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

by Mel Robbins

Give people the freedom to think something negative about you.

I recommend that you assume people will think negative thoughts about you. Because people do have negative thoughts about you. This is normal.

This stupid fear is stopping you from trying new things, taking risks, being yourself, and making the small moves that, over time, will change your life. How sad.

The point is learning how to put your needs first as you’re balancing what works for you with the expectations and feelings of other people. In life, you don’t want to be a doormat, but you also don’t want to be an inconsiderate bulldozer. It’s a balance.

don’t be the person who bends over backward to make everyone happy.

Frame of Reference is a fancy way to say “understanding the lens through which somebody sees something,”

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. When you say Let Them, you make a decision to let people think negative thoughts about you. When you say Let Me, you focus on the one person whose opinion truly matters—yours.

away from you Adults avoid confrontation Children sulk or pout in the corner Adults give the silent treatment Children shut down Adults act stoic Children throw tantrums Adults erupt, rage text, and vent Children slam doors Adults slam doors too Children lie Adults lie too

it is not your responsibility to manage another adult’s emotional reactions.

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

And then I want you to visualize an eight-year-old trapped inside their body.

It is not your responsibility to manage their emotions or try to fix them. Your responsibility is to protect yourself from their emotional spiral and to see it for what it is: A person who has no idea how to handle or express their emotions in a healthy way.

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 not my job. Let Me remove myself from any text chain, dinner table conversation, relationship, or friend group where this is happening.

Stop staying in situations where someone’s repeated emotional immaturity is starting to feel more like abuse. Stop feeling sorry for people who play the victim all the time. Stop explaining away someone’s clearly narcissistic patterns.

When you feel your emotions rising up, Let Them. Allow the anger, the frustration, the hurt, the disappointment, the sadness, the grief, the tears, and the feelings of failure to come up. Let Them. And then, Let Me not react. Don’t reach for your phone. Don’t turn on the TV. Don’t make a drink. Don’t open the fridge. And for crying out loud, don’t text anyone. Just notice the feelings and Let Them rise up.

Research shows that most emotions will rise up and then fall away within 90 seconds if you don’t react to them.

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.

letting people down and breaking their hearts is one of the hardest things you’ll have to do in life.

negative emotions are a mentally healthy response to life’s upsets.

Let Me is the part where you remind yourself that this too shall pass.

Problem: You’re allowing other people’s emotional immaturity to have power over your life. You’re allowing someone else’s outbursts, guilt trips, and reactions to dictate your actions, leading you to constantly manage their emotions rather than focusing on your own. This means you’re always prioritizing the emotional needs of others at the expense of your own happiness. Truth: Other people’s emotional reactions are not your responsibility to manage. You cannot control how others feel or respond, nor can you fix their emotional immaturity. Most adults have the emotional capacity of an eight-year-old and you can’t change that. Solution: 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.

the first step is accepting the truth: Life isn’t fair. It’s just not.

while you’ve been busy comparing yourself to everyone else, you’ve missed one of the greatest secrets in life: Other people teach you how to be a better player, and that’s how you win.

comparing yourself to someone else’s luck in life is a waste of your time.

The problem isn’t the tendency to compare. The problem is what you’re doing with the comparison that matters.

What are you doing when you compare? Are you torturing yourself, or is it teaching you something important? The fact is, there are two different types of comparison that people engage in: torture or teacher. In order to use comparison to your advantage, you must first identify which type of comparison you are doing, and it’s very easy to tell the difference. The first type of comparison is torture. This is when you find yourself obsessed over, caught up in, or beating yourself up over something that you will never be able to change. Comparison feels like torture when you’re focused on fixed attributes of someone else’s life.

It’s critical that you understand the difference between things you can and cannot change, because comparing yourself to someone or some aspect of their life that you cannot change, no matter how much you try, is just torturing you.

upward comparison. 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. According to the U.N., one in four people do not have access to clean drinking water. The truth is, if you have running water, electricity, and the time to read this book, you’re doing better than most people.

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.

comparison that is teaching you something. And here’s how you know that comparison is good: You’re looking at aspects of someone else’s life or success that you could create for yourself.

If someone has done something better, and bigger, and cooler than you could ever imagine, Let Them. Let Them have their success. Let Them beat you to it. Let Them do it in the smartest and the coolest way. Their success gives you the formula.

No one else’s wins are your losses.

the steps you need to take are always very simple. The problem is not doing them.

want you to 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!” No one should feel sorry for you. If you are jealous right now about someone else’s success, GOOD. I’m happy for you. Jealousy is an invitation from your future self. It is inviting you to look more closely at someone else—not to make you feel inferior, but to show you what is possible.

Comparison shows you the areas of your life that need more of your attention.

“Success is about putting in the reps.” What’s that mean? Simple: To be successful, to lose weight, to write a book, or to become a YouTuber, you have to show up every day and do the boring, irritating, and uncomfortable work. You’ve got to put in the reps.

The famous quarterback Tom Brady recently said about success, “The truth is you don’t have to be special. You just have to be what most people aren’t: consistent, determined, and willing to work for it.”

If all you ever do is stay on the surface wasting your time and energy on other people and on things beyond your control, you will never discover the deeper meaning and possibilities in your life.

You don’t have to be special. You just have to get up every day, put one foot in front of the other, and work hard to do a little better, and be a little better than you were yesterday. And one of these days, you are going to wake up and realize that you not only changed yourself, but you are in the middle of living the life you were once jealous of.

Problem: When you focus on how unfair life seems and compare yourself to others, you waste your precious time and energy on things beyond your control. You let others’ success paralyze you, leaving you stuck, and feeling behind and frustrated. This mindset fuels procrastination and perfectionism, preventing you from taking action to create your own success. Truth: There will always be someone who is luckier, has what you want, is further along, or achieves success more quickly than you. Comparing yourself to others is a natural instinct, but when it consumes your thoughts, it undermines your confidence and motivation. You can’t control the success of others, but you can control how you respond to it. Solution: Using the Let Them Theory, stop torturing yourself and use comparison to your advantage. Let others have their success and leverage it to fuel your own journey. Other people’s success is evidence that you can do it too. By turning inspiration into action, you begin to build the extraordinary life you deserve.

There are three factors that I believe make great friendships possible: proximity, timing, and energy.

When friends drift away, fall apart, or lose touch, it is because one or more of these three essential pillars is missing.

I was making the single biggest mistake that you make in adult friendships: I was expecting to be friends forever, expecting to be included, and expecting it to be easy.

energy can destroy a friendship, and that is in your control.

At some point, you’re going to go from being on the inside of a friend group to feeling like you’re on the outside. This is normal.

Because as people come and go, and scatter in different directions, and change their lives, and grow into who they are meant to become, every single one of the three pillars of friendship changes: proximity, timing, and energy. And that is why adult friendships require flexibility. That’s why it’s usually not personal when people come in and out of your life. Let Them.

It is painful to see the truth that you’re the one putting in the effort. When that happens, and it will, I want you to come back to the three pillars of friendship: proximity, timing, and energy.

Have you or your friend changed or grown in new ways? Have the patterns and schedules of your lives changed? Are you physically bumping into them as much as you used to? Do you feel like the timing of your life is still the same, or are you in different chapters? Has some major change happened in one of your lives that has shifted the energy between you? Asking yourself these questions is really important, because we tend to default to making ourselves wrong or blame the other person and then decide the friendship is over.

Friendships are not a tit for tat. Do not keep score. Reach out to people because you want to. But don’t expect a response. How quickly or how often someone responds is not a sign of how much they care about you. It’s more likely an indication of how overwhelmed they may be. Everyone has a ton going on, and 99 percent of the time you have no clue what someone else is dealing with, so with friends especially, don’t judge when you don’t hear back. Assume good intent.