As entrepreneurs and professionals, we often find ourselves in leadership roles.

For leaders with a social conscience, ensuring that our teams are able to thrive within a supportive environment should be one of our top priorities. With our minds ever-present on taking care of the needs of our teams, employees, and clients while simultaneously building our businesses and professions we often forget to take inventory of ourselves. We often forget to ask ourselves a simple question. "Am I happy?"

I'm guilty of it. I've never been an advocate of the work until you drop mentality but that doesn't mean that I haven't found myself in dropping situations. And when I've crashed, I've crashed hard.

Happiness means different things to different people. My marker for happiness is that of balance which requires three things: peace, purpose, and productivity.

Yes, we have to get things done and we have to check off the to-do list. But without happiness, without balance in our lives, we're more likely to crash, our teams are more likely to crash and thus we're unable to make the lasting meaningful impact that we wish to make on our families, businesses, communities and the world.

Make sure that you're happy. Then you'll be more equipped to give your best energy to your work and those around you.