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Simon SinekThe First Steps To Reducing Your Anxiety with author Mel Robbins | A Bit of Optimism Podcast
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55 min read · 10,584 words- 0:00 – 7:24
How Mel went from $800,000 in debt to a professional speaker
- MRMel Robbins
If your friends don't invite you out this weekend, let them. If the person you're dating doesn't want a commitment, let them. If your kids don't wanna go to the flea market with you this weekend, let them. Stop worrying about managing and stressing about other people. Stop forcing them to change. Let people be who they are because they're revealing themselves to you, and they're revealing their priorities and what matters to you, and then you get to choose. You get to choose how to respond, and that's where your power is.
- SSSimon Sinek
I love the way you speak. I'm been captivated this entire time, taking in every word. Not agreeing with all of them, but taking them in.
- MRMel Robbins
Let them.
- SSSimon Sinek
Uh, let them.
- MRMel Robbins
I don't care. [laughs]
- SSSimon Sinek
[laughs] Control freaks, breathe easy. Mel Robbins is here, and she's clearing a space to help us let go of our anxiety, and help all of us live our best lives. Mel has one of the most popular podcasts in the world, and she has a new book called The Let Them Theory, which is profound in the impact it's having in people's lives. Mel is a force of nature, and one of my favorite guests that I've ever had on the podcast. This is A Bit of Optimism. So one of the things that you and I have in common is that it's amazing that we're still around. [laughs]
- MRMel Robbins
[laughs] Who the hell are you calling old, Simon?
- SSSimon Sinek
Gi- given... No, no.
- MRMel Robbins
[laughs]
- SSSimon Sinek
Given that, given that the work that we did on TED that sort of helped the world know what we were thinking about the world-
- MRMel Robbins
Uh-huh
- SSSimon Sinek
... was many years ago.
- MRMel Robbins
Yes.
- SSSimon Sinek
Uh, yours 13 years ago, right?
- MRMel Robbins
Yeah.
- SSSimon Sinek
Mine 15 years ago.
- MRMel Robbins
15.
- SSSimon Sinek
I know. Painful. Um-
- MRMel Robbins
So you're the dinosaur. I'm the younger one.
- SSSimon Sinek
Yes. Yeah. [laughs]
- MRMel Robbins
[laughs] At least in TED years.
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah, at least in TED years. And did you know that your work would resonate as loud as it has? Was you able pr- to pr-
- MRMel Robbins
Are you kidding me? So, so literally, let me give you the backstory.
- SSSimon Sinek
Okay.
- MRMel Robbins
So it is 2011.
- SSSimon Sinek
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
And my husband is in a failing restaurant business.
- SSSimon Sinek
That sounds like all restaurant businesses.
- MRMel Robbins
Yep. We have liens on the house and we're 800 grand in debt.
- SSSimon Sinek
Okay, that sucks.
- 7:24 – 11:43
Simon asks Mel why her work resonates with so many people
- SSSimon Sinek
So the question I w- where I started was could you have predicted what has happened?
- MRMel Robbins
I think you would have to be an arrogant sociopath to think-
- SSSimon Sinek
But looking back, you can understand it.
- MRMel Robbins
No. Oh, I understand now.
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah, yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
But standing in that moment, I would never-
- SSSimon Sinek
No, but you can understand now why it connected.
- MRMel Robbins
It-- I do. And, and the reason why it connected is because there is so much information. Like, I- I personally believe that most people know what they need to do.
- SSSimon Sinek
Mm.
- MRMel Robbins
Or you're one Google search away from it.
- SSSimon Sinek
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
But there's not a lot of how.
- SSSimon Sinek
Mm.
- MRMel Robbins
And for me, I'm fascinated by intellectual concepts and philosophy and all this stuff, but I don't know how to apply it.
- SSSimon Sinek
Mm.
- MRMel Robbins
Like, I've always been the kind of person that wanted to let things go, but I never can because I feel like if I let it go, I'm admitting defeat.
- SSSimon Sinek
Mm.
- MRMel Robbins
And so for me, the experience of sharing one simple thing that helped me during one of the hardest moments of my life, it taught me a number of things. Number one, absolutely everyone who is struggling, and at some point everybody struggles, everybody feels stuck, everybody feels lonely, you think you're the only one.
- SSSimon Sinek
Mm.
- MRMel Robbins
And you're not. The second thing it taught me is that in life, when things feel overwhelming and complicated, the more complicated the solution, the less likely it's gonna work. You need something obvious and simple because when you're already overwhelmed and stuck, you're missing hope, and you're also not able to leverage the full capacity of your brain 'cause you're stressed out and you're overwhelmed and you're up in your head. And so the simpler-
- SSSimon Sinek
Mm
- MRMel Robbins
... the idea, the more likely you're gonna be able to use it.
- SSSimon Sinek
Mm.
- MRMel Robbins
And the third thing that it taught me is the extraordinary power of ignoring how you feel and forcing yourself to do something.
- SSSimon Sinek
All right. Talk about that one more 'cause that, that's-- I have no problem letting myself down.
- MRMel Robbins
What do you mean?
- SSSimon Sinek
So for example, um, I know I need to get back in shape. I know I need to go to the gym. And I'll wake up in the morning and be like, "All right. Work out."
- MRMel Robbins
Uh-huh.
- SSSimon Sinek
"I got all the workout stuff at home." You know?
- MRMel Robbins
Yeah.
- 11:43 – 18:47
Why Nike's tagline is "Just Do It"
- MRMel Robbins
You know, one of the most famous taglines in the world is Nike, Just Do It.
- SSSimon Sinek
Sure.
- MRMel Robbins
What's the most powerful word of those three words?
- SSSimon Sinek
The do.
- MRMel Robbins
No.
- SSSimon Sinek
The just.
- MRMel Robbins
Yes. If their tagline had been do it-
- SSSimon Sinek
Oh yeah, you would've hated that. I would've hated it, yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
Yeah, of course, because-
- SSSimon Sinek
It's, it's-
- MRMel Robbins
... pressure
- SSSimon Sinek
... it's aggressive.
- MRMel Robbins
Well, it, it's not only that it's aggressive. If you look at basic brain wiring-
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah
- MRMel Robbins
That type of pressure doesn't motivate. It actually creates resistance to change- Yeah ... because it is an assault on your fundamental need to control yourself. Yeah. But the tagline, "Just do it"- Mm ... appeals to your humanity. Mm. It's acknowledging something we all struggle with, which is that moment of hesitation, that moment of self-doubt, that moment where you're standing on the sideline aching to jump in the game, but you are holding yourself back. The just is everything. Mm. And that's what the five-second rule is. It's acknowledging that we all have this habit of hesitating in the small moments, this bias towards thinking, where we consider how we feel about the thing that we're about to do instead of doing the small thing that we need to do. And for me, it was the moment of hesitation when the alarm rang. Mm. And I knew I needed to get out of bed. I knew I needed to get the kids on the bus. I knew I needed to get a job. I knew I needed to not drink so much. I knew I needed to stop screaming at my husband. I knew I needed to ask for help. I wasn't doing any of it. Because in that moment when that alarm rang, and I knew what I needed to do, I stopped and considered how I felt about doing it. And when you stop and consider how you feel, your brain is wired to do what's easy. We naturally move towards it. We are also wired to push away from what feels hard. And the reason why it is so difficult to break patterns is because the patterns that you're in feel easy because you know them. Lying in bed is easy. That's why we do it. Picking up your phone and scrolling on social media, it's easy. That's why we do it. In order to change anything about your life or to replace any pattern in your life, you have to work against basic wiring in your brain, and you have to develop a skill of being able to ignore how you feel and choose to take action even when you don't want to. And that's what the five-second rule taught me. You know, when I look at the success that I've built and the things that I've done since even the TEDx talk or that moment in my life 14 years ago, uh, I don't think I'm particularly special. I just did what a lot of people won't do. I got up in the mornings when I didn't feel like it. I did the boring-ass, tedious, grueling crap that needs to get done every day, and I refused to quit. And it is a skill to learn how to feel what you're feeling and then align your action with the thing that you know you need to do that's good for you. Were you always like this? Were you always A type in, like in school? Like w- what was your, what w- what was your- Oh, I was a walking red flag for a long time. What does that mean? Uh, that means that I was... Like, I struggle with a lot of stuff. I think this is why I'm obsessed with helping. Like, it's why I'm obsessed with uncovering any kind of shortcut or any kind of knowledge or tool that can help you create a better life or solve a problem because I spent so much of my life hurting myself or hurting other people 'cause I just didn't know. I mean, there are so many examples of this, from trauma in your childhood to I had dyslexia and ADHD. I had no fucking clue I had those things. And part of the reason why I had no clue is because when they were researching ADHD in the '70s, they only looked at boys, and we now know that girls have ADHD just as much as boys. They just have the opposite symptoms. And if you're in a classroom and your brain doesn't learn the way that public school or whatever school is asking you to learn, if you don't address dyslexia, dysgraphia, ADHD, what develops on the surface is anxiety. So there are generations of women, I am one of them, who got diagnosed with anxiety in their late teens and early 20s who were medicated for anxiety. The wrong thing. The wrong thing. Yeah. And I didn't discover that I had ADHD or dyslexia until I was 47 years old. And you wanna know how I discovered it? I discovered it the same way the majority of women discover it, because one of my kids was going through the process of getting evaluated by a neuropsychologist- Mm ... for school. And as I looked at his profile, I'm like, "Well, that looks like me." And then I went through it, and lo and behold, it explained everything. Mm-hmm. I didn't know. And suddenly knowing gave me a completely different vantage point about the things that I struggled with, about the things that I did that I regret, about the opportunities that I squandered. Mm. You know, I recently had on our podcast a really incredible guy by the name of Dr. Stuart Ablon. He's a psychologist that's been practicing at Mass General Brigham for 30 years, and he had this thing that he said just a week ago that I will never forget. He said, "People do well when they can." And if you're not doing well or if somebody in your life is not doing well, it's because they can't right now. There's a, there's a skill. It's not a willpower issue. If somebody is expressing challenging behavior, there's typically some sort of skill that is missing. There's a problem underneath the behavior that hasn't been discovered. And so what I've found in my life is that I have struggled silently. I have felt very stuck in patterns of behavior that I didn't feel, like, equipped to be able to replace or understand, which only leads you to feel worse about yourself. Like, how, how can I keep doing this to myself? How can I keep making the same mistakes? Why am I so damn hard on myself? And so when you don't know what's going on or you don't understand kind of the, the trap that you're in, then you have no ability to get out of it. And so for me, it was a revelation to understand that simply counting five, four, three, two, one, it allowed me to not be ruled by emotion. It allowed me to not Let the patterns of my past dictate the person I was in the present. And when you start to gain that kind of control over yourself, it's liberating. So no, I wasn't always that person at all.
- SSSimon Sinek
But were you sort of a-- did you have a, always have a lot of grit, sort of work hard at school?
- MRMel Robbins
Yeah. Yeah. I, I-- 'cause I was, I was like super competitive and like a lot of people. I got a lot of positive attention-
- SSSimon Sinek
Mm-hmm
- MRMel Robbins
... when I got great grades or when the track team won or-
- SSSimon Sinek
Mm-hmm
- MRMel Robbins
... when I was elected president of whatever. And so, yeah. Like I-
- SSSimon Sinek
So,
- 18:47 – 22:12
Mel thinks motivation is complete garbage
- SSSimon Sinek
so, so it was not that you had the skill of grit and motivation and you lost it, and this five, and the 54321 helped you-
- MRMel Robbins
See, I don't think it's an issue of motivation.
- SSSimon Sinek
Go on.
- MRMel Robbins
I don't, because I think motivation's complete garbage.
- SSSimon Sinek
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
It's never there when you need it, and that's the paradox of it, is that we're all sitting there waiting to feel motivated.
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
And it's not coming.
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
Because basic wiring of the brain is that you will always default to what's easy, and you always push against what's hard. And if motivation were available on demand, we'd all have a million dollars and six-pack abs. And so sitting around waiting for motivation is the kiss of death because it's in the action that you dissipate the emotion.
- SSSimon Sinek
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
And it's in the action that you actually prove to yourself through the action-
- SSSimon Sinek
Mm
- MRMel Robbins
... 'cause you see yourself operating differently-
- SSSimon Sinek
Mm
- MRMel Robbins
... that you are a different person.
- SSSimon Sinek
Mm.
- MRMel Robbins
That you are not defined by your emotions. I mean, emotions are just chemical reactions that explode within six seconds, and the research shows that if you can learn how to let them rise and fall like a wave, most emotion dissipates in 90 seconds. Instead, what we do is we feel it, and then we think the emotion needs to guide our response to it, and it's actually the opposite. You can choose your response if you understand what emotions are. And I felt trapped, and I was a hostage to my emotions all the time. You can either be sunny, and you can be a storm cloud. You get to choose. And for a large part of my life, I was violently oscillating between those two things. And learning how to be in control of the actions that you take and learning that you do have agency and that you don't have to wait to feel like it, that you're not gonna sit around and wait for motivation, that you're the kind of person that is building the skill of doing what needs to get done, and that's an, an incredible thing.
- SSSimon Sinek
But do you allow yourself then to feel sad?
- MRMel Robbins
Of course. Absolutely. Absolutely. But I get to choose how I sit with it.
- SSSimon Sinek
So give me an example.
- MRMel Robbins
So being sad is a mentally healthy response-
- SSSimon Sinek
For sure
- MRMel Robbins
... to situations in life.
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
And the thing about it is that there's gonna become an amount of time that being in your sadness is helping you process grief-
- SSSimon Sinek
Mm-hmm
- MRMel Robbins
... or helping you process heartbreak or helping you process disappointment. Like, for me, the last ti- the, the thing that comes to mind is when we moved-- So I, we lived outside of Boston for 26 years, and then about four years ago, we moved to southern Vermont. And so at the age of 52, all of a sudden, I'm in this tiny little town, and I don't know anybody. I don't have any friends. I was very sad. I was very lonely. And I sat with it for quite a while. And I think that I over-indexed on sadness for probably six months too long. And at some point, there's this tipping point with your emotions where you go from needing to process something to truly drowning in it, and that's when I think you need to do something.
- SSSimon Sinek
Where do other people factor into all this? The idea of asking for help or having, uh, a, an, a, an, a support network.
- MRMel Robbins
Mm-hmm.
- 22:12 – 27:45
Simon asks where other people fit into Mel's work
- SSSimon Sinek
uh, uh, I hear everything you're saying, and it, it's, it's true and inspiring. But where, where do other people fit into this? Like-
- MRMel Robbins
Uh, other people are everything
- SSSimon Sinek
... because I, you know, we're social animals.
- MRMel Robbins
Mm-hmm.
- SSSimon Sinek
And none of this works in a vacuum.
- MRMel Robbins
Correct.
- SSSimon Sinek
So e-even in your story, at what points would this not have been possible if there wasn't another person involved? I mean, there's only so many times you can say 54321.
- MRMel Robbins
Yeah.
- SSSimon Sinek
Uh-
- MRMel Robbins
So, so 54321 changes your relationship to yourself.
- SSSimon Sinek
Right. I mean, you a-
- MRMel Robbins
There's-
- SSSimon Sinek
You asked me, like, what's the reason you wanna be in shape?
- MRMel Robbins
Yes.
- SSSimon Sinek
Right? And, you know, uh, and service is the greatest motivator of all. Um, your family, your friends, whatever it is, the greater good.
- MRMel Robbins
Mm-hmm.
- SSSimon Sinek
Um, and I said, "I'm okay letting myself down, but I don't wanna let other people-- I won't let other people down." And I also know that my ability to deal with stress, discomfort, whatever w- whatever, whenever one needs grit, um, skyrockets if I have at least one person in my life who says, "You got this."
- MRMel Robbins
Mm-hmm.
- SSSimon Sinek
They don't have to go on the journey with me.
- MRMel Robbins
Right.
- SSSimon Sinek
But if I can call them at the end of the day and be like, "I'm not so sure," they're like, "Yeah, I believe in you, and if it all goes south, I'm still gonna love you." And then all of a sudden, I'm, I'm golden.
- MRMel Robbins
Of course.
- SSSimon Sinek
Where is the person sitting next to you? Like, you were there for your husband who was going through this debt with you. You know, it's his restaurant, right? I just wanna know the role that other people play-
- MRMel Robbins
They're everything
- SSSimon Sinek
... or need to play.
- MRMel Robbins
They're everything.
- SSSimon Sinek
So-
- MRMel Robbins
But, but here's, here's the thing. So that changed my relationship with myself.
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
And it made me acutely aware that I'm responsible for creating what I want in life, and I'm also responsible for doing the work to make it happen.
- 27:45 – 38:49
How Mel discovered "let them"
- SSSimon Sinek
What, what happened that you came to this theory?
- MRMel Robbins
So I was at... I can't believe this is where it happened, but I was at a high school prom. [laughs] And I had gone... Now, I discover all this life-changing stuff, and this is the single most important thing I've ever discovered by far. This is the legacy I will leave on this planet. I'm at a high school prom. I have had, mind you, two daughters who have gone through high school proms. So we have done the dramatic five months of bullshit, picking out the dresses, the spray tans, the limos, like, the craziness. So I figure, "Okay, we got this on lock. I know what's gonna happen." I thought Oak was gonna be a breeze. It was the worst because he didn't know if he was gonna go. He was really nonchalant, so I couldn't get... Like, I didn't know it was happening. And then 48 hours before prom, it's like, "I'm going." I'm like, "Oh my God. Where are we gonna find a tux in Vermont? Like, you want those tennis shoes?" Like, it was a last-minute scramble. And so we get to the night of prom, and we go to the party where we're taking all the photos before prom. And everything is different in Vermont than it was in Boston. So I'm starting to be like, "What do you mean?" Like-
- SSSimon Sinek
More Birkenstocks
- MRMel Robbins
... "You're driving." Like, "You're driving? Isn't there a bus? Like, what?" Um, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, it starts to pour rain. Like, the storms roll in. It's pouring rain. Now all the parents are kinda milling about. "What are you guys doing for dinner?" I'm like, "You don't have dinner reservations? What do you mean?" And Oakley's like, "Well, I think we're just gonna go to the taco stand." And for me, that was just, like, the end of it. Like, I'm like, "Taco stand, rainstorm. You're not going. You're gonna ruin your..." And I start to just lose it. And my daughter was home from college, and she reaches over and grabs my arm. She's like, "Mom, you're, you're annoying. Stop it." And I'm like, "But, but, but they're gonna get soaked." And she's like, "Let them." And I'm like, "But the, the, the restaurant's not open." "Let them." "But he's gonna ruin his tennis shoes." "Let them." "But her hair." "Let them. Mom, it's their prom, not yours. Let them do what they want." And there was something about the moment and her saying let them in this cascading fashion, that every time she said it, it was like a sledgehammer hitting my nervous system. And by the time she said it the last time, "Let them do what they want"-
- SSSimon Sinek
Mm
- MRMel Robbins
... I felt this instant peace. And then it occurred to me, "Why, why the hell do I care about this? Like, why, why am I not worried about where I'm eating?" And so I walk up to our son, Oakley, and as I'm app- He's like, "What?" You know, 'cause I've been so annoying. I'm like, "Nothing, dude. Here's 40 bucks. Go have fun." And you could see him relax.
- SSSimon Sinek
Mm.
- MRMel Robbins
And, you know, they run out the door and of course they splash mud right up her dress.
- SSSimon Sinek
Mm.
- MRMel Robbins
And shoes are ruined. Who cares?
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
And so the next morning I wake up and I'm at like a garden center buying some plants, and I'm standing there in line. And you know how you're in line and there's like five people in front of you and it's like beep, beep, beep, chitchat for small talk. And then you start to feel the stress rising.
- SSSimon Sinek
[chuckles]
- MRMel Robbins
And then you start to think, "Why don't they have another cashier?"
- SSSimon Sinek
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
And you start to get irritated.
- SSSimon Sinek
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
And now you think that you can run the garden center better than everybody else.
- SSSimon Sinek
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
And now you're fidgeting and you're looking, and you wanna turn to the per- and you're like, "Can you believe..." Let them. They're doing traffic. They're doing construction on it. Let them. Your mother's disappointed you're not coming. Let her be disappointed. It is extraordinary how often other people's behavior-
- SSSimon Sinek
Mm
- MRMel Robbins
... or their opinions or what people are doing pisses you off, stresses you out-
- SSSimon Sinek
Mm
- MRMel Robbins
... or upsets you.
- SSSimon Sinek
Mm.
- MRMel Robbins
And you have zero control over it. So why on earth-
- SSSimon Sinek
Mm
- MRMel Robbins
... would you wanna give your precious time and energy to something that you have zero control over? And as I went through my day and, you know, I get home from the garden center and the dog has taken a dump on the, like, front walk, and I'm like, "What is... Let him." Like, I can't control it now. Why would I let this now get me... Let him. And it was so interesting to just watch how many times I was pulling this lever.
- SSSimon Sinek
Mm.
- MRMel Robbins
How many times I was allowing things out there to get in here.
- 38:49 – 43:19
Mel's theory on friendship
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
And, you know, the other area where I think you might be very interested, where this has had a huge impact in my life, is it's changed my entire approach to adult friendship.
- SSSimon Sinek
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
And I know you've been talking about this a lot recently.
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
And I have a philosophy about friendship, that when you are 20 and under, friendship is a group sport. Your entire life is organized so that it is easy to spend time with people your age, and every milestone in your life is measured at the same time. You move through one grade to the next grade to the next grade to the next grade. You are able to locate yourself in space and time because you are with people your age all doing the same thing, and so the conditions for friendship are set up.
- SSSimon Sinek
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
And you also have a tremendous amount of time with people going through the same things. And then all of a sudden, your 20s hit, and what I call the great scattering happens. And nobody sees it coming. And friendship goes from a group sport where everybody expects to be included, because you've always been included on teams or in classes or whatever, to an individual one. And what people don't understand is that there's a massive shift from expecting to be included, expecting to be best friends, expecting it, to actually having to create it, and understanding that there are three things that have to be present in order for a friendship to happen. Number one, you have to have proximity. And the reason why proximity matters is because time spent with people matters. And they've done studies on how much time you need to spend with somebody in order to become a friend, and it's a huge amount of time. To be a casual friend, the study's something like 70 hours. To be a close friend, it's something like 200 hours. This is why you easily made friends in college, 'cause you were living with people, you were eating with people. So the conditions of proximity were there. It's also why you weren't friends with the person at the end of the hall. They've done research on this too, that if you study who you're friends with in a dorm, the people across the hall or next door are more likely gonna be your friends. Why? Proximity matters. The person that you don't see much who's at the end of the hall, you're not gonna spend that much time with. The second one is, uh, the timing of your life. And so if you're now in your 20s, the timing of everybody's life is very different, because some people are going to graduate school, some people are going into the military, some people are moving, some people are getting married, some people are chasing the corporate ladder, some people are traveling. So the timing of what's relevant for you is off. And it used to be the same because you were all moving through grades, right? The third is energy. Sometimes energy clicks, sometimes it doesn't. And friendships in your adult life are gonna come and go for the rest of time, which is why you have to have a very flexible approach to friendship from the moment you turn 20. You have to learn to let people leave and let new people come in. And if you don't understand this, you start to think that you're the problem. You start to think that you're being left out. If you have a friendship that starts to fade, I want you, before you X them out, before you judge, before you judge yourself, I want you to ask yourself, are the three conditions present? Or is proximity changed? Or has the timing of our lives changed? They're gotten engaged, I'm still single. They're in graduate school, I'm across the country doing something else Has the energy shifted? Because that happens too. If you're suddenly not drinking, the energy is gonna shift with you and the friends of yours that partied all the time. And what I love about understanding this is that it makes it not personal. And when you understand that friendship is also now an individual sport and it's yours to create, it allows you to understand that the whole tool is not let them create my social life, not let them keep up with the text chain, but let me figure out what I want friendship to be and let me go first. Let me be the one that's making the plans. Let me be the one reaching out. Not because I'm expecting them to respond, but because this is a value of mine that I wanna create for myself. And what you'll find when you shift this perspective is that you find your people.
- 43:19 – 52:32
Mel shares how writing a book with her daughter healed their relationship
- SSSimon Sinek
Tell me a specific story, something you've done in your career that if a project, something you were involved in, doesn't have to have been commercially successful.
- MRMel Robbins
Mm-hmm.
- SSSimon Sinek
But that if every project you did was like this one, you'd be the happiest person alive.
- MRMel Robbins
I loved actually writing this book 'cause I did it with my daughter, and it healed our relationship. It allowed me to see my daughter in a completely different light. So my daughter had never wanted to work with me, and I respect that. She wanted to have her own path in life. She wanted to do her own thing. And when she graduated from college, she went and worked for this huge cybersecurity firm and was in the marketing and analytics department. And then after a couple years of doing that, she went on a solo backpacking trip in Asia and came home from that broke, moved in with my husband and I, and was looking for a job and looking for a restaurant job so that she could save up a bunch of money and move to New York and then go on with her life. And so I said to her, "You know, I'm about to hire a research assistant to research this thing that I'm calling the Let Them Theory. And you need money, and I know you don't wanna work for me, but if you would like to make some money, I can have you work with somebody else so you don't have to talk to me. But it's like a three-week-long project. Here's a podcast episode, here's a couple YouTube videos, here's some articles, and here's about 15,000 comments. Why don't you dig into all of this and come back to me and kinda tell me, give me some sentiment analysis?" And so she said, "Fine. Fine. Okay. Okay." So 36 hours later, she presents a 27-page Excel columned, color-coded dropdown menu, source linked guide to all of her research, including a two-page, like, d- distillation of everything she had discovered with a gigantic warning that she didn't think that I should write this book because she was deeply concerned that she was seeing a lane of people who were saying that the theory was making them lonelier. Because when you say let them and you allow people to be who they are, you start to realize that you have a lot of friendships that are fake, or you have a lot of relationships in your life that are one-sided, where you're putting in a lot of effort and it's not getting returned. And when you see that somebody doesn't reciprocate, you then start to feel like, "My God, my siblings, they don't ever reach out. My friends don't reach out. Now I'm really lonely." And so she said, "You can't write this book unless there's a second part. There has to be a part, Mom, where this flips and you feel empowered again." And it was her and her research and her brain that created the second step, which is let me. And it was a extraordinary experience to have her hand me that 27-page document because it was the first time I understood her brain. And she is a extremely, like, driven human being, and it made me realize, oh my God, like she's got a computer processor upstairs. And I now understand for the first time that if she doesn't have something big to aim it at, she aims it at herself, which is why she's hard on herself. And it had me see a side of her that I never fully understood. It was extraordinary. But the bigger thing was as we worked through all of the different aspects of writing this book, and you know, like you've written unbelievable books. It's a bitch to write a book. We had to say let them, let them, let them with each other every day, all day long. And we were the kind-- we had the kind of relationship where we're really close, but there was just this like invisible distance. And I think there's a lot of relationships like that, where you want to be closer. You want to have more fun. You want to feel like the tension or whatever the things are that you start to get irritated with one another, that they would just disappear. And every one of us has somebody like that in our life, whether it's a parent or it's an adult child or it's a sibling or it's somebody that you're a friend with, that there's just sort of like this k- like...
- SSSimon Sinek
So of all of the amazing things you've done in your life-
- MRMel Robbins
Uh-huh
- SSSimon Sinek
... what specifically is about this one that you w- that you, you, you cling onto it and you wanna talk about it right now? I asked for you for a single example of something you love that is everything you did in your life was like this thing.
- MRMel Robbins
Yeah.
- SSSimon Sinek
You'd be the most fulfilled person in the world.
- MRMel Robbins
Yeah.
- SSSimon Sinek
What specifically is about this story that stands out amongst all the other things you've done?
- MRMel Robbins
It allowed me to clear out the friction and bullshit between us.
- SSSimon Sinek
Okay.
- MRMel Robbins
It allowed us to create space-
- SSSimon Sinek
Okay
- MRMel Robbins
... for both of us to be and for us to truly give, like... You know, 'cause look, people are irritating, especially the people that you love. I often think that family is around so that it teaches you to love people you hate sometimes.
- SSSimon Sinek
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
And when you're working with somebody in the trenches like that-
- SSSimon Sinek
Mm
- MRMel Robbins
... there are gonna be things all day long that piss you off or frustrate you. And when you say, "Let them," you don't have that death by a thousand cuts-
- SSSimon Sinek
Mm
- MRMel Robbins
... that start to build up, the resentment, the frustration, the annoyance. You create space for the other person to be human.
- SSSimon Sinek
Okay. Tell me an early specific happy childhood memory, something I can relive with you, something specific.
- MRMel Robbins
Oh, boy. Um, childhood memory.
- SSSimon Sinek
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
Um, when... I grew up in, uh, North Muskegon, Michigan.
- SSSimon Sinek
Mm-hmm.
- MRMel Robbins
And it was back when winters were really bad, although, the ba- winters are bad now.
- SSSimon Sinek
[chuckles]
- MRMel Robbins
And my mom used to shovel off a big ice skating rink, and my best friend and I would go down.
- 52:32 – 57:09
What happened at Chico's
- MRMel Robbins
you know, what's funny is that this morning, uh, my mom sent me a text, and it was... She was in a Chico's. [chuckles] Of course. And it was a photo of her with this awesome woman between my mom and my dad, and she wrote me this note that said, "Hey, I'm in Chico's, and this is Ellen, and she's a huge fan of yours. And she wants you to know that because of your podcast-
- SSSimon Sinek
Mm
- MRMel Robbins
... she has gone back to singing opera, something she hasn't done in 15 years." And it's let them and the five-second rule that have cleared the path for her.
- SSSimon Sinek
To go make ice dances.
- MRMel Robbins
Yes.
- SSSimon Sinek
Mm-hmm. This is who you are.
- MRMel Robbins
[chuckles]
- SSSimon Sinek
You, you've devoted your life, and you are your best self, and you're probably your most fulfilled when you are clearing space for other people to go take accountability for their own lives and do, be their best selves, however you wanna put it.
- MRMel Robbins
Yes.
- SSSimon Sinek
And, uh, like I said, it is small things that have big impact, these little, little, little rules that can be applied so quickly and so easily.
- MRMel Robbins
Yeah, 'cause I feel like one-
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah
- MRMel Robbins
... of the things that is missing for most people is hope.
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
That it's easy to listen to you or to me or to read our books, but if you don't think it's gonna work for you-
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah
- MRMel Robbins
... you won't do it.
- SSSimon Sinek
Yeah. Well, I think this is the thing that I think you and I have in common, which is I work... I've really practiced over the years that I don't say you. I say we. I don't stand on stage and say, "You know what you need to do to thrive." You know? Like, who the hell am I, right? I say, "You know what we need to do to learn how to thrive? We need to be better at taking care of each other. We need..." And I always include myself, as do you. And both of our stories are not because we're smarter. Both of our stories is because we had no choice. Like, like, you had no choice but to come up with something. Otherwise, who knows what would've happened? My story is the same. Like, all of the discoveries I've made is not because I'm smart. It's not because I sat down and like, "Hmm, I'm gonna think about things that have an impact on the world." Not at all. It's because I had no choice. Like, like a kid with ADHD who couldn't read a book, and ADHD wasn't a thing when I was a kid. I was just hyperactive, selfish, and, and unfocused.
- MRMel Robbins
Mm-hmm.
- SSSimon Sinek
That's how I was described. And, uh, but I couldn't study, and I wasn't good at school, and I was gonna fail school unless I figured out ways to pass school.
- MRMel Robbins
Yeah.
- SSSimon Sinek
And so I learned how to ask really good questions and be a really good listener, 'cause I had no choice. And I'm a great believer that the, the solutions we find to the struggles we have when we're kids become our strengths as adults.
- MRMel Robbins
For sure.
- SSSimon Sinek
And-
- MRMel Robbins
Or they become the prison you're in as an adult.
- SSSimon Sinek
Or they become the prison that you... Yeah, 100%. 100%. And I love the way you speak. I'm been captivated this entire time, taking in every word. Not agreeing with all of them, but taking them in.
- MRMel Robbins
Let them.
- SSSimon Sinek
Uh, let them.
- MRMel Robbins
I don't care. [both chuckling]
- SSSimon Sinek
But it's not a question of caring. I like the intellectual pursuit.
Episode duration: 57:10
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Transcript of episode JP5USHGSF8o
