Today the Capricorn sun faces off with Mars in Cancer, sparking your passion, creativity, and competitive spirit. This energy could motivate you to fight for what you need, but it might just as easily drive you to initiate unnecessary and unhelpful confrontations. Remember that it’s possible to be assertive and understanding, honest and kind; do your best to find the right balance.

You’ll probably have little tolerance for other people’s foolishness today. Though you try to stay patient, you’re sick of seeing others make thoughtless choices that only serve to make everyone else’s lives harder. It might be tempting to come down hard on people’s mistakes, but be thoughtful about how and when you deploy your righteous anger. Your fury might be deserved, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll be helpful. If you’re going to pick a fight, choose the ones that have a chance of actually improving things.

From your most intimate connections to your most casual acquaintances, you’re constantly navigating small misunderstandings — and growing closer in the process. Today, though, it could be easy to overblow ordinary disagreements: It might seem like a personal affront when somebody thinks differently than you do, or like they’re intentionally being provocative. But chances are, nobody is intending to attack you or make your life harder. If a person hasn’t given you reason to distrust them before, try to give them the benefit of the doubt now.

You’re confident and resilient, in part because you don’t take yourself too seriously. If you make a silly mistake or if a friend makes a thoughtless comment, you know how to laugh it off. But today you might be a bit more defensive than usual, quicker to fight back if someone else mistreats you. Conflict isn’t always a bad thing, and right now it might be just what you need. It’s important to have a sense of humor, but you don’t have to turn everything into a joke — you’re allowed to stand up for yourself.

You do your best to be polite and considerate, a reliable colleague and a thoughtful neighbor. Sometimes, though, you get tired of playing nice; you want instead to put yourself first and prioritize your own goals. Today, remember that your needs matter just as much as anyone else’s — just be careful not to hurt others in your rediscovered assertiveness. If you’re thoughtful, you can get what you want while still doing right by the people you care about.

When things don’t go your way today, your gut reaction will be to blame the people around you — whether or not any of it is actually their fault. It might even be satisfying, at least in the short term. But ultimately, finding fault with your friends won’t solve any of your problems, and it’ll only make it harder to access the community support you need. Try to find ways to use your energy productively, rather than lashing out at people who probably don’t deserve it.

Part of you deeply wants to collaborate with others today. This is the side of you that recognizes the importance of community and understands that you’ll get farther together than you will alone. But you might also have another, contradictory inner voice insisting that you shouldn’t waste your energy working with others, and instead you should try to outshine them. Your challenge is to find a healthy outlet for this competitive energy, instead of letting it erode your strong relationships. Your friends aren’t your rivals, so don’t treat them that way.

You understand that it’s virtually impossible to change the world — or even just your life — on your own. So you’ve worked hard to cultivate a community you can rely on. Sometimes, though, a close-knit network can start to seem like a source of stress, rather than a bedrock of care and support. Today, you might get the impression that the people around you are holding you back, that their needs and expectations are preventing you from spreading your wings. Stand up for yourself if you need to, but don’t take your loved ones’ support for granted, and be careful not to recklessly burn bridges.

Nobody can get the better of you today — your mind is sharp and clear, and you’ve got the energy to argue all day. But before you start any fights or launch into impassioned speeches, make sure you’re not getting caught up in issues that aren’t actually important to you. It’s easy right now to become so fixated on “winning” any debate that you lose sight of your bigger values. Don’t damage important relationships only for the sake of being victorious in a minor argument.

You have strong, sometimes fiery, opinions about the world, and you tend to assume that the people in your life mostly agree with them. If they didn’t, you imagine, you’d never have become friends in the first place. Today, though, you might learn that you and the people you love see the world more differently than you thought. It would be easy for this discovery to lead to conflict, but remember that it isn’t inevitable. As long as you find some common ground, it’s possible to get past all manner of other, minor disagreements.

You’re hesitant to put too much stock in other people’s opinions. You worry that once you start letting their perspectives shape your decisions, you’ll lose touch with your independence and forget your thoughtfully curated sense of self. Today, especially, everyone else’s desires seem dramatically opposed to yours, so you might imagine that you need to ignore them entirely and focus on meeting your own needs. But moving ahead won’t actually feel good if you leave behind the people you care about, so put some effort into coming up with creative new ideas that genuinely work for everyone.

Sometimes you feel like you’re at the mercy of forces much bigger than yourself. Today, though, you’ll feel a sense of renewed power to take on challenges, make important decisions, and course correct any parts of your life that have gone off the rails. Just remember that you still can’t control everything — and if you try, you’ll only end up irritated and discouraged. Your role isn’t to make every tiny detail perfect, but to do the best you can with what you have.

You’re not one to be satisfied by superficial relationships — you want to go deep, ask interesting questions, and get to know people beyond the surface. But today, your genuine curiosity could easily be taken for inappropriate nosiness; your good-natured interest in other people could feel more like judgment to them. Don’t dismiss their feelings, however unreasonable; if your friends seem defensive, you might need to make it extra clear that you aren’t criticizing them.

Buy Claire Comstock-Gay’s book, Madame Clairevoyant’s Guide to the Stars, here.