Be someone your ten-year-old self would feel safe running toward.

Children read people accurately and with very little interest in status or explanations. That makes a child’s judgment a good test of whether you have become safe and warm rather than only impressive. The version of you at ten had a clear sense of who was kind, and that sense is worth borrowing back.

Ask whether the person you are on a stressed Wednesday is someone a child would walk toward. Find one thing in how you speak to people that would fail that test, and change it. Being trusted by somebody with nothing to gain is a fair measure of a life.