When the Problem Isn’t Going Away.

The emotional cost of fighting realities we do not want to accept.

Often in life, and especially in business, we run into problems that slowly consume our attention. We try to stay positive. We look for distractions. We hope the issue will somehow resolve itself if we give it enough time.

But some problems do not go away.

Eventually, we have to stop avoiding reality and start learning how to live with it.

I was reminded of this years ago when I opened a children’s restaurant. It was one of those places filled with skee-ball machines, flashing lights, ticket games, and loud excitement. We served pizza too, and honestly, it was good pizza.

The problem was beer.

Pizza and beer naturally go together for many adults. Children and beer do not. Since I rarely drink myself, I did not fully understand the expectation at first. In my mind, I was building a family place for children. But many of the parents walking through the doors were looking for a place to relax while their kids played. To them, having a beer with pizza felt completely normal.

That created tension for me.

Part of me resisted it because it did not fit the image I had in my head of what a children’s restaurant was supposed to be. I kept hoping there was some way around it, some way to preserve the atmosphere I imagined without dealing with the issue directly.

And to be clear, this was not even my biggest business challenge. It was simply one of those persistent realities that kept resurfacing, no matter how much I wished it would not.

Eventually, I realized something important: some obstacles are not signs that we are failing. They are simply part of reality.

The Stoics understood this well. They did not treat obstacles as unfair interruptions or as problems that should surprise us. They saw difficulty as a normal part of life. Not something to complain endlessly about. Not something to deny. Just something that had to be worked with, honestly.

Problems usually do not disappear because we stay optimistic. Most of the time, they become manageable only after we stop pretending they are not there.

I have noticed this applies to people, too, especially in leadership.

As bosses or managers, we naturally gravitate toward the employees who already make our lives easier. They are dependable, skilled, and comfortable to be around. But the people struggling are often the ones who need our attention the most. When we spend time helping them improve, the larger problem often improves with them. Sometimes what looked like a frustrating obstacle was really just neglected attention.

That does not mean every problem can be solved perfectly. Some tensions remain. Some compromises still feel uncomfortable. But reality usually wins in the end whether we acknowledge it or not.

In my case, the solution became clearer once I stopped fighting the situation itself. The parents were the paying customers, and the children did not care about the beer at all. Even though it was not my first choice, I decided to get the beer license.

And honestly, it worked out fine.

Looking back, I think many of our hardest struggles come not from the obstacle itself, but from resisting the fact that it exists.

Sometimes the obstacle is not asking us to abandon our values. Sometimes it is simply asking us to adjust our expectations.

The problem may not completely disappear. But once we stop fighting reality, it often stops controlling all of our attention.

Albert Alarcon Jr.

Author of The Nature Within Us