The Let Them Theory

by Mel Robbins

You’ll never feel ready to change your life. One day, you just get tired of your own excuses and force yourself to do it.

The truth is, other people hold no real power over you unless you give it to them. Here’s why this works: When you stop trying to control things that aren’t yours to control, you stop wasting your energy. You reclaim your time, your peace of mind, and your focus. You realize that your happiness is tied to your actions, not someone else’s behavior, opinions, or mood.

So much time and energy is wasted on forcing other people to match our expectations. And the truth is, if somebody else—a person you’re dating, a business partner, a family member—if they’re not showing up how you need them to show up, do not try to force them to change. Let Them be themselves because they are revealing who they are to you. Just Let Them and then you get to choose what you do next.

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.

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.

choosing peace is not weakness—it is power.

“It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.”

You are never stuck. That’s a lie you tell yourself.

Professor Margaret Mead said: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

Because other people are never going to stop you from achieving what’s meant for you. They can’t. Only you can stop yourself from achieving it.

In the words of Tom Brady, they aren’t special; they’ve just been what you aren’t: consistent, determined, and willing to work for it. That is 1,000 percent the secret to my success.

Jealousy is a doorway to your future cracked open, and it’s your job to recognize when it happens, kick the door open, and walk right through it.

I once heard an addiction specialist say that no one gets sober until being drunk is more painful than facing the thing you are running from.

That person needs pain in order to galvanize the will to change.

No one heals an eating disorder until restricting is more painful than facing the issues they are running from.