The self-help phenom’s new book is all about letting others do as they may. Can she follow her own advice?
As Mel Robbins tells it, the concept for her new self-help book, The Let Them Theory, came to her on the night of her son Oakley’s junior prom. Overcome by the realisation that her youngest child would soon be leaving her, Robbins coped by micromanaging the scene. She pressured Oakley to give his date a corsage. Fretted about the weather. Worried that the teenagers hadn’t made a dinner reservation.
Fed up, her daughter Kendall finally snapped: “Mom, if Oakley and his friends want to go to a taco bar for pre-prom, LET THEM,” Robbins writes in the book. If they get hungry? Let them! Soaked? Let them! Let them, let them, let them.
This mantra of radical acceptance was instantly soothing to Robbins, who – by dint of her iron will and innate confidence – has emerged as one of social media’s go-to motivational influencers (a term she loathes, incidentally). Robbins began repeating it whenever she felt stressed about other people’s thoughts or actions. In May 2023, her minute-long video about the term took off on social media; some of her followers even got “let them” tattoos.
“Let them” is not the first time Robbins, 56, has spun a catchphrase into content gold. She shot to fame more than a decade ago with her “five-second rule,” the idea that whenever you feel an impulse to act on a goal – whether something small, like getting out of bed when the alarm goes off, or big, like finally giving notice at work – you simply count down: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, then go! Do it. (The TEDx talk in which Robbins debuted that particular hack has been watched more than 33 million times, and she turned it into her first best seller.)
“There is an obsession with being smart, I think, in the thought leadership space,” Robbins said when we met in November at the loftlike headquarters of her media production company in Boston’s seaport district. “And I would rather be useful.”
If Robbins looks familiar, with her bright blonde hair and signature dark-rimmed glasses, the algorithm may have sent you one of her pithy takes on life’s problems – like how to stop trying to “fix” your parents, or her frequently memed exhortation against spending money on stupid … stuff. Maybe you saw a recent video of her – clad in a sports bra and hot pink hair rollers – weeping about her recent sit-down with Oprah Winfrey, who declared The Let Them Theory one of the best self-help books she has ever read.
Reid Tracy, the chief executive of Hay House, Robbins’ publisher, said the title, out December 24, has more than 100,000 preorders ready to ship the first week – a record for the company.
The book’s premise? If you stop trying to manage other people’s opinions, actions and moods, then your wellbeing and relationships will improve. Friends hanging out without you? Let them! Relatives griping about you? Let them! Your date ghosts you? Let them! Don’t stress about what you cannot control; focus on what you can.
If that seems like a thin concept for a 300-plus page book – so obvious, it’s laughable – well, that’s kind of the point.
“Yeah, it is a cheap trick – and it works,” Robbins said. “So you can criticise it or be cynical all you want, I don’t care.”
Who is Mel Robins?
On the morning of my visit, it was clear that going with the flow is not Robbins’ natural modus operandi. She was waiting for me when I stepped into her office, with its soaring windows, exposed brick and millennial beige decor. She swept me into a firm hug, before prompting her staff to give me a round of applause.
Robbins took pains to introduce me to every member of the staff of 17 who work in the Boston office. At one point, she fussed briefly over a colleague who declined to partake in a catered lunch. (“Let them!” Robbins reminded herself with a shrug.)
Robbins’ primary focus these days is on her growing media company. Its crown jewel is The Mel Robbins Podcast – a mix of interviews with doctors, therapists and researchers; personal stories; and motivational tactics. It debuted in 2022 and was an instant hit. Last year, it was the sixth-most-followed show on Apple podcasts. And it had the second-most-shared podcast episode of 2024 – a conversation with Dr Mary Claire Haver, “the menopause queen”.
Over the years, Robbins has held many other roles, including lawyer and CNN legal analyst, life coach and radio show host. She even had a short-lived TV talk show. Just don’t call her an influencer.
“I think everybody’s an influencer, because your behaviour influences other people, and so do your words and so do your emotions,” she said. But she said the popular definition of an “influencer” made her bristle: “The fact that 50% of kids today want to be one? I wish they would want to be teachers.”
Still, Robbins has never been shy about sharing her point of view.
Raised in North Muskegon, Michigan, Robbins attended Dartmouth, and then Boston College for law school. She tried working in a public defender’s office, and then a large corporate firm, before deciding she hated practising law. At 31, she hired a life coach who told Robbins that she would make a good life coach. Robbins wasn’t necessarily surprised; she said she had always been the type of friend people came to for advice. (In a 2007 interview with Boston Magazine, Robbins described herself as “a brilliant and gifted guide” who had been “given a tremendous intuition”.)
“I think one of my secret weapons, honestly, is that I’m not a therapist,” she told me. “I’m not a researcher. I’m a person who is trying to do a little bit better, and I’m a person who has been in really scary places. And I think we are all equipped to help the person we used to be.”
In her late 30s, when Robbins was pregnant with her third child, her husband, Chris, was laid off from his tech job. He then started a pizza restaurant chain that failed during the economic crash in 2008. The couple went into a financial free fall, Robbins said, and she began drinking heavily. She blacked out frequently because she mixed alcohol and Zoloft, a medication she had been taking for decades to treat anxiety. But she was treating the wrong problem, she said. At 47, Robbins received a diagnosis of ADHD and dyslexia. (Oakley got the same diagnosis around that time.) It was an emotional turning point for Robbins.
“When you don’t get the intervention you need, what is the primary symptom? Anxiety,” she said. Now, she relies on her therapist (“I love therapy!”) and the drug Adderall. She has posted about both, reminding her audience that medication is a tool, not a crutch.
In the Mel Robbins universe, every experience and every vulnerable moment offers a lesson. And her content machine feeds itself. On Instagram (where she has seven million followers) or TikTok (2.7 million followers), her audience is going to get a quick hit of encouragement, she said, something they might share with a friend. If a post “goes crazy,” she said, “we turn it into a podcast episode”. And if that episode goes viral, Robbins might turn it into a series – or in the case of “The Let Them Theory,” a book.
What does Mel Robbins know?
The first half of the “let them” idea is about freeing yourself from the burden of trying to manage other people. As for the second half, Robbins turns to another concept: “let me”.
It goes like this: after releasing what you cannot control, you say “let me” and take responsibility for your next steps. Without that idea, you run the risk of simply shutting down and isolating yourself, the book warns.
Robbins recounted, for instance, how distraught she felt when she saw friends posting on social media about a weekend trip they went on without her. Instead of spiralling, she reminded herself: “let them” do their thing. Then she told herself “let me” be more proactive about making plans with friends and set better boundaries with work to make time for socialising.
As I learned during our time together, the concept goes against her tendency to orchestrate any situation. And Robbins knows she can drive those closest to her nuts. “The people that use The Let Them Theory the most are the people that work with me, and my family,” she said. “And I’m cool with that.”
As her popularity has grown, so has her family’s exposure. All three of her children have gone on the podcast to talk about their lives: Oakley talked about anxiety, Kendall discussed her impostor syndrome and Robbins’ daughter Sawyer discussed heartbreak. Chris, who is now a death doula and runs a spiritual wilderness retreat for men, has shared stories about his struggles with depression. On his Instagram account, he pushed back against criticism that his wife had bullied him into disclosing his diagnosis.
“There are things that need to be private as you’re working through them with a person,” Robbins said. “And then there are stories and experiences that are extraordinarily valuable for other families to hear.”
For the Mel Robbins machine to work, family buy-in is essential. The personal is professional – and Robbins’ studied candour is vital to what makes her tick.
“I am not running clinical trials,” she said. “I don’t even know the specific types of research styles.” In the book, though, she uses the word “research” somewhat liberally to refer not only to the work of others, but to her own anecdotal data. She also calls “let them” a “proven method”.
Several psychologists and psychiatrists told me that the self-help world has always been full of people who have no clinical expertise, but offer advice nonetheless. That is not necessarily disqualifying, they said, but a healthy dose of scepticism is a good thing.
“I think what we want is for those influencers to be responsible,” said Dr Robert Waldinger, a psychiatry professor at Harvard Medical School who has appeared on Robbins’ podcast. “And I think she tries to be really responsible.”
The “let them” idea is not a panacea, he said, but it is a “pretty darn good guiding principle for a lot of things”.
“I think what Mel is saying is that, most of the time, life goes better if we let people make their own choices,” Waldinger said.
Rocket science it is not. But Robbins doesn’t care.
“I am so overwhelmed half the time, and busy, and ADHD, I don’t remember something that’s complicated,” she said. “If it’s simple, I can remember it. Which means, if I can remember it, I can use it – and tools only work if you use them. I think complicated solutions are stupid.”
And if people don’t like what she has to say? Well, let them.
This article originally appeared in the New York Times.
Written by: Catherine Pearson
Photographs by: Tony Luong
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