Latest news with #TheLetThemTheory:ALife-ChangingTool
Vox
10-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Vox
Is the viral 'let them' theory really that simple?
is a culture writer interested in reality TV, movies, pop music, Black media, and celebrity culture. Previously, she wrote for the Daily Beast and contributed to several publications, including Vulture, W Magazine, and Bitch Media. Sometimes the best advice is the most straightforward. This assumption seems to summarize the appeal of TikTok's favorite armchair psychologist at the moment, Mel Robbins. Her extremely basic tips for tackling life and 'getting anything you want' have made her the go-to self-help queen in our increasingly stressful times. The motivational speaker, author, and podcast host has become an A-lister in the virtual advice landscape thanks to her practical approach to productivity and relationships. Even if you haven't listened to The Mel Robbins Podcast, or bought one of Robbins's books, you've probably been exposed to her work online. She's the person getting women on social media to make their beds every morning and high-five themselves in the mirror. Most popular is her viral two-word phrase, 'let them.' The advice is as simple as it sounds: Your teenager wants to dye their hair? Let them. Your spouse is wearing a shirt you don't like? Let them. You think your co-workers are gossiping about you? Let them. 'Let them' theory has quickly become Robbins's calling card. It's the premise of her latest book — The Let Them Theory: A Life-Changing Tool That Millions of People Can't Stop Talking About, released this past December— and frequently invoked and (sometimes parodied) by her fans on social media. This catchphrase has won the attention of Oprah, TikTok influencers, and regular people posting about their relationship to the concept online. Not everyone is buying what she's selling, however. To some critics, an empire built on obvious and overly generic advice, from a woman without a social work or psychology degree, reads as another self-help scam, and the mantra like a gimmick. While Robbins has largely managed to evade the cynicism and scandals that emerge when a new self-styled expert blows up online, it's hard not to notice that her guidance falls into a familiar self-help trap. A burnt-out lawyer with a knack for public speaking Like many self-designated experts on life, Robbins has performed a plethora of impressive jobs and leadership roles outside the realm of psychology. After graduating from Boston College Law School in 1994, she worked as a criminal defense attorney for the Legal Aid Society in New York City, and at a large firm in Boston. She's led life-coaching programs at big corporations. She's launched (and sold) her own businesses and hosted a call-in radio show. In 2013, she was a legal analyst for CNN during the George Zimmerman trial. But back in 2009, at the age of 41, Robbins felt she had 'failed at life,' as she tells it in The Let Them Theory. In the midst of a recession, she and her husband were unemployed and operating a failing business, respectively. She was drowning in debt — $800,000, she claims — and facing house liens, while avoiding her problems with alcohol. As Robbins would repeat again and again when recounting her come-up story, she was so anxious and overwhelmed that she couldn't get out of bed in the morning. It was during this time, watching a NASA launch on TV, that Robbins came up with her 'five-second rule,' which would later become the premise and title of her 2017 book. The mental exercise is as rudimentary as it sounds: count down from 5 — as if you're a rocket — to launch yourself into whatever action you need to complete, whether that's paying your bills, going to the gym, or, in Robbins's case, simply getting out of bed. 'Using 5-4-3-2-1, I pushed through the excuses, the anxiety, the overwhelm, and the fear,' she writes in The Let Them Theory. 'Step by step, day by day, week by week, I slowly took the actions that put my life and career back on track.' Sheinelle Jones, Jenna Bush Hager, and Mel Robbins on the Today show on September 27, 2023. Nathan Congleton/NBC via Getty Images In 2010, Robbins published her first book, Stop Saying You're Fine: The No-BS Guide to Getting What You Want. The next year, the non-profit TED invited her to give a lecture at one of their first-ever TEDx conferences in San Francisco. The talk, titled 'How To Stop Screwing Yourself Over,' became an early hit for the platform, and currently has 33 million views. In the video, she uses ideas from her book to help audience members overcome complacency. She spreads her notably uncomplicated concepts over 20 minutes, filling the time with hypothetical scenarios, funny anecdotes about her family, and a dose of scientific research. More than any piece of advice, Robbins's public speaking skills and affable, Midwestern persona stand out. She's magnetic and motivating, rallying her audience out of feeling stuck, able to balance a sense of comfort with tough love. For Robbins, this down-home practicality is the point. 'There is an obsession with being smart, I think, in the thought leadership space,' Robbins told the New York Times last year. 'And I would rather be useful.' So is the playbook for Robbins's career. While she has a knack for sharing relatable, amusing anecdotes about her own life, she's largely a messenger of other people's well-tested ideas and wisdom. In Time, she describes herself more like an advice curator: 'I am on a mission to find as many stories and pieces of science and research and tools that a person can use to make their life a little better.' That's her methodology on The Mel Robbins Podcast, launched three years ago, where she talks to a wide range of experts and people who inspire her about how to tackle life's hurdles and reach their goals. It's also where she debuted her now signature theory for handling other people. Per a 2022 episode, 'let them' was originally uttered to Robbins by her daughter after Robbins tried to micro-manage her son's prom experience. Now, Robbins instructs her followers to stop wasting time trying to control other people by repeating the pithy saying. Controversially, the phrase has been met with plagiarism allegations. In an interview in the Substack newsletter Sage Words, writer Cassie Phillips accused Robbins of cribbing and capitalizing off of her viral 2022 'Let Them' poem, which preaches the same idea of radical acceptance. An illusion of freedom and simplicity for stressed-out women In the self-help guru space, it's hard to be entirely new. There are only so many ways to empower people. Robbins's patchwork philosophy feels like a cross between the more emotion-based work of professor Brené Brown and Tony Robbins's more spiritually macho leadership advice. What this gives her, though, is a platform designed for women who know that they can't have it all — but are still willing to try. Robbins's target audience is markedly goal-oriented, career-minded women, including mothers, trying to optimize every part of their lives. There's an assumption that her listeners have the time and privilege to keep adding self-improvement rituals, like running a marathon or adopting a perfect sleep schedule, to their plate. She often assures her followers that it's okay if they occasionally fail at their goals. But the message is that they should constantly be wanting more for themselves, whether it's more friends, more money, or a fitter body. Author Virginia Sole-Smith compared Robbins's teachings to diet culture on a recent episode of her Burnt Toast podcast. She says that, like most diet plans, Robbins doesn't seem to anticipate her followers ever reaching a slow-down stage where they aren't working as hard. 'There's no profit in [Robbins's] followers achieving stasis,' says Sole-Smith. 'That's what it comes down to, in diet culture, in perfection culture. Mel Robbins is never going to give you permission to reach stasis because then why would you buy her next book?' Rae Jones, a therapist at New York-based The Expansive Group, says that the self-help industry as a whole relies on consumers constantly feeling inadequate in order to make a profit. 'The industry profits off of people feeling poorly about themselves and believing they need to change or fix themselves in some way, and therefore will absolutely encourage the very type of thinking that keeps the self-help industry in business and making millions,' they said. Still, Robbins's advice thrives under the guise of simplicity and accessibility. It makes sense that Robbins's nuggets have penetrated short-video platforms, like Instagram and TikTok, where she has 8.4 million and 3.9 million followers, respectively. TikTok is overflowing with so-called 'hacks' that all too often make whatever you're trying to do even more stressful and complicated. Compared to the grueling workout challenges and elaborate morning routines that can easily flood one's feed, Robbins telling women to high-five their bathroom mirror and make their beds every morning may feel like some sort of reprieve. But she hardly seems to be advocating a stress-free, content life. While 'let them' has become her trademark, achieving radical nonchalance certainly isn't the core of her ideology. Scroll through her Instagram, and you're inundated with an onslaught of tips and life hacks on bettering oneself — often presented in small numbers ('3 Simple Ways to Get The Love You Want'; '4 Nighttime Habits To Feel Energized') to give the impression that they're not as overwhelming. She encourages people to control, regiment, and perfect virtually every aspect of their own lives. As Robbins's profile has grown, so has the range of topics she's eager to discuss. In addition to her usual motivational fodder, she has podcast episodes dedicated to boosting your metabolism, decreasing alcohol consumption, and intermittent fasting. 'As an upper-middle class, suburban, white mom, I understand why she's speaking to my people,' says Sole-Smith. 'We've been trained that the way we uphold all of that privilege is to keep going, going, going, achieve, achieve, achieve — and not actually look around and question the systems that are forcing us into all of these toxic standards.' To keep Robbins's utility at the top of viewers' minds and feeds, she has to find more hypothetical problems to fix and areas of her followers' lives to address. This quickly becomes repetitive, especially on her podcast, where she'll platform numerous experts and approaches on the same issues. This might be the conflicting mindset of an over-achiever whose hard work didn't prevent them from collecting tons of debt and having to rebuild their life. While she preaches indifference regarding other people, she can't help but perpetuate the core principles of hustle culture.
Los Angeles Times
05-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Control issues? These two simple words could help
'The single best thing' Mel Robbins has ever done began with a stressful moment onher son's prom night. The bestselling author, former attorney and host of one of the world's most popular podcasts is talking about her latest book, 'The Let Them Theory: A Life-Changing Tool That Millions of People Can't Stop Talking About ' (Hay House). The book — which demystifies ancient concepts from Stoicism, Buddhism and Greek philosophy for modern, plugged-in, multitasking audiences — arose that evening, when Robbins says she was 'being a complete control freak' and 'micromanaging every detail.' She was agonizing over the teens' lack of dinner plans and the fact that it was raining and they might show up to the dance soaked. She was on her phone and shouting to other parents and trying to take control of the situation when her daughter repeatedly insisted that she let the kids do it their way. Let them grab tacos instead of going to a restaurant. Let them ruin their shoes in the rain. 'It's their prom, not yours,' she said to Robbins. After 'like the 11th time,' it finally sunk in, Robbins said, and she felt herself relax. After sharing the experience with her 8.3 million Instagram followers, and then to her legions of loyal podcast subscribers, the enthusiastic response made it clear: She needed to write a book. In December 2024, so came 'The Let Them Theory.' In an interview with Robbins, Oprah Winfrey called it 'one of the best self-help books I've ever read.' The Times spoke with Robbins about how the simple phrases 'let them' and 'let me' can help us feel less stressed and more empowered, and help us better navigate the challenges of dating, family relationships and social media. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity. How did you realize that 'let them' could work beyond the prom? I'm the kind of person that's always wanted to know how to be more stoic and let go, yet I've never really been able to apply philosophy when I'm already emotionally triggered. The way it hit me was at the prom. From that point forward, any time either life was frustrating me or my husband did something that was annoying, or my mother — I just started saying, 'Let them,' and I noticed that it was immediate peace in a way that I had never experienced in my life. All that I'm doing is reminding people of what they know to be true. The issue of trying to control things that aren't yours to control, and how it just creates stress for you, this is the fundamental law of human beings that has been around since the beginning of time. There are two parts to the theory: let them and let me. Why is it important to use both? The second part is the more important part, because the second part is where you actually cue yourself and remind yourself that your life is your responsibility. When you say, 'Let me,' you remind yourself that in any situation — and this is literally the teaching in 'Man's Search for Meaning,' [Holocaust survivor] Viktor Frankl's work — the only thing that's in your control is your response to what's happening. You can control what you think about what's happening. You get to choose what you do or don't do in response. And you get to choose how you process your emotions. That's what you get to control and that's where your power is. You say the hardest part of 'let them' is learning to feel raw emotions without immediately reacting. A lot of times, we're already reacting before even thinking 'let them.' How do we do this? I'm still working on it. I think you deserve a gold medal if you have the presence of mind to even say, 'I would like to be less reactive moving forward.' Just being aware that it's a skill and it would benefit you and bring more peace to your life, that is the first step. Part of the reason we're so reactive is because we feel this sense that we're trapped because we've given so much power to other people. Every time you say, 'Let them,' even if it's after the outburst, you're still diffusing the emotion. What I have found in my own life, because [I'm] a very emotional person, is that the more I said it, the more you close the distance between the impulse to flip somebody off and actually saying, 'Let them.' And you'll get to a point where every time you say it, you're literally using it as a tool to catch that nervous system or emotional response. How can we use 'The Let Them Theory' to prevent that compare-and-despair feeling we often get from social media? It took me a long time to flip from this really insecure, scarcity mind-set, where I truly believed that if somebody else got something that I wanted, it meant they were winning and I lost. I didn't understand the beauty of the world we live in, which is the things that you want in life — whether it's success or it's money or it's happiness or it's friendship — these things are in limitless supply. It took me too long to understand that I'm not actually competing against somebody else in the game of life. I'm playing with them. If my friend is able to do [something], then it is evidence that I — with work and with time and with patience — can do that for myself too. You start to realize that other people are not standing in your way; you're doing that to yourself. You're the one using comparison to stop yourself. You're the one telling yourself it's never going to happen. You're the one telling yourself that you're not good enough or that you can't figure it out. When you stand in your own way, you miss out on the fact that literally every single person that has something that you're interested in or that you want in life, they can actually show you how to get it. They show you what's possible. Let's talk about 'let them' as it relates to dating. You say let them show us who they are, how responsive they are. But given today's digital landscape, how do we use 'let them' and still be present enough to allow for flirtation and mystery in relationships? It's understanding what part of the dating cycle you're personally in instead of constantly trying to guess what part of the cycle the other person is in. If you're in that phase where you're just meeting a ton of people, really staying focused on, 'I'm cool with playing the field right now.' But there's going to come a point in time where you're no longer interested in that, or where you say to yourself, 'I actually like this person and I don't want them to see other people.' When you recognize that you're no longer in that space of wanting to be casual, the mistake that everybody makes is we now give power to the other person we're interested in. We now become detectives trying to figure out when they feel the same way we do. That's when you start chasing the potential. That's when you start overanalyzing everything you do. That's when you start to cling, and you start to get weird, and you start to pretend that things are still casual, but you're secretly looking to see if their Hinge profile is still up. That's where you lose power. Because the better thing to do when you no longer just want to be in the casual space is to have a conversation. They could say no, but this is how you respect yourself. It seems like saying 'let them' and 'let me' requires self-confidence and self-compassion. How do we get there? You don't get there by hoping it comes. You have to use the tools. One of the reasons why we don't have these conversations — or even something more subtle, like you have a roommate or sister or a parent who's just negative or passive-aggressive and you've put up with it for years — is it takes courage to say to yourself, 'I don't want to have to deal with this, so I'm going say, 'Let them,' because I'm going to stop trying to manage their mood.' It takes a lot of compassion and grace for yourself. And then you do the 'let me' part, which is: Let me remind myself that I get to choose how much time and energy I spend with this person. You say this is especially hard with loved ones. Why is that? These people have known you since you were born, and they have expectations about who you are and who you should be and what should happen in this family. Think about family like a spiderweb. Any tap on the web reverberates through everybody. Anytime you start to let your family have their opinions, or let them have their fears, or let them have their expectations and let them have their concerns — which they have, because they've always had them about you — when you start saying 'let them' and create space, you're widening out the space between the webs. People don't like that. Then you say: Let me live my life in a way that makes me happy; let me pursue a career I really want to pursue; let me love the person that I love. Those decisions actually force other people to have to deal with their own expectations and opinions. But that doesn't mean you have to change what you're doing in order to appease them or meet their opinions. How do we apply the theory without becoming passive or aloof or waiting for a big blowup? One of the things I see from people is like, 'I'm supposed to let people abuse me? I'm supposed to let them disrespect me?' I'm like, no, that's probably happening right now. Because we, especially in families and with loved ones, explain away bad, disrespectful and abusive behavior. If we are in a family system or a relationship where there has been a cycle of emotional abuse or a cycle of narcissism, the psychology of it is very, very challenging, because you keep holding on to the hope that someone's going to change. We keep a fantasy alive in our heads versus learning how to live with the reality in front of us. You start to realize, every time you say, 'Let them' and 'Let me,' that the power isn't in what other people are doing. The power is in your values and how you respond.
