Problems.  The very name of trouble.  Trials and tribulation.  A preoccupation of humans from the early Greeks to this evening’s newscast.  Oh, woe!

Yet the Greeks survived.  And so do we.  It is the problems that did not survive. 

People are less problem-sufferers than problem-solvers.

A problem is anything you want to do something about.  Problems can be personal, practical, professional or whatever else you don’t like.  Your brain is what will deal with them.  If your brain gets better at fixing things, it will get better at fixing whatever you need to fix.  And you will get better at knowing what you can do.

Self-confidence is ninety percent of everything.

Being psychologists, we had to wonder whether the word problem would be politically correct for this site.  Maybe we should call it a challenge.  Or an opportunity.  Problem might sound too much like a wall to some people.  But we decided:

A problem by any other name would smell the same.

Whether it turns out to be a wall, a challenge, or an opportunity, depends on what you do about it.  Your brain can turn a wall into a challenge.  Or turn a challenge into an opportunity.

A problem is just an opportunity being mismanaged.

Then, too, the term problem might lead people to think that we’re only talking about real problems.  The kind that keep people up at night.  The kind that twist stomachs.  The problems that hang over your head, sometimes out of sight, never out of mind.  The big ones.  The sharks.

We do mean those.  But we also mean the little problems.  Bite-sized.  The ones you could practice with.  The ones that would build up your skills.  Build up your self-confidence.  So you are ready for the sharks when they come.