What would it feel like to let go of trying to control everyone around you, and instead shift your focus on what is actually within your control. This episode is a journey into liberating ourselves from the emotional burden of others' behaviors by insights from Mel Robbins' compelling book, "The Let Them Theory." Discover how Robbins' straightforward and scientifically-backed approach can help you reconnect with yourself and navigate relationships post-divorce.
Understanding how to reclaim your power during and after divorce starts with recognizing how to apply this concept of Let Them and own your power by Let Me, which will lead to freedom and healing in our relationships.
This episode will:
• Introduce Mel Robbins' Let Them Theory for those going through divorce
• Discuss the significance of letting go of control in relationships
• Explore the implications of autonomy and choice in emotional well-being
• Show the psychological benefits of the Let Them approach
• Encourage self-discovery through identifying personal values and priorities
• Recap on the transformative potential of embracing the Let Them Theory
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Grief and trauma are the two biggest struggles women deal with as they go through their divorce. It's highly likely that you are experiencing both and don't even realize what you're feeling. I'm here to tell you that it's okay for you to grieve your marriage (even if it was shitty) and it's normal to be experiencing some kind of trauma (which is essentially a disconnection from yourself - your mind, body and soul). I can help guide you through the grief in all of the forms it shows up so you can heal. I can also teach you how to ground yourself in healing so you can ease through the trauma. Schedule your free consult by clicking here.
Featured on this episode:
Interested in the Divorce Betrayal Transformation? Learn more here.
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Want to work first hand with Karin so you can stop worrying about what your life will be like after divorce, and instead begin making it amazing today? Click here to schedule a consult to find out more about working 1:1 with Karin as your coach.
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Full Episode Transcript:
This is Becoming you Again, the podcast that offers you the tools to deal with the mental and emotional challenges you face as you go through divorce. You are listening to episode number 202, and I am your host, Karin Nelson.
Welcome to Becoming you Again the podcast to help you with your mental and emotional well-being during and after divorce. This is where you learn to overcome the grief and trauma of your divorce. We're going to do that by reconnecting with yourself, creating lasting emotional resilience and living a truly independent life so that your life can be even better than when you were married.
I'm your host, karin Nelson. Welcome back to the podcast. My lovely ladies, I am, as always, so glad that you're here, so I have a question for you before I jump into this week's episode. Have you been watching the show Severance on Apple TV? Oh my God, oh my God. If you haven't been watching it, you need to like immediately go start watching it.
Season two just came out. My partner and I knew that season two was coming out, and so we had decided we were going to rewatch season one, because it's been pretty, pretty long time like two or three years in between the seasons. And as I was rewatching it, I was like I've forgotten how incredible this show is. And yes, I remembered mostly what was going on, but I had forgotten the real premise of this show, which is basically severing a part of your brain that you are completely disconnected from, so that you don't feel certain things all of the time. This show is kind of about like what that means for the person who's living their life at home, in their day-to-day life, and what that means for the other part of you, the severed part, the part that doesn't get to go home. It's really great, and just for me as a coach like to see the parallels of things that we do to try and kind of recreate this type of severing in our own lives in a much less severe way, where we might turn to checking out with video games or drugs or alcohol or porn or whatever we do to try to not feel certain things, to try to not experience certain things because they might hurt, and so we will just like disconnect in other ways and again, totally not saying that you shouldn't be doing those things, like we all do them, but then to watch this show that takes that idea and then twists it on its head and takes it to the most extreme way of doing things, but anyway, it's fascinating. So if you're needing a way to disconnect from your own life for a few minutes, check out that show. It's great.
Okay, so that was my side tangent for today's podcast episode. I'm going to just you know from here on out not that I haven't already been doing it just try to give you a side tangent every episode, because that's what I really like to do is side tangents. Also, it's very early in the morning, oh, my kitty's outside my door meowing and I'm recording this podcast and I have noticed that the older I get when I wake up in the morning my voice is a little bit deeper. I don't know. I kind of like it, so I don't know if you can tell, but to me my voice sounds a little bit different. So just put that out there. Maybe you can tell that I might sound a little like I just woke up 10 minutes ago and you'd be right because I did All right.
So today I'm talking about Mel Robbins' latest book. It's called the Let them Theory and it came out at the end of 2024. I dove right in because I have really enjoyed most of her other books and, knowing what the premise was, knowing what the idea was behind this book, I was like I have to read this because I think that this will be a hugely important book for anyone going through a divorce I think even more than any of Mel's other books have been, and I'm going to talk about, obviously, why that is. But there is something specific with the let them theory that can be so useful to you as you go through your divorce and then, of course, moving on with your life as well. But this is something that is going to help you create more reconnection with yourself when you're building a relationship with yourself, but also it's going to help you in your relationships with other people moving forward, and that is so important, especially when you're going through a divorce, because you're trying to learn to co-parent, you're trying to figure out what kind of solo parent you want to be, you're trying to navigate what your relationships look like with other people now that you're divorced, because people act weird and they don't know what to do, and it's just really important to know how you want to show up moving forward in all relationships that you have with literally everyone, and this book is hugely helpful in that area.
So I'm going to talk specifically about what the Let them Theory is, and I'm going to talk about it. It's not really a spoiler, because Mel talks about it literally in the first few pages of the book, but what I really love about Mel Robbins if you've never read any of her books is that everything that she teaches it's not rocket science, it's not like this brand new thing. It's not like she came up with some theory that no one's ever heard of and your mind is blown and you're like, oh, my God, my life is forever changed because this new idea was presented to me. No, the let them theory is out there. It's been out there for thousands of years actually. She presents these different ideas that are basically the let them theory that have been around forever, and that's a great thing.
The great thing about Mel is she packages things in a very easy to remember, easy to swallow pill. She makes it very easy for you to implement into your life. She's also really great at backing everything up with science, like showing you how this scientifically will help you, what it does to your brain, and backing that all up. But she is so good at the small, tiny package that's so easy to remember. Like her other books the Five Second Rule, the High Five, habit and now, of course, the Let them Theory those are packageable, easy to remember, easy to do if you want to, if you want to implement them, and that is one of the true benefits of Mel Robbins and having her present this in her book All right. So basically, the let them theory teaches us to let go of trying to control other people and instead focus on what we actually control, which is ourselves.
I teach this in my podcast all the time. I teach this to my clients almost every time we meet together. I mean probably not every time, but it's something that is a very common theme that I talk about with my clients, and I'm helping them to develop tools to use this in their own lives, tools to use this in their own lives. So it's like this idea of if somebody wants to be a jerk, or if your kid is unhappy on the trip or when they come back to your house, or if the person leaves their shopping cart in between your car and their car, you let them. Even though it drives you nuts, even though you don't want your kids to be unhappy when they're with you, even though you think that person shouldn't be a jerk, you let them. Now the question might be like why would this be useful to anyone? Right, and the people don't show up and behave in the way that we think they should. We get upset, we feel anger, we feel sad, we feel let down, we feel disappointed.
We feel like whatever right Any negative emotion, you just slide it in there. But we are the ones who are feeling that the other people aren't feeling that we are the ones wasting our energy. We are the ones running around trying to fix things and trying to manage other people's emotions and we make ourselves crazy, trying to get people to behave in the way that we want them to behave or that we would prefer, so that we can feel better, so that we don't have to feel negative emotion. But here's the thing, and I want to remind you of this, and I know you know this, but I'm just going to remind you because oftentimes we forget you have autonomy. You have choice. Autonomy just basically means your own choice. Right, you have autonomy to do and be and think and feel whatever you want. But the kicker to that statement is that so does everyone else.
The more you try to control all of the people around you and how they think and how they feel and what they do, the worse you feel, the more chaotic you feel, the more out of control you feel, the more helpless you feel, the more confused you feel, the more exhausted you are, because you're spending all of your time and all of your energy focusing on something that's completely out of your control and you're forgetting where the real power lies. This is what Mel says in her book. She says that when you can let go of trying to control how other people show up in the world by saying let them what happens is, you actually gain more control over your own life. You feel freer than ever before and you no longer have to be weighed down by the need to try to manage other people. I really want you to think about that for a minute. I want you to think about the impact that would have on your life If you could let go of trying to manage how your ex shows up or what your ex does or says. Just think how freeing that would feel to not have to think about them any longer, to not have to worry about what they're going to do, to not have to worry if your kid is happy the second they step in your door and just let them be unhappy for a little while because guess what, it's okay for kids to be unhappy. How freeing would that be for you to not have to take on everyone else's emotions and behaviors and try and change them. It feels so much lighter when you can step into that space.
But here's where the real power lies and Mel talks about this in a huge part of the book it's in how you think. And it's in how you think and how you feel and how you behave, because that is truly the only thing that you can control, is you? So how exactly does this theory actually work? Let's say, for example, that your ex introduced his new partner to the kids a few weeks after they started dating.
And you find out and you are pissed, not just because that's annoying and frustrating, but you actually had in your decree that the two of you signed and had decided together that you would not do that until one of the partners had been with this person for six months or longer and until you had discussed it with the other co-parent. And so you feel not only annoyed, frustrated and angry that they just did this without talking to you and after only a couple of weeks, but you also feel betrayed, you feel let down and you feel scared for your kids because, like, of course, our brainwaves will go to worst case scenario, which is like what, if they break up in like a month, then my kids have to deal with another person leaving their life, right? Or or maybe even worse than that. What if they really like this person and they? They like them more than they might like me, right, like we have all of these thoughts and so you're having all of these thoughts and emotions and you are angry. You're angry that they broke the decree. You're angry because you just feel like they didn't even give a shit about the decree. They're not following it. You feel like, even though you're already divorced, you kind of feel rejected again. Right, like this just happened and it's the worst feeling ever. Feeling rejected doesn't feel good and, most of all, you just wish that for once, he could be an adult and follow the decree and have enough respect for you and for the kids to do what a normal human would do and wait until after the relationship is, like, much farther along. Right, yeah, we wish all of those things. And it feels shitty, right, we're feeling crappy as we're thinking about all of this and we're like, why didn't he just do that? And we're getting more angry and we're getting more worked up and we're hating on him more and he's consuming all of our thoughts and like, right, all of the things.
And so how does the let them theory work into this example. You let him. You let him be who he is. You let go of trying to control having him show up in any kind of way or needing him to show up in any kind of way. Right, you let go of wishing that he would have done it differently, because the reality is he didn't do it differently. And the more you wish to change the past, the harder it hurts, the more you feel chaotic, the more you feel helpless, the more you're upset. Right, you let go of needing him to be something different than he is so that you can feel better or the kids could feel better. He is who he is. He's shown you who he is. Don't need him to be different. You don't need him to act different. You don't need him to behave different so that you can decide to be okay, to feel better, to be happy, to choose a different way of being for you. And you remind yourself of these things. He's going to break the decree. Let him. He's going to introduce his girlfriend to the kids. Let him. He's going to continue to disrespect me. Let him, because here's where the real power lies, and Mel talks about this in most of the book. It's like a huge part of the book.
But, as I explained before, the real power is in the second half of the let them theory and it's in let me, like you, let the people do what they're going to do. You let them behave in the way they're going to behave. And then you let me, where is my power in this? And basically that means that you've realized all the places that you don't have control and you've said, fine, let them right. You've given up trying to control what you can't control. Now let me. This is my kitty in here. He's decided to be very noisy right now, but you, let me right. Very noisy right now, but you, let me right. You, let me recognize where I have control. He wants to say hello, apparently.
So you recognize where you have control and you take a look at your values and you take a look at your intentions and you take a look at your priorities and you make decisions and show up and behave as that person, as the person you want to be or the person that you are, that you feel good about in any situation. So let's use this example, right. Let's go back to this example to see what let me might look like and the really amazing thing about the part of this theory the let me part is that it's going to be different for every single person, because what feels good and right for me and the way that I show up might be something that you would look at and go. I would never do that. This is actually what feels right and good for me and that's the beauty of the let me part of this theory is that you dig in and reconnect to who you are and make decisions from that place. That's where your power is in becoming you, in knowing yourself and acting and behaving and showing up from that space. So this part in my example of what is the let me theory look like, it's going to be different for everyone.
So I'm going to give you a couple of ways this could look. It doesn't mean that's the way you would do it or should do it. Only you will know by asking yourself in any situation what kind of a person do I want to be in this situation, who am I, how do I want to show up, what is aligned with my values and my priorities, and how am I going to respond in any given situation and then go with that. So I'll give you a couple of examples. Like I said, this could look like okay, he's clearly not following the decree, and one of my priorities that aligns with my values is that I'm going to protect my kids as much as possible, and my power in doing that is that I get to decide to go to my lawyer, tell him that he's not following the decree. We're going to reach out to him and see how he wants to respond and we'll go on from there. But that is a boundary that I'm not willing to cross is putting my kids in a situation that I think is hurting them in some way. Right, okay, so that could be one let me theory. That's where your power is. You have choices.
So another way that the let me theory might show up in this example is okay, he did what he did. I can't change that. But what am I in control of? Okay, well, I'm in control of my emotions and the way I behave around my kids emotions and the way I behave around my kids. And so what does that look like when the kids come back to me? How am I going to show up for them? How am I going to support them dealing with this new person in their life? How am I going to treat my ex and this new person? How am I going to talk about them around my kids?
I get to decide how to do all of that. I get to decide what kind of energy I want to have when I'm with my kids and we're talking about these things. I get to decide if I'm going to manage my emotions or if I'm going to continue to be upset and angry every time I'm with them. Right, you get to decide. You can create an emotionally safe environment with your kids and that could be your way of stepping into your power. In this example, I'm going to learn to manage my emotions and let my kids feel however they're going to feel about it, and I'm going to support them in whatever way they need.
Maybe that's how you show up in your power in this situation, right? Or it could look like, okay, he did what he did and you know what I've actually decided. Maybe this isn't that big of a deal. Maybe this isn't that big of a problem. Maybe I don't need to fuss about this and worry about this and take on this as my responsibility to fix. Maybe it's not. Maybe it's okay for me to just let it go. I can't control him. I can't control what he does, but I can control where my focus goes, and my focus does not need to be on trying to fix this. My focus and my attention in this moment needs to be on creating a better life for me and my kids and what that looks like. That is where my power is. Or it could be something totally different that I didn't even mention, that you think in your brain and you're like, oh, this is what I would do in that situation and that feels good to me.
That is the let them part of this theory, the most powerful part of this theory. Now, what I've been talking about in this podcast episode, it's just the tip of the iceberg, right? There's a lot of wisdom and even more practical application of the let them theory in this book. In my opinion, it's a very powerful tool because it's so easily digestible when you read this book to like implement it into your own life. But it's such a great way of learning to take your power back and live the life that you want.
It's going to teach you how to move away from people pleasing which we should all move away from. It's going to teach you how to move away from trying to make sure everybody's happy. It's going to teach you how to make decisions based on your values, your priorities and let everything else go. So if you're looking for a way to cut back on your day-to-day stress, to cut back on your overwhelm, to cut back on the chaos, the helplessness, the feeling powerless in your own life, then I highly recommend checking out this book. It's going to do you some big favors if you can start to implement it into your life. All right, my friends, that is what I have for you today. Thank you so much for being here. I'll be back next week.
Hi, friend, I'm so glad you're here and thanks for listening. I wanted to let you know that if you're wanting more, a way to make deeper, more lasting change, then working one-on-one with me as your coach may be exactly what you need. Together, we'll take everything you're learning in the podcast and implement it in your life, with weekly coaching, real-life practice and practical guidance. To learn more about how to work with me one-on-one, go to KarinNelsonCoaching dot com. That's W-W-W dot K-A-R-I-N-N-E-L-S-O-N coaching dot com. Thanks for listening. If this podcast agreed with you in any way, please take a minute to follow and give me a rating. Wherever you listen to podcasts and for more details about how I can help you live an even better life than when you were married. Make sure and check out the full show notes by clicking the link in the description.
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