First and foremost, cloud-native is an entirely different way of thinking and reasoning about software architecture. We literally need to rewire our software engineering brains, not just our systems, to take full advantage of the benefits of the cloud. This, in and of itself, is not easy. So many things that we have done for so long a certain way no longer apply. Other things that we abandoned forever ago are applicable again.

This in many ways relates to the cultural changes that we will discuss later. But what I am talking about here is at the individual level. You have to convince yourself that the paradigm shift of cloud-native is right for you. Many times you will say to yourself "we can't do that", "that's not right", "that won't work", "that's not how we have always done things", followed sooner or later by "wait a minute, maybe we can do that", "what, really, wow", "how can we do more of this". If you ever get the chance, ask my colleague Nate Oster about the "H*LY SH*T!!" moment on a project at a brand name customer.

I finally convinced myself in the summer of 2015, after several years of fighting the cloud and trying to fit it into my long-held notions of software architecture and methodology. I can honestly say that since then I have had more fun building systems and more peace of mind about those systems then ever before. So be open to looking at problems and solutions from a different angle. I'll bet you will find it refreshing as well, once you finally convince yourself.