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Have you ever wondered why some people seem to have an unlimited amount of success in both their personal and professional lives? It could be because they possess high emotional intelligence.

According to Psychology Today, "Emotional intelligence is the ability to identify and manage your own emotions and the emotions of others." This usually involves:

In some ways, 2015 was the year of the gig economy, with the scale and diversity of the freelance workforce not just expanding, but attracting more mainstream notice as well. By our own recent estimates here at Upwork, some 54 million Americans are now freelancers.

Still, that's just the most noticeable trend among several that will reshape the nature of work in the next five years. In fact, shifts in technology, connectivity, and the expectations of both employers and employees are on track to bring about bigger changes than the freelance economy can on its own. Here are four.

Kids get a ton of press for stressing out their working parents. Work-life balance is incredibly hard, screams one survey. You need to be a productivity ninja to squeeze it all in, implies another blog post.

And after having a baby last year, I can see why. From broken sleep to incredible amounts of laundry (babies are so small, how do they produce so much?) and a million other responsibilities, kids are a huge if happy time suck. But just because they demand a ton of effort, does that mean children end up being a net drain on your professional productivity?

So what are top executives doing before they even begin working to set themselves up for a more lucrative career? Here are a few tactics prospective CEOs might use.

Know your history.

Information is power, so get as much as you can before you even begin negotiating. You should research both the company's compensation structure as well as the position's value in the labor market. There's no doubt that a candidate for an executive position knows the previous CEO's salary and wouldn't accept anything less.

If you said “no” to any of the above, you’re probably not indispensable to your employer. But you should strive to be, says Chris Gaborit, managing director and cofounder of The Learning Factor, in a recent LinkedIn post.

In the post, Gaborit offers keys to becoming indispensable at work.

“I decided to get some wisdom from people I respect,” he says. “I asked some of our best clients — senior managers who work for global companies. These people have walked the walk; they have been bulletproof when it comes to restructuring.”

Here are two ways to become indispensable at work:

Employees who are lucky enough to snag an office with a view not only have a sunnier disposition, thanks to the rays of sunshine splashed across their desk. It turns out they also have better overall health than their coworkers whose desks are stuffed in drab corners lacking natural light.

A recent study published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine shows workers with office windows get 46 more minutes of sleep per night, tend to exercise more, and have lower blood pressure than those without a view.

Intuition forms over time. When McKinsey began publishing the Quarterly, in 1964, a new management environment was just beginning to take shape. On April 7 of that year, IBM announced the System/360 mainframe, a product with breakthrough flexibility and capability. Then on October 10, the opening ceremonies of the Tokyo Olympic Games, the first in history to be telecast via satellite around the planet, underscored Japan’s growing economic strength. Finally, on December 31, the last new member of the baby-boom generation was born.

This concept and the visual was taken from my new book which came out today called, The Future of Work: Attract New Talent, Build Better Leaders, and Create a Competitive Organization.

One of the things I have been writing about and have tried to make clear over the past few months is that work as we know it is dead and that the only way forward is to challenge convention around how we work, how we lead, and how we build our companies. Employees which were once thought of expendable cogs are the most valuable asset that any organization has. However, the employee from a decade ago isn’t the same as the employee who we are starting to see today. To help show that I wanted to share an image from my upcoming book which depicts how employees are evolving. It’s an easy way to see the past vs the future.

Consulting firm PwC recently published its outlook for work in 2022, based on interviews with 500 human resources experts and 10,000 others in the United States and several other countries. You probably won’t be surprised to hear that big companies could end up so powerful and influential they morph into “ministates” that fill the void when government is unable to provide essential services. Companies will also use sensors and other gizmos to monitor employees around the clock. And workers will mostly acquiesce to this digital leash, in exchange for job security, decent pay and important benefits.

You are a twentysomething entrepreneur ready to launch a new business and your emotions are running wild. You're frightened, intimated, and stressed, but at the same time you're enthusiastic and confident about what the future holds.

At this point, it's time to step back and listen to those who have been in the same situation.

It would be a foolish mistake and a missed opportunity not to value the advice, experience, and knowledge a mentor can offer. Put your ego aside; be a sponge and soak up as much wisdom as possible.

I was in this exact position prior to launching SDC Nutrition Inc. I was confident and probably a little too self-assured, but I knew I had to set aside my ego to listen and absorb as much invaluable advice as possible from my advisers.

1. I Believe I Can Fly - R. Kelly

You awake to a new, beautiful, and sunny day. The birds are singing and you are feeling amazing. As you bounce out of bed,you realize that you are a manager and leader—inspirational and empowered. A song comes to your lips and you start singing.

“There are miracles in life I must achieve, but first, I know it starts inside of me. Oh, if I can see it, then I can be it. If I just believe it, there's nothing to it. I believe I can fly. I believe I can touch the sky. I think about it every night and day; spread my wings and fly away. I believe I can soar. I see me running through that open door.”

And with that you run through the door and to your car.

Magicians are always under pressure to reinvent their performances to stay ahead of the competition. When David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty "disappear," Franz Harary responded with a vanishing space shuttle. The same is true of business managers: They must strive to be innovative, providing the kind of magical product and service experiences that exceed customer expectations and the offerings of competitors. What's the secret?

Success in business as well as magic has less to do with clever marketing and more to do with the innovation process, Thomke and Randal write in the 2012 paper Innovation Magic. The authors also teamed to write The Magic of Innovation, published in the European Business Review earlier this year.

The typical workday is long enough as it is, and technology is making it even longer. When you do finally get home from a full day at the office, your mobile phone rings off the hook, and emails drop into your inbox from people who expect immediate responses.

While most people claim to disconnect as soon as they get home, recent research says otherwise. A study conducted by the American Psychological Association found that more than 50% of us check work email before and after work hours, throughout the weekend, and even when we’re sick. Even worse, 44% of us check work email while on vacation.

A Northern Illinois University study that came out this summer shows just how bad this level of connection really is. The study found that the expectation that people need to respond to emails during off-work hours produces a prolonged stress response, which the researchers named telepressure.

The reason a coach — or any outside perspective — is helpful in these sticky problems is not because the coach is smarter or has more creative solutions. It’s because insiders don’t question the problem definition the way an outsider does. Being outside the system helps us see the system in a way that insiders can’t see.

If you’ve tried to motivate yourself in a million different ways but you’re not accomplishing your goals, consider that motivation is not your problem. The simple fact that you’re trying so hard to motivate yourself is evidence that you are motivated. So why aren’t you changing your work habits or getting places on time or eating more healthily?

Employees often express a desire for greater psychological ownership of their work, believing this will improve their job satisfaction and happiness. Management research has found that these expectations do play out. For instance, using data from over 800 employees, Linn Van Dyne of Michigan State University and Jon L. Pierce of the University of Minnesota Duluth found that employees’ sense of psychological ownership for the organization is positively associated with both their attitudes (job satisfaction and commitment to the organization) and work behavior (performance and organizational citizenship).

Sometimes, stress can seem like a full-time job. Many of us try to avoid it or, failing that, manage or mitigate it. But, Kelly McGonigal, a lecturer at Stanford University and author of The Upside of Stress, makes the case for embracing the stress in your life.

"We have this story about stress that says when stress is present, there’s something wrong with me or something wrong with my life," she says. But the reality is that there’s no stress-free version of your life available to you—it’s always going to be there.

Often, the reason we have stress in our lives is because we’re leading rich lives and something we care about is at stake, she says. Constantly avoiding or reducing stress could mean not striving for certain goals or taking risks that could lead to great rewards, such as a new job or relationship.

Instead, McGonigal advocates changing our attitudes about stress and embracing it. That’s easier said than done, but following several steps can help.

But if you’re already busy, feeding this appetite can feel like one more task on your list. So what should you do?

I put this question to several business leaders recently, and the short answer was this: get over it.

"Every manager should be giving feedback to everybody," says Bernard Tyson, CEO of Kaiser Permanente. "They shouldn’t have to ask. It’s how you let someone know if he’s hitting the mark and what to do to become more effective." The Millennial appetite is a huge opportunity for business. "Millennials are after feedback because they’re trying to get better at what they’re interested in doing."

It's often said that even the most respected leaders are considered by many to be ruthless, even brutal at times. Of course, often when leaders are perceived as merciless, that hard perception belongs to those who did not deserve any mercy.

Great leaders have to be tough and decisive. Often their decisions will displease many, but they can't effectively lead if every decision is the result of democracy or consensus. This is the difficult path for the leader. It's easy to stay popular when you appease everyone, but rarely will that drive a large organization to success. They must make the best decision taking all the needs and wants into account. Ultimately, they have to lead the way or step aside.

Here are five ways a leader must be uncompromising and perhaps ruthless in order to benefit a loyal following. See if you have the strength to be tough when needed.

Much like most people, I've faced multiple instances where there was nothing keeping me at a job, but bills and responsibilities meant quitting wasn't an option either. In such cases, it's difficult to show up, let alone do your work to your best ability. But a few strategies have helped.

Stop Blaming Yourself, But Take Responsibility

Motivation is intrinsic. While external factors affect it, your reaction to those factors is what ultimately leaves you demotivated. But there's a difference between taking responsibility for this and blaming yourself for this—and far too often, we do the latter.

Like thousands of professionals all over the country, you're trying your best to stay organized, keep your appointments, and still churn out the countless hours of work you need to keep pushing your company forward.

Most of us aspire to conquer more and more work in less and less time, but since none of us can cram more hours into the day (despite our best efforts), increasing our productivity is the best we can do. Even so, in some cruel twist of irony, most "productivity enhancers," like going to the gym every morning, seem to add more effort to our already busy lives. Instead, try one or more of these 15 productivity hacks--which you can execute and experiment with immediately:

Employee recognition programs may sound like an unneeded expense, but research shows that a little peer-to-peer recognition goes a long way.  

For example, organizations with a strong employee recognition approach are 12 times more likely to have strong business results, according to data cited by OfficeVibe. Companies with strategic recognition programs also report lower turnover rates than companies that don't.

The infographic below explains why investing in employee recognition is worth it.

We’ve all been there, even if you don’t want to admit it. It’s life.

And take it from someone who usually has great composure in a professional setting. You can try as hard as you want, bottle it all in, throw on some peppy tunes, but sometimes you just can’t help losing it a bit at work.

I started my first real job in February, and up until about three weeks ago, I was the epitome of professional. I showed up on time, wore appropriate clothing, engaged in meetings, spoke up when necessary, you get the picture. But then Monday rolled around, and I felt like my life (outside of work) had fallen apart. I was knee deep in friend drama, utterly confused about the dating scene in NYC (it’s rough), and I just found out that I was, yet again, roommateless and apartmentless for my impending move in September.

Whether we like it or not, conflict is a constant in life. From big-picture decisions about the future to where to eat lunch, every day we have myriad differences of opinion with others.

Somewhere between browbeating and caving in every time you’re faced with someone else’s preferences, there’s a middle ground out of which can spring innovation and ideas. Here are five steps to stop avoiding conflict and start managing it.

Many people hate change; contemplating the unknown is scary. So many stick with familiar things even though they no longer fit. This is especially true of careers. Sometimes people get stuck in a career direction or work environment that makes them terribly unhappy, and they stay there because it's tough to change careers once you have gained experience, power, and good compensation.

People often end up in the wrong careers by accident. They start out with a job and become proficient, so they advance and make a good living. They may even start a company in that field. They get so focused on growth, meeting objectives, or making the money to support their lifestyle, they don't realize how toxic their life has become.