the call to give back the blessings I received to others came into serious consideration. As I develop myself, I see the need to develop leaders within our team I the hope that they also share move the value beyond us and let other discover beautiful and transformational experiences we experienced.
Basically, this drives me to enhance myself further and eventually integrate myself back to pursue my mission in my AGENCY- family business to influence more people become stewards of financial freedom and satisfaction.
3. Leadership is always a continuous learning, innovating new ideas, a thought leadership. The idea of Community market is a perfect brand though it comes with a wrong location and wrong timing. What I saw in my husband leadership is that, he always innovate things and always one step ahead of the game. Have a positive outlook and execute things he plans to do. This is the kind of leadership I also learned from him. Though the community market was a failure but the concept anchored with core purpose is good and given the right execution plans including finding the right location, there is no way it will not succeed.
Lastly, as I relate this experiences to what I have learned during our 1st meeting, leadership for me is not only a hierarchical position that one may be holding on, but one can be a leader even without a position and in one's own little way.
As a leader of my clients whom I serve, I am a leader to myself; being aware of my needs and senses, I am a leader to the people whom I encountered and I inspired and shared my experiences to. And irony of it all is that , for all my life I have been hiding this leadership role in the thought that I am just a follower, I always isolate myself not to be called and not to take the first step, cause I thought I am not qualified to be one. But lo and behold, today and right now, it opened my mind and how I see things after this activity on retrospection and introspection, reflecting and connecting the dots on the events, experiences, challenges and triumphs I went through, I discovered the natural leader in me. Specially in those difficult situation wherein I was able to influence people to trust in us, inspite and despite what happened, I was a leader to myself believing that I can bounce back and squarely address and play the battle called life, believing that there is light after those dark moments in our lives, and believing that leadership starts within you, creating positive thoughts and looking ahead what life may offer you.
What will I do regarding the topic?
As I continue to seek my destiny and purpose in life, I will continue to reflect on my past in order for me to see much more clearly the path ahead. I will continue to ask the Almighty God to let me discover my innermost feelings and thoughts through my past experiences in order to act and decide with confidence and even in the most uncertain times. The right choice is the ability to choose on time that God has laid down on me. I will forever be grateful with this exercise because through this, I was able to connect the past in my search on my life's route. It is not by chance but I claim that it is his way of letting me discover who am I really and how blessed I am to foresee who will I become.
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