The Good

Let God sort em out:

The more I said Let Them, the more I realized a lot of what I worried about wasn't worth my time, nor did it deserve my attention. And not everyone was worth my energy. It was liberating (26)

qua "We stopped playing director" + Freedom from bondage of self:

The result? I gained more control over my own life than I have ever had before. It was freeing. I stopped making other people the problem, and in doing so, my relationships improved in ways I never thought possible. It was like unlocking a door that had been sealed shut for years. And behind it? A life where I'm no longer weighed down by the need to manage other people. (31)

Following an anecdote about someone coughing behind her on a plane:

And that brings me to another important point: who is responsible for me not getting sick?

Me or this stranger on a plane?

Me. I'm responsible for my health. It's not this guy's responsibility to stop coughing because I want him to. (64)

And in the year 2024, this is just a based take.

You rarely engage in forward comparison, which is looking around and seeing how much better off you are than the majority of people in the world.(136)

Speak for yaself, Mel

It is so funny to me how freely she airs out her kids. It works to her rhetorical advantage but some of these anecdotes reflect poorly on everyone involved

Attraction rather than promotion:

The reason why influence works is backed by decades of research on human behavior. We are social creatures and are highly influenced and inspired by the people around us. (208)

This may be the best paragraph in the book:

Stop rescuing people from their problems and start acting as if you believe in their ability to face them. Your actions are the loudest and truest form of communication. So when you act in a way that supports someone in facing what scares them, your behavior says "I believe in you. You can do this. And I'll be here by your side as you face it." (236)

The stuff about relationships

when you are brave enough to be yourself, you are in control–because you're the one who is choosing who gets your time and energy, and who doesn't that's where the power lies. (252)

nothing quite as empowering as crying yourself to sleep at night :triumph:, but yeah desperation has a stench, and I find no lie in this^^.

You believe there is a text you could send that might geth them to want you back

:yes: : "your wife is inside this app. you need to type the right sequence of words to get her out."

Her husband, Chris, definitely vapes:

For example, maybe you can't stand that they've started vaping (271)

2nd most banger:

The fact is, the grass is greener where you water it. (281)

The Bad

Mel Robbins may be afraid of a full paragraph. Tbd.

I don't love the presentation of information in a way that signals that Mel Robbins invented something that has been well understood by psychologists for like forever, e.g. the 5-second count down rule.

You are now way more capable than you give yourself credit for [as a result of reading this book]. (234)

+ pinning a medal on her own chest for inventing self-care (291)?

Referring to her theory as a proper noun is like rote self-help book ig, but I couldn't help but think "stop trying to make fetch [Let Them Theory] happen"

Grindset, problematic? :

I didn't achieve success or financial freedom because of some secret. I did it because I was wiling to do what most people won't: I woke up every day, and regardless of how I felt, I kept slowly chipping away at my goals for over a decade, a painstakingly slow process. (10)

Torn between this characterization of the American dream and tone deafness towards realities of poverty. Granted, her audience is probably younger members of the upper-middle class, like her kids, for which such advice probably is the main, if not the only, legitimate thing blocking them from achieving their dreams. But a motivational speak can't just come out and call a spade (laziness) a spade.

Sometimes, the audacity of the claims that she invented or even just put ppl on to these techniques comes across almost Huberman-esque: "the truth is, other people hold no real power over you unless you give it to them" (18). Kind of macho, while still laboring to be endearing and millennial (fixation on "vaping" instead of "smoking" thoughout) – but where's the lie.

IMO she doesn't take the theory to it's logical conclusion. Her end game is still power/control, when the fullest realization is surrender (something which she denigrates – though this is before segueing into the crucial second half: Let Me):

I've had a lot of people ask if Let Them is the same thing as "letting go." It is not. Letting go feels like you've lost. You're surrendering to something beyond your control. Let Them is the opposite: It's strength.

Talking about disciplining children / helping them to grow emotionally:

Let Them cry, beg, or do whatever they need, for as long as they need.

If kids are not allowed to experience the full wave of emotion (without an adult saying "calm down" or "this is silly" or "you're overreacting"), they never learn how to process normal human emotions in a healthy way. (113)

Ms. Rachel'ing our way towards the same end result of providing positive/negative feedback in response to their reactions is the same. Dressing it up as "I know this is hard. I know you want the Lego set. It's okay to be upset. I get disappointed too. It's not fair. I get upset when I don't get things that I want" (112) adds a lot of fluff and qualifications about the scenario that are untrue and thus confusing towards the hypothetical child who hypothetically needs to be guided about the appropriate way to handle said emotions. "It's not fair" and "it's okay to be upset" are circumstantial, whereas the negative examples of feedback are straightforward and probably more universally applicable.

This ^^ is one of many semantic gripes I have which, when taken in isolation are negligible, but accumulate to be a coherent minus.

Emotions are just a burst of chemicals in your brain that ignite and are absorbed into your body within six seconds. Becuase your emotional reactions happen so fast, they can often be completely unconscious. (119)

Like, no? Maybe a narrow subset of emotional reactions behave this way. But the scope of the book is focusing on the sustained negative emotions (a la resentment) which dominate our lives. We're not out here targeting the fruit fly, cmon.

Here's how you know it's fixed. Is there anything you can do in the next 30 seconds to change this? If not, you're never going to be able to change these things. (135)

Holy bad advice batman. The surrounding context helps temper this statement so that it can be understood along the lines of "can I do anything in 30s to make me hot," which is probably not true and adheres to her rule, but again it's a maxim presented as universal which not really useful or profound when applied to the things that I think this book does well to identify as problems in quotidian life. She's running semantic interference on herself.

I think I disagree / take the most issue with her advice w.r.t. enabling, confrontation, boundary setting, and the influencing.

e.g.

Dr. Sharot explained that brain scans show that when someone is telling you something negative ("I'll leave you if you don't stop drinking") or something you don't want to hear ("that dude you're dating is a narcissist"), your brain literally tunes it out. (200)

Which is like self-evident, but doesn't mean that we ought to dispense with clear comms idt...

Her ABC loop is straight up toxic wth brroooo:

Starting with an apology sets the tone for a compassionate and supportive conversation... Then, no matter what their answer to the first question is, you're not going to share your feelings about it. You're just going to repeat back their answer: "so it sounds like . . . " (215)

which amounts to like a caricature of psychotherapy presented in earnest: "And that goal is: to make them feel tension between their current behavior and what they actually want." (217) Leading with an apology before stringing along leading questions to cause intentionally cause discomfort in another person about their current behavior and what you coax them into stating they want (until it fits what you want them to want) is gross bro.

I feel like the dude from The Giver complaining about "precision of language," but this is unallowable bc, again, the context doesn't even really elucidate such an absolute:

Adults only do what they feel like doing. (220)

see also:

You can't want somebody's sobriety or their healing or their financial freedom or their ambition or their happiness more than they do. (229)

Sure you can! you can't will them towards those positions more than they can, but you can sure as hell want it for them more than they do. Again, semantic, but it matters kind of a lot?!

Food for Thought

In moments like this, when I really stop and pause, I always feel a little sad (20)

• Cherish vs. Cling mentality. Trust that there will be more good and be present, or set the fleeting bursts of joy in amber and never let them go. N.b. this quotation reads as personal ethos rather than directive instruction, so this is more of an observation than a criticism

When you let other people stress you out, you surrender your power to things that either don't matter or are beyond your control. (65)

Interested in the intersection w/like OCD x anxiety x addiction. In any case methinks these spirals/obsessions are lifted by action, rather than thinking/intellectualizing the subject.

This is crazy work from a self-proclaimed motivational speaker:

Stop trying to motivate people. It doesn't work. (196)

How do you feel about mercy without justice?

Let Them struggle.

Very few people are willing to do this, because it feels cruel.

Narrow view of what a wife/husband can be + she contradicts herself in the layering of symbiotic relationship I think. Hers is still an individualistic view: transactional partnership rather than union:

You weren't put on the earth to be somebody's wife or husband. You are here to fulfill your dreams, share your story, and create a big, beautiful, amazing life. (thru rest of the page tbh 253)

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