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don’t control. All the energy you put toward things you don’t control comes out of the energy you can put toward the things you can. While no one chooses difficult circumstances, adversity provides opportunity. It allows us to test ourselves, and see who we’ve become. The test isn’t against other people, though; it’s against our former selves. Are we better than we were yesterday? When circumstances are easy, it’s hard to distinguish ordinary people from extraordinary ones, or to see the extraordinary within ourselves. As the Roman slave Publilius Syrus once said, “Anyone can steer the ship when the sea is calm.”[*]