PDF Summary:The Let Them Theory, by Mel Robbins

Best-selling author, speaker, and podcast host Mel Robbins offers a simple but powerful framework for reclaiming your time and mental energy: Stop trying to control other people. In The Let Them Theory, she explains how accepting others as they are while taking responsibility for your own actions can transform your relationships, reduce stress, and help you build the life you want.

Our guide explores Robbins’s method, examining its roots in philosophy and psychology, why it works, and how you can integrate it into your daily life. Alongside Robbins’s ideas, we offer scientific insights—from the neuroscience of why our brains are wired to try controlling others (even when we can’t), to the empathy-enabling brain structures humans share with whales. Whether you’re dealing with difficult family members, navigating friendships, or building healthier relationships, this guide connects Robbins’s advice with research that explains why it works.

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Sailing Against the Wind

The Let Them Theory has a parallel in sailing, an activity where success depends entirely on working with forces you cannot control. Sailors understand a fundamental truth: You cannot sail directly against the wind. Attempting to do so leaves you stalled and frustrated, just as trying to change other people’s behaviors leaves you drained and ineffective. Instead, skilled sailors use a technique called “tacking,” where they zigzag at strategic angles to the wind, making forward progress through indirect routes.

This strategy perfectly illustrates Robbins’s approach to navigating the headwinds of your relationships with other people. When sailors encounter a headwind, they first assess its direction and strength, similar to Robbins’s “Let Them” step, where you acknowledge reality as it exists. Then, rather than fighting the wind directly, sailors adjust their sails and direction to harness that same force to move forward—just as the “Let Me” step redirects your energy toward productive action within your control.

The physics behind this approach is revealing: A sail works by creating pressure differences that generate forward movement, but only when properly positioned relative to the wind. Similarly, our efforts in life generate momentum only when we stop fighting unchangeable realities and instead position ourselves strategically in relation to them. Skilled sailors don’t waste energy cursing the wind’s direction. They simply adjust their course and sails.

Robbins explains that you can use the Let Them Theory to manage the stress of your everyday life more productively. When you’re feeling annoyed and stressed by your friends’ constantly changing plans, your colleague’s difficulty meeting a deadline, the crowd at the grocery store, or the person having a loud conversation on the train, that’s the perfect time to say, “Let Them.” Robbins writes that these stressors automatically activate your brain’s stress response but by stopping and thinking “Let Them,” you can reset this response to signal to your brain that whatever’s happening isn’t worth getting stressed over.

This method helps you take control of how you spend your time and energy. When you remind yourself to let other people manage their actions, you stop yourself from letting their behavior amp up your stress levels and bring down your mood. Then, when you refocus on what you’re going to say or do in the situation, you signal to your brain that you can’t control the situation you’re feeling stressed about—but you can control how you respond. As for figuring out how to respond, Robbins recommends considering whether the incident will bother you in an hour, or a week, or a year: If it won’t, then you might not have to do anything. But if it’s really going to bother you, then it’s worth putting in the time and effort to address it.

How to Interrupt the Stress Response

When Robbins suggests saying “Let Them” to reset your stress response, she’s tapping into something neuroscientists have been studying for decades: our ability to interrupt the body’s automatic stress cascade. Stress triggers a rapid sequence of events in your brain: Your amygdala (a brain region involved in emotional processing) perceives a threat and signals the hypothalamus, which works like a command center and activates your sympathetic nervous system. This releases adrenaline and eventually cortisol into your bloodstream. This “fight-or-flight” response evolved to help you survive physical dangers. But it gets activated by everyday frustrations too, like that person talking loudly on their phone in public.

The “Let Them” technique works by engaging your prefrontal cortex, the rational part of your brain responsible for higher-order thinking. When you consciously say “Let Them,” you’re activating this region, which can interrupt the amygdala’s emotional alarm system. This mental shift helps your parasympathetic nervous system (the “brake” to your stress response) engage more quickly. Researchers describe getting “stuck” in the fight-or-flight response as failing to complete the stress cycle. When you use Robbins’s method to accept what you can’t control and refocus on your own response, you’re actually helping your brain complete this cycle by transitioning from stress activation to relief.

This also explains why Robbins finds that saying “Let Them” and “Let Me” helps people to conserve mental energy. Instead of maintaining the physiologically expensive stress response (which both drains cognitive resources and depletes physical energy), you’re allowing your body to return to baseline functioning sooner. This also has the effect of keeping your prefrontal cortex online for more important tasks.

Ahead, we’ll consider how applying the Let Them theory can help you improve your relationships with others and even with yourself.

Take Control of Your Relationships

Saying “Let Them” and “Let Me” gives you a way to take responsibility for your relationships. Other people’s words and actions can send us on an emotional rollercoaster: When we internalize the negative things they say and do, we often feel inferior. For example, if your colleague walks into the office one morning and immediately snaps at you, you’d likely feel you must have done something wrong that justifies their rudeness. But they might just be in a bad mood because their shoelace broke or they missed their train—circumstances that don’t involve you.

Conversely, as we discussed earlier, it can make you feel superior to just think “let them” and dismiss your colleague’s behavior—thinking you’re the bigger person who’s above such pettiness or judging them for being rude. But that wouldn’t be a productive way forward, as it still involves judgment rather than true acceptance.

Robbins explains that you’re responsible for building the relationships you want with other people. In the situation with your grumpy colleague, that means that you wouldn’t respond to their rudeness in kind, but instead look at them with empathy and figure out how you can make their day better. Robbins notes that if you say “Let Them” without following it up with “Let Me,” then you can end up feeling isolated from others. It’s by saying “Let Me” that you exercise your agency to be the person you want to be—for example, the kind of coworker who speaks to your colleagues with the consideration they deserve.

How Humans—and Whales—Navigate Stormy Seas

Robbins’s advice to not just accept others’ behavior (“Let Them”) but to actively choose intentional and empathetic responses (“Let Me”) aligns with neuroscience research on specialized brain cells called spindle neurons, or von Economo neurons (VENs). These neurons seem to exist in just a handful of species: humans, great apes, elephants, and whales—all animals known for their complex social behaviors and apparent capacity for empathy. Spindle neurons are uniquely structured for rapid processing of social and emotional information, allowing quick transmission of signals across different brain regions.

Scientists have found that these neurons appear in brain areas responsible for social awareness, emotional processing, and what they call “sympathetic concern.” These are precisely the neural foundations needed for the sophisticated relationship dance Robbins describes: noticing someone’s negative behavior, choosing not to take it personally, and then deciding how to respond constructively.

The presence of these neurons in whales—who may have had them for 30 million years, twice as long as humans—suggests that the ability to maintain social bonds through empathetic responses might be a specialized evolutionary adaptation. While most animals react defensively or withdraw when faced with hostility, species with spindle neurons can override this instinct, potentially allowing them to consider: “How might I respond in a way that strengthens rather than damages this relationship?”

When Robbins suggests responding to your colleague’s rudeness with empathy rather than defensiveness, she’s inviting you to engage these advanced neural pathways—a capacity that appears to be rare in the animal kingdom but which defines some of Earth’s most socially sophisticated species.

The same principle applies to friendships, too: Robbins explains you have to create the community you desire by adapting to the evolution of your friendships over time. When friends move away, prioritize new connections, or have less time for you, you need to say “Let Them” instead of clinging tightly or feeling hurt. At the same time, use “Let Me” to consider what matters most in adult friendships: proximity, timing, and energy. Proximity refers to physical closeness, which creates opportunities for interaction. Timing involves being at similar life stages. Energy is the effort you put in nurturing the friendship. If these are lacking, you can take action to realign yourself with a friend who seems distant—or make new connections.

(Shortform note: Robbins’s emphasis on proximity, timing, and energy as key to staying connected as friendships evolve is backed by neuroscience. When we spend time in physical proximity to friends, our brains release oxytocin, which activates reward circuits and strengthens our bond. Timing is important, too: When friends experience similar challenges, their brain activity actually synchronizes—so we’re literally “on the same wavelength” with friends in compatible life stages. Finally, the energy we invest in friendships creates a safety net. When facing stressful situations, people with strong social connections show reduced activity in brain regions associated with threat processing—so challenges seem less threatening with support.)

Robbins notes that you can take the same approach to romantic relationships as well. When you’re dating someone, you have to “Let Them” show you who they really are, what they want in life, and whether you’re a priority to them. If they’re not the kind of person you want to be with, then you can let the relationship go to make space for someone else who can offer the love, commitment, and compatibility you deserve. No relationship is perfect, and every relationship hits rough patches. But if you agree on your values and support each other’s dreams, are willing to put in the effort to make the relationship work, and can accept each other as you are, then you can love them for who they are rather than for who you wish they could be.

(Shortform note: Robbins’s advice to let other people show you who they are echoes writer and poet Maya Angelou’s wisdom: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” People reveal their authentic selves through consistent patterns of action, but we resist seeing them as they are because we’re invested in seeing the “potential” in romantic partners.This tendency to ignore what people are showing us often stems from what psychologists call optimism bias, our tendency to overestimate the likelihood of positive outcomes despite evidence to the contrary. It’s why we overlook red flags, excuse behavior that conflicts with our values, and convince ourselves people will make an exception to established patterns.)

Stop Being Stressed Out by Other People’s Opinions

The Let Them Theory also works when it’s what other people think and say—rather than what they do—that stresses you out. Inevitably, people will have and express negative opinions about you. But if you let their opinions influence your decisions, then you give up control over what you do with your life. Robbins points out that just as we can’t change what thoughts pop into our own heads, it’s impossible to control what other people think. She recommends expecting that other people will think negative thoughts about you—and resolving to follow your own path anyway. Instead of letting your fear of other people’s negative opinions constrain you, you can make decisions you’re proud of and live according to your own values.

(Shortform note: Robbins’s advice to avoid stress over others’ opinions aligns with research on how malleable human opinions actually are. Studies reveal that people’s opinions change far more often than they realize: Thanks to the protection of our “psychological immune system,” we unconsciously adjust our opinions to make peace with circumstances we can’t change. We even revise our memories to align with our new beliefs, like smokers who remembered doing less public smoking than they’d previously reported after a ban was implemented. This means the opinions that cause you stress today may naturally shift tomorrow, making your efforts to manage those perceptions largely wasted energy.)

Navigating other people’s opinions can be especially difficult when those other people are your family since they’re with you for the long haul. Robbins explains that it’s important to think about why someone might have the opinion they do of you or your choices. That way, you can see things from their point of view—not so you can change their mind. (You probably won’t.) Rather, it’s so you can respect their perspectives, which were formed by their life experiences, and accept them as their imperfect (and perhaps judgmental) selves. This serves to deepen your relationship.

5 Ways to Handle Judgmental Family Members

When dealing with family members who express negative opinions about your choices, communication experts recommend using these practical strategies:

1. Use boundary-setting “I” statements: Rather than defending your choices, simply state your position with phrases like “I want to focus on other priorities right now,” or “It’s important to me to take the time I need.” These statements are harder to argue with because they’re about your preferences, not debatable facts.

2. Deploy a strategic “thank you”: When unsolicited advice comes your way, a firm “thank you” serves as both polite acknowledgment and a signal that the conversation should turn to a different topic. You can say, “I appreciate your advice. Thank you” to signal that you’ve heard their opinion, while still ending the discussion.

3. Redirect the conversation: Take control by changing the subject, especially to something your opinionated relative enjoys discussing. This technique respects their desire to engage with you while shifting away from judgments about you and your choices.

4. Enlist an ally: Before family gatherings, arrange with an understanding relative to help redirect conversations when judgment arises. For example, when your judgmental aunt starts criticizing your career choices, your ally can smoothly introduce a new topic.

5. Create physical distance: Sometimes the most effective response is simply removing yourself from the interaction. Take a break in another room, help in the kitchen, or spend time with more supportive family members.

Let Go of Your Fear of Other People’s Emotional Reactions

In the same way that managing other people’s negative opinions isn’t your responsibility, it’s also not your responsibility to manage other people’s emotional reactions. When you make decisions to avoid disappointing someone, to keep someone from getting angry at you, or because you know they’ll make you feel guilty if you don’t, you’re letting other people’s emotions dictate your decisions. Robbins explains that it’s hard but necessary to set boundaries and “Let Them” react. In doing so, you give people space to feel their emotions, and you release yourself from feeling like you have to manage or fix those emotions for them.

She explains that most people have the emotional maturity of an eight-year-old: They’ve never learned to process their emotions and communicate their needs in a healthy way because many parents inadvertently teach their children to suppress their emotions instead of finding a healthy way to express them. But Robbins explains that when an adult wants to act like an eight-year-old, you should just “Let Them.” Then, when you remind yourself to “Let Me” decide how to respond, you realize that their emotions aren’t yours to manage and it’s up to you to choose how much time and energy you want to give them.

Are You (Emotionally) Smarter Than an Eight-Year-Old?

Psychologists say emotional maturity isn’t tied strictly to age but develops through a combination of neurological development, experience, and intentional practice. While the prefrontal cortex—the brain region responsible for emotional regulation and impulse control—continues developing until approximately age 25, emotional maturity continues evolving throughout adulthood. Researchers say it consists of characteristics like taking responsibility for your actions, showing empathy, owning mistakes, communicating needs clearly, and setting healthy boundaries. But research does support Robbins’s core insight that many adults struggle with regulating and managing their own emotions.

While an eight-year-old typically can identify basic emotions and is developing self-regulation strategies, many adults still resort to emotional reactions that bypass rational processing, particularly under stress. This happens because emotionally triggering situations can activate our amygdala (the brain’s threat-detection system) before our prefrontal cortex can engage. But emotional regulation is a skill set that can be continuously developed. Robbins’s advice to “Let Them” experience their emotions while you choose your response aligns with models like Dialectical Behavior Therapy, which teaches distinguishing between feeling an emotion and acting on it—a skill that supports both emotional maturity and healthy relationships.

Robbins points out that sometimes, we’re the ones who are being emotionally immature. The Let Them Theory not only helps you feel more compassionate with people who have trouble managing their emotional reactions, but can also help you be more compassionate with yourself and your emotions. When you notice yourself getting angry or feeling frustrated, you can use “Let Them” to tell yourself to let those emotions wash over you. Then, you can use “Let Me” to remind yourself that you don’t have to react to the emotions you feel. You can’t control how you feel, but you can control what you say and do. You shouldn’t let your emotions dictate your decisions any more than you should let other people’s emotions determine what you do.

Shedding Emotional Baggage

Wes Anderson’s 2007 film The Darjeeling Limited dramatizes what happens when emotionally immature people have to replace their ineffective coping mechanisms with real efforts to manage their own emotions. The film follows three brothers on a “spiritual journey” across India after their father’s death, each attempting to manage his grief and pain in counterproductive ways: Francis tries to control every aspect of their trip, Peter hoards their father’s possessions, and Jack sidesteps emotions by turning them into thinly veiled fiction. The brothers initially practice a stunted version of “Let Them”: They physically distance themselves from problems, but they haven’t accepted reality.

They break through this emotional immaturity only when they’re forced to confront genuine tragedy outside their bubble of self-concern, culminating in the film’s most powerful visual metaphor: the brothers literally abandoning their father’s monogrammed baggage as they run to catch a train. The moment illustrates the shift from merely saying “Let Them” to embracing “Let Me”—taking responsibility for how they respond to their circumstances without being weighed down by past hurts or letting their pain prevent them from being present in the moment.

Stop Pressuring Other People to Change

If you’ve ever tried to push somebody else to change, then you know it almost never works. Instead, you have to create an environment of acceptance and love to enable people to make changes in their own time. We all have a fundamental need for autonomy and control over our lives, and we naturally resist attempts by others to force change because these attempts threaten this core need. However, when we feel fully accepted and loved unconditionally, we’re free to look inward and find our own motivation to grow.

Robbins recommends several steps to create this supportive environment: Practice radical acceptance of others without judgment, express unconditional love while separating who they are from behaviors you dislike, be patient as change happens naturally, celebrate positive steps, and provide resources only when asked. By modeling the positive changes you’d like to see rather than criticizing or controlling, you allow them space to decide for themselves that they want to change. The goal isn’t to enable self-destructive behavior but to provide the emotional safety that makes meaningful change possible. Paradoxically, when people feel truly accepted as they are, they become more willing and able to transform themselves.

(Shortform note: In Love Undetectable, Andrew Sullivan explores the contrasting dynamics of control in different types of relationships. While romantic relationships often involve surrendering control to another person—making ourselves vulnerable by placing our emotional well-being partially in their hands—friendships are different. Where romance might tempt us to merge identities or influence our partner’s choices, friendship thrives specifically because we respect the other person’s autonomy and separate life path. Both Sullivan and Robbins recognize that true connection emerges not from managing others’ behaviors, but from creating space where both people can exercise their freedom while choosing to remain in each other’s lives.)

The Boomerang Effect: Why Pushing for Change Also Pushes People Away

Robbins’s advice to stop pressuring others to change is supported by psychological research in a phenomenon known as “the boomerang effect.” When we try to force someone to change, they often respond by doubling down on their original behavior—like a boomerang that flies in the opposite direction of your throw before circling back to hit you in the face. This resistance to persuasion is deeply rooted in our psychological need for autonomy. Social psychologists have documented countless examples: putting up stern signs saying “Do not write on this wall” actually increases graffiti compared to gentler requests.

Similarly, when Romeo and Juliet, the protagonists of one of Shakespeare’s most beloved plays, were forbidden to be together, their love intensified rather than diminished. (Hence social psychologists’ nickname for this phenomenon: “the Romeo and Juliet effect.”) The boomerang effect explains why your well-intentioned efforts to get your partner to exercise, convince your friend to quit smoking, or push your sibling to change careers often backfire. The moment someone feels their freedom of choice is threatened, they instinctively resist to regain control.

Robbins’s approach of creating an environment of acceptance circumvents this psychological trap. By removing pressure and judgment, you eliminate the trigger for defensive resistance. This doesn’t mean enabling harmful behavior—it means recognizing that sustainable change can only come from within. By practicing radical acceptance, you’re not abandoning your hope for change: You’re actually creating the psychological safety that makes change possible. The person who feels completely accepted paradoxically becomes free to consider changing, without the defensive barriers that pressure creates.

Build a Healthier Relationship With Yourself

Finally, Robbins explains that you can use the Let Them Theory to improve the relationship you have with yourself. She notes that you are the only person that you’re guaranteed to spend the rest of your life with, and you owe it to yourself to make your happiness and dreams a priority. When you let other people do what they want to do (and resolve to not allow them to determine what you do), you decide to build the life you want without worrying about other people’s approval or validation. Robbins notes you can use “Let Them” and “Let Me” to give yourself the power to become your own source of happiness, to define what’s important to you, and to take control of how you work to turn your reality into the life you want.

The Limits of Self-Help in an Unequal World

Robbins’s advice to become your own source of happiness through the Let Them Theory offers powerful psychological tools for individual empowerment. Yet it raises an important question that haunts all self-help literature: How much control do we truly have over our well-being when structural barriers stand in our way?

Research reveals a sobering reality: While psychological techniques can help individuals cope with difficult circumstances, they can’t overcome fundamental inequities. A study found that nearly 90% of people with household incomes over $100,000 described themselves as flourishing, compared to less than half of those earning under $30,000. Similarly, more white participants reported flourishing than Black participants, regardless of their mindset or psychological practices.

This doesn’t invalidate Robbins’s approach but places it in necessary context. The ability to let go of others’ opinions and focus on your values presupposes certain conditions—like not having to worry about food security, housing stability, or systemic discrimination. Robbins’s framework might work best when combined with an understanding that flourishing requires both individual agency and structural support. “Let Them” and “Let Me” can be transformative tools for reclaiming personal power, especially in interpersonal relationships. But the most complete approach to well-being acknowledges both our personal responsibility for growth and the societal conditions that make that growth possible.