Difficulties are things that show what men are.

Hard conditions do not build a character so much as display one. What you do when the plan collapses, who you blame, whether you keep your word when keeping it has become expensive: none of that is created by the difficulty, only made visible by it. The same is true of other people. You learn more about someone in one bad week than in a year of easy ones.

Rather than waiting for a crisis to find out, look back at the last difficult stretch you had and read it honestly. What you did then tells you which part of yourself to strengthen now, while nothing is on fire.