“paglubog” and its notions

People with a certain level of attachment to a project/work/business has a certain level of commitment to it as well.

In the past days, I was assigned to be in-charge of our team. It was a task I thought was piece of cake. My mentor tells me I am to oversee day-to-day activities. I was thinking to myself that this is no difference to being a middle manager in the academe where I’d look after the operations. I got this, I was thinking.

I was, of course, wrong.

My mentor asks for updates on our numbers, especially as end of month nears. I barely have an answer to appease him, as he sees slow increase and seemingly declining performance. From where it was, day-to-day operations include monitoring of numbers. We are in the sales anyways. Numbers would have to speak for themselves.

As I, together with the other OICs (I for the branch, and them for their respective units)..

..tried to make sense of how to go about being in-charge, I am blessed that our branch manager [my mentor] took close overseeing us. He then pushed us to call for emergency meeting, monitor and guard our numbers, and the like. In the process, I have developed so much respect to our team’s leaders. What they do is not easy.

However, this overall experience of leading the team, previewing how it is to be a unit and branch manager, I got to assess the level of commitment I have for the job we do as Financial Advisors. I have struggled in the past year with failure here and there, but I find myself still getting back up in the business. Why? I just got the answer today: due to my “paglubog.”

In the Filipino context, paglubog could denote good or bad meaning. Paglubog as in sinking; Paglubog as in immersed.

I just understood how it is, and will always be, different for anyone in the team because we have varying levels of immersion in the work/business. Anyone who has exerted and invested so much time, effort, and resources to the business will always take chance to recover and bounce back to better the execution of the work. Immersed—that’s the better paglubog. When we allow ourselves to weave the job that we do to the life that we live, we slowly see the business as a work and challenge to simply surpass. Instead, it’s become part of our life’s meaning—what we do, and what we are.

Unfortunately, some lead to the bad paglubog. Sinking. They find themselves in a quicksand-like of path in the business, and end up leaving. For the immersed, failure is part of the process; for the sinking it’s the end of the line.

As I repeatedly try to leave the industry I am in, and always be given so many reasons to stay, I realized I am in the better paglubog. I have proven nothing much in the business, but I am certain I am/will never be sinking. That’s a commitment. #