Why who you surround yourself with determines how far you go
This Mother’s Day, I found myself thinking about a woman who never once described herself as a leader, and yet embodied every quality great leadership requires.
My mother, Dr. Ermida G. Albizu, a vocational rehabilitation psychologist who served some of Puerto Rico’s most underserved communities, raised her children, co-founded what is now Albizu University, supported her husband’s vision with quiet ferocity, and lived with joy, faith, and purpose until the age of 97.
As we move through the second quarter of this year, a time we encourage everyone to lean into momentum and intention, her life offers us something more valuable than any framework: a living model of self-leadership in action.
Earlier this year, we explored four cornerstones of self-leadership: self-awareness, self-reflection, self-regulation, and self-motivation. These are not soft skills. They are the inner infrastructure that determines how effectively we show up in every role we hold, as professionals, as partners, as parents, and as community members.
My mother didn’t learn these from a course. She practiced them through a lifetime of conscious, courageous living. She knew that leadership was not just a business skill, but a life skill.
My mother had a very strong sense of identity. She knew exactly who she was thanks to her deep sense of self-awareness. In the 1950s and beyond, when professional women, especially mothers, were expected to choose between career and family, she refused the false choice. She was a wife, a mother, a psychologist, a colleague, and a community builder, all at once. Her sense of identity was not fragmented by the competing demands of her world; it was integrated by her values.
One of my mother’s most consistent teachings was that any challenge could be resolved (and learned from) if we sat down, reflected, and opened ourselves to the possibilities available to us. She modeled this in her professional work, where she spent hours poring over case files and occupational manuals, not to check a box, but to make sure that the recommendations she offered in her professional role truly served the person in front of her.
She also modeled it at home. Before reacting, she paused. Before advising, she listened. This was not passive; it was disciplined.
Mom was a woman of deep faith. That faith served as an anchor when facing adversity. Her faith was the source from which she drew her ability to reflect about professional obstacles, personal loss, health challenges in her later years, every time with composure, optimism, and forward motion.
When my father, Dr. Carlos Albizu-Miranda, grew weary of the enormous challenge of building the first professional school of professional psychology in U.S. territory, the Puerto Rico Institute of Psychology, it was my mother who kept the fire burning for him and for the mission. She did not absorb his occasional discouragement when faced with a multitude of institutional and governmental challenges. She redirected it. That is self-regulation at its finest: the ability to manage your inner state so that it serves the people and purposes you love, rather than undermining them.
Her faith gave her something that no credential or strategy can fully provide: the deep, settled conviction that she was not alone, that her work mattered, and that whatever came next could be met with courage.
What motivated my mother was never recognition, rank, or reward. It was love, a word we take seriously at Love Your Work and Life, because we have seen again and again that sustainable leadership is rooted in it.
Dr. Ermida G. Albizu loved the clients she served, people from Puerto Rico’s most vulnerable communities who needed not just a competent rehabilitation psychologist, but an advocate who saw their full potential. She traveled to worksites, kept abreast new developments in her professional field, and appeared in court as an expert witness until the age of 85, because she was motivated by something deeper than duty.
She loved her colleagues and contributed her home, her time, and her energy to the Puerto Rico Psychological Association for decades.
Above all, Mom loved her family with a fierceness and a warmth that made every one of us feel genuinely seen. And her extraordinary sense of humor, those unmistakable, full-bodied bursts of laughter, was itself an act of love, a gift she gave freely to every room she entered.
My mother showed me something I now understand more fully than ever: motherhood is one of the most demanding, most formative leadership laboratories there is. It requires every self-leadership skill we have discussed: awareness, reflection, regulation, and motivation. She practiced these skills even under pressure, over decades, with no formal title and often no applause.
She also became a role model for other women who were trying to live whole lives, helping navigate times when they found themselves choosing between their professional ambitions and their family aspirations. She never told other women they could have it all. She simply lived in a way that showed them a different question was possible: not “How do I choose?” but “How do I lead well across all life domains that matter to me?”
Your Invitation for Q2 and Beyond.
As we step fully into the second quarter of this year, we invite you to carry forward two things my mother carried her entire life: momentum and resolve.
Ask yourself: Where in my life am I leading from my values? Where am I reacting when I could be reflecting? Where have I let the pace of life erode my sense of purpose?
Self-leadership is not a destination; it’s a daily practice, one that, over a lifetime, produces a legacy.
My mother didn’t set out to be a role model. She simply committed, day after day, to living her values with courage, compassion, and faith. And in doing so, she shaped every person fortunate enough to be in her orbit.
That is the Big Win. Not success in one area of life, but integration, wholeness, and meaning across all of them. It was her greatest gift to us. And it can be yours too.
