I, Dan, am a champion for emotional literacy. Discovering and developing my emotional literacy has changed my life in positive and signifi cant ways and has led to a deep desire to help others benefi t from increased emotional understanding and growth. In my late thirties and early forties, I suff ered from depression and addiction. Facing those taught me that although the visible aspects of these were behavioral, the driver for me was emotional. I was running from my emotions. Th ey were scary and felt horrible, and I had no idea how to come to terms with them in any other way. So, I tried to avoid them by immersing myself in my addiction. Preface 24 Dignity in Leadership The despair of those experiences drove me to seek treatment, but they also led me to begin exploring my emotional ignorance and to look for a new way of understanding emotions.

My search has led me to see emotions as logical, practical, and learnable, and my curiosity and desire to serve have been guiding me ever since. I've learned to trust my emotions as a source of information. I've learned that emotions come and go and that noticing and naming them helps me use them to navigate my life. Intentionally including emotions in my decision-making produces better choices, and the emotional agility I've learned helps me avoid getting stuck and being blind to possibilities. Personally, I consider them an enormous gift. A globally recognized subject matter expert on emotional literacy and resilience I'm the co-author of several books on related topics, including The Field Guide to Emotions, The Unopened Gift: A Primer in Emotional Literacy, and Dignity in Policing. My writing has been translated into Spanish, Italian, German, and Slovak. I am regularly invited to be a guest globally to share my practical approach to emotional learning and growth.