Mel Robbins: The ‘Let Them Theory’ (A Life-Changing Hack That 15M People Can’t Stop Talking About)

every human being has a hardwired need to be in control of everything there's three things in your control Jay what you think what you do or don't do and how you process your emotions if you Embrace this skill you're going to be shocked this is by far one of the best self hope books I've ever read your mind and soul are in for a tree the queen of grounded science fact personal development Mel Robin work has been seen as the number one cause of stress you have a customer that's really rude you lose a big

account you get passed over for something as you notice the stress come up Jay you're simply going to say let them if you focus and try to manage things that are never going to be within your control it only creates stress anxiety and frustration for you imagine for every thought you had about that person you had to pay them a dollar that's how much energy time and money is being wasted you have no idea right now how much time and energy is being wasted or drained because of other people's behavior or your expectations about how

you wish things would go this is I think my legacy I think that this is um the thing I was supposed to figure out and leave the world the number one Health and Wellness podcast J shett J shett the one the only Jett if you're struggling right now with things you can't control this episode is for you if you're someone who's struggling at work and negative people and toxic culture this episode's for you if you're someone who's struggling with your family members and your friends and setting boundaries this episode's for you so Mel where I

want to start is work has been seen as the number one cause of stress you write about this in the book in people's lives how can the let them theory help people in the place that causes them the most stress it's an excellent question so first let me no pun intended let me explain the theory so in case you haven't bumped into this online the theory is very simple it is a mindset tool that instantly helps you identify what's in your control and what's not in your control the reason why this is important is because

any psychologist will tell you that if you focus and try to manage things that are never going to be within your control it only creates stress anxiety and frustration for you when you take the context of work there is so much inside your day-to-day life at work that is irritating it is stressful it is annoying from the endless meetings and no time to get work done to if you're somebody that is working in a retail store you're doing shift work you don't have control over what shifts you get to feeling like you don't have the

chance for promotion it is just endless and the way that you're going going to use the let them theory is anytime something is happening at work that stresses you out you have a customer that's really rude you lose a big account you get passed over for something your idea gets dismissed in a work meeting as you notice the stress come up Jay you're simply going to say let them let my boss be in a bad mood let my colleague take credit let the uh customer like be rude to me and here's the thing this sounds

almost like you're being a doormat and you're being passive it's the exact opposite when you say let them you're recognizing that the situation right now that has just happened has already happened and that there is no reason to allow it to stress you out when you allow your boss's mood to stress you out or make you nervous you're giving power to your boss that they do not deserve and so you're going to say let them when you allow a customer that is rude or inconsiderate to make you feel bad about yourself or to make you

upset or to Rattle you you just gave this rude person power over you when you say let them something interesting happens first of all you detach second you feel almost Superior it's this weird thing because I don't think this is the same thing as saying let it go you're a very grounded person Jay you strike me as the kind of person that can let anything go me whenever somebody would say to me Mel I know I know it's not not fair what just happened at work you got to let it go I'd be like but

I feel like I lost I feel like I now have to be defeated I feel more like a dorat if somebody tells me to let something go what's the difference between let it go and let them for me when I say let them I get a jolt of superiority because I'm like I can see that my boss is kind of a jerk and I'm just going to let them be a jerk and I rise above it and I feel a little judgy I mean if I'm being perfectly honest I mean this is why people get

this tattooed on their bodies because when you say the word let them or you see it on your arm what happens is you no longer allowed a rude colleague or something frustrating at work to derail your day you say let them and you rise above it and you kind of go I see what's happening here I'm going to allow this without allowing it but then there's a second par J and this is the most important part and it's the part that people do not tattoo on themselves because it's the harder part and the second part

of this theory is saying to yourself let me let me remind myself that in life there are always three things I can control that's where my power is my power is not in managing my boss or in trying to like deal with some customer that just doesn't want to be in an okay mood and doesn't want to be calmed down they want to be right they want to take it out on you so you're going to let them but then you've created this boundary you rise above I'm going to just let you be upset here

I'm not going to let it impact me and then you say let me and what you're reminding yourself of is there's three things in your control Jay what you think next what you do or don't do and oftentimes not doing something is the more powerful mood and how you process your emotions those are the three things that are always in your control and when you say let me take responsibility right now for how I'm going to respond to this and the word responsibility after all is the ability to respond right and so when you say

me and you remember I can think what I want about this I can act in response to this and I can process my emotions and either allow them to rise and fall and stay steady and calm or you know you can certainly erupt if you want to but why would you want to because then that means you've given power to somebody else why are we so distracted and obsessed with things we can't control I'm sure we all have a friend or know someone who knows they need to be working on their business but they're talking

about the news they know they should be writing their book but they're focused on talking about politics they know they should be building the next stage in their career or whatever it may be trying to get that promotion work towards that next threshold or whatever they're trying to achieve but they're distracted by talking about all the people all the things all the ideas that they can do nothing about why are we so addicted to it well I think there's two reasons because your question is about two different things one is why are we focused on

things we can't control and the other one is sort of like why are we distracted and they're they're interconnected so let's just address the issue of control every human being has a hardwired need to be in control of everything because being in control is what makes you feel safe so I need to feel in control of my thoughts my decisions my environment my future and the problem is so do you but part of the need for control Jay extends Beyond me because if you're doing something that makes me annoyed or irritated or worried about you

now I'm feeling a little unsafe or worried because of what you're doing and so now I'm going to want to control you so that I feel better and so it is a fundamental hardwired need inside every human being you know to be in control of yourself and yet the second we step across the line and we try to control someone else whether it's I think you should be healthier I think you should be more motivated I wish you wouldn't like leave the kleenexes when you're blowing your nose on the whatever it is that you wish

someone else would do I wish my boss wouldn't talk in every meeting and would give a chance like for us to talk all of that desire for someone else to change is you attempting to control the uncontrollable and so I think one of the reasons why we do this is because we're hardwired to do it and the problem becomes that the second I try to control you Jay it's not going to motivate you to do what I want you to do it's going to bump up against your need for your own control so you're going

to push back against me absolutely and so you also asked about distraction I think the reason why we're so distracted is because if you spend so much time and energy allowing the world around you to stress you out and drain your energy you are now susceptible to being hijacked by meaningless things that are not important to you and this is one of the biggest discoveries that I've made about using the let them Theory and researching it is has spread around the world is that the single biggest benefit is that you get time and energy back

you have no idea right now how much time and energy is being wasted or drained because of other people's behavior or your expectations about how you wish things would go and once you start noticing all of these little moments all day long it's like a death by Thousand Cuts you want to know why you're too tired you want to know why you're overwhelmed you want to know why you're stressed out you want to know why you have no time for yourself it's because of the power you give to other people's opinions their emotions their immature

Behavior it's the ways in which you are turning people into a problem in your life and here's the sad fact the sad fact is other people should be the greatest source of happiness and connection and inspiration but if you don't truly learn this skill that we're going to talk about today of focusing on what you can control and letting people be who they are letting things play out as they're playing out and then bringing the power back in house and really focusing on how you responded if you Embrace this skill you're going to be shocked

you're going to be shocked by how much time you've wasted I'm not kidding yeah and you're going to be shocked Jay by the fact that you've allowed stupid things and people's drama to drain you and that's why I also think we're so susceptible to distraction because we've given so much power away all day long because here's the truth like I'll give you an example when I first discovered this and I started playing around with it the very first way that I used it after I discovered it was I was standing in line and we've all

been at the grocery store when it's like six people deep and there's one person working yeah it's like beep beep beep and you start feeling that wave right and immediately the wave of stress takes over because you're now irritated by what's happening and what just happens when you start reacting to that and you allow that stress wave to start to take over is that you're giving power to something outside of you now I can't control what's happening right now so why on Earth would I allow it to drain my energy because as it comes up

Jay what do I then do I then start talking to myself well this is ridiculous why have they not done an announcement like I I got I got to get going here why why are they not bringing another now I'm starting to believe Jay that I can run a supermarket better than the people that are running it and then you of course turn to the person behind you and you roll like can you believe this and now this is the interesting part that I really want everybody I really want the person listening to embrace in

that moment you just gave away your energy and you have a choice when you say let them you instantly feel a release and then you say let me decide what I'm going to do right now am I gonna leave I can leave the store that's one thing I can do I could stand here and practice being present that's another thing I could do I could because I don't have time at the end of the day and I'm always tired and I'm complaining that I'm only I could actually pick up the phone and call my grandmother

I could text my friend J shett because I've been thinking about him like you have so much power but you're going to burn through it in that line and then you're going to feel your stress activated and then you're going to get in the car and then somebody's going to pull out in front of you and then you're going to like be stressed again and then you're going to walk into work and you're going to be annoyed in some meeting because of what something somebody said and then that's going to hit you again and all

day long because because you don't recognize how this stuff is impacting you that energy inside your body is slowly draining and this is why you're exhausted and so simply starting to use it whether it's at work or it's just in your daily life to say let them wanting people to change is not the problem how we go about it is if their behavior is telling you that your needs are not a priority you have to let them reveal that you're only attached to it because you've never experienced anything else I want to paint another scenario

for people to really understand the system let's say you have a partner boyfriend girlfriend maybe you're married to them and this person always turns up from work a little bit late uh they don't wash the dishes you wake up in the morning the dishes are always still out there there's a sense that you've told them this irks you a million times did my husband ask you to ask me this question Jay he's amazing I know Chris Chris has your number so I probably text yeah Chris yeah and so I I I mean I'm speaking from

so much not direct personal experience but personal experience in so many ways and you're saying this person's not changing they haven't changed for like this is a fundamental role everybody number one you cannot change another human being it is impossible for you to change somebody else now you can influence them but you cannot change them people only change if they feel like it and if they can and wanting and wishing is a wonderful thing wanting and wishing somebody to be cleaner and to pick up out after themselves wanting your kids to be more motivated wanting

the people that you love to take better care of themselves and to be healthier or to date somebody that is normal and healthy instead of the losers that treat them like crap that's a beautiful thing for you to want for other people and you deserve to do that and you should do that wanting people to change is not the problem hunting bigger possibilities for people is not the problem how we go about it is and so in the scenario that you're talking about this is a beautiful example because you have to say let them you

see the dishes in the sink it makes you upset because you feel disrespected and it's annoying and you have higher standards for cleanliness which means you're probably just going to do them anyway and then you're going to feel like you're really taking whatever for granted but you have to say let them and one of the reasons why is because number one if this is a long-term committed partnership learning how to love somebody as they are is a form of love that is deeply important and if you can't say let them in that moment you are

going to get frustrated and angry and then you are going to come to the next part of the let them Theory with tremendous intensity and judgment and that's not going to motivate change what it does when you judge somebody or you push against them is it actually creates resistance to change so you have to say let them because it allows you to detach from your emotions and detach from judgment right it is what it is I see what's happened I'm accepting the reality of this let them then you come to the let me part is

this something that bothers you and if it is remember you got three things I can choose what I want to think about this and so you could think a good thought you could think okay good intention they were probably super busy this morning and they meant to do it later let them okay I'm going to choose to believe that you could also then remind yourself let me remind myself there's something I can do about this right and if it's really important what you need to do about this is have a conversation and by the way

Chris has had this conversation with me a bazillion times so if you walk into our bathroom Chris's bathroom probably looks like your side of the sink which is it's like a Zen sevenstar Hotel Jay like there's not a speck on that man's like Basin or whatever you call it if you look at mine it looks like somebody tipped over a Walgreens aisle on top of that thing and it drives Chris crazy but what particularly drives him crazy is when something migrates from my side to his side right and so he's asked me he's asked me

to please keep my stuff over there he has asked me to please flatten cardboard boxes when they come in don't please pack don't unpack them and then stack them by the garage door as if I'm supposed to do it and he's asked me ask me and ask me and then I forget well he finally sat Me Down Jay and this is the let me part you have to take responsibility for explaining to somebody what you need and the reason why this is important to you because when Chris said to me I know you don't intend

this but this is the impact mail when I see the cardboard boxes stacked or I see your hair brushing 15 products of yours on my countertop it actually makes me feel like you think I'm the maid and we don't even have a maid like it's just like it makes me feel like you think it's my job to clean up after you and that doesn't make me feel loved now when he took the time and a very calm way to drop into his values and communicate what he needed something interesting happens if you're in a committed

loving partnership and you're with somebody who wants to do better and cares about you it tap into their intrinsic motivation to build new skills if you have that kind of conversation with somebody and you explain how their behavior impacts you whether it's their drinking or it's the tone of their voice or it's the fact that they leave their stuff everywhere or it's that they insist that you spend every holiday with their family and they have no interest in your whatever the issue is if you sit somebody down and you take responsibility you've let them be

and you've let them shown you who they are and then you say let me sit down and talk about this and take responsibility I have the ability to respond to this like a mature adult and you actually Express what you need and why and that person doesn't try you have to let them and here's why their behavior is telling you the truth their behavior is telling you what they care about and what their priorities are and if their behavior is telling you that your needs are not a priority you have to let them reveal that

because that's also what let them me yes because then you're going to come back to the second part which is let me ask myself is this kind of behavior from somebody what I deserve is this what I'm willing to accept in somebody because again what do we also know people only change when they want to or they can and you might be in a situation where somebody would really love to change but they can't because they're dealing with some challenge right now or they don't have the skill yet and you may decide if that's the

case to still love and accept the person right right yeah but there may be times where you have had the conversation and it is very clear they're capable of it they just won't do it yeah and what I find in relationships where that sort of invisible distance and the frustration and the resentment comes up is twofold number one you can't detach from your emotions and say let them and really fully just let the person be who they are and you don't do the part let me where you actually take responsibility for expressing in a mature

way what you need and how their behavior impacts you and so if you don't ever express what you need and how it's impacting you you're not actually giving somebody the opportunity to build a skill or to change or to love you the way that you need them to love you so that you feel loved the second mistake that I see constantly is that you make the ask and then the person doesn't do it and then you start making excuses and resentment builds and you stay in something seeing exactly who someone is wishing they would change

living up here in your mind about the fantasy of what you wish this was refusing to accept the reality of what it actually is you've just unlocked a whole new meaning of let them for me how so I've always understood let them when I've heard you speak about it when I read the book this idea of let them be who they are let them act the way they want to act let them say and do whatever they want to do I have to let them I have to keep that distance what you just unlocked for

me which I really want to you know everyone to Grapple with because I think it's so powerful is this idea of let them also show you who they are yes and if they're showing you who they are let them be that person don't make them the person you imagine them to be the one you want them to be the one that you're wishing and waiting and hoping for them to be they are that person let them be that is oh my gosh my mind is literally blown because that is so powerful but you still have

power Jay then here's the most important thing everybody this is the most important thing this is The Epiphany that I had too like holy cow I still get to choose I still get to choose I get to choose how much time and energy I pour into this whether it's this issue or it's this topic or it's this person and here's how you know if you can actually love somebody for who they are and who they're not can you end your complaining and bitching about it because if you can't do that then this is something you're

holding on to and you're holding over the other person mhm and if they're never going to change you going to have a problem MH M because the only thing that's going to make the relationship better is either them hearing you and caring enough and being able to adjust or you being the one to adjust because it's your complaining about it that is creating the the friction and the resentment and this is not only with romantic relationships like when I think about the broader applications of this for family there are very challenging people in my extended

family just just like everybody's family right and so there's always one person in your life that you wish there just wasn't drama with you wish they didn't have a challenging demeanor or personality the let them theory has fundamentally profoundly changed my relationship also with people that have been difficult because when I say let them like let's say you're talking we're talking about somebody who's very narcissistic or dramatic or victim or they're all it's always about them and very draining person to be around well part of the reason why they're draining is because you brace and

you get ready for it and you allow their energy to impact you and I always find it funny Jay that especially in families and at work we allow the most challenging person to have the biggest impact on the whole system so if you have one person that's narcissistic in their personality style or that is very very dramatic and immature in their personality style they're one if you imagine a spiderweb right I think about a a system of relationships like a spiderweb and you're out in the morning the do's on it when you have a challenging

person because we all tiptoe around this person that person's energy is like tap tap tap and shakes all the do off I believe the opposite is true especially after learning the let them Theory because there's been people in my life both in work life and in my family life where when that person's around I literally shrink to 8 years old I'm dancing around their mood we all have had an experience like this maybe you're thinking about a boss or your mother or your father-in-law or a brother or whomever an adult child right when I walk

into these situations now and I say let them let them be who they are why am I making it my job to manage their mood yeah why am I pouring time and energy into this drama let me manage my energy let me remind myself I can remove myself from any dinner table any family text chain I can remove myself from an interview a date a conversation a relationship anytime I want and I believe Jay that the person that is the most peaceful and centered and Powerful because you understand the power of your energy and your

thoughts and your actions you actually have more power in any family system in any office building in any room anywhere than the most Challen ing person I could agree more I couldn't agree more I love that and I feel like when you start looking at your energy and time if you thought about it like money and this idea that imagine for every thought you had about that person you had to pay them a dollar and you think about how many dollars if you now started to count the amount of thoughts you're having about that person

about that situation about what they said about what they said to so and so what they thought about you and you had to pay a dollar for every thought you had about them that's how much energy time and money is being wasted yes and we're not realizing where else it could be invested and put in but I think you hit the nail on the head there the reason is we feel so attached that we don't feel we can actually leave as Tian would say we would rather live in the familiar pain than the unfamiliar pain

at least we know what we're going to get with this person and there's a part of us that gets attached to that even consciously well here's the thing though Jay because I think it's a really important point that you're bringing up but here's what I think you're going to discover I think you're only attached to it because you don't value your time and energy for sure you're only attached to it because you've never experienced anything else MH and the reason why you're used to it is because in the relationship dynamic you're up in your head

usually in a relationship explaining away Behavior instead of actually seeing it with clear eyes and detaching from it and that's the other reason and I know you knew this instantly that the let them Theory and saying let them and let me one of the reasons why it's so powerful and I'm so excited is I feel literally like I'm am surrounded by ancestors because this is a modern application of ancient philosophy spiritual guidance stoicism Detachment theory that you can then apply in any moment in any relationship and what I also love about this Jay is that

I think it allows you to truly see people perhaps for the first time and to give them the space to be who they are and from that space what's amazing is you can let people for example a lot of us are very triggered and motivated when somebody's disappointed or when some or we think that somebody's going to like you know really be let down by us and I had this huge breakthrough because I used to feel really guilty either by how much I work or the fact that uh Chris and I raised our kids on

the east coast and my parents are in the Midwest and you know I love my parents and I wish we all live together but here's the thing they're not moving to me and I'm not moving to them we got at them right mhm but there's a lot of emotion about it and I know your family's all over the place too so you know you're nodding like I'm not saying anything cuz my family listens to this SM so so here's the thing if I don't go home with my family for the holidays my parents are disappointed

let them be disappointed I mean isn't that a beautiful thing that they're disappointed don't you want somebody to be disappointed that you're not coming that really messes with people's minds right yeah like whether you can't make it to a business engagement or you can't make it to a birthday party or you can't make it this year home I mean what's the alternative that they're like thank God Jay's not coming I can't stand him no seriously like really wrap your brain around this and and so when you say let them be disappointed Something Beautiful happens you

actually honor their experience of Being Human mhm you allow them to be adults yes that is a sign that emotion that things are really good in your relationship yes but then you say let me and the old me would twist myself in knots and then I would make myself feel bad and then I would question what I was doing and then I'd bend over backwards try to be there and try to be here and instead when I say let me I drop into my values I deeply value family and so if they're disappointed that's not

the reason I would change plans I have to look at what do I think what do I want to do and how am I going to process my emotions and so as someone else's disappointed the old me would feel deeply guilty and conflicted now with the let them Theory I have space for them to be disappointed and for me to feel a little sad but if I change plans I don't do it for them because if I change plans for them guess what I just did I made them the villain in my life MH if

I change plans because it makes makes me feel like a good daughter it makes me feel good abut now I take responsibility for my life and I am owning my decisions and it's a small Nuance but it's absolutely everything yeah everything yeah and the other reason why I love this especially as a parent of adult children and you know there are very this is a book about adult relationships and so I make it very clear in the book and there's resources for parents with young kids in the back but one of the coolest things about

this is that when you let someone like have their emotions and you let someone struggle while you say I'm on the sidelines and I'm here to support but I know that the greatest teacher in life is life and I'm not going to Shield you from the consequences of some of the things that you're choosing you're an adult so I'm going to let you when you allow someone the space to process emotion and the space to face their struggles and the space to heal their own timeline and in their own way you actually communicate that I

believe that you can yeah when you step in and try to force somebody to be more motivated at school or you let's just take that one because I there's a lot of people that listen to my show and I'm sure it's the same people that are listening to yours that right in are like I don't know how to make this person more motivated oh for sure right and so here's what I want you to understand and this was another huge breakthrough when I was writing this book do you want to know the hardest person hardest

working person in a classroom Jay it's the kid who's struggling it's not the people that are getting straight A's it's the person who's having a really hard time wow do you want to know the hardest person that's working on their health it's actually the person that's unhealthy because they know that they want to be healthier and so they are not stuck they're in deep conflict actively within themselves and so if somebody is already aware that there is a gap between their potential and how they're performing that there is a gap between their god-given right to

thrive and be happy and be connected and what their life actually feels like they know it and then you come in and try to impose your will or your good ideas oh thanks a lot so I never thought that if I wanted to get great good grades I needed to study and not play video games thank you Einstein oh I should go to the gym if I want to lose some weight never thought of that so you come in and you have judgment and assumptions what is it that's more pressure on top of somebody who

is actually already deeply conflicted with themselves yeah and so if you really Embrace this and you understand that people change when they feel like it and when they can and if somebody's struggling it's because they're not able to right now there's a skill that's missing and one of the biggest things that typically missing is the belief that any of the small actions will actually do anything anyway yeah and so you coming in and imposing it you know what that says it actually says I don't believe you can do this I'll do it for you yes

I can do it for you I can it for you yeah absolutely if you can't control it why on Earth would you allow any timer energy to be wasted because you're going to keep this person in your life even though they walked out the door which is why you have to let them you're not just letting them leave you have to unlearn the patterns of your life yes that were with them I remember when me and R actually got married and we moved to America and rad will say this herself that at that time in

her life had parents had made a lot of big decisions for her and she was following decisions that they were making or opportunities that they were putting forward and all of that was with good intention and then when we got married she'd start to ask me for my advice or my insight this would be anything from what plates we should buy for our apartment through to like what kind of curtains we wanted right we're talking about really small everyday things and I remember I would always say to her well what do you think and she'd

always say no no no you just tell me and I'll be like no but what do you think and in the start it would really frustrate her but now she looks back and she goes that question helped her so much because it helped her find her own identity her own strength her own taste her own dislikes and now she's a whole human with opinions and it's so fascinating to watch that and it was because I almost had this for visioning or this thought that even if I make my life easier by just telling her my

tastes and dislikes and likes it's only going to be easy in the short term because 10 years from now she's going to think she became the person I wanted her to be and never became the person she could be right and I could see that and so I set up and I was like no you just tell me until this day I always practice I'm like I think you look beautiful but I want you to wear what you want to wear it it shouldn't be about what I think you look better in or worse in

or that that just shouldn't be the case and it's so interesting how we think love is over caring but actually over caring is over enabling that person and overwhelming that person and it's control it's control you're not like if you think about what love really is and for me love is two things it's consideration right it's having someone in mind if you pour in oat milk instead of the cow milk because that's what they like that's an act of love it's also admiration and admiration is the ability to see something in somebody that you deeply

admire I want to go back to something that you said though because it was genius and it had me think about the idea of the power of your time and energy and you were talking about imagine if like your time and your energy had dollars associated with it because I don't think we value it and I started to think about one of the biggest obstacles because what's ultimately happening when you start to use let them and let me is you're going to see that you've turned other people into a major problem and you have turned

them into a problem in four ways first of all you allow them to stress you out but you're not going to do that anymore because you're going to let them be but the second way that you've made them a major problem in your life is that you give so much weight to other people's opinions and in the example you were just talking about what was happening is by asking you what do you think Rody was doing what we all do but most of us do it subconsciously and we don't even realize it which is before

we even ask ourselves what feels right for us we stop and consider what we think somebody's going to think and you have that like really brilliant thing that I've heard you say a bazillion times that I love it's not what you think you think and think and I'm like wait what what But but so I want to play this out because this is so important was a huge thing for me if you open up your favorite social media platform we've all had the experience where you go and you pick a photo and you then put

it up and you're like okay should I put filter on this and you start to then question is this the right photo and then you go back to your photo roll and then you start working on the caption should I put an emoji is this too much should I do this and then you are worried why because you're actually thinking about what other people are going to think or do in response to what you're posting yes which means if you take the value of it right you just overvalued something that you will never be able

to control ever ever ever ever and yet you're doing it subconsciously and what typically happens is if you notice everybody's got hundreds of draft posts yeah you know what that is that is a graveyard of energy you wasted on something that you didn't you'll never be able to control because the average person has 70,000 random thoughts a day you can't even control half the crap that goes in your own mind so what makes you think any post is going to guarantee that any human being thinks anything and the let them Theory revealed to me Jay

how often I was subconsciously valuing oh for sure someone else and that like are they going to think negative are they think this are they going to think too much and there's a such a simple way to change this you just let them think negative thoughts that's it the next time you catch yourself stopping to consider what you're going to post or what your colleague might react to and that's what's keeping you silent say to yourself let them think negative thoughts because that's what you're actually afraid of yeah and so when you say let them

think negative thoughts something wild happens you accept the reality that no matter what you do it doesn't guarantee that anybody thinks anything yeah and then you say let me and here's where this gets really cool let me remind myself I can think what I want and I can do what I want and your social media in particular as you and I both know your self-expression that's what it's there forh and if you can't allow yourself to express yourself there then it's going to be everywhere where you edit yourself because you're not just letting people think

negative thoughts for sure but if you operate in a way now and you now take the value you take the money back we're not going to pay Jay the money for his opinion I'm going to take the money back and where I'm going to put the value is operating in a way that makes me feel proud of myself MH because when I operate in a way whether I'm posting something or I'm speaking in a meeting or I'm showing up and not responding to my dramatic whatever I'm proud of myself and when you're proud of yourself

you don't even consider what other people are thinking because you've just anchored all of your worth inside of yourself yeah and that's why this is another reason why this so unbelievably powerful yeah and and the truth is no one's thinking about you for as long as you think true no one's thinking about you for as much as you think no one's thinking about you as much as they even say they're thinking about you and we just like you said we keep draining that energy consumed by it you reminded me of the beautiful Charles Horton couie

quote and he wrote this in 1890 and he said the challenge today is I'm not what I think I am I'm not what you think I am I am what I think you think I am which means we live in a perception of a perception of ourselves so if I think Mel thinks I'm not smart then I don't think I'm smart so it's not even reality it's not even factually proven or checked or tested by the way everything in the let them Theory this book is literally every thought those 70,000 thoughts that's what you're addressing

in this book let them two words get rid of this fear yeah it literally does because I was talking I've talked to at least three friends this week and all of them are concerned by either hey Jay I'm thinking about posting a video on social media I'm scared of what people will think so that's for their professional their passion I've got another friend who's worried that a lot of our other friends are talking about him negatively because he's recently fallen out with them okay and so he's worried like what are they saying they're all talking

to each other what what rumors are they spreading about me like maybe it's not true and the thing that they're holding on to is they just can't let they can't let them and it's no but they can yeah see I don't think they have the tool yeah see here's the thing if you're worried that people are gossiping about you let them let them gossip about you here's why you can't control it it's gonna happen anyway yes and so if you can't control it why on Earth would you allow any time or energy to be wasted

yeah it's an act of self- torture so if you are worried that people are gossiping about you first of all let them gossip about you yeah because they're going to do what they're going to do because you cannot change what other people do you can't control what they think you can't control what they do if they're going to gossip they're going to gossip so let them gossip and when you say that it's a relief because you actually acknowledge the thing that you've been afraid of and it's like you're allowing it without allowing it but then

don't forget you have power yeah let me remind myself that I get to choose what I think about myself I get to decide what I do yeah and what I don't do whether or not I respond or not and I get to decide who I spend time with and so the bigger question becomes if you're busy worrying about which means you're spending time and energy people who are gossiping about you why would you want to be friends with them yeah and so now you take responsibility for your own part in chasing people that aren't treating

you in a way that you deserve yes and you recognize that the power here is in just letting people be and when you let people be your relationships get better because people reveal who they are and where you stand and then you get to choose how much time you spend or not yeah and not everybody in your life deserves an explanation they don't deserve a response necessarily and so you also get to choose who you tell your story to or who you apologize to or who how you respond to it and that's where your power

is and I'm not saying this makes it easy because you're probably in a situation like that going to have to say let them let them let them and then you're going to see them on social media and you're gonna be like should I block them should I not block them are they going to see if I do that should I not G let them let them know their lives and if I want to unfollow them let me do that because I get to choose what comes into my space or not and when you start really

play around with this because one of the big push backs that I that I've gotten in the research is what am I just going to be a doormat I'm let people abuse me I'm let people no actually it's the opposite because you're probably allowing it right now and then explaining it away when you say let them you're letting somebody's Behavior speak yeah and then you have to bring it back to yourself and say I've got to let them reveal who they are and if this person keeps gaslighting me or not including me now I've got

to ask myself is this actually the relationship for me Mel do you think we expect too much from people I do I think everybody's really busy and life is very overwhelming and you have no idea what's going on in other people's lives and we've gotten to a point in today's world where if I text you I expect Jay to respond and if Jay doesn't respond then I make it mean something about J or me and I hate that because it doesn't give people Grace we're constantly expecting people to show up a certain way and then

judging them when they don't instead of stopping to consider that other people have lives and other people have a lot of things going on and sometimes when people go silent on you it has nothing to do with you it has to do with a crazy busy period in life or it has to do with the fact that something's going on with their family and they're so drained at the end of the day that the last thing they want to do is talk to anybody and so I do think we expect too much because relationships feel

very like transactional you do this for me I do this for you I text you you better text me back now there are rules in terms of just being courteous to people and being gracious to people but I'm deeply concerned Jay about the rise of both arangement I'm concerned about the amount of posts that go viral about you know I got my life better because I cut all the toxic PE people out and I stop and think always well did you have a conversation about what was bothering you because if you just ghost other people

or you use the silent treatment that's actually punishing somebody and that's extremely immature actually it means you can't handle your own emotions which is why you don't have a hard conversation about what you need or how that someone's behavior is impacting you and if you haven't had that it's a very immature move to just cut somebody off and so I get very worried about the labeling of people as toxic and about the ease at which people seem to just drop people yeah and what I really love about the let them theory is that it opens

up the window to a lot more compassion because we're quick to think that if somebody hasn't texted you back or you've texed texted somebody a couple times and they haven't responded that you did something bad and it's perfectly fine to be like did I do something you know I I I noticed you haven't responded is everything okay if they don't respond then then something's probably wrong either with them or with you and you get to decide what you're going to do next but I am worried about the combination of people being isolated of people spending

way too much time on their phones instead of with each other and that we've gotten very transactional with one another and it's easy to forget that people have a lot going on and they're not thinking about you as much as you're thinking about them and just because you have time to text them doesn't mean they have time right now to text you back and I guarantee you when they saw your text they probably thought oh my God I love you know I got and then something came up yeah and so I do worry about it

Jay I do think we have too much of an expectation of something in return yeah and when you start to use this Theory what you're also going to notice is this when you start to say let them you will notice that maybe you're the sibling that reaches out more and it might bother you because when you say let them and you keep reaching out and they don't reach out or you have a group of friends and you notice that when you stop reaching out or making the plans that you're not included in theirs and that

hurts yeah the thing I used to do when that happened is I would make it about me I would make it like some deficiency in me and what I've learned using the let them Theory and really just saying let them which detaches from the hurt it detaches from the Judgment it reminds you that adults are allowed to live their lives adults are allowed to come and go in Friendship they're allowed to prioritize certain people at certain times they're allowed to have busy periods at work they're allowed to fall in and out of communication and the

more you let people live their lives the better your life gets and the more compassionate of a human being you become and The more I've started to recognize oh wait like my social life is my responsibility if I have a group of friends where if I make the plans everybody's included but if I sit back I'm never invited yeah then now I got to examine am I investing in the right group of friends or you might also wake up and realize well maybe I just like really like introverted people but I'm the party planner and

that's my role in life and instead of you being transactional you actually recognize the gift that it is to people oh yeah right yeah and you know it sucks that maybe your siblings get together because they live closer and they don't include you and it does hurt and feeling a little bit of pain like that means your mind and body is working properly yes right it's a sign that you're mentally well yeah it doesn't mean there's a sign that there's anything wrong with youh and so when you can say let them and then you say

Let me let me decide what I want to do about this you can have the conversation yeah and you might realize that they just click and you don't have as close as a relationship but then you get to decide how you value family and if you're going to bring different energy or if you're going to try a little bit harder because again you get to choose and when you realize how much power you have you see that through the way you think about it or you respond to it you actually can shift anything for the

better for sure and I'm really excited about this I wrote this um actually with my daughter who's 25 and it was an amazing experience because she was bringing a much different perspective and when we wrote the section about how you use the let them Theory with love she started researching The Breakup section because the fact about love is people choose who and how they love and sometimes they won't choose you but you also get to choose who and how you love and how you're going to create it and people forget that and so we get

to the part about when a relationship is ending and her boyfriend of two years breaks up with her and she the book like this is hor just rip this up I have to let them walk out the door I have to let them believe this is a of like just like and it was this unbelievable experience because when somebody that you love is grieving or going through heartbreak or struggling you would jump in front of a car to take their pain away and the Le them Theory and the experience of this book taught me that

the best thing I could do was to let her grieve to let her be heartbroken to let her go through her process you know I think about it this way like arm around somebody you're not blocking and tackling you've got your arm around somebody but if she's on the floor sobbing let her because she needs to you know if we need to remove the photos from the family thing because this was a two-e long relationship because that is actually a huge recommendation that I make this book that you've got to follow a 30-day rule of

zero contact zero photos zero videos because you're not just letting them leave you have to unlearn the patterns of your life yes that were with them yeah it's it's a withdrawal like anything else yes and any sign of that person actually triggers the old patterns in your nervous system and it delays your ability to move through it absolutely and it's impossible when you're in it to just let them move on because every part of your wiring and programming you're going to want to check their location you're going to want to listen to The Voice Memos

you're going to want to saturate yourself because the life that you wanted is over and you're either going to trap yourself in a life that you're no longer in by watching their life play out from afar and you're going to keep re-triggering these patterns in your nervous system because you're going to keep this person in your life even though they walked out the door which is why you have to let them and then you've got to let me do the hard part which is I get to choose how I'm going to move through this and

the research is also really empowering it gets better for the majority of people 71% of the people start to feel better by 11 weeks that's the that's number 11 weeks 11 weeks and you may feel better in 11 days what happens at 11 weeks what happens at 11 weeks if you're not cyberstalking somebody is that you've actually allowed your body to break the old patterns right see the reason why when you're going through a heartbreak and uh heartbreak and breakups are just like death that's what they are for sure because you're grieving what's no longer

there the life you had the life you could have had yes and aside from the 30-day rule which is remove like do not look at voice memos location social nothing no photos because it triggers everything to stay alive in you but during those 30 days what's going to happen is every time you wake up you're going to feel them there because your body remembers that doesn't mean that's a sign you should get back together yeah that's actually a sign that you're unlearning something let those memories come up let your nervous system process this every time

you have news in your life you're going to want to reach out to them why because that was the pattern that doesn't mean you should yeah so you've got to do the let them leave and let me remind myself I'm going through this process and every day that you do that you're actually unlearning these patterns and by the time you get to about 30 days you feel less intoxicated another huge recommendation is do something in your bedroom like paint a wall move the bed do something because you spent a lot of time there so walking

back into it is like a graveyard of your old life and it can be very triggering and so she did that and the 11we Mark is important because what's happening is you're now starting to create new patterns as you've let them leave you're now letting me move on you're letting me take the actions that show me that my life is moving forward and my therapist and and Davin who's the smartest woman i' human being I've ever met she said you know Mel the the thing for Sawyer to ask herself is if she knew that the

love of her life were literally just a couple months away what would you do right now with this period of time and when you think about it that way because again as long as you're holding on to somebody who already left you actually are not open to meeting anybody else that is beautiful that idea of what would you look like what would you be thinking how would you behave if the love of your life was two months away yeah or two years or a year away or whatever you see because we think because when somebody

leaves that you love you think you're unlovable you actually think you're never going to find it again you hate yourself that's why most of the advice about this is complete go love yourself how the hell am I going to go love myself when the person I love more than anything just left me mhm I hate myself I despise myself I am terrified of the day that they're going to meet somebody yeah I'm never going to find that again I'm never G to have sex like that again I'm not like you hate yourself and so telling

somebody to just go on a Revenge diet or love yourself it's horrible instead I want you to face reality they left let them and then let me grieve and follow my therapist an davin's advice you have to do a 30-day detox and if you are somebody that's been holding on to somebody that left a year ago I guarantee you you have not gone 30 days without listening to a voice memo or looking at a photo you are keeping them alive which is keeping you trapped in something that's dead and your inability to let them go

and let them leave and then let me accept reality and start moving forward and let me believe that the person that I am meant to meet they are in the future they're not in my past and by the way even if you kind of hold out secretly hope it might be the person from the past it might be but they're not the version from back there and neither are you and neither are you and so you have to again come back to where the power is it's not in getting them back it's not in making

them jealous because if you focus on making that person jealous or blah where are you putting your power then and something you can't control mhm you have to put your power here and the reason why I love the 30day rule and the 11we Mark is because it's the truth this is going to suck the only way to get over someone and to go through heartbreak is to go through it there's no avoiding it there's only delaying it and we delay it because we don't want to accept people as they are yeah when somebody breaks up

and leaves or cheats on you they have just revealed who they are for sure and your inability to accept it instead of explaining it away and living in a fantasy up here that's what's keeping you from having and creating the love you actually deserve and want in your life I was talking to a friend recently and this everything you're saying is just so true and it's it's resonating so strongly to me I was talking to a friend recently and she was saying to me I wish my friend would just be honest with me I wish

this person who's just screwed me over just let me down would just be honest with me rather than pretending to be my friend and I said to them they are being honest with you them lying is showing you their truth that's how much they value you them pretending to be your friend is their truth yeah you don't want the truth actually you want them to lie to you and you want them to be someone else you want them to become the honest person but they're showing you that they're not an honest person that is the

truth it's true and here's the other thing why are you pretending to be this person's friend yeah and not bringing it up why is it on them to tell you the truth let them lie to you and then come to the let me part yeah if aren't you pretending that you're their friend if you haven't brought this up and you're actually holding that in your head right there's so many applications of this so many just incredible and the thing that I'm really really excited about is that you know the other massive thing that I think

this is going to help people with is that one other way that you make people a massive problem is that you see somebody else's success or happiness or the things that they achieve in their life as somehow robbing you of yours yeah and the thing about life is that you're never playing against people you play with them and some somebody else's success happiness love like the things that they achieve it's in Limitless Supply MH and when you wrap your brain around the fact that happiness love money like all of it Limitless Supply so other people

can't block your way they actually lead the way and so if you let them lead the way and you see their wins not as your losses but you see it as an example to follow you now stop making other people a problem and you stop using them as an excuse for why you can't do what you're capable of other people don't block you you block your way M allow people to lead the way and the way that you do that is you say let them be successful let them get married let them have the baby

let them have the nice car because they're showing me what's possible and the cool thing about really embracing let them in that regard is that other people also show you the formula right yeah absolutely they show you exactly how to do something 100% but if you're so busy going oh well Jane launched a podcast and there's too many podcasts now I can't launch a podcast who's blocking you you correct you're capable of learning to be a better player in The Game of Life from other people yes so stop playing against them yeah and let them

show you the way Mel why is it so hard to make friends as we get older there is a massive shift that happens in adult friendship when you hit 20 that nobody sees coming the rules of friendship completely change when your 20's hit and I'm going to explain the rules when you're little and then we're going to talk about the rules of adult friendship so when you're little your entire life is organized around friendship and making it possible because you're with people your age all the time in class in sports so true you move in

groups CU you're on teams and you're in neighborhoods and you're always together you also celebrate the same Milestones you're hitting the same birthdays you're all talking about the next level of school or the this thing this summer you're watching the same movies because you're all the same age and so there's so much Synergy and relevance and the conditions to spend a ton of time together are there then you get to University and you spend even more time together and what happens when you hit your 20s right is that it moves from this big group sport

where you just kind of expect to be around your friends all the time you expect the group to get invited because that's what's always happened you expect to see them all the time cuz you do always see them all the time but then your 20s hit the rules change and what I call the great scattering happens everybody moves in different directions and friendship goes from group sport to individual sport you can no longer expect friendship you are no longer part of a group that is expected to be invited everywhere because everybody scatters and suddenly everybody's

on different timelines you're in different cities you're moving in different directions so there's no way to locate yourself inside your friend group and the only thing that's keeping you together from your friends from your little is a text chain that starts to go quieter and quieter quieter as people start to focus on the people in front of them and that brings me to two major shifts that I want you to embrace using the let them Theory number one you can no longer expect friendship you have to take a way more flexible approach and a more

proactive approach you got to let people come and go MH super important and then you got to let me take the actions to create the friendships I got to go first I got to be the one planning I got to seek out new people but there are three pillars of adult friendship based on Research that are also going to help you understand that when people come and go in your life 99% of the time it's not personal and you actually haven't lost them as a friend one of the three pillars is missing so the three

things that need to be required to have a friendship happen are the same three things that were around all the time when you were a kid number one proximity proximity matters tremendously proximity means who are you actually physically next to in fact they've done research Jay if you and I were in a dorm and we lived across the hall I don't I don't remember the percentages exactly but it's like 90% chance we're going to be friends interesting the poor person at the end of the hallway 10% chance that we're going to be friends with them

because of proximity even a matter of 50 feet makes a difference and so when you were little you were in proximity to people your age all the time all day exactly the research also shows that to have as an adult a kind of casual friend you need to spend approximately 70 hours with somebody to have a close friend 200 hours so when you're an adult that creates a big problem because who are you spending all your time with once you're 20 the American Time study shows that it's with people you work with so why aren't

we best friends with people at work because you have proximity and you're spending a lot of time together but here's the thing timing when you were little you were in the same timing of life with everybody yeah when you hit your 20s and it's now individual everybody's on different timelines some of your friends are getting married some are going to graduate school some are now pursuing jobs other people are moving out of the city into the city everybody's timing is now different and this also explains why you're almost never best friends with people at work

because the timing is off you're sitting next to people that are in very different times of their life you may like them a lot and you may be friends but you never spend time outside of work because they're at home with their family and you're going out with your buddies your age on the weekends and then that brings me to the third thing that needs to be present for a friendship to truly click and that's energy and the thing about energy is it changes and you can have fantastic energy with somebody and then if you

decide you're not drinking anymore the Energy's off yeah if you decide to get really focused on Fitness the Energy's off if you have very different political beliefs the Energy's off it's not personal it's one of these three pillars and it has helped me so profoundly Jay to realize that people come and go and it's a beautiful thing and you should let them and you should really if you have a friendship that starts to dissipate right ask yourself before you blame them or you blame you are any one of these three pillars missing are we not

near each other anymore is the timing of our lives off is there just something about the energy that hasn't clicked because you can't force those things but what I found is that when you recognize that those are really important factors to your connection to someone else that if a friendship starts to fade for me it's so easy to say let them and I don't wish anybody bad I literally wish people well because the other thing that I've learned and you know being 56 I've had a lot of friends Come and Go in different phases of

my life that you would be startled by how many people from your past that you no longer quote consider friends because you haven't seen them in a very long time or things just got weird if you actually called them they'd pick up the phone they would if you texted them the research shows that when you get a surprise text from somebody that you haven't heard from in a long time the amount of joy that you feel and so I want you to consider if you're very lonely right now that there's actually probably hundreds of people

from your past that still consider you a friend MH and if you take the approach that I'm talking about which is friendship is your responsibility you need to go first let me create the friendship and the connection that I want and you can start by literally taking a look through your past and thinking about people that you remember fondly and just sending them a text and you will be startled by what comes back because they're there they haven't actually gone anywhere the connection is still there and oftentimes even if you've had somebody where something's been

off again let them yeah and wish them well and there will be a time I promise you where the timing or proximity or energy comes back around again yeah and often you're so right when when I'm as I'm listening to your talk I'm just thinking of how conscious we have to be with all of our relationships the ones that matter to us the ones that we want to invest in and it's what you said there was we were actually dealt such a tough card in the fact that basically from the moment you joined school at

4 till the moment you were 21 if you went to college you basically didn't have to make really any major decisions or think about the next step because you went from seventh grade to e8th grade to nth grade to 10 whatever it is right and so then all of a sudden you're in the world at 21 yeah or 18 if you didn't go to college and you all of a sudden now have to figure out what to do for the next 50 60 years all structure of your life just evaporated disappears the hardest there is

no structure and it makes no sense and as I'm hearing you talk it sounds like to me that it would have been harder to watch your daughter have to practice the let them Theory than it is for you to practice the let them theory yes when she was going through her breakup would you say that's in your deep vicinity of people that you're close with the hardest way you've had to practice to let them do yes the hardest way is when you recognize the potential in somebody and you see them struggling and when you recognize

that somebody that you love deeply is in pain when you're saying let them you're not abandoning somebody you're actually recognizing their ability to meet these difficult moments in their life with you by their side and I think when I think about supporting versus enabling because the more you kind of step in and rescue people from their feelings or from the consequences of their decisions or their inaction the more people continue to drown and their problems I really believe that I do too I really believe that and it's a very very difficult balance because you're going

to hit your frustration and rock bottom and worry with somebody before they do and somebody said something in the addiction Community I can't remember who said this but it just is so true that somebody only gets sober when getting drunk is harder than facing the thing that they don't want to face mhm and the same is true with any like really motivating yourself to get in better shape recognizing that you have a pattern of dating people that are emotionally abusive and taking a break and really digging deep into the issue that keeps coming up for

you that's really hard that's why we avoid it yeah and so when you see somebody that you know is capable or who deserves better wanting that for them is a form of loving them I like you should want the people in your life that you care about to be doing better and you I hate seeing somebody with so much potential squandering it but again I'm going to come back to something that I learned from Dr Stuart ablon at Mass General Hospital people do well when they can and I want you to start to assume that

if somebody in your life is not doing well or if they're going through a challenge there is a skill that's missing or there is emotion that needs to be processed or there is pain that needs to be felt before they can Galvanize the ability to do the very difficult work to change and in the case of watching my daughter go through this heartbreak I mean I literally found myself Jay wanting to text you know her boyfriend and her boyfriend's mother like you know hey maybe we can like just because I want to fix it but

when you step in and fix it you literally demean someone else because I do know that she has the ability to move through this and so the way that I love thinking about support is this way the next time you have somebody in your life who is truly struggling whether it's in school or in relationships or with an addiction I want you to think how can I create an environment that supports their healing how not not stepping in and doing it it's rarely an issue of will like it's not willpower for people or the desire

it's actually more about skill MH and the ability and need to process things and do it on their own timeline right so how can you create an environment for that to happen and for me it meant removing any imagery it meant letting her stay up in her bedroom and every once in a while knocking on the door and being like do you need anything and allowing her to be in her pajamas for 4 days and be in a depressive State because guess what being in a depressive State and falling on the floor and crying it's

a sign she's mentally well that's what you do it's a sign that you're okay yes it would be scary if she wasn't feeling anything and then when you're ready you kind of put your armor on people and so how can you do this like when I when I when she was born actually Sawyer um I had severe postpartum depression Jay I had a very traumatic delivery lost a lot of blood and I just was so out of it that they put me on these drugs that turned me into a zombie I couldn't breastfeed her I

wasn't allowed to be alone with her I missed the first three and a half months of her life and nobody asked me if I needed help they showed up and created an environment where I could get better I had my parents drive out and just stay and they just did laundry and they cleaned and they did what needed to be done and people who are struggling they don't even know what they need and so don't ask somebody what you can do find something you can do show up with a meal walk into your brother's bedroom

and pull open the curtains in the morning when he's struggling with depression so the sunlight comes in create a playlist for somebody pick them up like don't say you want to meet at yoga say here's what we're going to do I'm G to come over on Saturday and pick you up and we're going to go to that yoga class or I'm going to come over on Sunday and I'm going to watch the kids and the dog so you can go to the park and read a book for two hours that's how you create an environment

for someone else to get better and the other way that you do it is instead of judging you're going to let them be who they are you're going to let them struggle and then you're going to use this technique that's incredibly effective I labeled at the Abc so that I could remember it first you're going to apologize so let's talk about like this is an issue I had with our son he didn't seem motivated so I would constantly be like why aren't you motivated why don't you study hard why are you doing this it didn't

work yeah it doesn't work no and so I finally a you're going to apologize I'm sorry I'm pressuring you I'm sorry I'm questioning you and then a you're going to ask an open-ended question how do you feel about this issue and it doesn't matter what they say because you're probably asking for the first time how they actually feel about the issue MH and then you're going to ask a really important question you're going to ask what would you like to do about about it if anything and their answers don't matter because what you're doing by

apologizing is you're removing the pressure that you're bringing and now by asking these questions and I like to do this in a carj because they're trapped and because you're both looking ahead so it's not as confrontational and there's something in the science around forward ambulation and the movement that actually opens up your thinking and then you ask you know what do you want to do about it if if anything and what happens is you're now revealing this tension because people that are stuck know it people that are struggling know it people who are failing at

school know it nobody wants to fail it's not like people are trying to be depressed it's not like people are trying to be very unhealthy people know when they're letting themselves go you don't need to remind them but have you ever asked them what would you like to do about this if anything what happens in that question with they answered or not is that friction between what they know to be true about what they desire and where they actually are Rises up that is the organizing intrinsic motivation that somebody needs to want to do better

and then you got to do B back off that's the hard part let them let them let them let them let me shut up let them let them let me not roll my eyes let me and people need space to have it be their idea and I'll give you a quick example I used to be the kind of person that would eat like that would eat lunch and work on my computer I'm like tapping on my computer shoving a sandwich on my throat right and there would be this colleague that would stand up and go

for a walk most days and every time she came back she'd have smile on her face and she' take her earbuds off and she'd then get back to work and this would go on for weeks and then finally one day Jay I look up outside and it's a nice day and I think I think I'm going to go for walk now here's the interesting thing I didn't credit her I thought it was my idea her example influence my desire to do it the people that you are close to need enough distance from you this is

why you have to back off for that friction yeah and that stirring to sit with them in order for them to feel safe to be able to take the step forward and then you better keep backing off because you do not want to be like oh I saw you inent in your T like that's going to no and so you keep going let them and then the C part is any small thing you celebrate it in a non-passive aggressive way and you actually model the change you can't ask somebody to stop drinking while you're pouring

yourself a glass of wine for sure you can't ask somebody else to get healthy if you're sitting on the couch eating chips so you model the change and make it easy just like my colleague did with the walk and just like you and I constantly buy things online because it looks so easy and fun your behavior and backing off and that tension inside them actually creates the space for somebody to truly want to change and that's how it's done Mel I want to thank you so deeply for writing this book The let them Theory a

life-changing tool that millions of people can't stop talking about it's true uh Mel I've learned so much from you today honestly and you've connected so many dots to me I know I'm going to be recommending this book to so many people in my life because I really believe it's the thing that's holding them back yeah I want to thank you for writing it I want to thank you for pouring your heart into it I want to thank you for just showing up so brilliantly and emphatically today as you always do and I'm just so grateful

to call you a friend and grateful to know you in this journey called life and genuinely so thankful that you're constantly trying to find really simple practical rules that all of us can apply in our lives to make it easier and make it a bit more livable but also Thrive so thank you so much truly well I'm not as smart as you Jay so I can't do the intellectual stuff I got to find simple things you kidding me well you know I have to tell you I really appreciate simple is beautiful and I truly accept

and feel how heartfelt and honest those words are because this is I think my legacy I do I think that this is um the thing I was supposed to figure out and leave the world I believe it too thank you thank you the best so are you if you love this episode you'll love my interview with Dr gabo mate on understanding your trauma and how to heal emotional wounds to start moving on from the P everything in nature grows only where it's vulnerable so a tree doesn't grow where it's hard and thick does it goes

where it's soft and green and vulnerable