The Let Them Theory: A Life-Changing Tool That Millions of People Can't Stop Talking About

by Mel Robbins

No matter how hard you try, you will never be able to control or change another person. The only person you are in control of is you. Your thoughts, your actions, your feelings.

learned that the urge to control things comes from a very primal place: fear. Fear of being excluded, of not being liked, of things falling apart if we’re not steering the ship.

The fact is, none of that “control” actually makes you feel better. In fact, it has the opposite effect. Trying to control people and situations doesn’t calm your fears. It amplifies them. Any psychologist will tell you, the more you try to control something you can’t, the more anxious and stressed out you become.

Let Them show you who they are. Their disrespect doesn’t say anything about you. How you respond does. Stop asking why they are doing this. The question is, why do you want to be with someone who does this to you?

This is about dating

the theory—Let Me. The source of your power is not in managing other people; it’s in your response. When you say Let Me, you’re tapping into that power by taking responsibility for what you do, think, or say next. Let Me makes you realize that you are in control of what happens next and that life is more fun and fulfilling when you’re not sitting alone in your superiority.

“It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.” What does that mean? It means that your personal power is in how you react.

You can’t control what is happening around you, but you can control how you respond to it.

stress causes you to doubt yourself, procrastinate, burn out, doomscroll, and struggle with comparison. If you’re having trouble focusing, feeling happy, or taking care of yourself, the reason is stress.

She also told me that if your inner critic is louder than ever, you’re struggling with procrastination, you’re constantly tired, you can’t stop scrolling on your phone, or you have trouble disconnecting from work, it’s all due to stress. Dr. Nerurkar explained to me that stress is way bigger than just the tension you feel in your body. Stress is a physiological state in your brain. This is important to understand because stress actively hijacks the functioning of your brain. As Dr. Nerurkar explained it, normally your prefrontal cortex is in control.

7 out of 10 people are currently living in a chronic state of stress. I used to be one of them.

Catching your stress response using Let Them and Let Me empowers you to choose what you say, think, or do instead of allowing your emotions to hijack your response.

The fact is, not every email warrants a response and not every conversation needs your participation—and you do not always have to have the last word. And as the famous saying goes: Your silence can’t be misquoted. You’ll start to see that a lot of what used to set you off isn’t worth your time and energy, and the less you react to the things around you using Let Me, the more in control you feel.

Focusing on what you can’t control makes you stressed. Focusing on what you can control makes you powerful. And that brings me to another important point: Who is responsible for me not getting sick? Me or this stranger on a plane? Me. I’m responsible for my health. It’s not this guy’s responsibility to stop coughing because I want him to.

My point is, trying to manage someone else, or a situation that is beyond your control, is only going to cause you more stress.

Most advice on this topic sucks. Most people tell you to just “stop caring” about what other people think. But no one tells you how. It’s time for a new approach. Using the Let Them Theory, you’ll adopt a revolutionary approach to squashing this fear once and for all: Give people the freedom to think negative thoughts about you. It is a radically beautiful idea that will unlock your confidence, free your self-expression, and catapult you into a whole new chapter of your life. Give

The fact is, it is impossible to control someone else’s thoughts. Therefore, fearing what other people think, or trying to control their thoughts, is a complete waste of your time. You will never feel in control of your life, your feelings, your thoughts, or your actions until you stop being consumed with or trying to control what other people think about you. I will say it again: Adults will have negative opinions about you—no matter what you do. Why? Because adults are allowed to think whatever they want.

love them. My point is simple: Adults will have negative opinions about you and everything you do. Let Them judge. Let Them react. Let Them doubt you. Let Them question the decisions you are making. Let Them be wrong about you. Let Them roll

Instead of wasting your time worrying about them, start living your life in a way that makes you proud of yourself. Let Me do what I want to do with my one wild and precious life.

People can only meet you as deeply as they’ve met themselves.

Let Them. When you recognize that, you have a choice in your life. Let your family be who they are. Your dad is not changing. Your mom is not changing. Your siblings aren’t changing. Your in-laws aren’t changing. The only person you can change is you.

When you say Let Them, you are seeing your family exactly as they are for the first time in your life, perhaps. They are human. You have no control over what happened. You have no control over who they are. You can only control what you do from this point forward. Accepting the reality of your situation doesn’t mean you’re surrendering to it. Instead, it’s about reclaiming your power to shape your future. Learn how to let adults be adults and accept people as they are. Then decide how to make the best of it, and I promise you your family dynamics will get better.

Problem: You are giving other people’s opinions too much power. When you let the fear of what people might think dictate your choices, you limit your potential and hold yourself back from pursuing what you truly want. This fear causes you to procrastinate, doubt yourself, become paralyzed by perfectionism, and, most importantly, give up on your dreams. Truth: People will have negative opinions about you no matter what you do. It will happen. Let Them. You can’t control it. Allowing someone else’s opinion to distract or consume you is a waste of your time and energy. Solution: When you Let Them think what they want, it gives you the freedom to do what you want. When you align your thoughts and actions with your values, you will be proud of yourself. And when you are proud of yourself, you won’t care what anyone else thinks.

You get one wild and precious life, so go live it in a way that makes you proud.

You will always come last if you let other people’s emotional immaturity have power over you. Instead of taking on the weight of someone’s disappointment, anger, or guilt, you’ll learn a liberating new approach: Just Let Them react. When you say Let Them, you give other people the space to feel their emotions without needing to fix them. When you say Let Me, you do what’s right for you, even if it upsets someone, which is how you take responsibility for your own life.

Other people’s emotional reactions are not your responsibility to manage.

“Mel, most adults are just eight-year-old children inside of big bodies.

The next time you’re with this person and you feel yourself getting triggered by something they say or some way that they act, I want you to just imagine the fourth-grade version of them present in the room with you. Because what you’re describing is someone who has the emotional maturity of an eight-year-old. And, like it or not, that’s most adults.”

Most people don’t know how to process their emotions in a healthy way, much less communicate their needs in a direct and respectful fashion.

Emotional maturity isn’t something you’re born with or that just happens. It’s a skill that takes time, practice, and a desire to learn.

This strategy is going to change your life. For you it might be a parent that gets angry, storms out of the room, and refuses to talk to anybody for several days or a weekend.

Or, in the case of one of my best friends, her mother suddenly stopped talking to her for a month. And then one morning she came down the stairs,

was as if nothing had eve...

They aren’t changing. The person who needs to change is you. And that’s good news, because it means YOU have the power and you reclaim it by choosing how you respond.

You will also realize that their inability to process normal human emotions like sadness, insecurity, disappointment, anger, fear, and rejection is not your fault. And it’s also not your problem to solve. This has been happening to this person since they were a child.

Let Them go silent. Let Them erupt. Let Them play the victim. Let Them

Then, Let Me. Let Me be the mature, wise, and loving adult in this situation. Let Me decide if I want to address this directly or not at all. Let Me remind myself that managing another person’s emotions is

That’s one of my biggest takeaways from using the Let Them Theory: You will never be able to control what is happening around you. You will also never be able to control your emotional responses, because they are automatic—just like how your stress response turns on automatically. But you can always choose what you think, say, or do in response to other people, the world around you, or the emotions that are rising up inside of you. That’s the source of all your power. Learning how to let other adults manage their own emotions will change your life. So will learning how to let your own emotions rise and fall while still communicating what you need to, even when it is very painful to do so. And there will be times when making the right decision for yourself is going to be one of the hardest things you have to do in life.