The Let Them Theory

by Mel Robbins

You can’t let your emotions drive your decisions, because they will often stop you from making the right decisions.

Adults are allowed to feel how they’re going to feel—and they’re allowed to be angry. Broken. Devastated. Overwhelmed. Shocked. Embarrassed. And extremely pissed off at you. You can’t control it. But you try to control it by avoiding the truth. We’ve all done this. It’s why you’ve found yourself staying in the wrong relationships or the wrong jobs or the wrong patterns of behavior for years.

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 maintain your power when you stop taking on the burden of others’ emotions and act in a way that aligns with your values.

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 are failing because of your chronic habit of comparing yourself.

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

If you can’t change it, you must learn to allow it. Let Them.

This is what psychologists call 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.

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 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.

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.”

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.

Right now the only things that are holding you back from taking control of your life are the excuses, fears, and emotions that we have been discussing throughout this entire book.

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.

And then BOOM. You enter your 20s and into a phase of friendship I call the Great Scattering. The Great Scattering looks like this: High school or college ends, and all friends scatter in different directions. Suddenly, everyone is living in different places, and very soon, all your friends are on different timelines, working different jobs, hanging out with different people, and achieving milestones at different paces. And the structure that supported all your friendships is gone.

There are three factors that I believe make great friendships possible: proximity, timing, and energy. These pillars are the invisible foundation every friendship is built on.

Timing refers to the chapter of life you are in right now. If you’re not in the same chapter of life with someone else, it’s much harder to relate because you have less in common.

You either click with some people or you don’t. You can’t explain it, and neither can they, but you have to trust it. The energy is either on or it’s off. There is no scientific reason to explain it. You just have to trust it. And here is another hard truth: Energy shifts over time.

Researchers say the kinds of people you sit next to at the coffee shop, or stand next to in the elevator in your building, are not strangers—they are “weak ties.” These people are super powerful and an important part of your life. They can become a foundation you build that lifts you up in your day-to-day routine. Learn their names. Say hello. Pet their dogs. Put descriptions in your contacts so that you can refresh your memory before you walk into the coffee shop tomorrow.

Creating friendship really is about the Let Me part. And here are some simple things I did to make myself go first: 1. Compliment people everywhere you go.

2. Be curious. Ask them what they’re reading. Ask them what they ordered. People love to talk about themselves.

3. Smile and say hello to anyone and everyone you pass or meet. Being a warm and approachable person is a skill.

4. Do this without expectation. The reason to be warm to strangers is because simply creating connections with other people will improve your life. The warmth you give to others always finds its way back to you.

People are going to come and go in your life. And the more flexible you are, the more they do. It’s such a beautiful thing to Let Them. Focus on Let Me, because that is what’s in your control. Let Me be understanding. Let Me make an effort. Let Me check in without an expectation, but just because I care. Let Me make the plans. Let Me trust when the energy feels off. Let Me call or text if someone crosses my mind. Let Me act with the belief that some of my most favorite friends I haven’t met yet. Let Me go first.

The reality is, people only change when they feel like changing.

When you push someone, it only makes the person push back. You’re working against the fundamental law of human nature. People need to feel in control of their decisions. You want people in your life to change, but pressuring them creates resistance to it.

You can’t motivate them, because the “feeling” of wanting to do it has to come from within them.

Of course it failed because pushing someone just makes them push back.

Humans are wired to move toward what feels good right now and to move away from what feels hard in the moment.

a human being will always feel like choosing what is pleasurable now and avoid what feels painful. In the moment, the work it takes to change is painful and hard. That’s why no one is motivated to change—even when they know it’s good for them in the long run.

When you pressure someone, you’re fighting against the wiring of the human brain. Remember, people are wired to move toward what feels easy and pleasurable now. Dr. K says that in order to make a change, a person must be able to separate themselves from the pain they will feel in the moment and the action that they need to take.

Everyone thinks they are the exception to bad outcomes happening to them. Which explains why your tears, pleading, and ultimatums will also backfire.

Our brains quite literally tune out the worst-case scenarios—which

You can see on scans that the part of the brain that is listening to negative information turns off!

what that situation requires is compassion, not contempt .

Pressure doesn’t create change—it creates resistance to it. When you try to exert control over someone else’s behavior, they instinctively resist your attempt to try to control them.

Instead of inspiring change, your pressure creates a battle over control.

when you start to push people around, pressure them, or tell them what to do, you are threatening their hardwired need for control over their own lives, decisions, and actions. You’re getting in the way of their agency, the feeling that they are in control of themselves, their life, and their own thoughts and behaviors.

it needs to be THEIR idea to change, not yours.

Let Them live their life. And you want to know what else you are saying? I trust YOU to figure it out.

There’s always something you can do. Because there’s always something within your control: It’s YOU. The only behavior change that you can control is your own. And this is where your power is. The first change in your behavior is to stop pressuring and start accepting. Let Them be. When you accept them as they are, the frustrating and ineffective battle for control ends and you set yourself up to win the war for positive change.

Decades of research from neuroscientists and psychologists say that you can’t motivate someone to change, but you can “inspire” them to change and even make them believe it was all their idea to do so.

The reason why influence works is backed by decades of research on human behavior. We are social creatures and are highly influenced and inspired by the people around us. Dr. Sharot calls it “social contagion,” which is a fancy way to say that people’s behavior is contagious.

Model the behavior change you want to see and walk the talk you’ve been asking for. If you have ANY shot at influencing them to move toward the behavior or change you want them to make, you need to show them how easy it is.

your influence is highly effective, but it requires a lot of patience because it will take time for your positive influence to take effect in someone else’s brain.

It’s important to do this without the expectation that they will change. The reason why you have to give up your expectations is that if you do this expecting them to change, you’ll start to resent them when they don’t.

In the ABC Loop, you have three steps: A: APOLOGIZE, then ASK open-ended questions. B: BACK OFF, and observe their BEHAVIOR. C: CELEBRATE progress while you continue to model the CHANGE.

Give yourself permission to get to the root cause even if you discover something ugly about yourself.

getting the person to talk about how THEY feel will encourage them to think about the disconnect between what they want and their current behavior.