We are out of control in so many areas of our lives that I believe we should spend the majority of our emotional, psychological, and spiritual effort in understanding and controlling our response to situations rather than controlling situations themselves.

Here’s the key question: as a leader, how can you turn adverse situations into strengths? How can you take difficulties and turn them into positives?

Here are a few of my recent thoughts:

1. Opportunities are Disguised as Adversity

As I look back on my own life, I recognize this simple truth: The greatest opportunities were the scariest lions. Part of me has wanted to play it safe, but I’ve learned that taking no risks is the greatest risk of all.
– Mark Batterson

2. Adversity Can Raise Your Ceiling

If you learn to use adversity the right way it can buy you a ticket to a place you couldn’t have gone any other way.
– Tony Bennett

3. Turn Obstacles into Opportunities

The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way. In Marcus’s words is the secret to an art known as turning obstacles upside down. And from what we know, he truly saw each and every one of these obstacles as an opportunity to practice some virtue: patience, courage, humility, resourcefulness, reason, justice, and creativity.

Whatever we face, we have a choice: Will we be blocked by obstacles, or will we advance through and over them?
– Ryan Holiday