We Regret It Too Late! - 5 Life Traps Keeping You From Peace, Purpose & Meaning | Mel Robbins

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 0:00 I wanted to start, Mel, with five questions. In the introduction of your new book, The Let Them Theory, you share these questions that you've been asking yourself for years-

Mel Robbins 0:13 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 0:13 ... and you put it to the reader that there's a benefit in them asking these questions of themselves. So if it's okay with you, I wanna go through each of these five questions, and I'd love your commentary on why it's such an important question.

Mel Robbins 0:27 Okay.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 0:27 Okay? First question. Why am I so afraid of failing?

Mel Robbins 0:33 Yeah, that's a big one. Um, just stop as you're listening right now and consider the truth that there is something that you would like to change or try in your life, like maybe you wanna write a book, maybe you wanna start a YouTube channel or a podcast, maybe you've thought about changing careers. And yet even though you have thought about this, you have seen other people do it, you maybe have felt a little jealous, for some reason you're not doing it. And there's a reason why. And the reason why is because you are worried that if you were to try it, you might fail. And if you realize that this is something that's happening in your life, that you wanna become financially secure, this is something that you really dream about, you would love to, but you don't even get started, it's because you don't believe you're gonna be successful.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:37 You're afraid that you're gonna fail. And so what I started to see in my own life is that there were a lot of things that I wanted to be doing, but I was stopping myself from doing them. There were a lot of things I wanted to try.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:52 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:53 But I either thought it was gonna be too hard, it wasn't gonna work out, so why even bother? And what's interesting about being afraid of failing is why would it matter? And that gets to the deeper truth about what's underneath it. You're not afraid of failing. You're actually afraid of other people seeing you fail.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:17 Mm.

Mel Robbins 2:18 You're afraid of feeling inferior to other people who tried the same thing-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:24 Mm-hmm

Mel Robbins 2:25 ... and it worked out for them, but it's not working out for you.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:29 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 2:30 And when you start to realize that, my God, it's not about failing at all. It's about the opinions of what other people are going to say about me, what must be true about me-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:44 Mm-hmm

Mel Robbins 2:44 ... in the eyes of other people if I go after something and I look stupid or it doesn't work out-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:51 Mm

Mel Robbins 2:52 ... or it's a giant eye roll to everybody. So you're not afraid of failing at all. You're afraid that other people's opinions will be that you're a failure. And when you go deep like that and you realize, wait, well, that stinks because, number one, I'm never gonna be able to control what other people think-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 3:14 Mm-hmm

Mel Robbins 3:14 ... and I'm allowing that fear of something I can't control, 'cause people are gonna think whatever they're gonna think about you.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 3:21 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 3:21 They're gonna have whatever opinions. Half of them are so consumed in their own lives they're not even paying attention to what you're doing anyway. But you're allowing that fear?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 3:29 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 3:30 I mean, this is one of the reasons why a lot of people, you know, who wanna learn how to make money online, or who wanna learn how to do something with social media, or who wanna learn how to market themselves or put themselves out there don't do it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 3:43 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 3:44 It's because of this nagging sense that if I were to take this risk, if I were to make this change, if I were to be so bold as to just say, "I'm gonna take my, my social media and I'm gonna use it to market my real estate business instead of just posting photos of my kids," that other people are gonna think something, and that makes me a failure.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 4:07 Yeah. It's so powerful, Mel. There is actually a story in your book about Molly, your friend, the interior designer, that really kinda speaks to this.

Mel Robbins 4:18 Yeah. So this is a story about... And look, here's my belief. You and I share this belief in the limitless potential that you have inside you to change your life.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 4:29 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 4:30 You have fundamentally changed who you are, how you live your life, the way that your life looks, your career over the past decade.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 4:39 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 4:39 I've done the same thing over the last 15 years. There is not a chance that, in hell that you could come up with a excuse or a reason that would make me say, "You're right. You have no power here. You're right. There's nothing you can do." There's always something you can do. And oftentimes what I've found in my own life is that I've spent so much time and energy looking at whatever everyone else is doing, that I am not paying attention to what is within my control, which is my actions, how I spend my time, my response-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 5:15 Yeah

Mel Robbins 5:15 ... to things, what I do, what I don't do. And so that brings us to the story about Molly. So Molly, not a real name, I'll just say that to protect people, you know, from feeling like, "Oh my God, I j- I'm in a book."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 5:26 [laughs]

Mel Robbins 5:27 Um, so... And I've had, like, seven people go, "Am I Molly?"

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 5:31 [laughs]

Mel Robbins 5:31 And they're not interior designers. Because the experience that I'm about to explain is a universal feeling.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 5:39 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 5:39 So Molly, in the story, is an interior designer, and she calls me one night and she's all upset about something. I'm like, "What's wrong?" Like, it sounds like something really bad's happened. She's like, "Oh, my gosh. Well," and she goes on to tell me this story. And there is a woman that is in her friend group, and it's not really a woman that Molly's good friends with. It's a woman that's kind of annoying. She's a little overbearing, a little bit of a bragger, and she has now gotten into the design business. And Molly has gotten her certifications. Molly has been in business for 10 years.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 6:12 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 6:12 Molly has, uh, employees. She has big projects. I mean, she has a lot to be proud of.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 6:18 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 6:19 So all of a sudden, this woman from the neighborhood gets into the design business, and now their whole friend group is just going on and on-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 6:28 [laughs]

Mel Robbins 6:28 ... and on about how talented this irritating woman is, and as Molly hears about this, she of course checks out the woman's website, checks out the woman's social media. It's beautiful.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 6:42 [laughs]

Mel Robbins 6:43 It's modern, and Molly's thinking, "I haven't updated my website in six years, and I know I've needed to."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 6:51 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 6:51 "I'm not doing anything on social, and now all of a sudden, this chick, who's not even a real designer, and who, by the way, these photos are her house?"

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 7:01 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 7:01 "And she didn't even decorate her house." And now every- Like, and so Molly loses her mind, and here's the point of the story. For years, Molly has known that she needs to get serious about marketing her business better. For years, Molly has been talking about updating her website. For years, Molly has been-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 7:24 Mm

Mel Robbins 7:24 ... talking about the fact that she needs to start to get serious about social media. She hasn't done it, and now all of a sudden, this irritating woman comes along, and she is doing the exact thing that Molly has been stopping herself from doing.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 7:40 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 7:41 And this is very important because when Molly was like, "What should I do? You know, is she gonna steal my clients? Like, everybody thinks she's a better designer." Again, now I'm worried about people's opinions about this woman versus me. I'm also mad at myself-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 7:57 Yeah

Mel Robbins 7:58 ... because I'm seeing somebody who I know has no advantage, no trust fund, no special anything. She's done exactly what I've been keeping myself from doing, and now I don't have any excuses. Because if this chick can do it, there's nothing stopping me but me.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 8:16 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 8:16 And so she's like, "What should I do?" I'm like, "You should pick up the phone and thank her." Because this irritating woman is in your life for a reason. She's there to make you angry. She's there to make you jealous. She is there to stir something up inside of you that you need-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 8:34 Yeah

Mel Robbins 8:34 ... to recognize that your excuses are BS, that you can find time. You can figure this out. You haven't made this a priority, but the fact that you're angry and jealous of this person actually means that this matters to you. So it's time to get out of your way, it's time to stop with the excuses, and it's time to just make a plan and figure this out. And it brings me to a point, Dr. Chatterjee, that was so life-changing to me, because I was basically, when I was in my 20s, 30s, and even into my 40s, I was a walking red flag as a friend.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 9:10 [laughs]

Mel Robbins 9:10 Because I hadn't done enough work internally, and when you're insecure about yourself-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 9:16 Yeah

Mel Robbins 9:16 ... when you are in a state of struggle or lack, you cannot give other people what you do not have to give to yourself.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 9:25 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 9:25 And so I was the kind of person, Dr. Chatterjee, where, you know, I, I would see somebody else winning in life, and I was jealous. I could not authentically be happy for somebody, even the people that I love, even the people that I know work hard, even the people that I know deserve it, because I was in such a state of lack. And what was interesting to me about this story about Molly and learning The Let Them Theory and starting to use it in my life is that no one can take anything that's meant for you. No one can. Only you can do that to yourself.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 10:05 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 10:06 See, this woman that all of a sudden starts posting beautiful things on social media and starts a design business and is doing all these things that you've talked yourself out of doing, she's not taking anything from you.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 10:18 Yeah, exactly.

Mel Robbins 10:19 I never knew that. See, I would see somebody else's wins as my loss. I would see somebody else having a brand-new kitchen or a beautiful new house that they deserved, that they worked for, and I'd walk in, and I'd, you know, kinda fake smile as I'm getting a tour, and it looks like the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in magazines, and then I would get in the car, and then because I was so insecure and lacking, you know, I, I, I first of all couldn't be authentically happy for that person, 'cause I'm like, "If they're getting this, it means I can't." And then I'd get in the car, and I'd turn to my poor husband and, and blame it on him. "Why couldn't you have gone into finance? Why did you have to be a nice guy that cared for people and doesn't make m-"

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 11:04 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 11:04 Like what, you know, like as if it's his fault. And here's the message that I have about other people's success. Number one, other people will never block your way. They lead the way.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 11:17 Sorry to interrupt, but to make sure you're taking action after watching this video, I've created a free seven-step action plan to help you build the life that you want. It contains the seven biggest takeaways from this powerful conversation, with a step-by-step action plan to make sure that you are making lasting change. Instead of spending loads of time trying to figure out what exactly you should do, just click on the first link in the description box below or scan the QR code here.

Mel Robbins 11:53 If somebody else has a beautiful kitchen or a brand-new podcast or they've got a wonderful relationship with their kids or they've turned their health around-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 12:01 Mm-hmm

Mel Robbins 12:01 ... and they've lost a bunch of weight, that means you can do it, too.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 12:04 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 12:05 But if you pour time and energy- Into watching them and to allowing your jealousy and your insecurity to consume you, you're wasting the very energy and time that you need to focus and wake up every day and chip away at working on the things that you want.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 12:26 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 12:26 And this is the biggest revelation. Like, you know, a lot of us don't feel like we have any power, and there were times in my life where I felt like I had zero power, too. But what I've come to realize is that you will never take control of your life until you stop trying to control everybody else's.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 12:44 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 12:45 You will never feel powerful in your life until you stop giving your power away. And if you're sitting there listening to my voice or watching us on YouTube right now and you're thinking, "But Mel, I don't have any power," baloney. You have so much power and currency. Your most, your biggest power is your time and your energy, and you talk so much about energy and your health. And I'm gonna tell you something. If you're exhausted, if you're not achieving your goals, if you can't catch a break, if you're constantly overwhelmed, you're not the problem. The problem is the power you give to everybody else.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 13:22 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 13:23 The power you give to their thoughts, to their actions, to their moods, to their expectations. Every time you allow somebody else's behavior to impact you or you allow their emotions to bother you or you allow their opinions or the fear of their opinions to stop you or you make it your job to make people happy, you are giving power to other people. And it took me until I was 54 years old to realize that, holy cow, there's a different way to live.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 13:54 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 13:55 And the different way to live is to just let people. Let, let them have their thoughts, let them have their opinions, let them have their business and their success and their brand-new kitchens. Let them have their disappointments and their expectations. Let them.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:06 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 14:08 I gotta focus on me. Let me remind myself that I got power here-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:13 Yeah

Mel Robbins 14:13 ... because I can always control what I think, what I do, and how I process my emotions, and that's how I take responsibility for my life.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:21 Yeah. That's the big theme for me in your book. It's responsibility. It's about agency. It's about a sense of control that we can take back if we've given it away. I mean, that's such a key point, isn't it? One of the reasons we're so tired all the time is 'cause we waste, and I use that word intentionally, we waste so much of our own internal energy on things outside our control, on the reactions and opinions of other people.

Mel Robbins 14:53 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 14:53 And that Molly story, the reason I wanted to talk about it is because it's a universal story.

Mel Robbins 15:01 And here's what I wanna say about that. First of all, you said the key word here, responsibility. Responsibility is just the ability to respond.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 15:13 Hmm.

Mel Robbins 15:14 That's what responsibility is. You take responsibility for your life by understanding that you are in control of your ability to respond to life. And that-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 15:26 That's the secret to life

Mel Robbins 15:27 ... that's the secret. And-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 15:29 Right there

Mel Robbins 15:29 ... and this is not a new idea, by the way.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 15:31 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 15:31 Like, I did not create the idea that what's happening around you does not need to happen to you. I did not create the idea that your power is not in trying to control out there, it's in trying to c- control in here. This is stoicism. This is Buddhism. This is Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. And what I love about these two words, let them, is that it has all of its roots in this philosophy and truth that has been true about human beings and life since the beginning of time-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 16:07 Yeah

Mel Robbins 16:07 ... which is any time you try to control something that you can't control, it just creates stress and frustration for you.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 16:15 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 16:15 And the more you give up trying to control everything, the more control you gain. And I've spent my entire life getting sucked in, well, I shouldn't even say sucked in, 'cause that implies that somebody else pulled me in. I have spent my entire life-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 16:29 Pulling yourself in

Mel Robbins 16:30 ... allowing, pulling myself in, allowing myself to be involved in people's drama, affected by people's moods, frustrated by things that I can't control, scared about what people are doing, scared about their opinions, all of which I can't control. And these two words, just saying let them, it was like discovering there's a completely different way to live, because there is. When you learn how to detach, and this is another thing that the Let Them Theory really is. If you understand detachment theory or radical acceptance-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 17:02 Yeah

Mel Robbins 17:02 ... this is how you apply it in modern life. It's ancient wisdom and therapeutic modalities and some of the greatest spiritual teachings in a simple tool for a very frustrating and stressful moment in human history.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 17:21 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 17:22 So you can apply it. That's what this is. And so back to the Molly story. The interesting thing about jealousy is that I used to get consumed by jealousy. If I saw, you know, a group of people going away, I would be jealous I wasn't invited. If I saw somebody else getting, you know, the promotion I thought I deserved, I would be jealous. If I saw somebody getting the better shift if I was a waitress on Saturday night, I would be jealous and frustrated.

Mel Robbins 17:45 The thing about jealousy is that you can only be jealous of things that you actually want.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 17:54 Hmm.

Mel Robbins 17:55 And so if you're willing in those moments of jealousy, whether it is, you know, a lot of us see other people renovating their homes, right?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 18:04 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 18:04 Or having a nice car or, and you're like, "I'm jealous of that."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 18:08 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 18:09 Okay, great. Well, let's go a layer deeper. Because what if jealousy didn't mean that there's something wrong with you? What if jealousy is a signal from your values-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 18:18 Yeah

Mel Robbins 18:18 ... that there's something important that you're ignoring? That friend's brand-new kitchen that you're happy for her but you're super jealous about, okay, good. Let's go underneath that.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 18:28 Feels like it's a two-step process, what you're describing, where process one is understand that you're jealous.

Mel Robbins 18:36 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 18:36 Okay? And y- you know, I think one of the things people love about you, Mel, is how open you are, on your podcast, on social media, and in this book. You, you share very openly, I think towards the start-

Mel Robbins 18:46 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 18:47 ... about, I think it's a, an old friend of yours, and they had the most beautiful house-

Mel Robbins 18:52 Oh my God

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 18:52 ... and your kids loved hanging out there and-

Mel Robbins 18:54 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 18:54 ... you wanted to be happy, but you couldn't.

Mel Robbins 18:57 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 18:57 Right?

Mel Robbins 18:57 I was so jealous. I mean, I'm like, have you ever had an experience, Dr. Chatterjee, where you and your wife, you pull into somebody's house, you're like, "How do they have this much money?" The driveway's long, they've got the playroom with like four bunk beds, and you're like, "No wonder my kids are always here."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:12 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 19:13 And the thing about those moments is it's normal to feel that way.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:18 Mm.

Mel Robbins 19:19 And it's normal to struggle with these conflicting emotions of being both happy for your friends that worked hard and who are awesome and deserve this stuff, but to then also feel sorry for yourself and really jealous. And so if you then can use let them. Okay, let them have a better house than me. Let them have the most amazing bunk room for the kids. Let them enjoy this. Now let me go to the let me part. Let me really ask myself, what exactly am I jealous of?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:50 Mm.

Mel Robbins 19:51 What exactly is bothering me? Because, you know, I'm not jealous of somebody that has a penthouse in Dubai. I don't wanna live there.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 19:57 Mm.

Mel Robbins 19:58 It wouldn't even stir any emotion in me. But for the things that are meant for you-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 20:05 Mm

Mel Robbins 20:05 ... I believe jealousy is a message from your future self. I believe jealousy is such a kind of frustrating emotion that it is trying to organize the energy and friction that you need inside yourself-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 20:22 Yeah

Mel Robbins 20:23 ... to actually wake up and recognize that where you are is not where you want to be nor where you're meant to be.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 20:30 W- what I think it also says to me is the importance of honesty, right?

Mel Robbins 20:35 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 20:35 So when I say it's a two-step process, what I'm hearing from you, Mel, is this idea that you pull up to your friend's house-

Mel Robbins 20:40 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 20:41 ... and I appreciate you weren't able to do this 10 or 15 years ago, right? But you can now do it-

Mel Robbins 20:46 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 20:46 ... which is you'll pull up and step one is recognize that I'm not being happy for her. I can't be happy for her. This is ridiculous. She's my friend. But despite me loving her and wanting to spend time with her-

Mel Robbins 21:02 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 21:02 ... there's something inside of me that's raging. I think some people get stuck there, Mel-

Mel Robbins 21:07 Of course, I lived there for decades

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 21:09 ... in stage one-

Mel Robbins 21:09 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 21:09 ... without realizing, okay, stage one, be honest with yourself. Don't try and pretend you're not feeling that, which is what I think a lot of people do. But then move to stage two. You call it let me. The way I hear it from you, it's kind of like you recognize it, spend a bit of time understanding what precisely is it about this person and their life. But Molly can apply the same thing with her interior designer business, right?

Mel Robbins 21:33 Of course, of course.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 21:33 And then what can I now do about it?

Mel Robbins 21:36 Correct. 'Cause here's the thing. The let them theory is a very simple mindset tool, and it is ultimately about control and freedom. That's what it's about.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 21:47 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 21:48 See, I learned in researching this that there is a fundamental hardwired need, all human beings have it, the need to feel in control. You talk about it all the time. It is a survival instinct.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 22:04 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 22:04 And you need to feel like you're in control of your life, your future, your decisions, what's gonna happen at work today, the food that you eat, what you're gonna do this weekend. And here's the problem. The problem is everybody has the same need for control. And if you, Dr. Chatterjee, do something that annoys me or bothers me or hurts me or irritates me or frustrates me or makes me concerned about something, your behavior now makes me feel something that makes me feel the need to try to control something. Because your behavior, if you're worrying me, I now feel a little out of control.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 22:42 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 22:42 So I then make a fatal mistake. I then cross the line, and I try to change you.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 22:49 Exactly.

Mel Robbins 22:50 I try to get you to change your mind or change your opinion or do that thing I want you to do or to take away the hurt that I feel. And now I'm bumping up against your need to be in control of what you're doing. And that's how I lived my life for 54 years. I was constantly crossing over the line in my relationships and in life because I was trying to push other people or I was frustrated by other people or I was jealous of other people or I was angry about what they were doing or I was judgy about what they were doing. And you know, we all have s- we all have a family member or a parent who, you know, you know that any time that you go be with them they're gonna have their opinions and then you brace and so then you wish that they were different.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 23:36 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 23:37 This is a dynamic that's never gonna change until you change. Because one thing that you will never, ever, ever, ever be able to control is what another person believes, feels, thinks, says, or does. You're never gonna be able-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 23:51 Mm

Mel Robbins 23:51 ... to control that. And any time that you spend trying to is a waste of your time and energy. It just makes more frustration for you. And ironically what I also learned is that when you push other people 'cause you're worried about 'em, when you try to pressure other people to lose weight or get in better shape-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 24:08 Oh, man

Mel Robbins 24:08 ... or make more money, you're not motivating them. You're actually triggering their need to be-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 24:13 Yeah

Mel Robbins 24:13 ... in control of themselves, and you create resistance to the very change that you want. And I worked against this fundamental law forever. And so the let them theory is super simple. The first step is anytime anybody else- Whether it is the person that i- whether it's the government, or it's traffic, or it's one of your kids, or it's your boss's mood, or it's your in-laws, any time anybody's behavior bothers you, just say, "Let them." Because when you say, "Let them," you are cueing to yourself, "I recognize that I can't control the government. I can't control my spouse. I can't control my mother-in-law's mood. I can't control what my boss is doing right now. I can't control what the hea- let them. I can't control the fact that there's traffic right now on a Monday morning-"

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 25:01 Mm

Mel Robbins 25:01 ... which is super stupid, while everyone's trying... Let them. Because if I can't control it, when I say, "Let them," I'm putting up a boundary, and I'm saying, "This isn't worth my time and energy."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 25:16 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 25:17 And then you say the second part, which is, "Let me," and this is the more critical part, I think. This is the more powerful part because, "Let me," every time you say, "Let them," you separate yourself from allowing the world to impact you in a negative way, and you separate yourself from making it your responsibility-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 25:38 Yeah

Mel Robbins 25:38 ... to make other people happy or meet their expectations. And then when you say, "Let me," you now cue yourself every time, Dr. Chatterjee. There's only three things in your control ever. It's what you think right now about what's happening, it's what you do or don't do, and we forget that not doing something is often the more powerful choice.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 26:05 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 26:05 And number three, you get to control how you react to your own emotions in this moment. Do they rise and fall? Do you breathe through it? Do you use-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 26:16 Mm-hmm

Mel Robbins 26:16 ... your three, four, five breath?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 26:18 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 26:19 And some of the tools that you talk about all the time and one of the pillars, the four pillars of-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 26:23 Yeah

Mel Robbins 26:23 ... relaxation and settle yourself? Or do you allow your emotions to run you over like a freight train, and next thing you know, you've said something you've regretted, or you've spent 90 minutes-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 26:35 Yeah

Mel Robbins 26:35 ... have you written one of those emails where it's like-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 26:36 Yeah, come on

Mel Robbins 26:38 ... back, back, back. And you're like, "Best," and then Send. And does nothing but keep you in a stressed-out state. And so it really is a tool that you can use in endless ways to recognize when life is getting to you and that you're giving time and energy to something that you can't control, and you're now choosing to recognize it and say, "Let them," which means you protect your time and energy.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 27:08 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 27:08 And then when you say, "Let me," you remind yourself, "No matter how scary this is, no matter how tired I am, no matter how alone I am, let me remind myself through my attitude, my actions, and my ability-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 27:21 Yeah

Mel Robbins 27:21 ... to process my emotions, I actually can make this a little better. I have power. I have choice."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 27:27 Yeah. It, it's such a powerful tool. I mean, as you say, there are echoes of stoicism, philosophy, religion.

Mel Robbins 27:38 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 27:39 But what does that speak to? It speaks to the fact that this is a universal human truth. But I think what you've done so beautifully is by distilling it down to two words, two very simple words, two deceptively simple words, that's where the power comes. That's where the practicality comes. And, you know, one of the things I'm really passionate about at the moment, Mel, which I think this book speaks to, is this idea that stress has become common parlance now. You know, "How are you feeling?" "Yeah, I'm okay. I'm a little bit stressed." You know, that's how normal it is. But I don't think people realize that stress is twofold. There's external stress, the amount of emails you have to do, the things that your boss has asked you to do, your, the, the, you know, the things you have to do to take your kids to after-school club or for your parents, whatever it might be. But then arguably more important is what I call internal stress, the stress that we are generating ourselves, right? You talk about control. This is within our control. I am generating my own response to this neutral external event.

Mel Robbins 28:45 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 28:45 And I think the goal in this book for me is... And it's a goal that I've felt in my own life over the last few years. It's this idea that once you understand that there is an event, and in between that event and your response, there is that choice. You can choose. You can work on this skill, the let them skill-

Mel Robbins 29:05 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 29:05 ... right, over time and realize, "I don't have to let that thing stress me."

Mel Robbins 29:11 No.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 29:11 Like, as I shared with you just before we started recording, I'm in Boston at the moment-

Mel Robbins 29:15 Yep

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 29:15 ... to come on your podcast.

Mel Robbins 29:17 Yep.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 29:17 Okay? And we've recorded a great conversation, and we just flipped the mics. I'm meant to be flying home tonight, and as I was getting ready to come to your studio, I got a text message saying that the flight's canceled. The older version of me would have absolutely stressed out. "Oh, no, I've got to do this. Oh, no."

Mel Robbins 29:36 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 29:37 I've learned over the years there is zero point, right?

Mel Robbins 29:40 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 29:41 I could even apply let them. Let the airline cancel the flight, right?

Mel Robbins 29:45 They've already canceled it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 29:46 They've canceled it. I can't do anything.

Mel Robbins 29:47 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 29:48 If I generate a whole lot of internal stress, "Oh, what about this? What about that?" It is what it is, right?

Mel Robbins 29:53 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 29:53 Let's just see what the next best option is. You know how much I believe in the power of small, intentional routines to transform your health, and one of my absolute favorites at the moment is to take a break mid-morning and have a cup of Pique's Sun Goddess Matcha. This fantastic drink contains L-theanine, a natural compound that keeps me calm and focused, and EGCG catechins, which help kickstart lipid metabolism and curb cravings. One of the things I love the most about Pique and what really sets them apart is their commitment to quality. Their Sun Goddess Matcha is organic, ceremonial grade, and quadruple tested for pesticides, heavy metals, and mold, and it's been crafted by ninth-degree tea masters in Japan, ensuring it's the highest quality that you can find. If you're looking for a small change that can make a really big difference, I cannot recommend Pique's Sun Goddess Matcha enough. All you have to do is go to piquelife.com/livemore to get your 10% off. There's a reason that Pique has over 15,000 five-star reviews. Try it today and take advantage of their 30-day satisfaction guarantee. You either love it or you get your money back

Mel Robbins 31:18 You know, you know what's beautiful about this? I wanna unpack this because it's a simple example, but just like you simplify so many overwhelming topics for us, it would be so easy in the telling of that story to miss what you actually did there, and to understand how that micro decision in a moment that could be overwhelmingly stressful to take over. So when you get the news that the flight is canceled or that the person doesn't love you anymore or that you're getting laid off from your job, the thing has already happened.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 32:02 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 32:04 So, you know, sometimes people say to me, "Well, does this just mean you're a doormat? Does this just mean you don't care?" I'm like, "No, actually, you're a doormat right now, and you're allowing too many things to have too much power over you." So if the flight's already canceled, doesn't it seem kinda stupid-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 32:22 [laughs]

Mel Robbins 32:23 ... to allow something that's already happened to derail everything else?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 32:29 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 32:30 And if you do, then work yourself up in a state where the flight is canceled, now you're angry at the airlines, and you're upset about this, and it feels like this always happens to me, and now I'm gonna do this, and now-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 32:41 Pity party

Mel Robbins 32:42 Well, that and you have taught me, just as you have taught the person listening, that allowing that agitation means you've just created a physiological-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 32:54 Exactly

Mel Robbins 32:54 ... chain reaction in your body that has consequences for your health, for your focus, for your state of mind, for your happiness, for your ability to connect, which means something very important. When the airline cancels the flight and you say, "Let them. Let them," like, "They're doing what they need to do. I have no control of this. I'm just gonna let them," you shut down the stress response-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 33:18 Yeah

Mel Robbins 33:18 ... which means you are now able to meet this moment in a very different way.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 33:25 Exactly.

Mel Robbins 33:26 Because you're calm. You can think clearly. You're not rattled by it. And so one of the reasons why I'm so excited for people to have this tool is because even when life just deals the cruelest blow, somebody that you love dies, you lose your job, and it is the only income that you have, let them is not gonna take away the pain of what's happening. What it does is it helps you understand in those situations what part of this can I control?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 34:07 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 34:08 I can't control the cancer diagnosis. I just have to let them tell me the bad news. I have to let the health situation be what it is. And when you say that, what you're doing is you're protecting your fear and your stress response from something having too much of an impact on you.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 34:33 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 34:33 Because what you need in the scariest moments of your life and in the scariest moments in your neighborhood or your country or your marriage or your family, what you actually need is you need the ability to think clearly.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 34:49 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 34:50 You need the ability to be able to bring the best of you to this moment.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 34:56 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 34:57 And if you allow everything to derail you or stress you out, you're not actually going to be able to help other people. You're not going to be able to help yourself. You're not gonna be able to truly face whatever the thing is that you're scared to face.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 35:17 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 35:18 Life today is a death by a thousand cuts. I mean, I think everybody in the United States is bracing for four years of just irrational headlines and scary news. And, you know, my philosophy about this is why would I give somebody who is that uncontrollable any power? Like, there's nothing I can do to control somebody who is that narcissistic and out of control, so I just need to let them because they're gonna do whatever they're gonna do, whether you're talking about somebody that's in government or you're talking about your mother-in-law. Let them because they're gonna do what they're gonna do. That's not where your power is. And when you say let them, what's also amazing in your relationships is that you actually, for the first time, call out, "This is who this person is. This is who they're not. I see you exactly-"

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 36:04 Yeah

Mel Robbins 36:04 ... "as you are, so I'm not gonna brace-"

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 36:06 Yeah

Mel Robbins 36:06 ... " 'cause I know what I'm dealing with. I'm gonna let you be you." And then you say, "Let me. Let me focus on how I'm gonna respond to this." And how I'm not gonna respond to it is I'm not gonna sit there and stress myself out trying to control or predict what's gonna happen 'cause I already know what's gonna happen.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 36:21 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 36:21 'Cause people reveal who they are through their behavior.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 36:25 Yeah. I mean, there's so many threads to pull on there. I'm gonna go back to these questions-

Mel Robbins 36:31 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 36:31 ... just because I think they're so powerful.

Mel Robbins 36:33 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 36:33 Okay? So the first one you've covered beautifully, why am I afraid of failing? The second question that you asked yourself repeatedly, and you suggest that we ask ourselves, is... Why do I have a hard time asking for what I need?

Mel Robbins 36:49 Because you have been programmed to believe everybody else's needs and expectations are your responsibility to meet, and this is true for men and women. So if you're female, you were raised to believe that your parents' happiness is your job.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 37:07 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 37:07 You're probably leaning more into the people pleaser category. Like, you think if everybody's happy and nobody's disappointed, whether it's your friends or it's your partner or it's your parents or your kids, then you're good. So you are so focused on everybody else's needs and moods and happiness that you are last on the list, and by the time you collapse into bed, you have zero energy left for yourself.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 37:29 Mm.

Mel Robbins 37:30 So you have life inverted. That's why you have to a- Why do I have a hard time asking for what I need? Because I think my job is to actually give everybody what they need, and so I'm not even thinking about my needs.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 37:43 Mm.

Mel Robbins 37:43 For men, it's the same thing, exact same thing. My husband, Chris, is the founder of a men's retreat called Soul Degree, and he doesn't share the details about what people share, but over the years I've asked him, "What's, like, the big theme that comes up at the retreats that men talk about that, that I think people would find surprising?" And he said, "Oh, it's very clear. Number one theme." And I said, "What is it?" He said that the men that he works with say, "My role is as a provider. My job is to take care of everybody. My worth is in the work that I do and the money that I make. It's in the doing." And most of the men that he works with, they don't even know what they need. Now, when I first heard that, Dr. Chatterjee, I'm like, "That's not true," 'cause women feel that way. Well, guess what? Based on the research, that's exactly how everybody feels-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 38:41 Hmm

Mel Robbins 38:41 ... that it's your obligation to provide for or to take care of everybody else's needs. And because you have put everybody else's happiness and wellbeing and their, their wellbeing first, that's why you got nothing left for you, and that's why you might not even know what you need. Because you've been so focused on everybody else's-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 39:06 Mm-hmm

Mel Robbins 39:06 ... you've never even stopped and asked yourself, "Well, what do I actually need?"

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 39:11 How do you change that?

Mel Robbins 39:13 Well, you cannot get sober until you stop drinking. You cannot take care of your needs until you stop taking care of everybody else's-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 39:26 Mm

Mel Robbins 39:26 ... ahead of your own, and that doesn't mean you become a narcissistic, selfish-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 39:31 Mm

Mel Robbins 39:31 ... closed-off human beings. It means you start to create space and boundaries between you and other people, and you start to recognize every time you say, "Let them," and you say, "Let them be in a bad mood," you've just stopped yourself from stepping in and trying to put them in a good one.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 39:50 Hold on. This is really important. So we're talking about when we don't put our own needs first-

Mel Robbins 39:56 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 39:56 ... and we're constantly doing things for others, right?

Mel Robbins 40:00 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 40:02 And I think what you're saying, Mel, is if I, in that moment, decide, "No, no, I'm tired. I've been overcommitting. I need an evening to myself tonight-"

Mel Robbins 40:12 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 40:12 ... "to nourish myself."

Mel Robbins 40:14 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 40:15 And you're saying if someone around you is unhappy with that-

Mel Robbins 40:19 "Oh, are you really gonna stay in? But we said that we would go see our friends, Dr. Chatterjee. And you know-"

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 40:25 Yeah

Mel Robbins 40:25 "... I'm just bummed 'cause I thought we were gonna do this. Come on"

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 40:29 You're basically saying it's okay for them to be upset.

Mel Robbins 40:32 Of course.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 40:32 But it doesn't mean you have to change your behavior to stop them being upset.

Mel Robbins 40:37 Correct.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 40:38 It's a, it's a subtle but a really important difference, isn't it?

Mel Robbins 40:41 It's a huge life-changing idea that in that moment, when you want to stay in, and your partner or your kids or whatever are now disappointed because you don't want to go to the thing or you're not going to the thing, let them be disappointed. Let them get a ride from somebody else. Let them go without you. And here's what's interesting about disappointment. Like, I've lived my whole life navigating other people's moods. Seriously, like if, you know, I, I... If you're disappointed, I'm gonna bend over backwards to make sure you're not disappointed, whether it's in business. How many times have you said yes to something and you're like, "Why the f- did I say yes to this?"

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 41:22 [laughs] Yeah.

Mel Robbins 41:22 Well, it's because you didn't want people to be disappointed in you. But here's what I want you to consider a- about disappointment, and I only saw this as I started saying let them and let me in my own life. Oh my God, I've been so afraid of disappointment. It's a beautiful thing. It really is. I mean, if you can't make it out for dinner to a friend's birthday and they're disappointed, isn't that good?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 41:51 Yeah. Exactly.

Mel Robbins 41:53 If somebody wants you to go and do something for the, uh, you know, a speech or a business or b- and you can't make it and they're disappointed, isn't that good?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 42:06 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 42:07 Of course it is. It means they want you there. And here's the other thing. Your parents, your children, your business partners, your boss, they're capable of experiencing the normal human emotion called disappointment, and they'll get over it. And even if this is a person in your life that loves to hold disappointment over your head, let them, because it only has power if you give it power.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 42:35 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 42:36 Let them try to guilt you. It only has power if you change your plans because you're trying to make their mood change. And the big takeaway for me in learning to say let them, let my friend be disappointed, let that business partner be disappointed- I love that they're disappointed that I can't make it, and still, I can't make it. Let me remind myself that it's my responsibility to live my life in a way that aligns with my values. And here's the cool thing. I had exhausted myself, Dr. Chatterjee, trying to navigate life based on people's moods, and whether or not people are happy, and if I'm doing the right thing according to other people, and trying to operate in a way that somebody would think a positive thing about me. It's exhausting. And nothing that you do actually guarantees that someone-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 43:25 Yeah

Mel Robbins 43:25 ... is gonna think a particular thought anyway. Like, you could literally bend over backwards after working a full day at the hospital, and then go to this party that you are so exhausted that you have no interest in going to because you don't want your friend to be disappointed, and you don't wanna let them down. And then you get home, and you can barely fall asleep, and you regret going, and even though you bent over backwards and you went, the person could be back at their flat going, "I don't even know why he came. He was such a bump on the log."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 43:59 Yeah, exactly.

Mel Robbins 43:59 You, you know what I'm saying?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 44:00 So no one wins. [laughs]

Mel Robbins 44:01 No one wins, and the point here is you can't control what another person's gonna think, and you can't control their emotions, and you can't control what they do and don't do. So if that's true, and the only thing you can control is what you think and what you do, here's what I've found in the last 18 months of using this. It's the single most powerful thing I've ever discovered. When you start to say, "Let them," and you create space between you and other people, which helps you not assume responsibility for people's moods and their success and their happiness, you also do something important. You create the space around the health decisions that we make.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 44:48 Mm.

Mel Robbins 44:48 You create this space when you then say, "Let me," where you recognize something that's really powerful that you've been overlooking this entire time. When you say the "let me" part, what's absolutely freaking incredible is that the more that you say, "Let me," let me operate in a way that makes me proud of myself-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 45:23 Yeah

Mel Robbins 45:24 ... let me make choices that align with what I value. And if you know that in your heart you're making the best decisions that you can based on your values, that you know your intentions, what's interesting is you become very proud of yourself.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 45:44 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 45:45 And when you're proud of yourself and you're proud of the way that you're showing up for life every day, you don't actually think about other people much at all.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 45:57 Yeah. I, I, I mentioned to you this morning, Mel, what the way I see life these days very much is my responsibility, I believe, or I would, I would say maybe my number one responsibility each day, is to make sure at the end of the day I can look in the mirror before I go to bed and look at myself and go, "Yeah, I'm proud with how I showed up today. I lived in alignment with my values today."

Mel Robbins 46:24 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 46:24 Because when you do that, and when you can take a moment to appreciate that, actually, we live in a world of eight billion people, okay? Not everyone's gonna agree with that. Some people are gonna like what I've done-

Mel Robbins 46:35 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 46:35 ... some people are not gonna like what I've done. That's an unwinnable game.

Mel Robbins 46:40 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 46:40 Right?

Mel Robbins 46:40 But we all have been playing it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 46:42 Oh, man. [laughs] You know?

Mel Robbins 46:43 That's, that's what these two words taught me. I had life backwards.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 46:47 Yeah. Exactly.

Mel Robbins 46:49 I was looking out there for the validation that I need to give myself.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 46:56 Yeah. There's also something in what you just said which I think is really powerful, okay? So there's let them and let me, but it's when you mentioned your husband Chris, and you mentioned his, the men's retreats.

Mel Robbins 47:10 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:11 And when he's sharing with you, after you asked him, that a lot of men feel, "I, I need to be the provider. Um, I'm always there looking out for my family-

Mel Robbins 47:22 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:22 ... and other people. Who's there looking out for me? I don't even know what I need."

Mel Robbins 47:28 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:28 Your initial feeling was, "What are you talking about? This is, this is like a, a woman's problem," you know?

Mel Robbins 47:34 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:34 "This is, this is what women say. It's not men. You guys have got it easy," or whatever it might be, right?

Mel Robbins 47:38 Yeah. You watch the game on the weekends. You're, like, playing golf. What are you talking about?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:41 Yeah, but, but there's this idea that actually when people say something and share it with us, let's believe them.

Mel Robbins 47:49 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 47:51 I think this also plays into the Let Them Theory. It's like, okay, instead of me projecting and going, "Oh, what a load of rubbish. What are you talking about?" Right? Just a few weeks ago, Mel, I was in London doing some media around my new book.

Mel Robbins 48:03 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 48:03 And I'm normally, when I'm in London, I'm busy. I don't have a spare moment. I'm not there to socialize. I'm there to work.

Mel Robbins 48:10 Yep.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 48:11 But because of the way a couple of things, uh, l- played out in my timetable, I had a spare afternoon, Sunday afternoon, completely free.

Mel Robbins 48:20 Fabulous.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 48:21 I've got a friend who lives about one hour out of London, and hadn't seen him in ages, and one of my intentions for 2025 is to spend more time with my friends. And I text him and said, "Hey, man, listen, if you have a moment, I'm gonna be around in London, uh, if you wanna come and grab some lunch and shoot pool, whatever." And he got back to me. He said, "Give me a couple of days. Let me see if I can work it in." And then he actually told me the day before, he said, "Hey, man, listen, I'm gonna really struggle. We've had issues at, in the house."

Mel Robbins 48:51 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 48:51 "The, um, one of the pipes is leaking."

Mel Robbins 48:54 Yep.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 48:54 "The kids have got a lot on at the moment. I would love to- But I'm just not gonna be able to.

Mel Robbins 49:00 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 49:00 It's not the right time. I think so many of us, Mel, we start to make up stories, right, in that moment. It's an event, right? And it goes back to what I said about you listening to Chris and actually taking people at face value sometimes. Like, I'm like, yeah, you know what? I could create a story that, "Oh, man, if he really cared about the friendship, he would've made it in," or whatever it might, whatever I might have done a few years ago.

Mel Robbins 49:23 Yep.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 49:24 But because I, I practice similar things to The Let Them Theory, I'm like, "No, I feel calm. I feel good. Yeah, that sounds reasonable. No worries. I get it. It's not the right time for him. No worries. He's still one of my closest friends. He just couldn't come in on that Sunday."

Mel Robbins 49:39 Of course. Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 49:39 That's the way it goes. So can you speak to that a little bit, though, particularly with a l- through the lens of your husband, Chris, and this idea that we project, and we think, "What are you complaining about? You got nothing to complain about. Your life's easy."

Mel Robbins 49:53 Right.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 49:54 How, how does your work fit into that?

Mel Robbins 49:56 Well, I think it's an incredible question, and I can even widen it out even more. People are allowed to cancel plans.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 50:04 [laughs]

Mel Robbins 50:05 They're allowed to have a different opinion than you. They're allowed to change their minds. They're allowed to be upset. They're allowed to struggle. They're allowed to be who they are and who they're not. And your job in life is not to second-guess or to judge or to be pissed off because people are not conforming to your expectations.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 50:32 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 50:32 See, it goes both ways.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 50:33 Exactly.

Mel Robbins 50:34 You're exhausted because you think you're supposed to meet everybody else's expectations, and the reason why you're frustrated is because the opposite's true. You actually believe everybody else should conform to your expectations. And so the very thing that is draining your time and energy and making you overwhelmed and causing the outside world and other people's behaviors to piss you off or frustrate you or stress you out or annoy you or just make you feel s- just intense all the time, it's the exact same thing that creates friction and distance and unnecessary drama in your relationships. It's the expectations-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 51:17 Mm

Mel Robbins 51:17 ... that we hold over each other and ourselves. And when you start to say, "Let them. Let them be who they are. Let them be who they're not."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 51:27 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 51:27 Because the more you let people be who they are, the more you're accepting them as they are, and that makes your relationships better. And the more you let other people live their lives, the more your life gets better because you're no longer holding expectations over other people that they should be different than they are. You are learning the most fundamental and important skill in a relationship, which is learning how to accept somebody as they are and love them as they are and be more compassionate-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 52:04 Yeah

Mel Robbins 52:04 ... and graceful and loving with people instead of constantly judging and having opinions and inserting your stories and wishing people were different. And then how it works with you is you recognize that the unfair expectation that you've held over your own head, that you should somehow be responsible for every other adult's happiness-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 52:27 [laughs]

Mel Robbins 52:28 ... and every other adult's social plans. I mean, just think about, you know, when you find the time to have a dinner party-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 52:36 Mm-hmm

Mel Robbins 52:36 ... and you haven't seen your friends forever because there's a real crisis in friendship that we're all feeling because everybody's-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 52:42 Yeah

Mel Robbins 52:42 ... busy, and hybrid work screws up everybody's schedules, and people have gotten a little bit more hermit-like because of the experience of being in lockdown and-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 52:52 Yeah, for sure

Mel Robbins 52:52 ... like, it just... And so if we're all feeling this way, and then you go to have a, a dinner party, and let's say you've got, you know, a couple friends. You invite two people. You're like, "Should we in- Oh, well, you know, maybe we should invite those two. Oh, no, now we got four. If we don't invite so-and-so, and they find out from this person, then they're gonna be upset, so we should probably invite those people." And the next thing you know, you either have a list of 20 people, 15 of whom you don't really wanna spend the evening with because you're worried about what other people are gonna feel-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 53:23 Mm

Mel Robbins 53:24 ... if they know they're not invited, or you're so exhausted by the thought of, "What am I gonna do with this?" That you just are like, "Forget it. Forget it."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 53:33 It, it reminds me, Mel, I'm not sure I should be sharing this or not, but, um, you, you've re- [laughs] which probably means I should. Um, I remember when I completed my first book, Mel, and you know how hard it is to write a book.

Mel Robbins 53:46 Uh-huh.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 53:46 Okay? These things aren't easy. The most stressful thing is sometimes writing the acknowledgments. I don't know if you've found this. I certainly found it with my first book, and my sec-

Mel Robbins 53:55 You don't wanna forget anybody.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 53:56 You don't wanna forget anyone, and then you end up mentioning everyone by name who you've, who's ever given you a leg up or done anything for you. And it's interesting that as I have let go of the need to be liked by everyone, in my latest, which is my sixth one, it was a very simple acknowledgment section. And instead of name-checking each and every single one of my friends, I said something like, "You know, I'm blessed to have great friends. You all know who you are."

Mel Robbins 54:25 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 54:25 And I said something really nice, but without naming them all. And what, why, why I'm sharing that is because it's not about the names. It's about me, and it's about, um, my need when I did my first book to make sure I'm not disappointing anyone.

Mel Robbins 54:46 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 54:46 What will they think?

Mel Robbins 54:47 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 54:48 I must make sure. You know, trying to manage, trying to control, right? Maybe I'm being a bit harsh on myself, but do you know, do you know what I mean?

Mel Robbins 54:55 No, I think this is... I'm gonna, I'm gonna give an example so the person listening will really feel what you're feeling in case you haven't written a book So I want you to imagine that you are about to post something on your favorite social media platform.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 55:09 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 55:09 And for me, I like Instagram the best. So you pull out Instagram, you're gonna select a photo or a video. Now let me look through my camera roll. Uh, is this a good pi- Is that a good picture? Should I do this one? Should I do that one? A good picture for who?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 55:29 [laughs]

Mel Robbins 55:30 And then you put the photo up, and then you're like swipe, swipe, swipe on the filters, trying to make it look better for who? And then you go and write the caption, and you're like, da, da, da. Is this too much? Should I put an emoji? Delete, delete, delete. Should I put this? And for who? And if you ever look at all your drafts, that is the graveyard of your self-expression and dreams. When you do the simple act of trying to share something online, which let me just remind you, your social media is not for your friends. It is not for your mates from university. It's not for your fa- It's for you. It's for your self-expression. If you're in business, it's a marketing channel. And here you are editing yourself because you believe that there's a certain photo or a certain way to write a caption that is going to guarantee that another person is going to like you-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 56:37 Mm-hmm

Mel Robbins 56:37 ... or share... Like, you have given all the power to another human being. You will never be able to control whether they follow you, unfollow you, share it, save it, like it, whatever, comment. You will never be able to control that-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 56:53 Yeah

Mel Robbins 56:53 ... or guarantee it. And yet, in that moment before you hit Post, you are... That's all you're considering. And then what ends up happening is you get so stressed out and frustrated, you hit Draft, and all the drafts are evidence of how often this has happened. And then once you do post, what do you do? You go back, and you check it obsessively to see, like, okay, are people like or they're not? And if you don't, and then, then they're, you're deleting it. And so this is what I'm saying about this very sneaky and destructive habit that we have-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 57:29 Yeah

Mel Robbins 57:30 ... where we give the power to somebody else, and we don't even realize we're doing it, and we give control to things that are beyond our control and then spend all this time and energy trying to ensure that our behavior somehow guarantees it's... No.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 57:44 Yeah. It's a form of betrayal, isn't it?

Mel Robbins 57:47 Yes, it is.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 57:48 I- in fact, the example you just used there, if you play this out, not only can you not control who's gonna like that post or not-

Mel Robbins 57:58 Uh-huh

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 57:58 ... or the image or what you've written, okay?

Mel Robbins 58:00 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 58:01 So you're playing a, an unwinnable game.

Mel Robbins 58:03 Yep.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 58:04 But then the follow-on point from that is you've done something very dangerous. Let's say you have changed your self-expression in order to get validation from other people, and you get that validation.

Mel Robbins 58:16 Yep.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 58:17 In some ways, that's even worse because now you know that the way to get validation from others is to change who you are.

Mel Robbins 58:25 Just look at every woman that posts on social media with their breasts out and their ass in the camera. You're getting positive reinforcement for that.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 58:38 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 58:39 And look, if that's your form of artistry, go for it, but I would be willing to bet that 99.9% of those accounts that are actually real human beings and not bots are actually a deeply insecure person who is seeking very toxic attention and getting it, proving your point exactly. And look, here's what I'm gonna say. Let them. If that's how they wanna live their life, let them do it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 59:07 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 59:07 Let me say something very pointed and provocative to challenge the person listening who may be doing that, who deep down knows that this is not the life you wanna be leading. This is not the attention you actually want, that there's deeper work to do, and you are trapped. And here's the thing. No one's gonna come and fix us. At some point, you're gonna have to wake up and understand that any change you wanna make is on you. And all of the time, all of the energy that you're pouring into-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 59:39 Mm-hmm

Mel Robbins 59:39 ... seeking validation from others, chasing their opinions and their likes and, you know, hoping that people are gonna be happy with you and you're gonna win them over, all of that is a waste of your precious life.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 59:51 Mm.

Mel Robbins 59:52 You need to take all that time and energy back and really assess for yourself. At the end of the day, when I'm laying on my deathbed and I look back, I want you to be proud of yourself.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:00:04 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:00:04 I want you to look back. I want you to be surrounded by people that you love and that love you back. I want you to see the time that you had and go, "Wow, I really used the time that I had-"

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:00:15 Yeah

Mel Robbins 1:00:15 ... "in a way that makes me proud." And so if you're not in that moment and you can't authentically say, "I am proud of who I am. I am proud of the way that I spend my time. I'm proud of how I start my day and take care of myself," then wake the fuck up and make changes because you can.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:00:36 Yeah. Hey, guys. I really hope you're finding this useful. If you are and you want more content like it, please do check out my book, Make Change That Lasts: 9 Simple Ways to Break Free from the Habits That are Holding You Back. It's in all the usual places as a paperback, e-book, and as an audiobook, which I'm narrating. Now, back to the video. In fact, one of the top regrets people have on their deathbed is, "I wish I'd lived my life-" And not the life that other people expected of me

Mel Robbins 1:01:09 Yes. Well, that's, that's question number three.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:01:12 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:01:12 Question number three, what is stopping me from living my life the way I wanna live it?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:01:16 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:01:16 You are. No one else is stopping you. You are stopping yourself because you are making other people a problem. You are looking at other people's success, and you think it is an example of your failure. You are looking at other people, and you think they are the source of your happiness. You're looking out there for the validation that you need in here.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:01:39 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:01:40 And this is why, look, again, nobody gets sober until you first stop drinking. You will never take control of your own life until you first stop trying to control everyone and everything out there, what they think, what they do, all of it, and you pull it back, and you focus on you and figuring out, what's gonna make me proud of myself?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:02:01 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:02:01 What kind of person do I wanna be? What do I wanna think about this? What do I wanna do in response to this?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:02:06 On, on the subject of only we're the ones who can make changes in our own life and get us out of a hole or change where we are, it kinda leads on to question four, right?

Mel Robbins 1:02:17 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:02:18 So question four out of these five questions that you've been asking yourself and you encourage us to ask ourselves is, why do I procrastinate and overthink every decision?

Mel Robbins 1:02:30 So the procrastination, as you know, Dr. Chatterjee, is a stress response.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:02:36 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:02:37 And if you think about any of the research around fight or flight, there's a third stress response, which is freeze.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:02:45 Freeze.

Mel Robbins 1:02:47 And if you wanna talk about procrastination from a medical or physiological standpoint, typically you're procrastinating because the thing that you need to do is going to require a lot of mental energy to do it, whether you're procrastinating on paying your bills or procrastinating on balancing your, you know, checking account, or you're procrastinating on working on your resume, or you're procrastinating on cleaning out that back closet that you know you need to do or the garage or whatever. And a lot of us, when we get overwhelmed by life or we're already, as you've been teaching us, are in a stressed-out physiological state, the ability to bring a lot of energy-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:35 Mm-hmm

Mel Robbins 1:03:35 ... to something that requires focus is not there. And so I just wanna acknowledge that there's a deeper physiological reason for procrastination, and it's almost like a trauma response to life.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:03:48 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:03:48 You freeze. The overthinking and the going up in your head has a lot to do with the fact that, again, when you've gotta do anything in life or you're thinking about things that you wanna do, you immediately consider how other people are going to react to it. Most of the things we overthink about, whether it's how we're going to get out of debt or how we're gonna face this diagnosis-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:04:22 Mm

Mel Robbins 1:04:22 ... or how we can care for our aging parents and still find time for ourselves, there's information, and there's simple things you can do. I mean, all of your work, your six books, provide the roadmap. The reason why we overthink, though, is since the beginning of being little, we have been around adults that typically are a little reactive, a little predictable, unpredictable. I'm talking about our parents. And as kids, we've had to develop this skill of paying attention to how other people-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:04:56 Yeah

Mel Robbins 1:04:56 ... are responding and what their moods are, so we are trained since childhood to consider how our behavior or what other people's moods are in and then to think about it and respond. And so for me, one of the things that has helped me a lot is when you catch yourself overthinking, "What if this happens? What if that happens? What if the other thing happens? What if..." All overthinking is about things that haven't happened yet, right?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:05:24 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:05:25 So one thing that has helped me a lot is to say, "Let them," and then whatever the thing I'm afraid of, I just say. So for example, if I'm worried about what somebody's gonna think, "Well, what is so-and-so gonna think?" And then I start overthinking about it, I say this, "Let them think something negative." I don't ever say to myself, "I don't care what people think. I don't care what they think." If somebody says that, they care what somebody thinks. The best way to deal with overthinking and being afraid of what other people are going to do in reaction is to say, "Let them have a negative opinion. Let them be disappointed."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:05 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:06:05 "Let them be angry with me. Let them misunderstand me," because now you're calling out the very thing that you're overthinking about.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:13 Hmm. Yeah. You mentioned this idea that I don't care what people think.

Mel Robbins 1:06:22 Uh-huh.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:22 Okay.

Mel Robbins 1:06:23 That's not true.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:06:24 Yeah. So it's really interesting to me. You are... Well, there's a couple of things that come to mind, Mel. You are, I would say, a once-in-a-generation phenomena, and what I mean by that is there's something about you that people just absolutely love. People can really relate to you. You share so much of your life, your struggles, the things that you've got wrong, right? You know, in, within my team, I've got people who just love you. You know, I shared when you first came on my podcast that one of my team members only joined my team because they used your 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 methods.

Mel Robbins 1:07:08 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:07:09 They were too scared to write to me and apply.

Mel Robbins 1:07:11 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:07:12 And they were reading your book, and they said, "Right, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1." Send. She got a job

Mel Robbins 1:07:18 And let me give you another example in that, 'cause there's, the person listening, there's an email or, you wanna send or a job you wanna apply to, and isn't it interesting, the only thing that was stopping her is she was worried that you would reject her or worried that you were gonna think she wasn't worthy of it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:07:33 Exactly.

Mel Robbins 1:07:33 And so again, an example of these moments where she was giving power to your opinion over the email that she was waiting to send.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:07:40 Yeah, and this, you can apply it to your last book, The 54321-

Mel Robbins 1:07:44 Uh-huh

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:07:44 ... Habit, right?

Mel Robbins 1:07:45 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:07:45 Which she used. So this fourth question, why do I procrastinate and overthink every decision? Well, your last book was on a tool that people can use, right? I need to do this, 54321, do it.

Mel Robbins 1:07:57 Yeah, the five-second rule, do it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:07:58 But again, the same thing applies to the let them theory because I guess the lady who applied to join my team, as you say, she was worried about what I would think.

Mel Robbins 1:08:09 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:08:09 You know? Oh, who's this person, you know? She's not worthy, or whatever, whatever story she created in her head-

Mel Robbins 1:08:15 Yeah. It's not gonna, it's not gonna matter anyway, 'cause he's never gonna hire me.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:08:18 Yeah. But she could have also applied let them.

Mel Robbins 1:08:21 Of course.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:08:21 Hey, let him. I'm gonna write this email, and you know what? If it's not the right job for me, if I don't get it, that's okay as well.

Mel Robbins 1:08:29 Yeah, let 'em.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:08:30 It shouldn't stop me writing it.

Mel Robbins 1:08:32 Correct.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:08:33 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:08:33 Do you see what I'm saying? That's the perfect example of how you have made other people a problem.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:08:38 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:08:39 I have now, there's a job I want, and I'm not applying for it because I am making up a story about what Dr. Chatterjee is gonna do in response to an email I haven't even written yet. And so I have now put Dr. Chatterjee's made-up action-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:08:55 [laughs]

Mel Robbins 1:08:55 ... that I can't control in between me and the action I could actually take to land my dream job.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:09:03 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:09:03 How fucking sad.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:09:05 It's ridiculous on many levels because if you even think about it through the lens of time, the amount of time and energy we waste, like we said before, right, thinking about other people's opinions. Actually writing the email, sending it, would probably take 10% maximum of the time that is spent, "Should I? Shouldn't I? Oh, I'm not sure. I don't think I'm the right person. They probably want someone more exper-"

Mel Robbins 1:09:29 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:09:29 Do you know what I mean?

Mel Robbins 1:09:30 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:09:30 It's like, when you look at it rationally, it's absolutely crazy. But I've shared with you my view. Why do you think so many people resonate with you and your message?

Mel Robbins 1:09:42 I think it's, uh, th- it's multilayered. Um, the reason why is because, you know, I started sharing things that I was discovering, like counting backwards five, four, three, two, one to get out of bed when the anxiety would pin me down, and I didn't feel like I had it within me to face the day-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:10:06 Yeah

Mel Robbins 1:10:06 ... because there were just so many problems in my life. So I just started five, four, three, two, one, and I'd launch myself forward. And you know, I, I was sharing these things with friends, and then friends would tell friends, and then, you know, started to use social media to share these things because I have caused myself and people that I care about so much pain and heartache because I didn't know. I didn't know what my problem was. I didn't know what I could do differently. I didn't know why I was trapped in these really negative thinking patterns or these really self-destructive patterns of behavior that hurt me or that hurt other people.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:10:52 Mm.

Mel Robbins 1:10:52 And as I started to claw my way out of the mental and the physical and the financial hole that I had dug for myself and fallen into, and I began learning that there were simple things that I could do to treat myself a little better, to be a little bit better of a person, to improve my health. I thought, "You know, if I can save anybody the headaches, the heartaches, the pain that I've caused myself or other people, that is a life well-lived." And every time I've shared something, whether it is the simple story that everybody on the planet can relate to of going to a friend's home that is a hell of a lot nicer than yours, and the very childish but normal reaction that you have and the conflict that you feel. If I can actually tell that story and it makes you stop beating yourself up-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:11:55 Yeah

Mel Robbins 1:11:55 ... for being a horrible friend and it helps you to understand that there's something deeper there for you to learn, then that painful experience has value and meaning for me and for you. And you know, I, and, and I never ever will get too far away from the painful things to forget that I'm just trying to share things that help move the needle in a normal person's life.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:12:32 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:12:32 And I think the relatability comes from the fact that even in this wild, incredible, just unimaginable, like I, I can't on some level even believe that I've gone in 15 years from alcoholism, almost divorce, almost $800,000 in debt, liens on the house, unemployed, to building what I've built and changing who I am. Like, at my core, I know I've always been a really good person, but there was so much crap that had built up and so much evidence that I had based on bad, toxic behavior on my part, that I lost that connection.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:13:20 Mm.

Mel Robbins 1:13:23 I just feel like I've, I still have the same values. Like, I, what I wanna, what I want now is I want more free time. I wanna see my friends. I wanna spend more time with my husband. I, I wanna spend more time with my adult kids and my aging parents.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:13:36 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:13:37 I live in a tiny, small town. I have no interest in the big, shiny bullshit that, you know, people may think is part of hosting what is right now the number one ranked podcast in the world on Apple Podcasts.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:13:52 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:13:53 And I think it's very cool that as a 54-year-old mother of three, I stepped into the podcast space, and this show is not only making a difference, it is dominating globally.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:14:09 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:14:10 And so that example, Dr. Chatterjee, the fact that I don't have a PhD, yes, I'm an extraordinarily intelligent person, and I'm clearly a very, very good businesswoman, but I'm just, you know, somebody's daughter. I'm somebody's mother. I'm somebody who said, "You know what? I'm tired of thinking about a podcast and being pissed off and jealous that Dr. Chatterjee's doing it, and my buddy Jay Shetty's doing it, and I'm just gonna do it."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:14:38 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:14:39 And so I do think that part of the appeal is that people can see that I actually just am exactly who you see-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:14:47 Yeah

Mel Robbins 1:14:47 ... that I am. And, you know, we joke a lot in my family because my daughters will call me, they're 25 and they're 23, and they'll be like, "Oh, my God, that vi- you look horrible. Why are you, wh- why are you posting that video of you?"

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:14:59 That's what people like. [laughs]

Mel Robbins 1:15:00 But no, but, but here's the thing. That's not a gimmick. See, I went to the grocery store looking like that.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:15:08 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:15:09 Why the fuck would I put on makeup? You know, in here on the podcast, it's a little different 'cause these lights are damn bright, right? But, you know, when I'm home-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:15:18 Yeah

Mel Robbins 1:15:18 ... when I'm just living my life, and so I feel like I am just very tied to making sure that I never forget that the reason why I'm doing this is because I wanna continue to learn.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:15:35 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:15:36 I wanna continue to be a better person and a better friend and a better mom and a better sister and a better wife and a better daughter. And I also am doing this because I know how much pain I've caused myself and people I love, and I didn't mean to, and I think we can all do a little bit better.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:15:54 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:15:54 And when I was at my lowest moments, Dr. Chatterjee, it wasn't ability that was missing. It was hope.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:03 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:16:03 It was this opinion that things are so far gone, or I'm such a shitty person, that even though I believe what Dr. Chatterjee is saying, I'm convinced this won't work for me, so why would I try?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:18 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:16:18 And so I think that's one reason-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:21 Yeah

Mel Robbins 1:16:21 ... why people, people really understand that I mean it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:25 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:16:25 Like, I'm not the kind of person that, that, that fakes it. I'm not the kind of-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:30 Yeah

Mel Robbins 1:16:30 ... I spent too much of my life pretending to be somebody I'm not.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:34 I, I've been hanging out with you for the day on and off the mic. Mel is literally the same person [laughs] off the mic-

Mel Robbins 1:16:40 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:40 ... as she is on the mic, okay? I've seen it firsthand. Um, with such a big public profile, Mel, you're obviously, like anyone with a public profile, subject to criticism.

Mel Robbins 1:16:52 Uh-huh.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:53 Okay? So there seems to be a very natural, uh, connection between The Let Them Theory that you write about-

Mel Robbins 1:16:58 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:16:59 ... and how you might tackle and deal with criticism.

Mel Robbins 1:17:04 Oh, of course.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:17:04 So how do you find public criticism, and how do you use The Let Them Theory? Maybe there was a time in your life where you didn't use it-

Mel Robbins 1:17:11 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:17:11 ... and now that you do use it, how has it changed things?

Mel Robbins 1:17:15 Oh, I just let them. Let them say what they want. People are gonna think, believe, have opinions about, and feel things even when they're not true. Let them. Like, [laughs] if you can't control what people are gonna say, do, and feel about you, why would you spend any energy trying to manage it? There is nothing that somebody could say that would actually upset me, and here's why. I know the truth of who I am, and I know the truth behind the intention of what I do and why. And so people can have whatever opinions they want. They can write whatever they want. They can comment whatever they want. Let them. It's so liberating. I hope, like, if people don't have negative opinions, then I'm not saying anything-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:18:13 Yeah

Mel Robbins 1:18:13 ... of interest. See, somebody that comes at you, Dr. Chatterjee, "He's a quack. He, this advice is so stupid. Who needs a medical degree?" People attack the messenger and the message that they actually would probably be saved by. You know, the biggest criticisms that I get is typically kinda snarky comments around how simple it is. Like, I remember when The New York Times wrote an article that was largely very, very positive. Same thing with Time Magazine. The only kinda negative vibe in it was that, you know, "This is kinda profoundly stupid and simple stuff she's saying. Count backwards, five, four, three, two, one," whatever. Here's the thing for me. Let them. Because if the only thing that you're able to question is the simplicity, then you don't even understand the complexity of issues that keep people stuck.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:16 Yeah, exactly.

Mel Robbins 1:19:17 And you don't understand the reason why somebody deeply relates to me. I understand how hard your life is. I understand how overwhelming things are. The last thing anybody needs in today's world is somebody being intellectual and trying to be smarter than you.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:38 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:19:38 Because you're already carrying the weight of the world.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:19:41 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:19:41 So I am in the highest service and can be the most impactful if, like you, Dr. Chatterjee, I am handing you something that is so simple that even with the weight of the world on your shoulders and even when you feel like there's nothing that's gonna work, that you feel a sense of hope that maybe, just maybe, this might.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:20:09 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:20:09 And so if ... It doesn't matter what people say. I mean, like, let them have negative thoughts.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:20:14 People attack simplicity all the time.

Mel Robbins 1:20:16 Of course.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:20:16 They don't realize how difficult it is to get to simplicity.

Mel Robbins 1:20:20 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:20:21 You know, I, I've experienced similar things myself.

Mel Robbins 1:20:23 I'm sure you have.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:20:23 And it's like simplicity is how you help people make changes.

Mel Robbins 1:20:28 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:20:28 When you make it complicated so you have to do this and track this and do this and do this-

Mel Robbins 1:20:32 Right

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:20:32 ... who does it?

Mel Robbins 1:20:33 Right.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:20:33 Very few people.

Mel Robbins 1:20:34 And here's the thing. When somebody is able to make something look easy, whether they make a podcast look easy or they make a speech look easy or they make their marriage look easy or they make the fact that they're in good health look easy or they make the process of change look easy, what you know when it looks easy-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:20:55 [laughs]

Mel Robbins 1:20:56 ... is that there was an extraordinary-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:20:59 Yeah

Mel Robbins 1:20:59 ... amount of hard work that went into making it easy.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:21:05 Yeah. On the subject of criticism not bothering you-

Mel Robbins 1:21:10 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:21:10 ... because, you know, a big part of The Let Them Theory book is about-

Mel Robbins 1:21:13 Well, let me just say something, because you were framing the question in terms of strangers and in terms of the public and in terms of the press. Um, if my daughter is upset with me because she believes ... Like, a, a recent thing that happened is she said to me, uh, our daughter that lives out in Los Angeles, and I know she won't be upset by this, um, she just said, "I'm excited that you're coming out, but can you please not just fit me into a work trip? Can you take an extra day? Can you come a different time if, you know, I'm gonna only see you for dinner?" And that bothers me. What bothers me about it, first of all, I'm grateful that she told me.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:22:08 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:22:08 Because here I am, and again, this gets to the point, too, about relationships. Two people can have very different opinions about the exact same thing, and we often do, and still love each other very much.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:22:21 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:22:21 My daughter can think I am squeezing her in and she's an afterthought, and I can think that this is extraordinary that I'm able to go to Los Angeles for work, and Kendall's schedule lines up, because she's very busy too, that we can actually go to dinner and we can actually do a yoga class and we'll be able to see each other. And both things are true. So let her have her opinion, let me have mine, and then let us come together, share openly without trying to manage each other or change each other's opinions, and figure out what to do about it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:23:00 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:23:00 And so the reason why her opinion matters and the reason why I care about her opinion is because my deepest value is family and connection.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:23:12 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:23:12 My deepest value is making sure the people that I care about know that they matter to me. And so it does make me sad and upset that my actions or the way that I've behaved in the past, and here I have been thinking, "This is amazing. I have a job that gets me to LA every quarter, and I get to see my daughter, and how cool is that?" Whereas her experience is, "I only see my mother if she's on a work trip."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:23:35 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:23:35 And both are true.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:23:36 Both are true.

Mel Robbins 1:23:38 And when you start saying let them and let me, what's so fabulous-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:23:42 Yeah

Mel Robbins 1:23:42 ... is you actually create space for both things to be true, and then to learn how to, without changing each other's opinions, accept both, and then figure out what we're gonna do about it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:23:54 It's, it's much more honest, actually.

Mel Robbins 1:23:55 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:23:56 It's much more honest, because when we're trying to change other people's opinions, without realizing it, we're kind of being a bit manipulative.

Mel Robbins 1:24:04 Yes. Or we don't tell you the full truth because we're afraid you're gonna be disappointed-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:08 Yeah

Mel Robbins 1:24:08 ... or we're afraid you're gonna be hurt. And then there's this weird friction, 'cause you can already tell when somebody's, like, kind of ... This is especially true with family. I'll tell you, we went on a family trip where my dad was turning 80, and his big bucket list is going to Machu Picchu. And so if you've ever been on one of these trips where there's, like, 11 of you, you may be in matching T-shirts or not, you know, [laughs] for the person's birthday. You're in a van.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:33 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:24:33 You're traveling around with a tour guide. And when the trip started, my brother and his family arrived, and my nephews, who are 16, identical twins, one of them had the flu. So the flu then moved from row to row to row-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:24:48 Right

Mel Robbins 1:24:48 ... in our van as we're traveling through Peru. It was the single best vacation we've ever had. Why? Because any time somebody got testy or hungry or, you know, whatever-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:25:04 Yeah

Mel Robbins 1:25:04 ... you could hear people in the van go, "Let them. Let her." My mom was like, "Oh, you don't wanna, you don't wanna come today on the morning stuff? No problem. Stay at the hotel. Let them." There was zero controlling.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:25:15 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:25:16 There was just space for everybody to be with each other and be more flexible with one another and more gracious with one another.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:25:24 And respectful.

Mel Robbins 1:25:25 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:25:25 That you're another individual and you see the world differently.

Mel Robbins 1:25:29 Yes, yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:25:29 Right?

Mel Robbins 1:25:29 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:25:30 It's, it's really beautiful. And you know, I know control is at the heart-

Mel Robbins 1:25:33 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:25:34 ... of the book.

Mel Robbins 1:25:34 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:25:35 But so is compassion.

Mel Robbins 1:25:36 Mm, deeply. See, people misunderstand the message in the beginning because everybody loves saying let them because you feel superior.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:25:42 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:25:43 Like, a lot of times when traffic's backing up and you're like, "Let them," or the, the plane gets canceled and you're like, "Let the airlines do it," you're just like, "I wouldn't do it that way, but I'm gonna let them. I'm gonna rise above this, and I'm a little judgy. My friends go away without me? Let them." But everybody misses the let me part, because if all you do is say let them, let them, let them, let them, you're gonna then find that you feel a little isolated and lonely.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:26:10 Or you feel like a doormat sometimes, I guess.

Mel Robbins 1:26:12 Yes. Well, the interesting thing about the doormat is that you can feel that way, but when you start to see that you're a doormat, you're gonna recognize, "I've always been this way." See, when you say let them, you're not saying, "Let them abuse me-"

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:26:26 Yeah

Mel Robbins 1:26:27 ... let them not call back, let them talk down to me. What you're saying is, "I for the first time in my life, when I say let them, I'm actually recognizing that this person's treatment of me is how they feel about me." I am calling out. When I say let them talk down to me, I'm not allowing it, I am naming it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:26:51 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:26:51 And then I say, "Let me remind myself, I choose who gets my time and energy." And if this person talks down to me, if this person ghosts me, if this person will not give me the love and the respect-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:27:08 Mm

Mel Robbins 1:27:08 ... that I deserve, I have to let them, 'cause they're revealing what they actually feel about me. Now it's on me. I get to leave any relationship, any conversation, any job, any interview, any date, any dining room table, any time I choose.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:27:25 Yeah. There's a beautiful bit in the book where you say, "The more you let people be who they are, the better your relationships will be."

Mel Robbins 1:27:34 That's right, because this was a big concept for me. My relationship, for example, with my mom, is not my mom's responsibility. It's mine.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:27:44 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:27:45 And if I want the relationship to get better, I have to stop wishing she would change, and I have to change. And we often focus on the other person and the changes that we wish we would see in them. I wish they managed their mood better. I wish they didn't drink so much. I wish they treated me better. I wish they did this, that, and the other thing. I wish they made more money. I wish they were a more positive person, more social, more proactive. Stop it. Stop it. Trying to change somebody isn't loving them. Let them be who they are. Let them be who they're not. If you want the relationship to change, you have more power than that person. You change your energy. You change your approach. And if in doing that it gets worse or nothing changes and you still have complaints, then it's time to look in the mirror and say, "Let me ask myself if I can actually choose this relationship or not."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:28:41 Yeah. There's a key subtlety in the Let Them Theory I'm keen for us to highlight.

Mel Robbins 1:28:50 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:28:50 Okay, so let's go back to criticism-

Mel Robbins 1:28:53 Yep

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:28:53 ... and what you said a moment ago. Okay? Some people may say, well, is some of this a bit of toxic positivity, right? Is you saying, "Let them," someone's gonna criticize me, let's say a member of the public-

Mel Robbins 1:29:08 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:29:08 ... we're not talking about your family now.

Mel Robbins 1:29:09 Or even the family.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:29:11 Yeah. Let them. It doesn't bother me. Could s-

Mel Robbins 1:29:13 I didn't say it doesn't bother you.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:29:15 Okay.

Mel Robbins 1:29:15 The reason why you have to say let them is because it does bother you.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:29:18 Okay, so this is the key point, because you're not saying ignore your emotions-

Mel Robbins 1:29:23 Mm-mm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:29:23 ... and just stoically move on.

Mel Robbins 1:29:26 Nope.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:29:26 Right? So let's just ex- let's just explore that, 'cause I don't want anyone to misinterpret this part of it.

Mel Robbins 1:29:31 Oh, I, I, I think this is a brilliant question. So here's the thing. The issue isn't caring. The issue is that you give more weight to your family's opinions than you give to your own.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:29:47 Mm.

Mel Robbins 1:29:49 And with family in particular, it feels like we've gotten to this point in the world where everybody is completely intolerant of holding space for opposing opinions-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:05 Yeah

Mel Robbins 1:30:05 ... about anything. And what troubles me is I see this almost knee-jerk stress response in relationships, where if I don't like your opinion, then I cut you off. If I don't like that you're disappointed in the fact that I don't wanna be a lawyer anymore, I don't wanna major in business, I wanna major in philosophy, and now you have an opinion that I'm screwing up my life, then what I'm seeing that really troubles me is an inability to lean towards somebody. Instead, what I see is people icing people out, not sharing about their life-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:54 Mm

Mel Robbins 1:30:54 ... not leaning towards somebody to say, "Well, why do you believe that?"

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:30:59 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:30:59 And so the Let Them Theory is not supposed to actually hurt your relationships. It's supposed to teach you the emotional maturity and the compassion and the confidence to be able to care about what somebody thinks, to care about why they may think that way-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:31:22 Yeah

Mel Robbins 1:31:22 ... but to care more about the decisions that you make about how you're going to live your life. And again, learning this incredible skill that two things can be true at once.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:31:35 Yeah. I love that.

Mel Robbins 1:31:36 Yes. And so I'm not saying that it's easy if your parents, for example, have a bigoted opinion, or if they do not accept the person that you wanna date or that you wanna marry. That's not an easy situation. It's also not easy if you are in a career that is sucking your soul dry and you wanna go and launch a business and your partner is the loudest voice against you. Let them. Because here's the issue. The reason why most people criticize what you're doing is typically not because they think you're an idiot.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:32:13 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:32:14 It's because they're deeply concerned that it might not work out, or they're concerned that you're changing and now they feel like you're somehow rejecting them.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:32:25 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:32:25 And when you don't understand that people can have their opinions, they can be disappointed in you, they can be pissed off at you, they can not understand why you're making decisions that you're making, and they can still love you.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:32:38 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:32:39 That's basically the definition of family, learning how to love people that you hate sometimes. If you are able to go let them, let them believe what they wanna believe, let them have their opinion, but then you also, now that you have space, because you're actually allowing somebody to be an adult.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:32:56 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:32:56 People are allowed to believe what they wanna believe. And most of the time, when people believe something that you don't understand, there's a deeper reason why that has to do with their life experience.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:33:06 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:33:07 Like, I believe certain things about money and about savings and about wealth that my great-grandmother would never believe-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:33:18 Yeah

Mel Robbins 1:33:19 ... because of when she lived and her experience in the Depression. I mean, 'cause her frame of reference is totally different.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:33:26 E- everything makes sense, actually, once you understand someone's life story.

Mel Robbins 1:33:30 Of course.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:33:31 It all makes sense. Like, yeah, if I were you, if I had your childhoods, your experiences, your first job, your toxic boss, I'd probably see the world in the same way as you.

Mel Robbins 1:33:42 Like, let me just play this out, 'cause I love that you brought this up. Let's just say you're in this situation where your parents do not understand why you don't want to become a doctor, right? Their hopes and dreams and expectations, and based on their upbringing, the highest, most respected thing that you could become is a doctor. It would mean that they are wildly respected. It would mean they had done their job-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:34:13 Yeah

Mel Robbins 1:34:14 ... as a parent. That's their belief. Let them have it. Now, you over here, you're, like, in university. You're an artist. You, you, you were gonna be a doctor, but now that you're studying, you're like, "I don't like any of this." And you start to realize, "Wait, being a doctor was their dream and expectation. It's not mine." Here's what's interesting about this moment. The person who's at university is terrified of disappointing their parents. The parents are terrified that their child's gonna screw up their life. They're also worried about what the relatives and their friends are gonna think. They're also now questioning, "Did we make the right decisions, because our dream had always been X, Y, Z?" And here's what's interesting about this. The parents expect the child to believe the same thing they do.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:34:59 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:35:00 The child expects the parent to believe the same thing they do. And so the problem isn't the people and their opinions. The problem is we expect other people to do as we please and to think what we want.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:35:14 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:35:14 And that's not how human beings work. And so when you say, "Let them," you create the space for someone to have their life experience and to have their beliefs. And then because you're not at all trying to manage it, you then get to say, "Let me remind myself."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:35:32 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:35:32 "I get to choose how I live my life, and I also get to choose how I'm gonna respond to this disagreement. Do I lean toward them or do I lean away?" And it's my hope that more and more people learn this skill to lean towards somebody that is disagreeing with them, to understand why, so that we can seek deeper connection.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:35:53 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:35:53 Because if we can't do that, the, the division that we see online, the tension that people see, the polarization, it's gonna get worse and worse. And so if you can start to practice this in your family and with your loved ones, that's the ripple effect that I'm hoping that this achieves.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36:12 Yeah, that example's so powerful, because if that kid at university then sacrifices their dreams and their desires and their wants in order to keep their parents happy-

Mel Robbins 1:36:24 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36:25 ... just fast-forward 10, 15, 20 years.

Mel Robbins 1:36:28 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36:28 'Cause frankly, I've seen this a lot in... So I'm in a family of Indian immigrants, okay?

Mel Robbins 1:36:33 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36:34 So growing up, I knew a lot of other people like me. And in Indian immigrant families in the UK, you will usually find one of the kids are at medical school. Why?

Mel Robbins 1:36:46 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36:46 Because it's hugely valued, okay?

Mel Robbins 1:36:49 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36:49 Now, for some people, it's the right choice.

Mel Robbins 1:36:51 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36:51 For a lot of people, it ain't the right choice.

Mel Robbins 1:36:53 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:36:53 And so one of the reasons I find that people in their mid-40s suddenly wake up and feel stuck, lost, unmotivated, they're drinking to excess on Friday and Saturday nights, is actually a symptom of the problem. The problem is they actually had what I call an over-reliance on being liked by other people.

Mel Robbins 1:37:15 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:37:16 And as I say, the cost of being liked by everyone is that you no longer like yourself.

Mel Robbins 1:37:20 Correct.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:37:21 And that's why, you know, one of my favorite bits in this book is the middle section, Dealing With Someone Else's Emotional Reactions-

Mel Robbins 1:37:28 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:37:28 ... which I think a lot of us don't wanna do, and there's such a powerful bit at the start of that section when you write, "The reality is adults are as emotional as children, and it is not your responsibility to manage someone else's reactions. As long as you let other people's emotional immaturity dictate your choices, you'll always come last in your own life."

Mel Robbins 1:37:57 Mm-hmm. It's true.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:37:58 That is profound, Mel.

Mel Robbins 1:37:59 This changed my life, dude. Changed my life. Um, I was just one of these people that felt so... Tuned in to other people's moods and emotions, and the second somebody was emotionally reactive, upset, angry, or passively aggressive, silent treatment stuff, I... My job to make everything okay, my job to make everybody in a good mood, my job to make sure my kids aren't sad or upset or bummed, nobody's disappointed in me. Um, it was a life-changing realization in researching this because I started to notice, I say let them a lot if somebody's snarky. I say let them a lot if somebody rage texts me. I don't need to respond.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:38:47 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:38:47 And what I started to learn from the experts, and I'm sure you know this to be true, is that the skill of emotional maturity, which is the ability to understand your emotions and the ability to feel them and process them in a mature way without barfing them on other people or acting like a kid throwing a tantrum inside an adult body, it is not anything someone's born with. It's a skill. You have to actually want to learn it. You have to be taught it. You have to practice it. And there is almost no one on the planet that has ever been taught how to do this, and one of the main reasons why is nobody, none of our parents were taught how to do this.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:39:33 Yeah, exactly.

Mel Robbins 1:39:34 And so I have this rule that I adopted from my brilliant therapist, Dr. Anne Davin. She basically, I was talking about this family member who's got a narcissistic personality style. We all have somebody like this in our life that it's always about them. You know, an evening with them is going to be fraught with all the attention on them. It's draining, and one of the coolest things about the Let Them Theory is, you know, you used to go into those situations with said family member or friend, and you would brace, and you would wish that things were gonna be different, and you would hope things would be different. You can just now go let them.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:40:14 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:40:15 I know who this person is. Why would I expect them to be any different? I'm gonna just let this play out and remind myself, let me remind myself, I don't have to sit at the table. I don't have to be part of this conversation. I don't have to give this a lot of energy because this is who this person is. But I was talking to my therapist, Anne, about, "How can I make sure this person really doesn't bother me?" And she said, "Look, Mel, the vast majority of adults are just eight-year-old kids in big bodies."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:40:43 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:40:43 And it was so life-changing to hear that because she said to me, she said, "You know, just think about it. Most adults can't handle their emotions. It's why your boss screams at you."

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:40:56 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:40:56 It's why people write those, like, three-page-long emails and then sign it best regards. You know, it's why you'll be out to dinner and a fr- if a friend has a location, they're like, "I see you that you're near me. Why didn't you let me..." You're like, "What? This is a grown-ass adult?" It's why people give you the silent treatment. In fact, there's a, there's a part in the book where, here it is, it's on page 112, where you line up childlike behavior. So this is a behavior of, like, an eight-year-old. When kids are overwhelmed emotionally, they run away from you. What do adults do? We avoid confrontation. Same thing.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:41:29 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:41:30 When a kid doesn't get what they want, what do they do? They go sulk in the corner. What does an adult do? They give you the silent treatment. Right? When a kid, like, feels, like, deeply sad or scared, they shut down. Adults, oh, you men, you guys act stoic all the time, as if things aren't bothering you. Same thing. When a child is at a store and they don't get the toy they want, they flop on the floor and they throw a tantrum. It's exactly what adults do. They rage text at you. They flip you off at traffic. They vent at you. That is an adult tantrum.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:42:04 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:42:04 It's emotional immaturity. Kids slam doors. Adults slam doors. Kids lie. Adults lie all the time. And so these are all examples of when somebody gets flooded with emotion, and they have not developed the capacity or skill to actually process it, so they tend to either shove it down and then pout or give you the silent treatment or lie about how they feel or drink it away, or they vomit it at you. And I was a vomiter. I was the kind of person-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:42:36 Yeah

Mel Robbins 1:42:36 ... that when I would get frustrated by life, I was the classic person that would come storming in the door and slam down my bag from work, and then I would be horrible to the people that I care about the most, and then I would say this, "I'm so sorry. It's just been so stressful at work, traffic," and I... And for years, I had this inability to protect myself from outside stress, and I had this inability to process all the frustration and inconsiderate behavior and the tension that I felt, and so I just would literally take it out on the people that I care about. And when I started to recognize, "Okay, I'm just, like, eight years old. Like, I, there's a little third-grader in my body right now. Mel, I don't wanna-"

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43:25 Yeah

Mel Robbins 1:43:25 ..."act like this anymore. How do I get control of this?" Well, you get control of it by first of all recognizing that this is everybody. And so what I also love about this is that if you have somebody in your life that's emotionally volatile or narcissistic in their personality style, we tend to fear them-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:43:43 Yeah

Mel Robbins 1:43:43 ... and tiptoe around them. When you start to imagine that your boss is just an eight-year-old kid on the other end of that nasty email, you pity them. And it's not a demeaning thing. You literally are like, "I feel sorry that you live in a body that must have that much stress and tension that you actually think you need to take it out on me." I see what's happening here. You have no ability to process normal human emotions, and what a shame you're going through life like that.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:44:18 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:44:18 But I am going to let you because it's not my job to be your parent.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:44:22 Exactly. And I think my sense from you, Mel, and you can tell me if I'm right on this or not, my, my sense is that one of the reasons you're so passionate about this new book and this Let Them Theory idea is because you know damn well what it feels like when you don't live your life in accordance with this theory.

Mel Robbins 1:44:47 Yeah. Say hello to the first 54 years of my life.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:44:50 Yeah. And you also know the calm, the freedom, the sense of control, the peace.

Mel Robbins 1:44:56 I didn't know this was possible.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:44:58 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:44:58 I would hear, like, people like you talking about what's possible when you really relax, when you really start taking care of yourself, and I will admit, I had that thing like I could, I could get a little bit of that, but I didn't really understand what it meant to be in a body that feels calm and present.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:20 Well, I don't think I knew until recently.

Mel Robbins 1:45:24 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:24 I, I, uh, why I'm so passionate about these ideas that I share, that you share, is because on the other side of this deep realization that you can't manage other people, you can't control their behavior, you can't change them-

Mel Robbins 1:45:45 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:46 ... right, that for me at least this idea that every external event really is neutral, and it's the perspective that we choose to take on it that determines its outcome-

Mel Robbins 1:45:59 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:45:59 ... that really resonates with me and my brain and how I see the world. Once you get that and you practice, right? 'Cause people aren't just gonna buy the book and immediately go, "Oh, I've got this nailed," right?

Mel Robbins 1:46:11 [laughs] Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:46:11 They, they're gonna learn it and through the stories you share in the book, they're gonna go, "Oh, I can apply it there." And little by little, week by week, month by month, you start to change.

Mel Robbins 1:46:23 Yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:46:23 And in a month, in two months, in three months, you're gonna feel like a different person.

Mel Robbins 1:46:29 Oh, I'm never going back.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:46:30 Yeah. Well, well-

Mel Robbins 1:46:31 Never going back

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:46:31 ... you can't go back. 'Cause even if you did go back, I contend that you'd notice, "Oh, there I go again. I'm-

Mel Robbins 1:46:38 Yeah

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:46:38 ... falling back."

Mel Robbins 1:46:39 I'm not doing it. Not doing it. I, I... The level of peace. And look, there are days that are frustrating. There are days where the stress gets to me. There are days where I vent at my business partner, and then I'm like, "Why did I do that? I'm so sorry." Uh, but here's what I'm proud of. The amount of time between the emotional reactivity and my ability to clean it up and apologize is, like, a minute.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:47:10 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:47:10 It's not a day. And-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:47:13 Oh, that's massive for your relationships

Mel Robbins 1:47:15 ... it's massive. And the number of times that it happens, 95% less.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:47:22 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:47:23 Because I value my time and my energy and my peace so much that I've now been saying let them and let me so much, I don't... Like, the let me part especially, that I am not going to allow myself to have things that don't matter affect me the way they used to.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:47:51 Yeah. A- and actually, one thing that I really believe about this new book of yours, Mel, even on the surface it could be seen to be about relationships, and it is.

Mel Robbins 1:48:06 It is, yeah.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:48:06 Right? It's about relationships with other people, relationships with your- your, your relationship with yourself. To me, it's also about health, right?

Mel Robbins 1:48:15 Mm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:48:15 And to me, the reason, there's many reasons it's about health, but one of the key reasons which I don't think people talk about enough in health and wellness is the why behind our behaviors, right? So if you're constantly getting triggered and stressed out by the actions of other people, what do you do? Sugar, alcohol, like numbing, distraction, right? So we think more knowledge about the sugar's what we need. No, if you apply the Let Them Theory in your life and you develop this inner calm, I bet that people's behaviors are gonna get better as well.

Mel Robbins 1:48:54 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:48:54 Their health behaviors. 'Cause those behaviors were there as a symptom of the internal stress they created by the way they interacted with the world.

Mel Robbins 1:49:04 The easiest way to start using the Let Them Theory is to simply protect yourself from daily stressors. Like-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:49:10 Yeah

Mel Robbins 1:49:10 ... you know, if you're standing in queue at a little market, and there's two cashiers open, five people in front of you, and there's, like, tons of people around, but five other empty cashier register things, and it's like, beep, beep, beep.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:49:31 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:49:32 What do you feel in your body?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:49:33 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:49:34 You feel the flood of stress, and in that moment, if you're the old Mel Robbins, you would start rocking back and forth, you'd anxiously look at your phone.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:49:44 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:49:44 I'd turn around and roll my eyes at the person behind me. I'd get frustrated if I saw people working in the store, but they're not coming to cashier. And now I'm thinking I can run the store better than the people running it, and I'm mad, and here's what I've just done. I've allowed something stupid to put me in a fight or flight response and trigger the stress psychology in my body-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:50:07 Exactly

Mel Robbins 1:50:07 ... which impacts me for the rest of the day, and I've also lost sight of something. I have control. Let them be slow. Let them run the store like this. And let me remind myself that I can leave.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:50:23 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:50:24 I could actually, instead of rocking back and forth, I could actually close my eyes and practice your three, four, five breath technique.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:50:34 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:50:34 I could-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:50:34 Anything you want

Mel Robbins 1:50:35 ... anything you want

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:50:36 Once you realize that you have the power-

Mel Robbins 1:50:38 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:50:38 ... that's the key.

Mel Robbins 1:50:39 Yes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:50:40 That's the key message-

Mel Robbins 1:50:40 Yes

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:50:40 ... in this book, right?

Mel Robbins 1:50:42 Yes. And to your point, if you do that in a micro moment, and you do that all day long, let them with the stressful email, let them with the traffic, let them with no seat being offered to you even if you're pregnant and you're on the tube, let the, uh, patient's family that you're taking care of as a nurse be rude to you because they're stressed out and scared-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:51:05 Yeah

Mel Robbins 1:51:05 ... just let the parents of the kid who you're teaching, you know, not understand how hard you... Let them.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:51:12 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:51:12 Like, if you insulate yourself from those moments of stress that drain you, that just impact your health, one two-word phrase at a time, you're actually protecting yourself from the things that are hurting your health.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:51:29 Yeah, I love it. So we've done four of the five questions.

Mel Robbins 1:51:32 Got it.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:51:33 So to finish off the loop, 'cause I said five at the start-

Mel Robbins 1:51:36 [laughs]

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:51:36 ... so I'm gonna remind people of the four and then get to the fifth one. Okay, so the first question, why am I afraid of failing? Number two, why do I have a hard time asking for what I need? Number three, what is stopping me from living my life the way I want to live it? Number four, why do I procrastinate and overthink every decision? And the fifth one, arguably the most powerful one, what is underneath all that doubt?

Mel Robbins 1:52:07 What's underneath all that doubt is your attempts to control things that you will never be able to control. Every time you try to control what somebody else thinks, or you worry about it, or you are frustrated by somebody's opinion or their behavior, or you're annoyed but s- by what somebody does or doesn't do, or you navigate your life around people's moods, or you make it your job to make everybody happy around you, you are focused on something that is outside of your control. And if you are spending time and energy on something that you'll never be able to impact, of course you're gonna doubt yourself. I mean, it's never gonna work.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:52:57 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:52:57 And so you're in this loop where by constantly thinking about what other people think, believe, do, feel, all of your energy and power is going to other people, so you have none left for yourself, and then you've missed the single biggest truth about life. It was never over there. The power's in here. The power's in what you do, what you think, how you process your emotions.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:53:24 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:53:24 And when you start to focus on what you can do, on the choices that you do have, on what you want to think about-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:53:33 Mm-hmm

Mel Robbins 1:53:33 ... what's happening, all of those times that you focus on your response, you take your power back. You recognize that, oh my gosh, no matter what's happening, there are things I can control.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:53:47 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:53:48 And when you focus on what you can control, it makes you feel safe. It makes you recognize that you have agency. It makes you feel like there are things that create forward momentum. And every time that you lean into what you can control, it makes you feel a little bit more capable-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:54:09 Yeah

Mel Robbins 1:54:09 ... which then makes you feel a little bit more confident. I mean, you doubt yourself when you stop yourself from taking action and when you obsessively push against a wall that's never gonna move.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:54:25 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:54:26 And I think we know when we're quietly giving up on ourselves. I think... You know, see, I choose to believe that everybody has within them the ability to change their life for the better, and I also believe that you are capable of achieving things that are way beyond what you could imagine for yourself.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:54:49 Mm-hmm.

Mel Robbins 1:54:50 And I also believe that anything that is in your way is something that you have put in your way because you have told yourself that there's nothing you can do, and that's a lie. There's always something you can do, through your attitude, through the actions you do or don't take, and through the way you react to the emotions that you feel.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:55:19 Earlier on, Mel, you said that you've caused people a lot of pain in your life.

Mel Robbins 1:55:24 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:55:26 I think a lot about the concepts of regrets.

Mel Robbins 1:55:28 Yep.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:55:29 Okay? And I'm interested, as you've evolved as a human being over the last few years, even in the writing of this book-

Mel Robbins 1:55:36 Mm-hmm

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:55:36 ... which clearly has been life-changing for you and for many of the hundreds of thousands of readers around the world now, I guess my question is, what's your relationship like with regrets?

Mel Robbins 1:55:51 You know, there's, um, tons of regrettable things I've done, and there's a tremendous number of things that I wish I hadn't done, and it's a long list, and I wish that I could go back and remove any of the pain that I caused other people because I do know that I never intended to. There's a big difference between what you intend, though-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:56:17 Mm-hmm

Mel Robbins 1:56:17 ... and the actual impact. And so- While there are things that I wish I hadn't done, and there's a lot of pain that I wish I hadn't caused, I have created space for two things to be true. I understand that absolutely everything that's ever happened to me has led me to this moment.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:56:42 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:56:43 And given the impact that I am able to make and the things that I have experienced and achieved, and most importantly, arriving at a moment in my life where I am truly proud of the person that I am, which is something I could not say about myself for probably the first fifty-four years of my life.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:57:04 Wow.

Mel Robbins 1:57:04 I was proud of some of the accomplishments, but deep down, I still wrestled with a lot of hatred, a lot of regret, a lot of shame. Even though I talk openly, there was still something unresolved. And so I have created this space for two things to be true. I hate that things that I did cause people pain, and I wish that I could erase it, but I can't erase parts of my story.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:57:33 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:57:34 And I've apologized for the things that I've done, and I've done the only thing that you can do when you cause yourself or other people pain, and that is to dig deep to understand the very important and personal message that... and the lesson that you needed to learn through those things.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:57:54 Exactly.

Mel Robbins 1:57:55 And then work your tail off to become a better person and not do that again. Because you can apologize through your words, but that's important, but a true apology is a change in behavior. And what I know as I sit here today is that I have changed who I am through my attitude and through my behavior over time. And one of the reasons why I do believe that the person listening and the person that they're gonna share this with can change their life is because over the course of the last fifteen years, I've changed absolutely everything about mine. And it's not gonna happen overnight. But if you make a decision that where you are is not where you wanna remain, that you do wanna grow, that you do wanna learn, that you do wanna change the way that you move through your day, then that decision is all you need because it turns your life in a completely different direction. And then what you need to do is, I encourage you, like think about a fifteen-year timeline. Like we often think about, what could I do in a month? When you're thinking about whether or not you could change your life-

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:59:15 Mm-hmm

Mel Robbins 1:59:15 ... and give yourself a decade. Do you know how much you can change in a decade?

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:59:21 Yeah.

Mel Robbins 1:59:24 You can change everything. You can meet the best friends of your lifetime. You can have an incredible marriage. You can get yourself out of debt and make a ton of money. Like, people around the world have figured out how to do this, and they've been in the exact situation that you're in. You just have to make a decision that where you are is not where you're gonna stay, and then you have to get up every morning and put one foot in front of the other, and that's all that it takes.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 1:59:53 Mel, you're an incredible human being. You are doing such phenomenal work in the world. You've written a quite brilliant book. Thank you for coming back on the show. Thank you for loaning me your studio for the afternoon to have you back on the podcast, and I can't wait for the next time we get to chat.

Mel Robbins 2:00:12 Me either. Thank you.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:00:13 [upbeat music] If you enjoyed that conversation, then I think you are really going to enjoy this one that I picked out especially.

Cameo 2:00:20 The only challenge I think with addictions is that if you can't think greater than how you feel, your life will stay the same.

Dr. Rangan Chatterjee 2:00:29 Yeah.

Cameo 2:00:29 The solution then is