by rossanahead | Feb 2, 2017 | Business Tips, career, Education
By Ruth Manimtim-Floresca
You’ve probably heard the story of how Thomas Edison failed more than a thousand times before he finally produced a light bulb that works. Instead of looking at failures as mistakes, Edison acknowledged them as a successful discovery of 1,000 ways to not make a light bulb.
Throughout history, Edison and many other great men and women have proven that we can always “fail forward.” Their stories teach us that no one can be a total loser as long as one keeps trying. Here are uplifting lessons to keep in mind when setbacks threaten to dampen your spirit.
- Let failure refine—not define—you. For people with a teachable heart, committing and acknowledging mistakes enables them to turn pride into humility that, in turn, develops their character.
- Never associate setbacks with complete failure. Although not succeeding is surely disheartening, wallowing in self-pity for long will not help you move forward. Get up and try again.
- Consider failure as a stepping stone. Everyone is bound to fail at some point, but those who persist despite stumbling are the ones that usually succeed. Read up on famous people like Walt Disney, Isaac Newton, Charlie Chaplin, and J.K. Rowling to find the inspiration you need to keep going.
- Treat failure as a learning experience. Before making another attempt, evaluate your past actions, reflecting on what went right and what did not. Take note of what to avoid doing or what to do differently the next time around.
- Allow failure to help you pinpoint priorities and values. When you fail, you are forced to inventory what truly matters to you and to make the needed adjustments. One mistake people may make is focusing on the wrong things. If you value the right things, it often becomes easier to succeed because you have the passion and determination to chase after your dream.
- Consider if you need to seek help. Being self-sufficient may not always be the right approach. It won’t hurt to ask for and accept assistance from trusted partners. As the saying goes, “Two heads are better than one,” and that often applies to many situations.
- Credit failure for improving your financial perspective. Major debacles will force you to look at money-related things differently. Losing money through bad decisions will remind you to treat your finances with more care. As your decision-making skills improve, you’ll be creating a stronger foundation for future wealth and success.
- Thank failure for filtering out superficial friendships. Unfortunately, there are people who stick around only if they can get something from you and who disappear once you fall. While betrayal hurts, be comforted in the knowledge that true friends will not care about how much money you have or how you can continue to be of use to them. Know that real friends stay and motivate you to get back on your feet.
Ultimately, failure reminds us to look to a higher power for comfort and guidance. Personally, I rest my faith in God, knowing that everything happens for a reason and that failure teaches me lessons I wouldn’t otherwise learn if things always went smoothly.
Photo: Leonardo Shinagawa
by rossanahead | Mar 15, 2012 | children, Education, family, parenting
By Maridol Ranoa-Bismark
“Good evening, Chelo. This is Ben’s mom. Sorry to disturb you at this time but he has not replied to my message. May I call you?”
I sent this panicky text message at 11 p.m. and Chelo, my son’s friend, replied, “Yes Tita.”
After explaining my problem, Chelo must have sprung into action. She contacted her network of friends. My son, who is in his junior year at the University of the Philippines, was on the phone in no time at all! Sorry, he told me. He was in a dead spot at the debate tournament and didn’t get my message. But he’s fine and will be home in an hour or so. I went to sleep smiling, grateful to Chelo. She must have been a mom in her past life.
Now you see why I have the cellphone numbers of around five of my son’s friends stored in my directory. I know deep in my heart that I will need them, especially during the wee hours of the night, and the morning. But having the numbers of your son’s friends is not good enough. You also have to be in good terms with them. It doesn’t take much: a smile, a hello, an offer to give them a ride, and the occasional get-together in your house. This way, they will warm up to you and even tell you untold stories about your son. Is he taking life too seriously? Does he need to loosen up?
Sometimes we parents act like bulls in a China shop. No matter how much we love our children, we do not realize that we’re just charging into their world and breaking valuables along the way. My son’s friends see another side to him that I, his mom, can’t see. They give me a fresh way of looking at my son. They don’t treat him like a son but as an equal. And that’s just what I need, even with my grown-up son. Now, I see him the way his friends do. And I can’t tell you how happy that makes me. Now, I know that I have to advise him to slow down and enjoy his youth, even if I don’t know exactly how he can do that with a worried mom like me around.
If you can’t beat ’em, be friendly with them. I don’t mean attending their parties or joining them for lunch. I mean just letting them know that they can count on you when they need you.
Now that my son is always away from home, spending more time with friends and giving monosyllabic answers to my questions, I know can still have an idea of how he’s doing through the people he hangs around with.
And I can only cross my fingers that he chooses his friends well the way I advised him to. So excuse me while I check my phone directory again and see if I missed any name on the list.
Photo by Tim Marshall on Unsplash
by rossanahead | Mar 9, 2012 | career, children, Education, family, grandparenting, woman
By Jane Santos-Guinto
It was my grandfather Lolo Manny who taught me how to read. He was a journalist for the South China Morning Post, one of Hong Kong’s two largest English newspapers at the time. But on weekends, he would teach me the rudiments of consonant-vowel-consonant blending.
Lolo comes from a family of educators. Both his parents were public school teachers in Agusan del Norte, a province in Southern Philippines. Up until her death in the 1970’s, his mother Lola Victorina was the Dean of the Northern Mindanao Colleges. Dean Francisco Benitez of the University of the Philippines and Sen. Helena Benitez of the Philippine Normal University are distant relatives.
Lolo taught himself how to read when he was barely four in 1938. By eight, he had already read Shakespeare’s entire collection, all volumes of the Encyclopedia for Children, and the Bible. World War II had broken out and children could not go to school, so Lolo Manny took care of his own education. “There was nothing else to do but read,” he would tell us his grandchildren later.
Ironically, Lolo never completed his formal education. He had married quite young, at 20, and when one child came after the next, there really was no time to study. But because he was exceptionally bright, having been a consistent honor student and later a top-scorer in the Civil Service Exam, he went on to have a career that many would consider stellar.
For a while, he taught in a public school like his parents. But when there were too many mouths to feed out of a teacher’s pay, he went to Manila and tried his luck in his real passion—writing. He wrote for the Times Journal with some of the country’s most noteworthy newsmen. At times, it still amazes me to find out whom he had worked with. In 1967, he became the first Filipino journalist to be sent by a local newspaper to Cardiff, England for a certificate course in journalism. For a time, he was one of the writers of Sen. Benigno Aquino Jr., one of the country’s most prominent heroes.
During Martial Law in the 1970’s with eight children, Lolo grabbed the opportunity to work in Hong Kong. This is where he mastered his craft for 20 years or so. And where he would tutor us his first few grandchildren in a tiny tenth floor apartment (or flat as the British-influenced Hong Kong Chinese would call it).
I don’t know if it was out of fear that I learned to read so quickly under my Lolo’s watch. After all, he had a feisty temper, one that I had witnessed on many occasions when I was young. By five, I was writing my own stories. He would bring me to company outings and introduce me to his journalist friends. Having always been on the petite side, I would stretch out my little hand to greet his British colleagues. One time, Lolo said I told them a made-up story, The Monkey and His Briefs.
In the late 1980’s, Lolo went back to the Philippines and became the editor in chief of The Manila Times. After retirement from full-time journalism, Lolo wrote chess columns for the Philippine Star and self-published a weekly chess newsletter for the players of the Quezon City Memorial Circle’s Chess Plaza. These days, he prefers to watch cable movies and exchange jokes with his great grandchild. He has survived three heart attacks and professes he has “no desire for anything else from life.”
Sometimes I wish I were a more diligent pupil; that I followed his advice to read, read, and read more. My knowledge of geography and world affairs is so poor that I squirm every time my 77-year-old Lolo asks his pop-up trivia questions. I salute the University of the Philippines for a great education, but I still feel inept in many areas. There are so many things I wish I knew more about.
I just hope that my own children would have a trickle of Lolo’s brilliance in their blood and pray every day that they would come soon enough to meet my first teacher and greatest mentor, their great grandfather Lolo Manuel O. Benitez, Sr.
Photo by Ian Noble on Unsplash
by rossanahead | Mar 9, 2012 | career, children, Education, family, Mari-an Santos, parenting, woman
By Mari-An C. Santos
Our family is not wealthy. My father is the eldest son among eight of a welder and a housewife who worked part time. Growing up, he worked many odd jobs, mostly selling odds and ends, waiting outside a different church every day, depending on whose Novena day it was, e.g. Quiapo, Baclaran, etc. My mother is the daughter of a district school
supervisor and public school principal in Mindanao. They would scrimp and save every last centavo until the next teachers’ salary came from the government, literally making ends meet for five children.
But both my parents value education. My father was a working student all his life and so, it was no wonder that he went into economics. My mother took up nursing at the advice of her grandparents and came to Manila to work. Later, they were both employed by a top multinational corporation, where they met.
My parents worked hard to send me and my sister to a school that they deemed would teach us not only the basic R’s, but also impart positive values that they too shared. We did not always have enough money to “keep up with the Joneses” at the school, but we did manage to have all the basic school supplies and participate in most relevant school activities like field trips and class projects. As a child, I did not fully appreciate why I could not afford to buy a Trapper Keeper or the latest pair of Keds or Reeboks.
It is in hindsight, of course, that everything makes sense. My father was very strict about maintaining good grades all through my grade school and high school years. He forbade watching TV on weekday nights—even going as far as locking up the TV case so that the time was devoted only to studying. When the time came after every quarter of the school year to claim the school cards, I trembled before seeing my grades. If I had a low grade or a lower grade than the previous quarter, my father would sit down with me and find out exactly what went wrong. He was tough, as most Filipino parents are, and put a great emphasis on high grades.
In grade school, I lived up to my potential and was part of what was called the “interdisciplinary classes” from fourth until sixth grade. In our school, we took an exam at the sixth grade to find out if we could go on to high school or stay one more year in grade school. I passed the exam.
In high school, I was placed in the “honors class” where we had to excel in the academic subjects. I dreaded the end of the schoolyear, as inevitably, some of our classmates were transferred to other classes. Thankfully, I graduated as part of the same class, and among the top of my batch.
In college, even though I lived near the university and enjoyed greater freedom, I found that I took with me the drive to excel in my studies. I was a college scholar every semester and I graduated cum laude. I was so proud to have my
parents on stage to award me on graduation day. It was, after all, due to their efforts that I received such an achievement.
Even when I was working, the drive that my parents instilled in me to excel was very strong. I made the most of every opportunity to learn and to be the best that I could be—whether it was as a production assistant or as a segment producer or as a scriptwriter.
When I began to pursue higher education, it was of my own initiative, not at the prodding of anyone else. I felt that I wanted to learn more and more every day. Although I had to abandon what I started when I moved from the capital city, I found more and other ways to learn from new experiences and new people I met in new places.
Now, that I am pursuing a degree with a scholarship, I value much more the good basic foundation that I have—thanks to my parents’ efforts and the education that they helped me achieve. Without such good foundation and records, how would I get a scholarship that would enrich me and fund my day-to-day expenses? That is why I strongly believe that good education is of primary importance in every person’s life, whether we can see it at present or not. The adage is true: a good education is something that can never be taken away from us.
Photo by Alex Samuels on Unsplash
by rossanahead | Mar 8, 2012 | career, children, Education, family, parenting, Rossana Llenado, woman
By Rossana L. Llenado
Today is very special as we celebrate International Women’s Month and the first year anniversary of Smart Super Women.
We started S, as we fondly call it, to serve as a forum for smart super ladies to inspire other equally bright and busy women.
We asked people we admire to share with us their stories.
We asked leaders to share with us the secret of their success. We asked them to trace their roots, to speak to us about their vision, and to share with us their triumphs and tribulations.
We asked parents to share with us how they raise their children. We asked them how they became so strong as they dealt with the challenges of modern parenting. Does your being strong benefit your children? Do you want your daughter to be as strong as you are? These are the questions that we asked of them, the answers of which they gladly gave us.
We asked single successful career women to share with us the choices that they had to make. We asked them to tell us about the joys of freedom and independence and about how they sometimes had to conquer the specter of loneliness.
We asked everybody to share with us the events of their daily lives. What gives them joy? What matters to them, what concerns them, what jolts them into feeling?
By asking these questions, these leaders, parents, and women showed off the brilliance that is their education. Indeed, in one story after another, we saw how a good education proved to be the final touch that spurred a person to excellence and achievement.
This we did for the last 365 days. They wrote. We posted. We shared.
Each essay is a celebration of one woman and of all women.
We hope to bring more inspiring essays in the coming years. And we invite all of you to share your story, so that there will be more Smart Super Women out there.
