Your mood walks into the room before you speak. Check what you’re bringing in.

People read your face and your shoulders long before they process a word, and they adjust without deciding to. A bad afternoon can quietly reset a whole dinner table or a whole practice. That is not an argument for faking fine, because faking is readable too. It is an argument for knowing what you are carrying so it does not get handed out by accident.

Take ten seconds at the door of a room you keep arriving at tense. Decide whether you are bringing it in or leaving it in the corridor. Saying today was rough and it is not about them costs one sentence and prevents an argument.