Plan something. It doesn’t have to be a vacation—plan a night out, a day trip, or even just a fancy dinner at home. Give yourself something to look forward to, and watch how it shifts your mood, mindset, and motivation.

This is one of my favorite emotional intelligence secrets to level-up leadership: Great leaders never complain down.

Have you ever been so in your head about something that you convinced yourself everyone else was noticing it too? That was me—until I got a reality check from my own two feet.

As leaders, parents, friends, and colleagues, we have the power to leave people better than we found them. And that power comes from empathy, kindness, and emotional intelligence.

When Jack was little, he would come home from school, dump his backpack on the counter, and run off. I’d sort through the papers, keeping a few and tossing most into the trash. One day, he came to me, with huge tears in his eyes. When I asked him what was wrong, he told me I had thrown away something important—his art.