Looking Forward To Problems

How to Reframe Problems as Opportunities for Growth

There is a major challenge you will face as you embrace the opportunities offered by the New Year. Ignore it, and you risk abandoning your goals at the first sign of it.

What’s the challenge? Not the problems you’ll encounter, but how you perceive them.

Because here’s what most people miss: problems themselves are not the issue. The issue is whether your perception of problems allows you to persist through them, or causes you to retreat at the first sign of difficulty.

And you have more control over that perception than you think. The first step is understanding where that perception came from.

When Problems Were Propositions

Problem is a word loaded with negative connotations. But if we trace its etymological roots, we arrive at a fascinating perspective far removed from our current notions.

The word “problem” can be traced back to the Ancient Greek noun próblēma, which literally meant “a thing put forward” or “a question proposed”. For centuries, it referred to an intellectual puzzle to be solved.

Notice the presumption: problems existed to be engaged with. A problem was literally a proposition for solution, not a mere difficulty.

By the 15th century, the meaning had shifted. As the word was increasingly used to describe crises and hardships in daily life, it came to emphasise the difficulty itself rather than the necessity of finding solutions. The word changed from proposition to predicament.

When the meanings of words change, so too does our emotional response when we use them. When we say “problem” today, we’re not just describing a situation that requires a solution — we’re activating a centuries-old neural pathway of threat response.

Think about the last time you said “I have a problem.” Notice what happened in your body. Did your shoulders tense? Was your breathing shallow?

Our vocabulary once meant to help us describe reality, now shapes it in ways that limit us.

Here’s what I find fascinating: we inherited this definition, but we’re also the ones keeping it alive. Which means we have the agency to choose differently — to reclaim what it originally meant and apply it to the problems you’ll face this year.

Opportunities in Disguise

I was raised to view problems as something to avoid, and I suspect you were too. But as we’ve seen, the issue isn’t the problems themselves — it’s how we perceive them.

This matters because the unexpected obstacle can be both a barrier and an opportunity, depending on how you perceive it. And how you perceive it in turn influences your response.

Yet we resist this reframing despite knowing it’s beneficial. Why? Because our threat-detection systems evolved for physical dangers but now misapply themselves to abstract challenges.

Here’s your choice: view problems as opportunities, discover solutions and make forward progress. Or view them as obstacles, stay stuck, and blame fate and circumstances. One is a path of agency whilst the other is a path of victim mentality.

Everyone searches for opportunities whilst running away from problems, not realising that problems aren’t obstacles to opportunity. They are the opportunity itself.

Without problems, there is no friction against which to develop new capabilities. Without resistance, there is no strengthening. This is the paradox: the very thing we instinctively avoid is the mechanism of our development.

“The obstacle in the path becomes the path. Never forget, within every obstacle is an opportunity to improve our condition.” — Ryan Holiday

When Cracks Become Gold

Let me share a story that illustrates what happens when someone chooses to see problems differently.

In 15th-century Japan, the Shōgun Ashikaga Yoshimasa faced a problem. When one of his cherished Chinese tea bowls was broken, he sent it back to China for repair. When the bowl returned, he was dismayed. It had been crudely mended with ugly metal staples — a common but purely functional solution for broken ceramics at the time. The solution preserved the bowl’s utility but ruined its aesthetic value.

Instead of accepting this outcome or discarding the item entirely, the Shōgun reframed the problem. He didn’t ask his craftsmen to figure out how to erase the crack. Instead, he commissioned a method that honoured it. This gave birth to the art of Kintsugi — literally “golden joinery”.

In Kintsugi, the breakage is meticulously repaired using gold lacquer, transforming the network of fractures into glittering, deliberate lines of artistry. The damage is not disguised – it is explicitly celebrated.

The Shōgun’s true innovation wasn’t technical but conceptual. He changed the success criteria from “restoration to original state” to “creation of a new aesthetic category”. The original problem was reframed as an opportunity to create a new form of beauty, demonstrating that a flaw could be converted into a feature, elevating the mended object into an art form of its own category.

This is the power of changing how you frame problems. The same broken bowl. Two different perspectives. Two entirely different outcomes.

But here’s what the Kintsugi story doesn’t tell you: there will always be more broken bowls. The question isn’t whether you’ll encounter problems — it’s whether you’ll develop the capability to solve better problems.

Graduating to Better Problems

This brings us to the deeper implication: problems are inevitable.

No matter what circumstance or stage of life you find yourself in, there will always be problems. There are problems no matter your age, your relationship status, whether you have children or not, your work situation, your financial status.

The nature of the problems might differ, but what remains constant is that life will always present you with problems.

If you avoid these problems, you stay stuck encountering the same patterns again and again. If you’re dealing with the same kinds of problems you were five years ago, that’s not bad luck — that’s developmental stagnation.

I’ve observed this pattern repeatedly. Consider someone who avoids difficult conversations at work. They will face variations of the same interpersonal conflict — different people, different contexts, but the same underlying problem pattern. The avoidance doesn’t eliminate the problem, it just ensures its recurrence. Meanwhile, their capability for navigating difficult conversations remains undeveloped, guaranteeing they’ll continue to find such situations threatening.

The goal is not to avoid problems altogether but to graduate to solving better and better problems.

“When you solve your problems, you simply end up with new, better problems. It’s not about not having problems; it’s about having better problems.” — Mark Manson

The Compounding Returns

As you shift from seeing problems as obstacles to seeing them as opportunities, several benefits emerge.

You adopt what philosopher David Deutsch calls rational optimism — the view that all problems are soluble through reason and effort. This isn’t naïve optimism or magical thinking. It’s a conviction that solutions exist and can be discovered through systematic inquiry. When problems arise, your cognitive system automatically searches for solutions rather than quitting.

You also develop confidence that is decoupled from specific knowledge. This confidence arises not from the fact that you have it all figured out, but from the belief in your ability to figure it out.

“Confidence isn’t about knowing the answer. It’s about knowing you’ll be okay, even if you don’t.” — Mel Robbins

Solving problems leads to competence, which increases self-confidence, which increases willingness to engage with harder problems. Each cycle strengthens the next, generating a rich-get-richer phenomenon in both results and identity. But the loop compounds in both directions — avoidance creates a downward spiral just as surely as engagement creates an upward one.

Those who see problems as obstacles gather evidence of victimhood. Every problem confirms life is difficult. Those who see problems as opportunities gather evidence of agency. Every problem confirms challenges can be navigated. Over time, these different evidence bases create divergent life trajectories.

The Question That Changed Everything For Me

So here’s the shift that changed everything for me.

When I encounter a problem, I pause and ask myself one question:

“What is this problem here to teach me?”

This single question transforms the problem from a threat to be avoided into an opportunity to learn and develop. It redirects my attention from what I’m losing to what I’m gaining.

The next time a problem appears, pause and ask. You’ll be surprised by what it reveals.

I use this question in two ways: In the moment when a problem first appears (to prevent my initial avoidance response), and later, when I’m tempted to give up (to reconnect with the opportunity).

Over time, the reframe becomes automatic. You stop experiencing problems as interruptions and start experiencing them as growth opportunities.

The Opportunity Waiting

This year’s problems are arriving whether you welcome them or not.

But whether the problems become an impediment to your goals or the catalyst towards them is a choice you can make. That choice determines not just what you achieve, but who you become.

“Every problem is a gift — without problems we would not grow.” — Anthony Robbins

The question isn’t whether you’ll face problems — it’s whether you’ll face bigger, better, more meaningful problems twelve months from now, evidence that you’ve grown.

Look forward to problems. Because they’re the only way forward.