The Let Them Theory

by Mel Robbins

Frame of Reference is a fancy way to say “understanding the lens through which somebody sees something” and it works beautifully with the Let Them Theory.

One reason why it’s so challenging to navigate these types of situations is because you both believe you are right.

It takes an extraordinarily mature person to be able to detach from their emotions and want to step into someone else’s shoes.

when you give people the space to come to their own conclusions—and you focus on showing up as your full self in a loving and compassionate way—over time, people often change their opinions on their own.

You have to decide whether or not you’re going to accept people as they are (your family or stepfamily especially) or create the distance that you need.

Anytime you improve yourself, it improves all your relationships.

The stuff that used to bother me doesn’t stress me out anymore. I don’t allow myself to get sucked into the drama. And I stay laser focused on how I show up and live my life in a way that makes me proud. One of the things that I have determined for myself is that it is important for me to have a close relationship with my family. And wasting my time and energy allowing them to stress me out or trying to control situations that are beyond my control is a waste of time.

People can only meet you as deeply as they’ve met themselves. Most people haven’t gone to therapy, haven’t looked at their issues, and they don’t want to. Let Them.

The only person you can change is you.

Let Me figure out what kind of relationship I want to create, based on the kind of person I want to be and the values that I have.

The reality is adults are as emotional as children, and it is not your responsibility to manage someone else’s reactions.

Their passive-aggressive behavior, guilt trips, and emotional outbursts are driving your decisions. This is why you say yes when you really want to say no. You cave when you should stand firm. This is why it’s hard for you to set boundaries. This is why you walk on eggshells when certain people are in a bad mood.

Why are you always the one who has to adjust?

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.

What??!

your immediate instinct is to try to figure out what you did wrong. And that’s exactly what the person giving you the silent treatment wants—they want your attention.

What I know now is that it was easier for her to give me the silent treatment and avoid having an honest conversation than to come to me and share how she was feeling. She didn’t even know how to do that.

First, it’s never your job to manage another adult’s emotions.

Hold yourself to a higher standard and stop allowing this type of emotionally immature behavior to be your responsibility to manage. Stop staying in situations where someone’s repeated emotional immaturity is starting to feel more like abuse.

Stop explaining away someone’s clearly narcissistic patterns.

Research shows that most emotions will rise up and then fall away within 90 seconds if you don’t react to them. You cannot control your emotions from rising up. Trying to is a waste of your time. The better strategy is learning to just Let Them rise up and then fall without reacting. There is also nothing you can do that will ever allow you to control the emotional reactions in another human being, no matter how hard you try. Emotions are also contagious.

Too often in life, when you’re in that dilemma, you choose to inflict the pain on yourself instead of making a decision that you know is right for you but is going to be painful for other people to accept.

Agonizing over a difficult decision is a mentally healthy response to a very difficult situation. The fact that he is worried about other people is a sign that he’s a good person.

But you try to control it by avoiding the truth.

Avoiding the hard conversations now won’t make them any better next year. In fact, from experience I can tell you that the longer you wait, the more painful it gets. Choosing not to do what’s right for you will do nothing but cause you more pain.

you’re not avoiding confrontation—you’re avoiding someone else’s emotions. The only conflict is the conflict you’re going to feel internally about how your decisions are going to impact other people emotionally and how they’re going to react.

you’re always prioritizing the emotional needs of others at the expense of your own happiness.

Using the Let Them Theory, you can stay in control even when an adult is acting like a child and having an emotional outburst. Make the right decisions for you, even if they make other people upset. You maintain your power when you stop taking on the burden of others’ emotions and act in a way that aligns with your values.

Allowing other people’s success to paralyze you.

When you see other people’s lives as evidence that you’re a failure, or you’re unattractive, or not good enough, you become your biggest obstacle.

When you focus on how unfair life seems and compare yourself to others, you’re draining your motivation and keeping yourself from moving forward. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

You can figure out how to win. You can learn how to work with what you’ve got and start where you are and create anything you want in life.

there are two different types of comparison that people engage in: torture or teacher.

It’s critical that you understand the difference between things you can and cannot change,

If you can’t change it, you must learn to allow it. Let Them. This is not easy to do.

Upward comparison is this tendency to measure yourself against people and their attributes that you think are better than yours. Research shows it destroys your self-esteem. You rarely engage in downward comparison, which is looking around and seeing how much better off you are than the majority of people in the world.

Stop focusing on the other players; that’s not how you win the game of life. Learn to play with other players, not against them.

Psychologists will tell you that the root cause of many disorders is an obsessive need for control.

What I’ve found is that being happier requires you to allow yourself to be happier.

The list of things you could change is endless:

95 percent of the things that you want in life are things that you can create if you are willing to work hard, be consistent, disciplined, and patient.

when you see other people’s wins as your losses, it will make you feel defeated before you even start.

You’re capable of achieving the same success, but instead of working to create it, you’re actively arguing against what you want. This is an example of how you’ve turned other people into a problem, and they don’t need to be.

limitless supply.

remember this the next time you find yourself burning up with comparison or anger about what someone else is doing: I told Molly, “You should thank her!”

Let Them wake you up.

Maybe you’re so used to doing things the way you’ve always done them, you’ve been reluctant to try a new way.

Their success and their wins don’t shrink your chances of creating what you want. They expand it. Let Them lead the way. Flip your jealousy to inspiration.

That anger that is burning you up inside is you being mad at yourself, because you know that you could have gotten to work sooner, and you know you are capable of figuring this out. You just didn’t.

Comparison shows you the areas of your life that need more of your attention. It means the time for thinking and excuses is over. Let Me get to work.