‘Have no entitlement & other lessons my mom taught me’
Whenever I am asked who I really look up to, I smile and reply, that’s an easy question: my mom!” says Cristalle Belo Pitt, daughter of Dr. Vicki Belo.
The mother-daughter tandem smoothly runs the Belo Medical Group, where Vicki is the medical director and CEO and Cristalle, the managing director.
Cristalle, married to Justin Pitt and proud mom to two beautiful children, Sienna and Hunter, says how lucky she is to witness all the ups and downs her mom went through to get where she is today.
“It wasn’t a walk in the park for my mom. She has experienced challenges and heartaches because my mom trusts everyone so easily that a lot of people in her lifetime have taken advantage of her,” she says.
Despite Vicki’s challenges, Cristalle is proud of her mother for her tenacity to move forward in life with bravery and grace.
“I could see that sometimes she felt alone in her fight, but that didn’t hold her back. As an example, she saw the innovation and technology in the practice of dermatology available abroad and wanted to bring that to the Filipino people. At first, she was challenged by other known dermatologists in 1990. Fake news was spread that the laser technology used in dermatology was bad for the brain. She painstakingly had to go to different channels (on traditional media since social media didn’t exist back then) and debunk the false claims. Now laser technology is seen in all dermatology clinics.”
Cristalle credits Vicki for the many things she learns from her mom every single day. “I hold her wisdom close to my heart and find ways to apply it in my life as well. Here are some of the top ones I feel you can benefit from as well,” she says.
1 Find your passion and find a way to make money from it. As a bullied child because of her weight and severe acne, my mom wanted to make sure she would be able to help those who were not born pretty to have an equal opportunity in life. She believed there was a way to make everyone feel confident and beautiful and that was how she ended up in her profession. “To make the Philippines the most beautiful country in the world” is the Belo mantra, which I also adopted and used as inspiration when I created Belo Essentials. It meant bottling the Belo expertise and making it affordable to every Filipino.
2 Live day by day. My mom easily gets overwhelmed by the future. It feels like a daunting task that seems hard to achieve. This is why she focuses on “today.” She always says, “Today. This is what I can do to get closer to my goal.”
3 Live with gratitude. Have no entitlement. We grew up in Tambo, Parañaque, where on one side of the road lived the privileged and on the other side were the houses of the underserved community. It was a daily reminder to thank God every day for what we had and to constantly help those who had less.
4 Balance your life — exercise is so important. I remember when my mom was an aerobics instructor at Clark Hatch. I was five and I was her little assistant in my pompom skirt. My role was to stop, play and replay her music. It was good for me to see how she made time for exercise and how it is also a priority in life.
5 Constantly create new paths for the brain. If you use the same pathways in your brain over and over, you strengthen those paths, but the other parts of the brain shrink. Every year, it’s important to learn a new language, skill or hobby. We dance together and memorize new choreography at least once a week. Mom is currently learning French and I’m learning how to play the piano.
6 You cannot make a first impression twice. Make sure that when you do something, you do it big and make an impact. Keep the messaging clear, short and memorable. Give it all that you’ve got.
7 Servant leadership. God put you on earth for a reason. You don’t really own anything; the money, the influence, was given to you for a reason. You must be a good steward of everything He puts under your trust. Use your talent and resources to make life better for the earth, the community and your family.
8 Integrity is something you hold close and can never be taken away from you. If your word is all you have, then so be it.
9 As long as you’re not hurting anybody, you can dance to the beat of your own drum. Here’s what my mom told me: 20 percent of the people will not like you, no matter what you do; 20 percent will always like you and will constantly forgive you no matter what you do; and 60 percent will keep changing their minds. So, live your life for an audience of one: God!
10 A lathering of sunblock a day keeps the wrinkles away. The best anti-aging cream is sunscreen because an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure. If you prevent * damage in the first place, you’ll need less procedures to fix it!