Turning problems into opportunities

I think everyone has heard the saying "turn problems into opportunities" or, "turn obstacles into life-transforming experiences" or some other variation of that. This all seems like great advice except for one problem. How the heck do you actually do it?

I recently had a problem which gave me some insight into this issue. I couldn't download podcast episodes. This is kind of a big problem for me because I love to listen to podcasts and I do it pretty much everyday. On the other hand, I lived for many years without podcasts at all, so the problem couldn't really be considered that big. But it felt like a big problem nevertheless. After a bit of frustration, I decided that I was going to turn this problem into an opportunity. I had several podcasts that I had downloaded but never listened to. This would be my opportunity to clean out my podcast app of old downloaded podcast episodes.

I successfully did this and it was pretty fulfilling. I allowed me to listen to some episodes that I had meant to listen to but just hadn't yet. Then my problem reoccurred, because now I had no episodes to listen to at all. But this was another opportunity. I downloaded a different podcast player app and subscribed to some new podcasts. This allowed me to get out of the rut of podcasts that I had listened to for a long time and try some new podcasts, which was a refreshing change.

Although this is a small example of turning problems into opportunities, it highlights to me that any problem is some sort of opportunity. Now I want to start looking for other problems that can be opportunities.