My 3 Lessons from 2024

The Best Way to Prepare for 2025!

7 min readJan 10, 2025

2025 has been here for 10 days already. As family, friends, and colleagues exchanged holiday wishes, something about the standard “joy and prosperity,” “health, happiness, and success,” and “a year full of peace and love” just felt wrong. May 2025 be the best one yet. Ha? Seriously? Have we learned nothing?

So, when it was my turn to write a holiday wishes message, I went with something along the lines of: “May 2025 give us the patience, the courage, and the wisdom to deal with whatever troubles it will throw at us.” Some laughed. Some rolled their eyes. No one disagreed.

The best we can do is not blind hope, but look at 2024, learn our lessons, and try to be better prepared for what’s ahead. Two years ago, I wrote an article titled How To Do Your Personal Annual Review. In it, I outline my process for reviewing the past year and planning for the year ahead.

If you have read my articles before, you may already know that I keep track of my workouts, reading, writing, learning, and other activities (check out my article Tracking and Measuring). I plan, review my plans, track and measure the progress, and this approach has served me well. But at every year-end review, I have realized that statistics only tell a part of the story. In what has become my favorite part of the annual review, I reflect on the key lessons of the year, and it is my three lessons of 2024 that I want to share with you today in this article.

It Is Supposed To Be Hard

“Smooth Seas Do Not Make Skillful Sailors“— African saying.

In the course of 2024, this has become my mantra when dealing with challenges. Rather than let the panic take over, or even the thought of panic to appear in the back of my mind, I remind myself: It Is Supposed To Be Hard. This is now my go-to sentence when the task at hand turns out to be harder than expected. This is a mental trick I play on myself. When the voice inside my head says — this is hard! I respond — it is supposed to be. If it yells — I did not expect it to be this hard! I remind myself — you should have.

In a way, this is a version of the message from Marcus Aurelius, which Ryan Holiday summarized as: “The Obstacle is the Way.” The full quote goes: “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” This is brilliant.

Over the years, I have seen this concept in different shapes and forms. Think Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Antifragile, Jocko Willink’s Good, Kobe Bryant’s Mamba Mentality, or the concept of post-traumatic growth. Read Victor Frankl’s The Man’s Search for Meaning. What all these approaches, mental models, and techniques have in common is that they are about welcoming adversity and challenges. Even seeking them out. And when an unwelcome challenge strikes, they are about reframing hardships into lessons and important practice.

Replace fear with curiosity. Approach the new difficult boss, the new task you feel unprepared for, and the new challenging opponent as curiosities rather than annoyances. We think we know who we are, but adversity introduces a man to himself, as Einstein is thought to have said once. Or as Stoic philosopher Seneca put it: “I judge you unfortunate because you have never lived through misfortune. You have passed through life without an opponent — no one can ever know what you are capable of, not even you.”

It is Supposed to be Hard.

For more on this concept, check out my article It Is Supposed To Be Hard, which I wrote in February 2024.

2. Deserve First

“The safest way to try to get what you want is to try to deserve what you want.” — Charlie Munger.

This profound insight hit me like a truck. Once you truly accept this concept, it has the potential to be your most potent weapon against bitterness. Against envy. Against lamenting your back luck and blaming others.

Success is never guaranteed. Way too much in life is outside our control. Life is complex, and there are too many variables. You may be applying for a job, and someone else gets selected. You may be trying to win a competition, but someone else triumphs. You fall in love, but the person you love does not love you back. You may… scratch that, you will fail and fail again. That is how life is.

Since we cannot control most variables, the best we can do is focus on what we can control. Getting better. Learning. Growing. Focus on the right action even if the outcomes keep disappointing you.

Let me give you an example. For the last several years, I have been applying for positions at a higher grade in my organization. Time after time after time, I failed and failed again. Most of my job applications did not even get a reaction, let alone shortlisting or a job interview. After a decade at my current level, I felt snubbed, and righteous (or what felt like righteous) anger, frustration, and irritation threatened to take over. It was only when I came across this quote from Charlie Munger that it gave me the direction I needed.

If I want to be at a higher grade, just the years I’ve put in are NOT enough. Do I, in my heart of hearts, truly believe I deserve the promotion? Do I really have the skills and the knowledge? I realized that I had to focus on skill-building. I had to be patient. Methodical. Forget the actual promotion. Act the level. Demonstrate — to myself, first of all, but also to everyone around me, that I am at that level — whether I am formally recognized to be or not. If I am truly there, the titles and levels will eventually catch up.

Once I settled into this framework, the relief was palpable. The burden was off my shoulders. I could concentrate on truly getting better without opinions or comparisons, without expectations of reward or recognition. What I essentially did was apply the Stoic concept of the dichotomy of control — where we focus on our thoughts, choices, decisions, attitudes, actions, and reactions — things we can control. We should try not to be disturbed by what lies beyond our control — other people, their opinions, actions, feelings, outcomes of events, outcomes of our actions. The dichotomy of control is an excellent way to manage stress and anxiety, as I saw in my own case.

Deserve first.

For more on dichotomy of control, check out my December article The Metaphor of Stoic Archer.

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3. Leadership is not a rank. It is a choice

This reframe changed the way I looked at leadership. It also made it easier to spot great leaders and identify bad ones. It helped me articulate what leadership is and what kind of behaviors can help us improve our leadership skills.

First off, we often confuse leadership with management. Management comes with a rank. Leadership does not need a rank.

During 2024, I saw managers who failed to be leaders. They had the rank, all the formal authority, and the attributes of power. And yet, they did not have a following. People around them did not look up to them. Managers who fail to be leaders struggled to mobilize people. Their message did not resonate.

I also witnessed people who successfully led without having a senior position in the organizational hierarchy. They had a following. People listened to them. Believed in them. These leaders empowered others. They did not overpower. An important distinction.

“Great leaders don’t set out to be leaders. They set out to make a difference.” — Lisa Haisha

I now advise people to practice their leadership skills even if they do not have the rank of a manager. To make mistakes and learn from them. To prioritize service to others over personal achievement. To learn to communicate effectively and lead by example. To take initiative and build networks. To seek to advance the cause regardless of who takes the credit. As you do this, the moment there is a leadership gap, those around you will expect you to step in. To step up.

Leadership is not a rank. It is a choice.

For more on this concept with fun examples, check out my article Leadership Without Rank, Lessons from Ellen Ripley, Aragorn, and Optimus Prime.

2025 will, no doubt, be a year of challenges. If you think differently, you need to wake up. I wish you the patience, the courage, and the wisdom to handle the challenges this year will surely bring about. And the first step to do that is perhaps to review your 2024 and see what powerful lessons you can learn. Do share!

Shout out to my friends who keep me honest and motivated. It was the conversation with them that inspired this article.

If you liked this read, check out my home page for articles about philosophy, learning, self-improvement, literature, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and more. Here are some you may be interested in: