Jim VandeHei

It's about seven years ago, and we adopted a teenage boy.

And I had two teenagers already at home.

And he had lost his parents.

It was a rough part of his life.

And he's a young guy doing what you do when you have a rough period of life.

And I remember thinking, you know what?

He's going to be watching me.

My kids are going to be watching me.

My wife's going to be watching me.

If I show love, if I show forgiveness, if I show persistence, if I show grit, that's going to echo through how they experience what we're going through.

And if I'm rattled or I'm pessimistic, it would have an opposite consequence.

And that process, I really believed, had a very small part

in turning my son into this amazing, thriving, grateful college athlete today.

And I think that applies to all of us.

The fifth thing that you control

is you control your destiny.

You control where you're going.

One of the things I hate the most is when I run into people and they just feel like a bobber or a log on a river, and you just have to go with the current.

It's not true.

You get to control where you go.