by Carmen J.

Days before the new year had me ruminating about resolutions and the things I want to accomplish in 2025. Work out more? Eat better? Stop procrastinating about my dreams? Sound familiar? Have you made similar intentions and broke them, and kept them, only to break them again?

This year, I turned to “my friend Mel” – as she regularly coins herself to her millions of followers of The Mel Robbins Podcast and her readers of best-selling titles such as The 5 Second Rule and The High 5 Habit.  I am savoring her latest work, The Let Them Theory: A Life-Saving Tool That Millions of People Can’t Stop Talking About. It’s the book I never knew I needed.

Simply put, the theory puts into sharp perspective how we can’t control others, including their thoughts, emotions, and opinions about us. Similarly, we can’t control when things don’t necessarily go our way. For example: If someone decides they don’t like you or an opinion you have or the way you live your life: Let Them. Often times, there will be nothing you could say or do to change those thoughts, emotions, and opinions. Consequently, what we can control is the next step: Let Me. The Let Me is our reaction, the thing we can control. Sometimes the reaction is no response, or it’s setting boundaries, or having difficult conversations that need to be had. Robbins shares more in-depth strategies and experiences from her own life and from her followers.

If you are one who has people pleased and sucked it up, all in the gallant hope of keeping the peace, Robbins’s book will be a walk through mud: uncomfortable and messy, yet survivable and relatable nonetheless. It’s part of the human condition to wonder and think about the opinions of others and try to check all of the boxes in accordance. What if we vow this year in the face of uncertain times or certainly hard times and with the utmost certainty to let the chips, opinions, and emotions happen. Let Them wash over you without fury but with fearlessness. And Let Me (and Us) make the focused choice not to change course and be OK with any mild discomfort. Let Them, Let Me, Let Us be better for it.

The Let Them Theory: A Life-Saving Tool That Millions of People Can’t Stop Talking About by Mel Robbins is available in print and e-book.

Carmen J. is a teen instructor at HCLS East Columbia Branch. Among her favorite things are great books, all things 80s, shamelessly watching The Bachelor, gardening, and drinking anything that tastes like coffee.