On breaking patterns and believing in better things.

Happy New Month 🎉

It feels only right to talk about new things in a new month — not just in the obvious sense of fresh starts, but in the subtle, uncomfortable art of allowing them to happen.

I write this for hamsters in a cycle — those of us who know what it means to hope for something different but somehow find ourselves circling the same loop. Emotionally. Professionally. In life, in love, in work.

If you’ve ever been here, you know how hard it is to admit when you're stuck — especially when you feel like you’re doing everything right. You’re showing up. You’re trying. You’re putting yourself out there. But somehow, you end up exactly where you started. It’s frustrating. It’s exhausting. And if you're anything like me, it leaves you wondering if you're the common denominator in every dead end.

One thing I've learned in product management is that iteration isn't always forward movement. Sometimes it’s going back, reworking, or even shelving what you thought would work to make room for something you never considered. It’s uncomfortable — watching your best ideas fall apart, learning to detach from what felt promising — but the product is never truly stuck. It’s just finding the version of itself that works.

But what happens when you're the product? When the thing you have to iterate on is yourself? Your feelings, your patterns, your capacity to believe that something new can happen to you — and stay.

The art of allowing new things to happen to you isn't just about doing new things. It's one thing to chase newness — to actively seek out change on your own terms — but it's another thing entirely to let yourself be surprised by what you didn't see coming. To let life happen to you without trying to micromanage every unfolding.

A lot of us know how to start something new. We know how to pivot, how to take risks, how to try. But allowing — that soft, passive surrender — that's much harder. Especially when you've had to be in control for so long just to protect yourself. When disappointment has taught you that the only way to survive is to anticipate every outcome before it happens.

But if I've learned anything, it's that control is not the same thing as safety. Sometimes, holding on too tightly to what you think should happen is exactly what keeps what could happen from finding you.

I’ve found that the hardest part of allowing new things isn’t starting. It’s surrendering. It’s the letting go that happens quietly in the background — of people who didn’t choose you, of ideas you were so sure would work, of versions of yourself that are no longer serving you. It’s choosing not to overanalyze, not to find a red flag in every green light, not to force a connection to fit simply because you’re tired of waiting.

It’s hard. It’s lonely. It’s tiring.

But the truth is, allowing new things requires a little bit of foolishness — the kind that makes you believe something better could still be out there, even when nothing in your history has shown you otherwise. The kind that makes you lower your guard without needing proof that it will be worth it this time. The kind that says, I don't know what this could become, but I'll give it space to become something.

So, maybe this is the month to let your heart breathe a little. To stop rehearsing every worst-case scenario in your mind. To choose curiosity over suspicion. To stop measuring new people, new opportunities, or even new versions of yourself against old disappointments.

Whether in love, in life, or in work — the next version of you is waiting. You just have to allow it to happen.

Here’s to new things 🥂