Let Them, by Mel Robbins
stop giving away your energy for free
Mel Robbins is a blonde American woman in middle-age, with those heavy black-rimmed spectacles. She is a popular motivational speaker and author who has no credentials that I can see, other than a degree in law and a talent for rambling on reasonably lucidly. She is no relation to the other popular motivational speaker Tony Robbins.
Her newest book, The Let Them Theory is currently no.1 in The Sunday Times non-fiction bestseller list. I laughed when I saw this because I thought: I know exactly what’s in this book. I know what’s in this book because I am such a controlling maniac that I have to consciously practice unclenching my buttocks and saying, “Let them,” as in let them be. Let them get on with it. Leave them alone. Let them.
I don’t mean if someone is burgling my house, or holding my cat in a weird way that she clearly doesn’t like. I mean if my grown-up friend wants to do something that I think is a bad idea, or my child wants to pick Geography for GCSE when I know she will find the coursework a living nightmare. You can offer an opinion once and after that, you have to just let them (get on with it).
The book sprang from an informal Instagram post by Robbins a year ago. “So much time and energy is spent on forcing other people to match our expectations,” she said in the post, among other things.
If you’re interested in more, watch this YouTube video of her talking about it, which is about an hour long.
If you know you are a bit controlling this is very helpful, but only up to a point. Robbins outlines three areas where you shouldn’t just let them, which include maintaining personal boundaries, keeping others safe and mistreatment at work. But I think it’s more complicated than that. If your son doesn’t want to do his homework, shall you let him not? If your daughter can’t be bothered to go and visit grandma on her birthday, should you let her not? If a friend keeps repeatedly and mindlessly telling you that she’s sorry she hasn’t returned a borrowed item yet doesn’t return it - should you just let her? Or should you arrive at her door and say, “Ding Dong, hand it over.”
An example Robbins gives in her YouTube tutorial is of not being seated with your friends at a wedding. You arrive and discover that your friends are all on one table and you’re out in Siberia with bores. She advises to practice radical acceptance here, instructs you to breathe calmly through your nose and say “Let them”. Just let the hosts do whatever they needed to do.
Really? I mean, sure, I wouldn’t be able to do anything at the time. But I reserve the right to fume about this for years. Where does Let Them, turn into Let Them Walk All Over Me?
The central plank of this book is, more-or-less, the central plank of the AA serenity prayer: Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. And that makes sense. It can, after all, be a direct line from Extremely Controlling to the drinks fridge. The tricky one for a lot of enlightened, but still fundamentally controlling, people is that the wisdom to know the difference is hard to come by, not the knowledge that there are some things you can change and some you can’t.
I am very curious to know if you are familiar with Mel Robbins. Are you a fan? What do you think about The Let Them theory? Please leave a comment in the handy box below. And if you had a moment, do tap the heart on your way out. But if you don’t, that’s okay… I will let you.
I think the Let Them theory is worth considering as a way of reducing women's mental loads; something men are very happy to let us carry as it takes all manner of issues and pressures off them. The Let Them theory helps sort out what is really important to tackle - the inviolable stuff - from the daily noise of concerns and worries. Men are good at this - especially when it comes to in-laws, school gate issues, street what's app comments, friends who let you down, party invitations (or lack of), tennis fours: they just don't engage, maybe because they know we will. What is our reward for the mental effort of dealing with other people? Nothing, except the expectation we will do it again and again. It's been empowering to respond to a minor issue with the words "oh dear, what a pity" and then glide out of the kitchen to get on with something else.
I knew this before Mel R wrote her book, but if it's helping a few people with their mental load that's got to be a positive.
A year ago when I was feeling quite low I came across a couple of MR’s podcasts to do with organisational skills, routines and habits and while I found the whole thing waffly and I did find some of the suggestions useful. I did feel at the time I wasn’t sure how you could spin quite so many hours out of this sort of help as it started to get very padded and repetitive, but I think if you are struggling in some way there is an appeal in somebody going “Here, it’s easy, let’s walk you through it”. I also think everyone should be wary of things with such an appeal. I listened to the beginning of one again a couple of weeks ago after all this Let Them stuff came out and she went from “You don’t have to eat the shit sandwich” to quoting a holocaust survivor for motivational purposes with such revolting speed that I thought the ideas must be coming thin and slow. This new book sounded similar - an idea with some value in certain circumstances but which she had stretched out to book length like butter over too much bread (apologies Tolkien), but I haven’t read it. I could certainly do with learning to let go of my anxious need to control things, but I am also so easily walked over I could end up with “She Let Them” stamped on my grave. In fact I could do with you writing a book called “Ding Dong, Hand It Over”.