Latest news with #selfhelp
Yahoo
4 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
14 Things They Did To Make You Feel Like The Crazy One
Feeling like you're losing your grip on reality can be unsettling. Sometimes, the people around you might subtly or not-so-subtly contribute to this feeling. Here's a straightforward guide to some common tactics others might use to make you feel off-balance. Recognizing these behaviors is the first step to understanding that you're not the problem. 1. Gaslighting Gaslighting is a common tactic where someone makes you question your own memory or perception of events. They might say things like, "That never happened," or "You're imagining things." The goal is to make you doubt what you saw or heard, so you start to rely on their version of reality. According to Dr. Robin Stern, author of "The Gaslight Effect," gaslighting is an insidious form of emotional abuse that can leave lasting scars. Knowing that this behavior is a deliberate tactic can help you trust your instincts again. Over time, consistent gaslighting can erode your confidence and make you second-guess your decisions. You might find yourself asking for validation more often or turning to others to confirm your version of events. This dependency can be damaging, as it makes you feel like you can't trust your own mind. It's important to remember that your experiences and feelings are valid, regardless of what others might try to make you believe. Reaffirming your reality can be empowering and is a crucial step toward reclaiming your peace of mind. 2. Minimizing Your Feelings When someone minimizes your feelings, they are dismissing or belittling your emotions. If you express that you're upset, they might respond with, "You're overreacting," or "It's not that big of a deal." This tactic makes you feel like your emotions are too intense or unwarranted, leading you to doubt the legitimacy of your feelings. The intent is to make you feel as though you're being unreasonable, often to deflect attention from the real issue. Acknowledging that your feelings matter is a critical step toward validating your own experiences. The impact of minimizing is often cumulative, where each instance builds upon the last, adding to your self-doubt. Over time, you might start to suppress your feelings, thinking they aren't worth discussing. This suppression can lead to increased stress, anxiety, and even depression. It's essential to surround yourself with people who respect and acknowledge your feelings. Being able to express yourself freely is a key component of healthy relationships and mental well-being. 3. Deflecting Blame Deflecting blame is when someone shifts the focus from their actions to yours, making you feel responsible for a problem. They might say, "Well, you started it," or "If you hadn't done that, I wouldn't have reacted this way." This tactic effectively takes the spotlight off their behavior and places it on you. A study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology by Dr. Russell Johnson found that consistent blame-shifting can negatively impact a person's self-esteem and mental health. Recognizing this pattern is crucial to stop yourself from accepting undue responsibility. When you're constantly blamed, it can lead to unnecessary guilt and self-blame. This can affect your self-worth and make you question your role in every disagreement or problem. It's important to distinguish between constructive feedback and destructive blame. The former aims to resolve problems, while the latter is often about avoidance. By identifying blame-shifting, you can begin to set boundaries and protect your self-esteem. 4. Withholding Information Withholding information is a tactic where someone deliberately keeps you out of the loop. This can be about small things, like forgetting to tell you about a change in plans, or more significant issues, like not sharing important details that affect you. The aim is to make you feel uninformed and unsure about what's happening, fostering dependency on them for information. This tactic can make you feel confused and powerless, as if you can't make informed decisions. Recognizing when information is being intentionally withheld can empower you to seek clarity and assert your right to be informed. When information is withheld, it can create an imbalance in the relationship. You might find yourself constantly asking for updates or trying to piece together fragmented details. This dynamic can lead to frustration and anxiety, as you're never quite sure if you're aware of the full picture. It's essential to assert your need for transparency and open communication. Open dialogue helps ensure that you're on equal footing, reducing feelings of uncertainty and confusion. 5. Public Shaming Public shaming involves criticizing or embarrassing you in front of others. It might be a snide remark at a dinner party or a sarcastic comment in a meeting. The aim is to undermine your confidence and establish control by making you feel small. Dr. Brené Brown, a research professor at the University of Houston, emphasizes that shame can be a powerful weapon that damages self-esteem and social connections. Understanding the intention behind public shaming can help you detach from the embarrassment and address the real issue. Being shamed in public often leads to feelings of humiliation and self-consciousness. You might find yourself withdrawing from social situations or becoming overly cautious about your actions. This self-censorship can stifle your authentic self and make interactions feel strained. To combat public shaming, it's important to reaffirm your self-worth and engage with supportive individuals who respect you. Building resilience against shame can empower you to stand up for yourself and maintain your dignity. 6. Playing The Victim Playing the victim involves turning the tables to make you feel guilty for their problems. They might say things like, "Everything always happens to me," or "You don't understand what I'm going through." This tactic is designed to evoke sympathy and shift attention away from their actions. By casting themselves as the victim, they're trying to make you feel responsible for their hardships, deflecting accountability. Recognizing this behavior can help you avoid falling into the guilt trap they set. When someone constantly plays the victim, it can create a dynamic where you feel obligated to fix their problems. This obligation can become emotionally draining, as you're continuously trying to alleviate their perceived suffering. It's essential to understand that while empathy is important, you're not responsible for solving someone else's issues. Setting boundaries ensures that your emotional energy isn't being exploited. By maintaining these boundaries, you can foster healthier interactions and preserve your mental well-being. 7. Silent Treatment The silent treatment is when someone stops communicating with you in an attempt to control or punish you. They might ignore your calls, texts, or even your presence altogether. According to Dr. John Gottman, a renowned relationship expert, stonewalling, or the silent treatment, can be one of the four major predictors of relationship breakdown. This behavior leaves you feeling isolated and anxious, as you try to figure out what went wrong. Recognizing this tactic is vital in understanding that it's a form of emotional manipulation. Receiving the silent treatment can feel like you're being emotionally abandoned, leading to feelings of rejection. It often leaves you overanalyzing every interaction, searching for the cause of their behavior. This silence can deter effective communication, fostering resentment and misunderstanding. It's important to address the silent treatment head-on, expressing your need for open dialogue. Healthy communication requires mutual effort, and both parties should feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and feelings. 8. Constant Criticism Constant criticism involves frequently pointing out your flaws and mistakes. Whether it's about the way you dress, speak, or handle situations, the critique never seems to end. The intent is to lower your self-esteem and make you feel inadequate. Over time, this barrage of negativity can wear you down, making you doubt your abilities and worth. Recognizing that not all criticism is constructive helps you filter out what's meant to help from what's meant to harm. When you face constant criticism, it can make you overly self-critical and hesitant. You might find yourself walking on eggshells, trying to avoid further judgment. This apprehension can hinder your confidence and stifle personal growth. Instead of internalizing every negative comment, it's important to assess their validity and relevance. Constructive criticism should help you improve, not diminish your spirit, so focus on feedback that offers genuine value. 9. Love Bombing Love bombing is when someone overwhelms you with excessive admiration and attention at the start of a relationship. It might involve lavish gifts, constant communication, and declarations of affection. While it feels flattering initially, the intent is to create dependency by making you feel indebted or overly attached. Once you're hooked, the love bomber may withdraw affection, leaving you confused and seeking their approval. Recognizing love bombing is crucial to maintaining a balanced perspective on affection and commitment. The initial phase of love bombing often feels euphoric, as you're showered with attention and praise. However, this intense focus can quickly shift, leaving you feeling abandoned or questioning your worth. The cycle of over-attachment followed by withdrawal can create emotional instability and insecurity. It's important to establish boundaries early on and seek a balanced, reciprocal relationship. True affection is steady and consistent, not a rollercoaster of highs and lows. 10. Triangulation Triangulation involves drawing a third party into your relationship or conflict to manipulate the situation. This might involve spreading rumors, confiding in someone else, or using another person to deliver messages. The goal is to create confusion and division, making you feel outnumbered or unsupported. This tactic seeks to undermine your confidence in your relationships and make you question loyalties. Recognizing triangulation allows you to focus on direct communication with the person involved. When triangulation occurs, it can leave you feeling isolated and unsure about who to trust. The presence of a third party can skew perceptions and complicate resolutions. It's important to address issues directly with the person involved, rather than allowing intermediaries to influence the narrative. By fostering open and honest dialogue, you can prevent misunderstandings and strengthen trust. Understanding the motives behind triangulation enables you to navigate conflicts with clarity. 11. Weaponizing Insecurities Weaponizing insecurities involves using your fears and doubts against you. Someone might bring up your past mistakes, body image concerns, or career struggles during arguments. The intent is to hit you where it hurts, making you feel vulnerable and defensive. This tactic seeks to control you by exploiting your weaknesses, ensuring you stay in a position of self-doubt. Recognizing this behavior can help you build resilience against such attacks. When your insecurities are weaponized, it can lead to feelings of shame and inadequacy. You might find yourself dwelling on these insecurities more often, impacting your mental well-being. It's crucial to differentiate between genuine concern and manipulative intent behind such comments. Surrounding yourself with supportive individuals who uplift rather than degrade you can counteract this negative influence. Building self-confidence and self-acceptance is key to deflecting these harmful tactics. 12. Inconsistent Behavior Inconsistent behavior involves unpredictable changes in someone's actions or attitude toward you. They might be warm and affectionate one moment and cold or distant the next. This inconsistency can leave you feeling confused and anxious, as you're never sure where you stand. The aim is to keep you on edge, seeking their approval or attention. Recognizing inconsistent behavior is essential to understanding that their actions are more about control than genuine emotion. When faced with inconsistent behavior, it can make you question your actions and their impact on the relationship. You might find yourself constantly seeking reassurance or analyzing every interaction for clues. This uncertainty can create a cycle of dependency, as you strive to maintain their positive attention. It's important to establish clear boundaries and communicate your needs for stability and consistency. Trusting in your worth, regardless of someone else's fluctuating behavior, empowers you to maintain emotional balance. 13. Moving The Goalposts Moving the goalposts involves changing expectations or requirements, making it impossible for you to meet them. You might complete a task only to be told that the criteria have shifted or that additional requirements are needed. This tactic is designed to keep you in a perpetual state of striving, never feeling like you've achieved success. Over time, it can lead to exhaustion and feelings of inadequacy, as you can never meet the ever-changing standards. Recognizing this behavior helps you realize that the problem isn't your effort or ability. When the goalposts are constantly moved, it can lead to frustration and decreased motivation. You might start to doubt your capabilities, feeling like you can't achieve anything worthwhile. It's essential to identify when expectations are genuinely shifting versus when they're being manipulated. Establishing clear and consistent objectives helps maintain focus and avoid unnecessary stress. By setting your own standards and celebrating your accomplishments, you can resist the pressure of constantly shifting goals. 14. Isolation Isolation involves cutting you off from friends, family, or other support systems. The person might discourage you from seeing loved ones or create conflict with those around you. The goal is to make you more dependent on them, reducing outside influences and support. This tactic can leave you feeling lonely and trapped, as your world becomes increasingly centered around them. Recognizing attempts to isolate you is crucial to maintaining your independence and support network. Isolation can lead to feelings of loneliness and helplessness, as you feel disconnected from your usual sources of support and joy. You might find it harder to reach out for help or express your feelings openly. It's important to actively maintain your relationships and seek support from those who care about you. By staying connected with others, you reinforce your sense of identity and belonging. Building and nurturing a strong support network is vital to resisting isolation and maintaining your emotional well-being. Solve the daily Crossword
The Sun
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Sun
Strictly star breaks down in tears and says he's ‘ashamed' after falling victim to cruel scam
A STRICTLY star broke down in tears while revealing he fell victim to a cruel scam. TV and radio presenter Ore Oduba, 39, won the BBC dancing series back in 2016. 4 4 Taking to Instagram, the star opened up about having fallen for a scam. During an appearance on Loose Women, Ore praised US podcaster Mel Robbins and her self-help books. In particular, he told how Mel's bestselling 2024 release The Let Them Theory had "changed his life". Speaking in an emotional six-minute video, Ore shared: "I reposted that interview, I tagged the Mel Robbins podcast, tagged the Let Me theory, tagged Mel, tagged everybody who cared, and then I got an email from my agent who forwarded on an email from the team at the Mel Robbins podcast. "I could have cried - they knew who I was! I got an email from the Mel Robbins podcast team." Continuing, Ore explained how he "told Mel everything" and added: "How she had changed my life. "And I literally said at the end of the email, even for you to know who I am, is everything. Thank you so much for getting in touch." After revealing he was "ashamed and embarrassed" about falling for the con, Ore recounted how the email extended an invite to Mel's hugely popular podcast. He said: "I wrote back and I said, "Mel, I'm holding back tears. Is this for real? You must have AI helping you correspond with all of these fans." "Mel wrote back, "of course it's me - it's Mel Robbins!" So then I lost my s**t, I absolutely lost my s**t, in tears on an Avanti West Coast train from Birmingham to London, thinking that my whole life was about to change." Ore Oduba and Portia Announce Separation After Nine Years Ore recalled he "used to host a show about scammers" and had "watched enough Watchdog to last a lifetime". However, as the star said: "That doesn't stop me being in the middle of it. 'I never thought I'd be the person that would be scammed.' He realised the email came from a Gmail account - which sparked an immediate red flag. Even worse, Mel's name had been incorrectly spelled with a double 'L.' Upon contacting Mel's PR team via her official website, Ore had his fears confirmed - any correspondence sent from a Gmail account would likely be malicious. His post caption included: "Still inspired by and love @melrobbins@letthemtheory and so grateful to them for their swift response. I got lucky - it could so easily have been too late." "I was excited and then so gutted for you listening to this. Important to share your story. Hope you're ok." Another follower wrote: "Oh Ore, I'm just sad that it wasn't the real Mel team for you." A third added: "Easy mistake to make because they went via your agent first!" While Ore himself remarked: "Thank you so much everybody… there's a lot of kindness out there, I see it and I'm grateful for it (dw I've deleted and blocked the drivel." 4
Daily Mail
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Ore Oduba breaks down in tears as 'ashamed and embarrassed' presenter admits he's been scammed in elaborate online hoax
TV personality Ore Oduba was reduced to tears on Sunday evening after revealing he's been duped by an elaborate online scam. Sharing a six-minute video with Instagram followers, Oduba, 39, struggled to contain his emotions while admitting he'd fallen victim to the con after scammers exploited his passion for American podcaster Mel Robbins and her series of self-help books - among them The Let Them Theory. The presenter had publicly advocated Robbins during a previous appearance on ITV show Loose Women by claiming her philosophy 'changed his life.' And Oduba - who once helped viewers avoid insurance scams as host of BBC documentary series Claimed And Shamed - says he was contacted by someone claiming to be Robbins following his appearance on the daytime panel show. He said: 'I reposted that interview, I tagged the Mel Robbins podcast, tagged the Let Me theory, tagged Mel, tagged everybody who cared, and then I got an email from my agent who forwarded on an email from the team at the Mel Robbins podcast. 'I could have cried - they knew who I was! I got an email from the Mel Robbins podcast team.' He added: 'I told Mel everything. How she had changed my life. And I literally said at the end of the email, even for you to know who I am, is everything. Thank you so much for getting in touch.' Admitting he was 'ashamed and embarrassed' by the con, a tearful Oduba recalled being invited onto the Robbins' podcast - currently among the top 15 podcasts in the United States with more than 20 million subscribers. 'I'm reading this back and I know exactly how it made me feel at the time,' he said. 'I wrote back and I said, "Mel, I'm holding back tears. Is this for real? You must have AI helping you correspond with all of these fans." 'Mel wrote back, "of course it's me - it's Mel Robbins." So then I lost my s**t, I absolutely lost my s**t, in tears on an Avanti West Coast train from Birmingham to London, thinking that my whole life was about to change. He added: 'By the way I used to host a show about scammers.I have watched enough Watchdog to last a lifetime - that doesn't stop me being in the middle of it. 'I never thought I'd be the person that would be scammed.' Oduba soon realised the email had been sent from a Gmail account - an immediate red flag - and worse, even Mel's name had been misspelt. After contacting the Robbins PR tea via her official website, the presenter's fears were confirmed when he was told that any correspondence sent from a Gmail account will be a scam. Captioning Sunday's Instagram post, he wrote: 'I'm ashamed, I'm embarrassed and I'm human. Did not think I would be the kind of person who could be scammed, but this proves it really can happen to anyone. 'Especially with the help and manipulation of AI. I'm terrified how easily I was 'hooked'. It was SO convincing, it's scary.' He added: 'I've made no secret of how much Mel Robbins, her book and podcast have helped me through a really difficult period. 'Truth is I turned an emotional blind eye to something I so deeply wanted to believe was for me and nearly got myself into a whole heap of trouble (sidenote.. I've realised in making this video how often we do the same thing in relationships too!) 'Listen to your gut, it's most likely telling you the truth. And don't get scammed, it's no fun. 'Still inspired by and love Mel Robbins and so grateful to them for their swift response. I got lucky - it could so easily have been too late.'
The Guardian
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Women have more power than they think': self-help superstar Mel Robbins on success, survival and silencing her critics
'Putting yourself in this room today,' booms Mel Robbins from the stage of a sold-out London theatre, 'is a decision that's going to change the trajectory of your life.' Rows and rows of (almost exclusively) women gaze at the podcaster and self-help superstar, her image on a huge screen behind her. It's the final day of Robbins's first tour, this one to promote her latest book and viral sensation, The Let Them Theory – her tool for helping people detach from other people's dramas. Outside forces, she teaches, from annoying relatives to strangers in a traffic jam, are not in your control; nor are you responsible for what they do, feel or think (so long as they are not your children). It's a waste of time, energy and emotion to even try. Instead, you should just say to yourself: 'Let them.' Robbins is bounding around, sparkling with charisma and no-nonsense charm, first in a comfy tracksuit (available from her website for £150), then in boss-lady blazer and sexy denim. For nearly two hours, she commands the stage – occasionally joined by her two grown-up daughters, one of whom, Sawyer, is the book's co-author – and the women in the audience smile, nod, hug each other and cry. By the finale, when the confetti cannons go off and yellow ribbons rain down to Coldplay's booming A Sky Full of Stars, I have promised myself I will (in no particular order) lose my perimenopause tummy, be nicer to my children and care less what other people think. I am, I decide, beaming to myself, ready to change the trajectory of my life. Three days before I was fully indoctrinated into the cult of Mel Robbins, when I still had some semblance of cynicism and didn't have phrases such as 'You have everything you need inside you to make it' flashing across my brain like ticker tape, I meet her in a London cafe. Robbins has flown in this morning, but you wouldn't know it. The qualities that make her such a good podcast host – warmth, energy, humour – are intense in person. People, she argues, mostly need encouragement. 'I think that's the number one thing in people's way,' she says, untouched iced coffee in front of her. 'This sense of discouragement: my life is fucked, so nothing I do is going to matter, or I'm too old, or I'm too late, or too this.' This is where Robbins comes in, and it seems to work. The 56-year-old has a huge, cultish following. Her podcast has had more than 200m downloads, she has 10m Instagram followers and Let Them has sold 5m copies since it was published in December. She has celebrity stans, including Chrissy Teigen and Davina McCall, who called her the 'queen of beginning again'. Oprah has anointed her, saying, 'I have over the years read probably thousands of books. And Let Them is by far just one of the best self-help books I've ever read. It is right up there with all the greats … saying everything I was trying to say for 25 years.' If you have spent any time on Instagram, Robbins will probably have been served up to you at some point, face framed by blond hair and heavy-rimmed black glasses, to dispense some no-nonsense advice. Someone may have sent you one of her podcast episodes, in which she interviews renowned doctors and professors, such as the Harvard psychiatrist and happiness expert Robert Waldinger or the orthopaedic surgeon Vonda Wright (though not all guests are so rational – at least one medium has appeared). Other shows might find Robbins spending an easy hour talking about herself and the lessons she has learned about everything from diet and relationships to boosting confidence and setting boundaries. Even if you don't know her name, you have probably been touched by her rules for empowered life. Maybe people have begun saying 'let them' around you when they're frustrated by friends' behaviour, or used the five-second rule (counting down from five before doing something uncomfortable) or high-fiving themselves in the mirror before breakfast – blame Robbins for all of that. She is the ultimate in personal brand-building – a lawyer turned motivational speaker who, according to legend, dragged herself out of an $800,000 debt to become a star of the advice economy in her 50s. She wanted to do the tour, she says, to look her audience in the eye. 'It's just a reminder that who I'm reaching are normal people trying to get up every day and do a little better. I'm not trying to reach people who want to be billionaires.' Does she feel like a rock star, soaking up the adulation? 'I don't think about that,' she insists. 'When you have something this extraordinary happen this late in life, you're very clear about what matters – my family and my friends, and I'm mostly driven by the impact that I can make.' Self-development is huge, from questionable wellbeing influencers to any number of writers and podcasters exploring what it takes to be healthy, happy and successful. What does it say about us, in the affluent west, that we all crave it? Are we all narcissists? 'No,' Robbins says with a smile, 'but we all have that self-centredness. I personally feel we're so overoptimised for productivity, but what I also hope happens is that, in listening to podcasts and reading this book, you're reminded of what's actually important to you. Most of us focus on the wrong things for too long, and then we realise we didn't spend the time we wish we had with our parents while they were here, and we realise we worked too many late nights at work and we didn't spend time with our pets or our friends.' Is all this advice, overwhelmingly aimed at women, just another way to make them feel they need more, or to change, or be perfect? Robbins brushes over the question, saying, 'I guess what I want women in particular to know is you have more power than you think.' She is sometimes criticised for not being a qualified psychologist or therapist, or for dispensing obvious or age-old advice, but that is to miss her talent – she has an ability in the way she distils and communicates information to mainline it straight to your brain. I know, because for years I've had her voice in my head in a way that few other wellbeing podcasters – and I've listened to them all at some point – take up residence. Robbins acknowledges that her insights aren't necessarily new. 'Everybody has said 'let them' a bazillion times,' she says. 'This is stoicism. It's radical acceptance. It's the serenity prayer.' What is it about her saying it that makes people listen? She ponders for a second. 'I think this is a moment. I've said to our team: we never would have been able to orchestrate something as extraordinary as the timing of this – a modern twist on a timeless rule of life, for a moment where it feels like the Earth is spinning off its axis. All of the things that have lined up, I don't feel that it's me; I feel in service of something bigger.' As a child growing up in Michigan, Robbins wanted to be a doctor like her father (her mother ran a kitchenware shop). Was she a confident teenager? 'I think people who knew me would say yes. What I would say is I was deeply anxious and insecure.' Her anxiety made her driven, she thinks, 'but I wouldn't call it confidence'. She 'barely made it through' law school – she had undiagnosed dyslexia and ADHD – but thrived in mock trials and oral argument. For three years, Robbins worked as a legal-aid criminal-defence lawyer in Manhattan, representing people who couldn't afford to pay for representation. It taught her to develop intimacy fast. 'The job is actually about trust, and building trust with somebody that didn't pick you.' And it exposed her to people who had had extremely difficult lives. It was around the time New York City was being cleaned up, and with so many petty arrests to process, Robbins would often work in the night court. 'When you're representing somebody in a bail hearing, one of the things the judge considers is ties to community. Night after night, I would go into that courtroom, and I would call out for family or friends for this person, and no one was there. It broke my heart.' Later, it would be the reason she ends her podcast with the words: 'In case no one else tells you today, I wanted to be sure to tell you I love you.' By this time, Robbins had met her husband, Chris. When he got a place at business school in Boston, they moved. 'I went to a large law firm and wanted to die,' she says. With four weeks of her maternity leave with her first child left, she reveals, 'I had a mental breakdown and said, 'I'm not doing that any more.' An interesting thing about human beings is that when you have a defined problem, most of us are good at solving it. I found a new job the night before I was supposed to go back.' For the next few years, Robbins worked for tech startups and digital marketers, and wondered what to do with her life, so she hired a life coach, who suggested that actually Robbins would make a good coach herself. She loved it, and was good at it. She started a daily call-in radio show, Make It Happen With Mel Robbins, and a newspaper column, and was already laying the foundations of her empire: there was a development deal with Disney, and books and a talkshow planned. In a 2007 magazine profile, Robbins, then in her late 30s, sounds hyper, talking up everything about herself – her sex life and marriage, her body, her work. Call it hubris. Within a couple of years her husband's business was struggling, leaving them $800,000 in debt. How did she cope? 'I wanted to kill him. I'm serious. I wanted to absolutely kill him. Those moments when things go off the rails in your life, it's easier to be angry than it is to be afraid, and I could tell he was afraid, which just made me even angrier, because I felt fearful that we'd never get out of the situation.' She felt incapacitated for about six months, she says. 'I drank myself into the ground. I was a bitch every time he was around. I withdrew from my friends. I didn't tell my parents what was going on.' She lost a long-term coaching job. 'I felt, how can I possibly give anybody advice when my life looks like this? I'm not even an impostor; I'm just a liar. And so my whole life kind of collapsed.' Blame seemed the obvious response. 'And then you avoid doing what you really could be doing. It goes back to what we were talking about: discouragement. I believed at that moment, at 41 with three kids under the age of 10, and liens on the house and no income coming in, that I would never get out of this.' It was in this state, slumped in front of the TV and seeing an advert that used images of a rocket launch, that Robbins had the idea that, instead of staying in bed the next morning, she would count down from five and launch herself out of it. It worked for other things – the idea being that if you give yourself more than five seconds, you will talk yourself out of doing something difficult or hard. In 2011, Robbins, who was still earning a living as a coach and motivational speaker, and had just published her first book, Stop Saying You're Fine, was invited by a friend to speak at a Tedx event in San Francisco. 'That was like a 21-minute-long panic attack,' she says with a laugh. She didn't intend to make her 'five-second rule' a thing, but she blurted it out towards the end. The video went viral (it has now had more than 33m views), then she published her second book, based on the 'rule', in 2017. Her next book, The High 5 Habit – essentially, high-five yourself in the mirror in the morning, setting a plan for the day, boosting confidence and silencing your inner critic – became a bestseller, and in 2022 Robbins launched her podcast. It's in this arena that Robbins, by talking about overcoming adversity, feels infinitely more relatable. In her episodes on trauma, she has described being sexually abused by an older child while on a family holiday, around the age of 10. She has also talked about the impact of getting a later-life ADHD diagnosis, and issues her husband and three children have gone through; part of her live show is about how she improved her relationship with her eldest child. How does she feel about using her personal life and trauma in her work? 'It's easier than hiding it,' she says. 'So many of us are putting on a front, yet every one of us is going through something. I feel that sharing, like any good friend does with another friend – that's a way to make all of this scientific research relatable and understandable.' When she's more open or vulnerable, is listener engagement greater? 'Here's what I do know – the uglier I look on social, the better the content does,' she says with a laugh. 'I don't even think about it as being vulnerable. To me, it's just easier to be honest. When you feel like you can't disclose something, you're judging yourself. Being free with your history and what you've learned from it means you don't judge, and you don't have shame around what's happened to you.' If Robbins was successful before, her Let Them theory has taken that to another level. Essentially, it's simple: if you spend too much time worrying about what other people do or say, which you can't control anyway, you're giving them too much power. Focus on yourself. It isn't about being a doormat, or about resignation, she says. 'When you say, 'let them', you're not allowing anybody to do anything. You're recognising what people are doing, and what's in your control and what's not.' This is only the first stage in the process. One problem with saying 'let them', she acknowledges, is that it can put you in a position of judgment and superiority. 'That's why it works, because when you feel superior, that unhooks you from the frustration or hurt you may feel.' But if that's all you do, she warns, you can end up isolating yourself. 'At some point you've got to use the 'let me' part. I think what keeps you from becoming an asshole and cutting people out of your life is: let me decide what I'm going to do in response.' Maybe that will be accepting you're the sibling who always checks in, or the friend who invariably makes the plans. 'Maybe, conversely, you're going to realise: I've been chasing these people all this time; they don't give me anything in return. Is this what I deserve? Maybe I should pour my time into creating other types of relationships.' That's the harder part. But, Robbins adds, 'If all people want to do is say, 'let them', then let them.' How has her theory changed her life? 'I had no idea how much I allowed the outside world and meaningless bullshit to penetrate me and my peace, whether it was traffic or people walking slowly, or somebody who didn't text me back when I thought they should, or somebody's mood.' Applying her tactic helped, she says, 'to let them have their emotions and opinions, and then remind myself: what do I want to think about this? What do I want or not want to do?'. Robbins's style can be quite tough. 'You think I'm tough?' Forthright, then. 'I think I'm honest,' she says. In her book, she writes that, if you're stuck in a job you hate, 'the harsh truth is you're the one to blame – because you are choosing to stay in a job that makes you miserable'. Doesn't that underestimate the reality for people who don't have the privilege of walking into another job? 'You always have options,' Robbins says. 'You may not have options tomorrow, but you have options. Even if you are living paycheck to paycheck and you are sleeping on a friend's couch, if you believe there are no other options, you won't look for them. It is important to recognise that, with time and consistent effort, you can create different options.' We're in a moment, she says, 'where the headlines are terrifying, economies are faltering, AI is coming, jobs are redundant. You don't know if you're going to get laid off.' That's beyond your control, she says. 'Say: let them lay you off. You're recognising it could happen, and reminding yourself to not waste time and energy worrying, feeling like a loser, feeling like you've got no options. So let me, every day after work, spend an hour getting my résumé together, networking and doing what I need to do to build skills. You will feel empowered when you focus on what's in your control, and what's in your control is what you put your time and energy into.' It can be applied to big or small things. Robbins describes herself as a 'very political person'. 'If we're ever going to get things back on track in terms of people feeling stability and peace and support, you can't burn through all your energy feeling powerless. You've got to remind yourself: I actually have the power to change this. If it bothers me, the more energy I spend arguing about it and venting about it, the less time I'm spending getting myself organised to change this.' With Robbins's increased success and profile has come, inevitably, more criticism. How does she deal with that? 'Let them,' she says instantly. Does it not hurt when she reads horrible comments about herself online? 'No.' She doesn't look, anyway – people who are intent on misunderstanding aren't her problem, she adds. Does she think male podcasters get an easier time? 'Yes – no question. Absolutely.' One of the persistent allegations is that Robbins plagiarised 'let them' from a poem that went viral in 2022. She has always said she hadn't seen the poem and her inspiration came from the night she was trying to micromanage her 18-year-old son's school prom, and her middle child, her daughter Kendall, told her in a moment of exasperation to 'let them' – get soaked in the rain, have tacos if they want them, just let them. 'Anybody that can't see that a poem is very different than a book that makes a case for a theory, with an 18-page bibliography, doesn't want to see, and doesn't understand the word plagiarism either,' Robbins says. I agree it's a fairly weak criticism, as is the complaint that she has stretched a basic idea into a whole book (and now tour) – something that could be applied to just about every self-help book ever written. Her podcast remains free and, unlike many other motivational 'influencers', she doesn't flog online courses, or supplements. I take more issue with some of the oversimplistic things she says: 'Success, love, happiness, money, friendship – these things are in limitless supply,' said the multimillionaire Mel Robbins to the billionaire Oprah Winfrey, on the latter's podcast. Robbins says she follows her own rules 'about 90% of the time'. When she's at home in Vermont, she gets up around 6am, makes her bed, 'so I don't crawl back into it', and high-fives herself in the mirror. She might take a bite of a banana, 'because of what Dr Stacy Sims said about cortisol and women never working out fasted'. Sims, a physiologist and one of her podcast guests, says that, for women, exercising on an empty stomach means burning lean muscle and holding on to fat. 'I was like: motherfucker, we've been gaslit by the fitness industry. It's incredible what she shared about women not being little men.' Robbins walks her dogs to get her early sunlight (it helps with the circadian rhythm), drinks water before her coffee, has breakfast. She has a regular walking group with friends. She likes to cook, so she'll start prepping dinner when she does lunch, then it's bath and bed not long after 9pm. 'I'm so fucking old,' she says with a laugh. 'But I love my sleep.' In the middle of it all is work. She wants, she says, to be an example 'of leaning into new things and reinventing myself over and over, and clawing our way out of debt in our 40s. There's so much you can do.' Robbins, similarly to Oprah, controls her empire. 'I don't want to be in a situation where I'm pissed off about the deal I made, and if I'm in control of what happens, the only person I can truly be mad at is me.' Is she a life coach or a media mogul? 'I'm just your friend, Mel,' she says with a bright smile. A few days later, on stage, Robbins is so overcome with emotion, she can barely get her last words out: 'I love you, I do, and I believe in you.' There are cheers and whoops, and that blast of confetti and Coldplay, and we leave on a high. I chat to two women, in their 40s, who had been sitting behind me, emotional at points; one has a delicate tattoo on her arm of a dandelion releasing its seeds and the words 'Let them … Let me'. They love Robbins, says Eva (with the tattoo), 'because she's so normal. She's been through stuff like all of us have, but she's got grit and determination, and she's an example that, if you put your mind to it, you can achieve anything.' Her friend Hayley says the years and the struggles since the pandemic have left her feeling exhausted and overwhelmed. 'I know that I need to make a change,' she says, eyes shining. 'She makes you believe you can do it.' The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins is published by Hay House UK at £22.99. To support the Guardian, order your copy at Her podcast is available here.
The Guardian
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Women have more power than they think': self-help superstar Mel Robbins on success, survival and silencing her critics
'Putting yourself in this room today,' booms Mel Robbins from the stage of a sold-out London theatre, 'is a decision that's going to change the trajectory of your life.' Rows and rows of (almost exclusively) women gaze at the podcaster and self-help superstar, her image on a huge screen behind her. It's the final day of Robbins's first tour, this one to promote her latest book and viral sensation, The Let Them Theory – her tool for helping people detach from other people's dramas. Outside forces, she teaches, from annoying relatives to strangers in a traffic jam, are not in your control; nor are you responsible for what they do, feel or think (so long as they are not your children). It's a waste of time, energy and emotion to even try. Instead, you should just say to yourself: 'Let them.' Robbins is bounding around, sparkling with charisma and no-nonsense charm, first in a comfy tracksuit (available from her website for £150), then in boss-lady blazer and sexy denim. For nearly two hours, she commands the stage – occasionally joined by her two grown-up daughters, one of whom, Sawyer, is the book's co-author – and the women in the audience smile, nod, hug each other and cry. By the finale, when the confetti cannons go off and yellow ribbons rain down to Coldplay's booming A Sky Full of Stars, I have promised myself I will (in no particular order) lose my perimenopause tummy, be nicer to my children and care less what other people think. I am, I decide, beaming to myself, ready to change the trajectory of my life. Three days before I was fully indoctrinated into the cult of Mel Robbins, when I still had some semblance of cynicism and didn't have phrases such as 'You have everything you need inside you to make it' flashing across my brain like ticker tape, I meet her in a London cafe. Robbins has flown in this morning, but you wouldn't know it. The qualities that make her such a good podcast host – warmth, energy, humour – are intense in person. People, she argues, mostly need encouragement. 'I think that's the number one thing in people's way,' she says, untouched iced coffee in front of her. 'This sense of discouragement: my life is fucked, so nothing I do is going to matter, or I'm too old, or I'm too late, or too this.' This is where Robbins comes in, and it seems to work. The 56-year-old has a huge, cultish following. Her podcast has had more than 200m downloads, she has 10m Instagram followers and Let Them has sold 5m copies since it was published in December. She has celebrity stans, including Chrissy Teigen and Davina McCall, who called her the 'queen of beginning again'. Oprah has anointed her, saying, 'I have over the years read probably thousands of books. And Let Them is by far just one of the best self-help books I've ever read. It is right up there with all the greats … saying everything I was trying to say for 25 years.' If you have spent any time on Instagram, Robbins will probably have been served up to you at some point, face framed by blond hair and heavy-rimmed black glasses, to dispense some no-nonsense advice. Someone may have sent you one of her podcast episodes, in which she interviews renowned doctors and professors, such as the Harvard psychiatrist and happiness expert Robert Waldinger or the orthopaedic surgeon Vonda Wright (though not all guests are so rational – at least one medium has appeared). Other shows might find Robbins spending an easy hour talking about herself and the lessons she has learned about everything from diet and relationships to boosting confidence and setting boundaries. Even if you don't know her name, you have probably been touched by her rules for empowered life. Maybe people have begun saying 'let them' around you when they're frustrated by friends' behaviour, or used the five-second rule (counting down from five before doing something uncomfortable) or high-fiving themselves in the mirror before breakfast – blame Robbins for all of that. She is the ultimate in personal brand-building – a lawyer turned motivational speaker who, according to legend, dragged herself out of an $800,000 debt to become a star of the advice economy in her 50s. She wanted to do the tour, she says, to look her audience in the eye. 'It's just a reminder that who I'm reaching are normal people trying to get up every day and do a little better. I'm not trying to reach people who want to be billionaires.' Does she feel like a rock star, soaking up the adulation? 'I don't think about that,' she insists. 'When you have something this extraordinary happen this late in life, you're very clear about what matters – my family and my friends, and I'm mostly driven by the impact that I can make.' Self-development is huge, from questionable wellbeing influencers to any number of writers and podcasters exploring what it takes to be healthy, happy and successful. What does it say about us, in the affluent west, that we all crave it? Are we all narcissists? 'No,' Robbins says with a smile, 'but we all have that self-centredness. I personally feel we're so overoptimised for productivity, but what I also hope happens is that, in listening to podcasts and reading this book, you're reminded of what's actually important to you. Most of us focus on the wrong things for too long, and then we realise we didn't spend the time we wish we had with our parents while they were here, and we realise we worked too many late nights at work and we didn't spend time with our pets or our friends.' Is all this advice, overwhelmingly aimed at women, just another way to make them feel they need more, or to change, or be perfect? Robbins brushes over the question, saying, 'I guess what I want women in particular to know is you have more power than you think.' She is sometimes criticised for not being a qualified psychologist or therapist, or for dispensing obvious or age-old advice, but that is to miss her talent – she has an ability in the way she distils and communicates information to mainline it straight to your brain. I know, because for years I've had her voice in my head in a way that few other wellbeing podcasters – and I've listened to them all at some point – take up residence. Robbins acknowledges that her insights aren't necessarily new. 'Everybody has said 'let them' a bazillion times,' she says. 'This is stoicism. It's radical acceptance. It's the serenity prayer.' What is it about her saying it that makes people listen? She ponders for a second. 'I think this is a moment. I've said to our team: we never would have been able to orchestrate something as extraordinary as the timing of this – a modern twist on a timeless rule of life, for a moment where it feels like the Earth is spinning off its axis. All of the things that have lined up, I don't feel that it's me; I feel in service of something bigger.' As a child growing up in Michigan, Robbins wanted to be a doctor like her father (her mother ran a kitchenware shop). Was she a confident teenager? 'I think people who knew me would say yes. What I would say is I was deeply anxious and insecure.' Her anxiety made her driven, she thinks, 'but I wouldn't call it confidence'. She 'barely made it through' law school – she had undiagnosed dyslexia and ADHD – but thrived in mock trials and oral argument. For three years, Robbins worked as a legal-aid criminal-defence lawyer in Manhattan, representing people who couldn't afford to pay for representation. It taught her to develop intimacy fast. 'The job is actually about trust, and building trust with somebody that didn't pick you.' And it exposed her to people who had had extremely difficult lives. It was around the time New York City was being cleaned up, and with so many petty arrests to process, Robbins would often work in the night court. 'When you're representing somebody in a bail hearing, one of the things the judge considers is ties to community. Night after night, I would go into that courtroom, and I would call out for family or friends for this person, and no one was there. It broke my heart.' Later, it would be the reason she ends her podcast with the words: 'In case no one else tells you today, I wanted to be sure to tell you I love you.' By this time, Robbins had met her husband, Chris. When he got a place at business school in Boston, they moved. 'I went to a large law firm and wanted to die,' she says. With four weeks of her maternity leave with her first child left, she reveals, 'I had a mental breakdown and said, 'I'm not doing that any more.' An interesting thing about human beings is that when you have a defined problem, most of us are good at solving it. I found a new job the night before I was supposed to go back.' For the next few years, Robbins worked for tech startups and digital marketers, and wondered what to do with her life, so she hired a life coach, who suggested that actually Robbins would make a good coach herself. She loved it, and was good at it. She started a daily call-in radio show, Make It Happen With Mel Robbins, and a newspaper column, and was already laying the foundations of her empire: there was a development deal with Disney, and books and a talkshow planned. In a 2007 magazine profile, Robbins, then in her late 30s, sounds hyper, talking up everything about herself – her sex life and marriage, her body, her work. Call it hubris. Within a couple of years her husband's business was struggling, leaving them $800,000 in debt. How did she cope? 'I wanted to kill him. I'm serious. I wanted to absolutely kill him. Those moments when things go off the rails in your life, it's easier to be angry than it is to be afraid, and I could tell he was afraid, which just made me even angrier, because I felt fearful that we'd never get out of the situation.' She felt incapacitated for about six months, she says. 'I drank myself into the ground. I was a bitch every time he was around. I withdrew from my friends. I didn't tell my parents what was going on.' She lost a long-term coaching job. 'I felt, how can I possibly give anybody advice when my life looks like this? I'm not even an impostor; I'm just a liar. And so my whole life kind of collapsed.' Blame seemed the obvious response. 'And then you avoid doing what you really could be doing. It goes back to what we were talking about: discouragement. I believed at that moment, at 41 with three kids under the age of 10, and liens on the house and no income coming in, that I would never get out of this.' It was in this state, slumped in front of the TV and seeing an advert that used images of a rocket launch, that Robbins had the idea that, instead of staying in bed the next morning, she would count down from five and launch herself out of it. It worked for other things – the idea being that if you give yourself more than five seconds, you will talk yourself out of doing something difficult or hard. In 2011, Robbins, who was still earning a living as a coach and motivational speaker, and had just published her first book, Stop Saying You're Fine, was invited by a friend to speak at a Tedx event in San Francisco. 'That was like a 21-minute-long panic attack,' she says with a laugh. She didn't intend to make her 'five-second rule' a thing, but she blurted it out towards the end. The video went viral (it has now had more than 33m views), then she published her second book, based on the 'rule', in 2017. Her next book, The High 5 Habit – essentially, high-five yourself in the mirror in the morning, setting a plan for the day, boosting confidence and silencing your inner critic – became a bestseller, and in 2022 Robbins launched her podcast. It's in this arena that Robbins, by talking about overcoming adversity, feels infinitely more relatable. In her episodes on trauma, she has described being sexually abused by an older child while on a family holiday, around the age of 10. She has also talked about the impact of getting a later-life ADHD diagnosis, and issues her husband and three children have gone through; part of her live show is about how she improved her relationship with her eldest child. How does she feel about using her personal life and trauma in her work? 'It's easier than hiding it,' she says. 'So many of us are putting on a front, yet every one of us is going through something. I feel that sharing, like any good friend does with another friend – that's a way to make all of this scientific research relatable and understandable.' When she's more open or vulnerable, is listener engagement greater? 'Here's what I do know – the uglier I look on social, the better the content does,' she says with a laugh. 'I don't even think about it as being vulnerable. To me, it's just easier to be honest. When you feel like you can't disclose something, you're judging yourself. Being free with your history and what you've learned from it means you don't judge, and you don't have shame around what's happened to you.' If Robbins was successful before, her Let Them theory has taken that to another level. Essentially, it's simple: if you spend too much time worrying about what other people do or say, which you can't control anyway, you're giving them too much power. Focus on yourself. It isn't about being a doormat, or about resignation, she says. 'When you say, 'let them', you're not allowing anybody to do anything. You're recognising what people are doing, and what's in your control and what's not.' This is only the first stage in the process. One problem with saying 'let them', she acknowledges, is that it can put you in a position of judgment and superiority. 'That's why it works, because when you feel superior, that unhooks you from the frustration or hurt you may feel.' But if that's all you do, she warns, you can end up isolating yourself. 'At some point you've got to use the 'let me' part. I think what keeps you from becoming an asshole and cutting people out of your life is: let me decide what I'm going to do in response.' Maybe that will be accepting you're the sibling who always checks in, or the friend who invariably makes the plans. 'Maybe, conversely, you're going to realise: I've been chasing these people all this time; they don't give me anything in return. Is this what I deserve? Maybe I should pour my time into creating other types of relationships.' That's the harder part. But, Robbins adds, 'If all people want to do is say, 'let them', then let them.' How has her theory changed her life? 'I had no idea how much I allowed the outside world and meaningless bullshit to penetrate me and my peace, whether it was traffic or people walking slowly, or somebody who didn't text me back when I thought they should, or somebody's mood.' Applying her tactic helped, she says, 'to let them have their emotions and opinions, and then remind myself: what do I want to think about this? What do I want or not want to do?'. Robbins's style can be quite tough. 'You think I'm tough?' Forthright, then. 'I think I'm honest,' she says. In her book, she writes that, if you're stuck in a job you hate, 'the harsh truth is you're the one to blame – because you are choosing to stay in a job that makes you miserable'. Doesn't that underestimate the reality for people who don't have the privilege of walking into another job? 'You always have options,' Robbins says. 'You may not have options tomorrow, but you have options. Even if you are living paycheck to paycheck and you are sleeping on a friend's couch, if you believe there are no other options, you won't look for them. It is important to recognise that, with time and consistent effort, you can create different options.' We're in a moment, she says, 'where the headlines are terrifying, economies are faltering, AI is coming, jobs are redundant. You don't know if you're going to get laid off.' That's beyond your control, she says. 'Say: let them lay you off. You're recognising it could happen, and reminding yourself to not waste time and energy worrying, feeling like a loser, feeling like you've got no options. So let me, every day after work, spend an hour getting my résumé together, networking and doing what I need to do to build skills. You will feel empowered when you focus on what's in your control, and what's in your control is what you put your time and energy into.' It can be applied to big or small things. Robbins describes herself as a 'very political person'. 'If we're ever going to get things back on track in terms of people feeling stability and peace and support, you can't burn through all your energy feeling powerless. You've got to remind yourself: I actually have the power to change this. If it bothers me, the more energy I spend arguing about it and venting about it, the less time I'm spending getting myself organised to change this.' With Robbins's increased success and profile has come, inevitably, more criticism. How does she deal with that? 'Let them,' she says instantly. Does it not hurt when she reads horrible comments about herself online? 'No.' She doesn't look, anyway – people who are intent on misunderstanding aren't her problem, she adds. Does she think male podcasters get an easier time? 'Yes – no question. Absolutely.' One of the persistent allegations is that Robbins plagiarised 'let them' from a poem that went viral in 2022. She has always said she hadn't seen the poem and her inspiration came from the night she was trying to micromanage her 18-year-old son's school prom, and her middle child, her daughter Kendall, told her in a moment of exasperation to 'let them' – get soaked in the rain, have tacos if they want them, just let them. 'Anybody that can't see that a poem is very different than a book that makes a case for a theory, with an 18-page bibliography, doesn't want to see, and doesn't understand the word plagiarism either,' Robbins says. I agree it's a fairly weak criticism, as is the complaint that she has stretched a basic idea into a whole book (and now tour) – something that could be applied to just about every self-help book ever written. Her podcast remains free and, unlike many other motivational 'influencers', she doesn't flog online courses, or supplements. I take more issue with some of the oversimplistic things she says: 'Success, love, happiness, money, friendship – these things are in limitless supply,' said the multimillionaire Mel Robbins to the billionaire Oprah Winfrey, on the latter's podcast. Robbins says she follows her own rules 'about 90% of the time'. When she's at home in Vermont, she gets up around 6am, makes her bed, 'so I don't crawl back into it', and high-fives herself in the mirror. She might take a bite of a banana, 'because of what Dr Stacy Sims said about cortisol and women never working out fasted'. Sims, a physiologist and one of her podcast guests, says that, for women, exercising on an empty stomach means burning lean muscle and holding on to fat. 'I was like: motherfucker, we've been gaslit by the fitness industry. It's incredible what she shared about women not being little men.' Robbins walks her dogs to get her early sunlight (it helps with the circadian rhythm), drinks water before her coffee, has breakfast. She has a regular walking group with friends. She likes to cook, so she'll start prepping dinner when she does lunch, then it's bath and bed not long after 9pm. 'I'm so fucking old,' she says with a laugh. 'But I love my sleep.' In the middle of it all is work. She wants, she says, to be an example 'of leaning into new things and reinventing myself over and over, and clawing our way out of debt in our 40s. There's so much you can do.' Robbins, similarly to Oprah, controls her empire. 'I don't want to be in a situation where I'm pissed off about the deal I made, and if I'm in control of what happens, the only person I can truly be mad at is me.' Is she a life coach or a media mogul? 'I'm just your friend, Mel,' she says with a bright smile. A few days later, on stage, Robbins is so overcome with emotion, she can barely get her last words out: 'I love you, I do, and I believe in you.' There are cheers and whoops, and that blast of confetti and Coldplay, and we leave on a high. I chat to two women, in their 40s, who had been sitting behind me, emotional at points; one has a delicate tattoo on her arm of a dandelion releasing its seeds and the words 'Let them … Let me'. They love Robbins, says Eva (with the tattoo), 'because she's so normal. She's been through stuff like all of us have, but she's got grit and determination, and she's an example that, if you put your mind to it, you can achieve anything.' Her friend Hayley says the years and the struggles since the pandemic have left her feeling exhausted and overwhelmed. 'I know that I need to make a change,' she says, eyes shining. 'She makes you believe you can do it.' The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins is published by Hay House UK at £22.99. To support the Guardian, order your copy at Her podcast is available here.
