PNTV: The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins

Just let them. Let them do what they want to do. It isn't that big of a deal. Quit making it a big deal, and it's his problem, not your problem. Let them. Buddhist retreat that she went to, meditation retreat, where the teacher said, look, suffering equals pain times resistance. If you resist whatever is happening to you right now, you increase your suffering. In ancient Sanskrit, the word mantra literally means a tool of the mind. So let them can be a tool of your mind to restructure how you're approaching something, reframe how you're approaching something. Let them. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes TV. Today we've got another great book, The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins. Love Mel. We've got the Philosopher's Notes you can get for free. Just click on the link in the show notes and you can check it out. What I do in the notes The High Five Notes, as I say every time, is I pull out the best, most life-changing ideas from my favorite books, and this one's packed with them. I'm a big fan of Mel Robbins. We have notes on her prior 2 books, The 5 Second Rule, which is phenomenal as well, and The High Five Habit, building your self-image and giving yourself some love. This book, subtitle, The Let Them Theory, subtitle, A Life-Changing Tool That Millions of People Can't Stop Talking about— let's get to work. We got 5 ideas we're gonna look at quickly today. Let them. We're gonna talk about the origin story, how she came up with this idea and how it took off almost immediately. We're gonna talk about the fact that it's a tool that you can use. She connects it to ancient philosophy, modern therapy, psychology, etc. And then it's not just let them, that's only half of the story. Then we need to let me. It's easier to complain about what other people are doing. We gotta let them be them. Let me be me. Then we need to let me and let ourselves do what we feel called to do. Much more challenging. Part 1, part 2, let them, let me. And then we're going to talk about how to influence people. Mel says you can't motivate people, they need to be motivated or not, but you can influence them. The way you do that, we'll talk about the number 1 way. And then finally, we're going to talk about a love note. Mel ends the book with just this pure, beautiful expression of love. It's one of the reasons everyone loves Mel as much as they do. You can feel how much she cares about you. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and then always most important, let's go! The point here is to move from theory to practice to mastery together today. Life-changing ideas are only life-changing if you live them, so that's our intention. So watch this thinking about what distinction you can make in your life and how specifically you can engage in that behavior today. As Phil Stutz says, no philosophy is worth anything unless it ends in action. With that, origin story time. Let them. So Mel is, among many things, a great storyteller, and she tells the story of her son who's going to prom. And apparently he's all decked out, he's got these new sneakers, and he decides he's going to go to some taco stand or something with his friends. And it's raining outside, and I think the taco stand might be outside, so they're going to get rained on in his new shoes. And she's like, you can't do that. First of all, What are you doing? Doing this? I think it was a taco stand. I might not be getting the story quite right. Why are you going there? And it's going to rain. It's going to ruin your shoes. And she's getting all worked up about it. And her son's like, dude, I'm just going to go. I'm going to have a great time. And her daughter told Mao, let them. Just let them. Let them do what they want to do. It isn't that big of a deal. Quit making it a big deal. And it's his problem, not your problem. Let them. I get goosebumps saying that. Again, she tells the story beautifully. That's the condensed version. And she just— something clicked for her and she said, oh gosh, let them. Then she created a post that she shared on social media, and apparently within 24 hours, something like 15 million people had watched it. Within an X period of time, even more people had engaged in it. News outlets started writing about it, and she ran with it. And this book is the distillation of and kind of unpacking the philosophical, psychological underpinnings of the Let Them Theory, which leads us to— with that origin story, and I think he had a great time at prom. Let's go. Prom, my goodness. Let's go. All right, next idea here is think about Let Them as a tool. And Mel talks about the fact you can connect this basic idea to ancient philosophy and to modern science and modern psychotherapy. So if we look at the philosophical side of things, we've got Stoicism And we've got Buddhism that she reflects on. So Stoicism 101. Raise your hand if you're a fan of Stoicism. Rule number 1 of Stoicism. Ryan Holiday, my— one of my favorite authors, one of the best thinkers on applying ancient Stoic wisdom to our modern lives, wrote a book called The Daily Stoic. If you haven't gotten into Stoicism yet, that's a great place to start. Again, check out the Philosopher's Notes, check out the PNTV on it. Day one of his daily Stoic 366. Let's go leap year on it. 366-day guide to embodying the wisdom of Stoicism. What does he say on day one? Well, he gives us Stoicism 101. Stoicism 101 is this: You have control over some things, and you don't have control over other things. Quit worrying about the things you do not have control over. Focus on the things you do have control over. What do you have control over? You have control over your thoughts, your behaviors, your values, how you're showing up in the world. You do not have control over other people, the weather, broader systemic, you know, political challenges, etc. That's Stoicism 101 applied here. Let them. You do not have control over other people. Quit trying to exert that control. Let them. Again, a big part of the ancient Stoic practice. They called it the art of acquiescence, where you allow reality to be what it is. Byron Katie doesn't reference Stoicism in her work, but loving what is, is essentially Stoicism. Her work is essentially Stoicism applied in her own distinct way. She says that when she argues with reality, whether that's what someone's doing, the weather, whatever, She loses, but only 100% of the time. Let them— let whatever is happening be what's happening. Radical acceptance is another big idea that she brings into the psychological side of things, right? Radical acceptance, big idea. Phil Stutz talks about that all the time as well. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, all these different approaches. Begin by accepting your current reality. It may not be what you want it to be. Accept it. Then you can choose to take effective action. Now, from a Buddhist perspective, I think she brings up Kristin Neff. If not, I'm pretty sure she does. But Kristin Neff, leading researcher on self-compassion— check out the Philosopher's Notes and TV on self-compassion by Kristin Neff, phenomenal stuff— she shares a story about a Buddhist retreat that she went to, meditation retreat, where the teacher said, look, suffering equals pain times resistance. And in fact, suffering is actually not just multiplicative but exponentially driven by your resistance. Meaning, if you resist whatever is happening to you right now, you increase your suffering. Step 1: Accept that life involves a certain amount of suffering and challenges, and whatever's happening to you right now is happening. Accept that, step back, then choose your best response. In terms of it being a tool that's reflected in both ancient Stoic and Buddhist philosophy and modern science, You can think of it literally like a tool, and I'm thinking now of the word mantra. I've been practicing this when I was reading the book and at different times. You can say to yourself, let them. Anytime you find yourself wanting to micromanage someone in your life, whether it's your significant other, your kids, colleagues, whatever, you can say to yourself, let them. In ancient Sanskrit, the word mantra literally means a tool of the mind. So let them can be a tool of your mind to restructure how you're approaching something, reframe how you're approaching something. Let them. That's a quick look at how it applies to Stoic, Buddhist ideas, etc. Threw in a little Byron Katie as well. Now again, part 1 is let them. Part 2 is let me. So once we accept reality and the individuals who are behaving in a certain way, even if it's not quite the way we'd hope that they are behaving or would behave. Then the question is, what do you want? Who are you? And when you look forward, what do you want to see in your life? And it's a lot easier to complain about what other people are doing or not doing than it is to slow down, say let them, and then decide what you want. This is where let me, let me live a life of deep, authentic, values-driven meaning and purpose. But that requires a lot more effort than criticizing and complaining and condemning other people for their behaviors. You gotta slow down and take responsibility for yourself, which is habit number 1, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey. Habit number 1 of the most highly effective people, and each of us at our most highly effective, be proactive. Be response-able, right? This is again Stoicism 101. Whatever's happening is happening. The question is, how are you gonna choose to respond? Can you step in between the stimulus And choose a better response. As Viktor Frankl says, it's in that gap between the stimulus and your response in which your freedom exists. One of the practices I like to engage in with Heroic in our coach certification program, our basic training, and all the other stuff that we do is something called targeted thinking. So again, go back to the ancient world of philosophy. The patron god of philosophy in ancient Greece was Apollo. Apollo was an archer, and the idea was you can take clear aim, and once you release your arrow, you no longer have control over the outcomes. I like to think of it as targeted thinking. So you accept what other people are doing, you accept reality whether you like it or not. Then the question is, if you want to move from victim— complaining, criticizing, etc.— to creator or hero, the question is simple. What do you want? Given the current reality, what do you want? Let me get clear on what I want. Then the question is, all right, well, if you want that, what do you need to do? And the answer to those questions is rarely, well, I want to be in an argument with somebody and I want to blow up my relationship with them. That's rarely what a conscious, deliberative, contemplative conclusion would be to that question. No, no, I want to Navigate this however I can in this best way, and then what specifically do you need to do in order to take those next steps? Let me. Responsibility, agency is another big concept in psychological therapeutic approaches. You got to have agency, you got to believe that you can affect change. You do that by quit trying to control things you can't control and begin controlling the things you can, which leads us to the 4th idea here. Influence. So Mel's got a chapter on how do you interact with other people. Okay, given all these ideas, how do we interact with other people? And she was asked a question, hey, can I motivate— how do I motivate my loved one who's not doing certain things I want? She says, hate to break the news to you, but you can't. You can't motivate somebody else, but you can influence them. They either want to do it or they don't. But the way to influence them is to let them be who they are Let me, let us be who we aspire to be, and let who we are being influence them. Again, this is a really big idea in our coach training program we have, where it's one of the most frequently asked questions. Our coaches get really into it and they want their spouses to change with them. Good luck with that. Don't proselytize, right? Slow down, integrate the things that you believe to be true. Phil Stutz calls this being unilateral. Don't expect anyone else to change. You just do the hard work. Integrating these ideas, practicing your philosophy, etc. And I vividly remember, and I've shared this story a number of times in different contexts, the very first coach graduation we ever had. We've now trained 10,000 coaches from around the world, over 100 countries, etc. The first one, we had a cohort of 1,000 people, and at the end of the first graduation, a woman came up to me and said, at the beginning of this program, when my husband started it, I hated you. Goosebumps saying that. I could feel my heart skip when she said that to me. I'm like, all right, cool, where's this going? She's like, it was so annoying because he did this and he did that, he did this, and he just changed his life. He stopped watching TV late at night, he changed his nutrition, and I just, I literally hated you. All right, cool, take a breath. We'll talk about this in the next PMTV, by the way. It's going to be on Jefferson Fisher's The Next Conversation. He says, say with control, say with confidence, say to connect— his 3 rules of good communication. Say it with control. The number one tip there we'll talk about in our next one is breathe. He calls it a conversational breath. Take a breath before you say anything. So I sat there, listened to her, and I took a breath. All right, deep into my belly, back out through my nose. Let's go. Where are we going? Anyway, long story shorter, she says, and then something happened. Over the months that he was engaged in the practice, over the first, second, third month, he changed. I get tears in my eyes now and goosebumps again. He just became a better husband, he became a better father, he became a better human being. It was just amazing. The stuff was working. And then she said, and now I've signed up for your program and I'm excited to go through it. Point here being, bringing it back to the Let Them Theory, you can't change somebody by wanting to change them per se. Be the change you want to see, paraphrased Gandhi 101. He didn't actually quite say that, but be the change you want to see As Ralph Waldo Emerson, great teacher on my wall, one of my heroes, we named our son after him, he says, who you are, who you are speaks so loudly I cannot hear what you say. Who you are speaks so loudly I cannot hear what you say. You want to influence your significant others? You want to influence your kids? You want to influence your team? Be the version of you you aspire to be. Let that influence shape them. And the best feedback we ever get when we train our coaches is individuals coming up to them and saying, what are you doing? They've lost 5, 10, 15, 20 pounds. They're more calm. They're more confident. What are you doing? That's how we want to influence people most powerfully. Be that change, etc. Then next idea here is— and the final idea is the love note. Again, Mel ends the book with what I consider to be just a beautiful love note. And she says, look, if nobody else in your life is believing in you, let me. Let me be the one who believes in you, right? Let me be the one who loves you and knows that you're capable of achieving what you aspire to achieve. So I, in the note, echo that, reflect that right back to you. Wherever you are in your life right now, it's a privilege to be this far into a conversation with you today. Let me be the one, along with Mel, who believes in you. You have untapped potential. You, as I like to say, are the hero We've been waiting for. I have absolutely no doubt about that. It's an honor and a privilege to be able to serve with you together, and I hope you enjoyed this quick look at the Let Them theory, origin story. Let them wear sneakers in the rain to the prom at a taco shop. It's a tool. Use it as a mantra. Let them. Let me. We talked about ancient Stoicism, ancient Buddhism, radical acceptance, knowing that resisting what's happening is going to amplify The amount of suffering that you're experiencing. We talked about how to influence. Well, then we talked about let me, right? Responsibility, have agency, know what you want, know what you need to do to get there. A lot harder to do than to complain about what other people aren't doing. Influence comes through you being the change. And at the end of the day, and most importantly, you are the hero we've been waiting for. Plus one, let's go! What's an idea that jumped out and landed for you today? Think about that. Think about how you can move from theory to practice to mastery. Put that into practice today in whatever small way you can and aggregate and compound those tiny gains over an extended period of time, and we can fundamentally and permanently change your life, helping you be that version of you you aspire to be. And as always, today is day 1. We are all in. Let's go. One more time, get the note for free in the show notes if you're feeling it, and check out all the Philosopher's Notes. and the stuff we've got going on with Heroic. And I'll see you in the next episode. Have a great day. Hey, this is Brian. Thanks for spending a few minutes with me today. If you enjoyed it, please hit subscribe so that the best of the show keeps landing in your feed. Then head over to heroic.us. That's heroic.us, where you'll find the full library of wisdom I've created over the last 20 years. As well as the app, advanced training programs, coaching, and everything else we've built to help you optimize your life, actualize your potential, and live heroically. It is day 1. We are all in. Let's go.