Every Time I Forced It, It Didn't Happen

On the difference between giving up and letting go.

Cristina Bossini

Jun 07, 2026

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There is a pattern in my life that I keep discovering over and over again.

Not because I forgot it.

Because I am human, and humans need to relearn the same lessons in different costumes until finally, hopefully, one day, the lesson stays.

The pattern is this:

Every time I forced something to happen, it didn’t happen.

Every time I let go, life moved.

I want to tell you about the Empire State Building.

Not as a tourist. As a rejection.

When I decided I wanted to come to America, I was living in Italy, working as a CPA, and watching TV on a Saturday morning, which I almost never did, because on Saturdays I was always working.

But that Saturday, for some reason I still cannot explain, I was home. The TV was on. And there was a woman on a show talking about her internship in New York, doing international accounting.

I am a CPA. I remember sitting there thinking: I could do that. I want to do that.

So I did what I always do when I want something. I went after it. Hard.

I found a CPA firm in the Empire State Building. I wrote them an email. I explained who I was, what I could do, how much I wanted this.

They said no.

Not cruelly. Not unkindly. They said: you do not know American tax law. When you do, reach out again, and we will reconsider.

I remember reading that email and feeling the particular sting of a door that doesn’t slam, it just closes quietly.

So I found another way. I came to America on an internship with a nonprofit that produces contemporary operas in Brooklyn. It was not the plan. But I came.

And once I was here, I joined a meetup group called “Language Exchange”, because I wanted to practice, to connect, to belong somehow in this enormous city.

At one of those meetups, I met a man.

He asked me what I wanted to do.

I told him.

He said: send me your resume.

He sent it to three CPA firms.

One of them was the exact firm in the Empire State Building that had said no to me a year before.

This time, they said yes. They interviewed me with five different people. And then their lawyer sent me an email that I will never forget.

I am working on your visa.

They had hired me.

The firm that rejected me became the firm that sponsored my life in America.

And I needed to get rejected first.

I needed to come through a different door, learn something I did not know, become someone slightly different — before I was ready for the thing I had wanted all along.

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I think about that a lot when I look back at my life.

How many times I was absolutely certain I was ready. How many times life quietly said: not yet. Not as punishment. As preparation.

Because there is something I have learned that is easy to say and almost impossible to feel in the moment when you are desperate and the door is closed:

The lesson always comes before the door opens.

You just cannot see the lesson while you are still banging on the door.

I see this same pattern in one of the most meaningful professional experiences of my life.

If you do not know me yet, last year I appeared on a show called The Fixer with one of the businessmen and investors I have admired most since I moved to the United States, Marcus Lemonis.

What most people do not know is what it took to get there.

For a year and a half, I followed him. I went to motivational speaking events where he was a keynote. I tried to meet him, to get a moment, to pitch him my business. Every time, he would say the same thing: send me an email. And every time, I did. I applied for the show. Nothing happened.

At some point, I planned one last visit. I was going to bring him a gift basket. I was going to try one more time.

And then I got sick. I could not go.

I remember the moment I made peace with it. I said to myself: you did your part. Now leave it to the universe.

Seven months later, they reached out to us.

An invitation to be part of the show. The thing I had been chasing for a year and a half arrived the moment I stopped chasing it.

I will tell you the full story — every detail, every door that closed, every email that went unanswered — in a future letter. Because it deserves its own space. But for now, it is simply the clearest example I have of what I am trying to say:

The moment I let go, life moved.

I see this same pattern with hiring too.

It comes in cycles. There are moments at Healthy Italia when we desperately need someone: a person for the store, an assistant for the cooking school, someone to help carry what the team cannot carry alone. We post the job. We wait. And either nobody shows up, or the wrong people show up, and I find myself asking the universe directly, somewhere between a prayer and a complaint:

Where are my people? Why won’t they come?

And every single time I have been in that place of desperation — please, someone, anyone — the right person does not arrive.

At first I thought it was bad luck. Then I thought it was the job market. Then I started to notice something uncomfortable.

Every time the right person did not show up, there was something I had not figured out yet.

A process I had not built. A role I had not defined clearly enough. Something I still needed to do myself, so I could teach it properly when someone arrived. A restructure that needed to happen first, so that when the right person walked in, there would actually be a real place for them to land.

The people were not the problem.

I was not ready to receive them yet.

And so I have learned (slowly, through enough cycles to finally believe it) to stop asking where are my people? and start asking what is the lesson I still need to learn before they arrive?

Show me what I am missing. Show me what needs to be built, clarified, decided. And then, once I have done that work, send me the person.

Every time I have shifted the question like that, something inside me settles. And eventually, the right person comes.

I know what you might be thinking.

This is all beautiful in hindsight. But what do you do when you are in the middle of it? When the door is closed and you cannot see the lesson and you just want the thing you want?

Honestly? I do not always do it gracefully.

I get frustrated. I want to control things. I want to push. I want to make it happen through sheer force of will, because I am an Italian woman and force of will is basically my first language.

But I have started to notice something.

The pushing never works. It exhausts me, and then the thing still does not come until it is ready to come.

So I am learning slowly, imperfectly, sometimes with more resistance than I would like to admit, to do something different.

To prepare as if it is happening.

And then release as if it is not up to me.

Both things at the same time.

Prepare like it is your job. Then release like the timing is not.

Because most of the time, I find that when I do not get something, it is not because the universe is ignoring me.

It is because there is still a lesson that I need first.

And once I learn it, the door opens.

Not always the door I was expecting.

Sometimes a better one.

The Saturday morning I watched that TV show in Italy was not an accident.

The language exchange meetup in New York was not an accident.

The man who asked for my resume was not an accident.

They were all part of the same sentence, just written in a language I could only read after the fact.

I am still learning to trust that.

I am still learning to let go of the timeline my anxiety proposes and trust the one that life actually has in mind.

It is the hardest practice I know.

But the evidence is there, written across my entire life:

Every time I forced it, it didn’t happen.

Every time I let go, life moved.

This week’s question

Where in your life are you pushing something that might be asking you to let go instead?

Not give up. Let go. There is a difference.

Giving up means you stop believing.

Letting go means you prepare, you show up, you do your part and then you trust that the timing is not yours to control.

Maybe the door is not closed because you are not worthy of what is behind it.

Maybe it is closed because you are not finished becoming the person who is ready to walk through it.

Every week, I write one honest letter from inside the life I am building — the business, the book, and the woman behind both. If this resonated with you, subscribe and come back next Sunday.