About 50.5 million people quit their jobs in 2022, more than the 47.8 million in 2021, according to the Job Openings and Labor Turnover survey. This record-breaking wave has been labeled, The Great Resignation. Among the most cited reasons for resigning include wage stagnation, limited opportunities for career advancement, hostile work environments, lack of benefits, inflexible remote-work policies, and long-lasting job dissatisfaction.

If you are one of the many people considering leaving your job, there are many factors to consider—including your emotions. Any time we consider leaving a job, there are financial and logistical variables to consider, but our emotions become a strong factor in the decision as well. How well we are able to manage, and leverage, our emotions to make the right decision will determine whether we will look back with regrets, or with gratitude—that we did what was best for us.

Self-awareness is the basis of emotional intelligence, and the better we know ourselves, the more likely we are to make decisions that are best for us. Years ago, I had a friend who was feeling very unhappy with his career and looking for a way out. After going for counseling, he became aware that it was his relationship with his partner, not his job, that was making him miserable. For my book, The Other Kind of Smart, I spoke with people who struggled to understand themselves and find fulfilling and rewarding work. I learned that all areas of our lives impact one another, and it is important that we know ourselves well enough to really understand what is going on within.

I believe it is crucial that we don’t make important decisions, like leaving a job, while in a highly charged emotional state. Instead, I recommend that we wait, think it over, and share how we feel with friends and family, especially those who will be directly impacted by our leaving. Talking to someone we trust, respect, and know will give us honest, unbiased feedback is important.

Emotional intelligence can give us important information for whether or not to quit, and when. For instance, feeling that we have more skills and potential than we are using in our current work, often leads to frustration and boredom. If we have tried to find ways of utilizing our skills in the present position, but have run into dead ends, that tells us that it’s time to look for work opportunities that feel more satisfying and rewarding.

And when we feel no passion toward our work, it can feel very stressful and monotonous. Even if the work isn’t directly in the area that we feel strongly pulled to, we at least need to see a connection with something that makes us feel alive and passionate. There will be parts of our work, even in jobs that we feel motivated and excited about, that we don’t enjoy. For example, I love public speaking but don’t particularly enjoy all the preparation that goes into it. However, I can’t imagine doing something where I didn’t enjoy any part of what I do. If we don’t have any passion for all (or most of) our work, we need to find something that inspires us, or face regret later in life.

Even if we feel that the work we are doing is satisfying and fulfilling, there are times when we need to look elsewhere. One of these is an unhealthy work environment, which emotional intelligence can help us identify. When we don’t feel safe, trust management or our coworkers, it will cause us stress and take a toll on our well-being and mental health. If we have tried to change the situation but keep running into a toxic work environment, the cost of staying is too high. If we sense that we are in an environment where we get a sense that we have to compromise our ethics, the price of staying will be a loss of self-respect.

Oftentimes, we end up wishing we had left these environments earlier. While it may be difficult to make the big decisions about our futures while we are in a work situation defined by these unhealthy characteristics, our future selves will be grateful that we did.

“As we grow through life, the only person we ever really have to please is our future self,” says Sally Raymond, a long-term psychotherapist who has coached high school students about communication and emotional intelligence for more than 20 years. “If we make our decisions going forward from the point of view of how our elder self will feel looking back at the choice we make now—whether about a job or anything else—we’re using our emotional intelligence to ensure not only a life well traveled, but also a fulfilled, even triumphant, destination.”

And this perspective is a key part of emotional intelligence.