#56: We Can Do Hard Things and Other Lessons Learned in 2024 (Part 1)

Maybe including something about building B2B SaaS Products

👋 Hola friends! Thank you for opening my email! I truly appreciate it.

If you’ve been with me for a while, you might have noticed that my newsletter is now called “How To Build What Feels Good & Other Stories”. This shift reflects my focus on building products AND careers that align with our values, maximize our strengths, and embrace our uniqueness.

If you’re new here, I’m Kax — welcome! How to Build What Feels Good is my weekly newsletter about becoming your favorite version of a Leader, building a purpose-driven startup or any business, and navigating all the human mess in this often cynical world of tech… while still having a happy and healthy life.

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😮‍💨 Let’s Start With…“What A Year!”

In January I was more worried about my health and frustrated about my day job that I didn’t have the energy to set goals for the year.

Now it’s December 27, 2024 (as of writing), I can say with absolute confidence that everything turned out so much better than I could have imagined. 🤯

Because for the first time in a very long time… I feel like myself again. In fact, I am in my “favorite version of myself” era. And as a result, my business endeavors are also taking off.

But none of these would have happened if it weren’t for 5 critical milestones in 2024 that taught me the lessons that I needed to learn so that I could get to where I am right now.

And I want to share with you these lessons I learned about success, personal growth, career development, and more. And I hope you will take at least one of these lessons and shape it into something that feels good for you.

So that you might have a 2025 that fills you with joy, gives you space to shine, brings you success. And more importantly, so that you can finally become your favorite version of yourself too. 🫶

source unknown (if you know where this is from, let me know please!)

Let’s go! 💪

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💡 Lessons from Burning Out: We are enough by default

Early in 2024, I went on medical leave. I was up to my eyeballs in anxiety and burned out as hell.

I burned out because I neglected myself and my needs in pursuit of success. I neglected my needs because I didn’t believe I was good enough yet to deserve them.

So I overcompensated by working too much, often at the cost of my health and relationships. By choosing things that made me want to pull my hair out of my head because I wanted to do things right vs. wanting to do the right thing. Because external validation was the only thing that made me feel good enough for success.

In my desire to be good enough for success, I forgot to be myself.

But here’s what my burnout taught me:

Success does not require sacrifice. 

• Success that matters does not require that we sacrifice our health. It requires that we’re in top shape both physically and mentally. So rest, exercise, and a healthy diet are the bare minimum.

• Success does not ask us to neglect our relationships. It, instead, asks us to take care of them and to keep building new ones. Because from other people’s input, we can gain perspective. And in other people’s kindness, we can get support.

• Success does not ask us to give up leisure. Instead, it asks to pursue activities that fill our cups.

Success does not require sacrifice because the kind of success that matters does not ask that we become less than who we are. Instead, it asks us to be ourselves as a baseline because who we are is already enough. Everything else is gravy.

📌 Because who I am already has the capability to do what’s best as well as the capacity to expand and gain new tools and skills to do more.

It all sounds so simple: to know that, by default, who we are is already enough and deserve good things in life - including success, good health, pleasure, and relationships that bring out the best in us.

To know is easy. To accept is much harder. To do that, there are self-limiting beliefs and unhealthy habits to let go of. And often, it’s just easier to work a 16-hour day and ignore what our bodies tell us than it is to do the much-needed work to love ourselves a little bit more each day.

But here’s the thing, with acceptance and self-love comes clearer priorities. And with this clarity, success is not so far behind.

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💡 Lessons from Prioritizing Wellness: A Healthy Body Makes For A Healthy Mind

I still surprise myself every time I wake up at 6am to go to yoga/pilates, or when I power through a hangover on Sunday morning to go to spin class.

Because I used to tell myself that I am not a morning person and that I was allergic to exercise. 😂

But if there’s anything burnout taught me, it was that I needed to let go of my self-limiting beliefs and create routines that allowed me to expand and create more space for all the good things that I deserved.

I’m glad I that I became a morning fitness girly though, because I think 90% of the lessons I learned came from this:

01 The importance of being present

Sure it’s important to have a goal (or many). And mine included having abs.

But unless I make sure that I am holding myself correctly; then not only will I be engaging the wrong muscles (so no abs), I will also probably fall flat on my face.

And if I pay attention to what today is showing me, I could see that I can already do 2 pull-ups more and stand 3 seconds longer on Warrior 3 - compared to last time. And seriously, it’s always damn satisfying to notice these things.

Tomorrow is never guaranteed, but today is. So we can either spend today focusing on what we don’t have (yet), or we can spend it

• Celebrating what we already have

• Recognizing the new things we are learning

• Enjoying the moments in between

The more we engage with today, the more we can be excited to do it all over again tomorrow.

02 Giving yourself permission to fail is giving yourself permission to grow

One time in spin class, our trainer told us “Give yourself permission to fail. Then try again!”

And friends, that was a light bulb moment.

My sporty friends + Instagram fitness reels all said the same thing: training to the point of failure is how you grow muscle and how you become strong.

How many times have we stopped ourselves from trying something new or from taking risks because we’re afraid to fail? But it’s only in doing things we didn’t know how to do before or that we aren’t good at (yet), can growth and confidence be found.

And constant exposure to failure can reframe it completely. It’s not failure but only learning how to do something better over and over again until we learn how to do it well.

03 Progress is inevitable. Measure progress from where we started. Not from how far we still have to go.

Early on, I had to learn how to recognize how far I since I started. Otherwise, I’d quit out of frustration because I’m constantly focusing on the gap between where I am and an ever-moving goal post.

For example, I could get frustrated by not being able to do a reverse chaturanga or I can acknowledge that a few months ago I couldn’t even do a normal chaturanga without belly flopping. This means I’ve improved already so I’m learning something new!

If we keep showing up and keep trying, then we get better. It’s inevitable.

Replace yoga with onboarding in a new job, starting a new business, building a new product, or anything that requires doing something that we didn’t know how to do before, and it’s still applicable.

Bonus: Working out is great at regulating emotions (🔗:research)

Learning how to regulate our emotions is critical for personal and career growth.

It helps us deal with stressful situations so we learn how to respond with calm and always in alignment with our values. Vs reacting impulsively based on anger or fear.

Honestly, at this point, if I can survive 60 minutes with a Pilates Chair, I can survive anything. 😂

💬 What major shifts did you experience in 2024 and what lessons did you learn? Share in the comments? 🙏

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💡 Lessons from Walking 100km of Camino de Santiago: We Can Do Hard Things. But Suffering is Optional.

In September, I walked 115km for Camino de Santiago.

5 days of walking in the sun and the rain. Even though it was not a technical hike, it was still quite the challenge for first-time multi-day hikers like me.

An already hard walk made even harder on the 2nd day because I prioritized my ego vs my well-being.

I wanted to finish the day’s walk earlier than I did the previous day for no real reason other than wanting to “perform better”. So:

• I took fewer stops than the previous day even though Day 2 was longer

• I skipped snack breaks thinking brunch was enough to get me through the day

I was tired. I was weak. And I was miserable the entire 24km. As a result, I twisted my ankle and I arrived in town much later than I wanted.

Did I have to suffer to get to Palas de Rei? Absolutely not. I would have made it to my destination regardless. It’s inevitable. So I could have rested and taken snack breaks. And the 24km walk would have been more fun.

I made decisions that made me suffer because I thought walking faster in Day 2 vs Day 1 was so important. It wasn’t.

all smiles again once I’ve remembered that eating well is part of the journey

These days there is so much pressure to get things done faster.

Why? So we can do more things?

We’re being made to run an imaginary and unnecessary race that nobody gets to win (except maybe investors). Worst case? Some of us come out the other side broken, unfulfilled, and lonely.

The road to success can be hard but it can also be fun.

Progress is inevitable. There is no real valid reason for us to neglect our health, our relationships, and our joy to get to the other side. But we neglect them anyway when we give in to the unnecessary pressure of doing things faster so we can do more things.

But the pressure feels difficult to ignore when we don’t feel secure about the value we already bring to the table.

These days, when things are challenging, I remind myself that:

• I can do hard things. Suffering is optional.

• There’s joy to be had. But I need to give myself the space to enjoy the journey.

• One foot in front of the other. That’s all I need to do. Arrival is inevitable.

And I’m pretty sure, it’s the same for you.

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⏸️ To Be Continued…

I will pause here because there are still 2 big milestones that happened in 2024 that taught important lessons to go through.

But we’re already at 10-minutes reading time and I’d like for you to stay with me as much as I want for you to stay awake. 😂

So I hope you join me again for Part 2 of “We Can Do Hard Things and Other Lessons Learned in 2024 “ where I will share lessons learned from:

1. Building a Startup and Launching Magical Audios

2. Going all in on my coaching business

In the meantime…

If any of these lessons resonated with you and you’d like to make 2025 the year you make inevitable progress in your career goals while stepping into your favorite self era and making space for the things that are important to you - like your health, your values, and the things that bring you joy… then let’s chat!

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If you got to this part of this newsletter, thanks for staying with me til the end. And thank you for sharing with me topics that you’d like for me to share my thoughts, feelings, and violent reactions on.

❤️

Kax

PS. Here are more ways for us to connect:

1. Follow me on Instagram, Bluesky or LinkedIn for thoughts, feelings, and violent reactions that take less than 10 minutes to read. 😂

2. Learn more about my 1:1 coaching services. I typically work with experienced Product Managers, Designers, Software Developers and new Leaders in Tech who want to achieve their career goals. (and if budget is a constraint: join incitefulapp and you can get coaching for free!)