Be a role model. Parents want me to teach them the tricks of raising an emotionally intelligent child. And what they don’t realize is that the real trick is their development of the skills and modeling them. Your kids are not going to talk about their feelings unless you talk about your feelings.

People sometimes think of anger and stress, and anxiety as bad. But there are no bad emotions. All emotions are information. Let’s say you have a kid or a significant other, and you’re plotting yourself in the red with those people; you’re angry. That’s an indication that you’ve got to work on your relationships. It’s not a bad thing. You’ll want to ask yourself, what’s going on in your life? Is it that you have no space? Are the people you’re with bringing you into the red? Is it your work? And then start setting goals—say, I want to be 5% less red next week. You’re not going to get rid of your red. Because life is about being in the red and blue. We’re complex people who should feel the full range of emotions.