the let them theory by mel robbins

synopsis music by Tunetank

this episode we are taking you on a journey to discover the self professed life changing tool that millions of people can’t stop talking about. it’s a book that promises to deliver the fastest way to take control of your life and stop trying to control other people and focus on what you can control; yourself. in case it wasn’t obvious, we’re reading The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins.

we discuss the never-ending loop that the let them theory sent us on, Mel Robbins’ career, “those” plagiarism allegations and weigh in on a newspaper profile that has, somehow, never been scrubbed from the internet. 

we also chat about our 2026 ins and outs, goals and dreams and all the things we want to achieve with our reading both on and off the podcast. 

39:05 - The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins discussing begins

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join talk lit, get hit podcast for deep dives into the hottest BookTok recommendations, trending contemporary fiction, and literary favourites! each episode features book discussions, spoiler-filled chats, and thoughtful literary analysis of novels everyone is talking about - from viral romance and fantasy to modern classics. whether you’re looking for BookTok book reviews, author interviews, or a virtual book club experience, out podcast is your go-to space for readers who love stories and want to explore them in depth.

talk lit, get hit are reading and recording on Giabal, Jagera, Jarowair & Turrbal lands. we acknowledge the cultural diversity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and pay respect to Elders past, present and future. always was, always will be.  

Transcript

Laura 0:00

Hello and welcome to Talk Lit Get Hit, a podcast where we read viral books the internet won't shut up about and rate them lit or shit.

Bridget 0:08

We're your hosts Bridget and Laura, lovers of sad gold fiction and tragic endings, fearers of smart urban fantasy and the Who Did This To You trope. Join us as we pick apart all the books the internet loves and embark on a journey to figure out why.

Laura 0:24

This episode, we're taking you on a journey to discover the self-professed life-changing tool that millions of people can't stop talking about. It's a book that promises to deliver the fastest way to take control of your life and stop trying to control other people and focus on what you can control yourself. In case it wasn't obvious, we're reading The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins. Bridget. Hello, hello. Hello. I really thought you were gonna start by saying, hey, it's your friend Laura. Hey, it's your friend Bridget. It should have been so easy to make a let them joke. They weren't coming to me. Hey, it's your friend Mel.

Bridget 0:58

Sorry, I've I've been in a weeklong haze of Mel Robbins.

Laura 1:05

Please continue. That's all I got. Apart from the Mel Robbins haze, how has your month been?

Bridget 1:13

It's been pretty good. I'm not really sure what I've done other than like, you know, general Christmas activities. Had a lovely Christmas. That's always good. Made a roast chicken for the first time. First time? Yeah. Like, you know, like the full-on in the oven. Yeah. I'm familiar with the roast. I've never done it myself. Wow. Yeah, I did it myself. Really? Okay, Julia folks. I really liked it. I think I might do it again because it was so easy. Like, I mean, the oven did all the work.

Laura 1:42

That's so funny. When you said uh like you were cooking something for Christmas but you hadn't figured out what it was gonna be yet, I was actually gonna message to you roast chicken never goes astray.

Bridget 1:51

My mum is celiac, and Brian's twin is also celiac now. So I had to have everything gluten-free. So I did like a gluten-free pasta salad with like sun-dried tomato pesto that I made. Yum! Like artichoke pesto, cold rolls, delicious. Mum brought a ham too. Anyway, I don't know why this has gone into the menu of what we had. Other than Christmas, I have finished my twilight reread, but I was in like another haze, like a vampire craze, frenzy, frenzy, absolute frenzy. I've read most of them in about a day each. Breaking news. Stop the press. I've got something to add to the press. To the day's papers. I love Bella Swan. Oh, okay. The patriarchy is over. Elizabeth Gilbert was right when she said the patriarchy is over. I love her now. Why? What's what do you think has changed? I I don't know. I think it's because we've read so many shit books with shit heroines. She is smart, she's funny, she's charming, she's sarcastic, she's smarter than every single Cullen. She is figuring out shit all the time. They never are pulling their weight. They've been alive for years. She's freshly 17. She's like, guys, I know what's what's happening. It's Victoria. I know what's happening. It's the Vulture. I do agree with you there. She knows everything. And I am sorry, Bella. It's taken me a long, long time to get to this point. Nearly 20 years. It's your life's work. It is my life's work. But finally, I'm not a misogynist anymore. Bella Swan, love you.

Laura 3:26

Uh, I mean, like, I went outside too early because we are about to talk about this book by Mel Robbins, but we'll see where we land with that pretty soon. How about you? How's your month? My month's been lovely. I've mostly been enjoying Christmas and on holidays. I've been to the beach, I've been to the reservoir, I've been reading, I've been relaxing. Not being afraid of the inaugural reservoir has been a real high point because there is a period of time, I think, in spring when the catfish are breeding. And it's not so cool to go there because they're pretty territorial. They build their nests on the bottom of the water and then they snap at you if you get anywhere near them. It's a bit of a water plover situation. Yeah, yeah. But I'm sure the babies aren't scary. Stop nesting there.

Bridget 4:10

Yeah. Don't do it. Yeah, go somewhere where I'm not doing things at my leisure.

Laura 4:16

I'm doing something. Stop. Yeah. Let me intrude and disrupt your ecosystems more, please. Anyway, that's done. And so now it's just all nice.

Bridget 4:26

That's what the ecosystem has done.

Laura 4:27

Yeah, the ecosystem's out. You heard it here first. Belliswan in habitat destruction in catfish babies out. Out. Dead. No, but that's been nice, like freed from the shackles of my own fear. We went to the beach yesterday as well, and I am kind of getting a little bit over my fear of my feet touching whatever is on the bottom of the ocean. I hate, like, oh, even just thinking about going into water, my feet just curl up. But no, I'm I'm overcoming those fears. That's good. Is this as boring as to you as it feels like? No, I love it. Okay. I really don't have any standout stories for this month, but I've been having a great time. I let me tell you, not having to work is just the best thing in the world. And every day I cannot wait until I'm retired. Yeah. Ruin for the long haul, but now that 2025 is behind us, how do you feel looking back on what you read last year, Bridget? Do you have any standout faves?

Bridget 5:26

I do have to say that I thought I would have more standout faves than I actually did, if that makes sense. Like I looked at all the books that I read. I read over 140 books, and looking at the top 10, I don't know. I feel exactly the same. In no particular order. I'm just gonna rattle off the top ten. Sorry in advance, a lot of these are books that I've already talked about on the podcast, so. Okay, the first one was Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut. Then we had They're Going to Love You by Meg Howrie, Henry Henry by Alan Bratton, How to End a Love Story by Eulin Kwang. Blue Sisters by Coco Malores, Greta and Valden by Rebecca K. Riley, Love Forms by Claire Adam, Lead Us Not by Abby Lay. There are Rivers in the Sky by Elive Shafark and Painting Portraits of Everyone I've Ever Dated by Joseph Up. How about you? What's your list?

Laura 6:17

I had the same experience of hoping that I would have read more bangers than I did upon reflection. I read 68 books, and I have to say I always find it so comforting that I always read about half of what you read.

Bridget 6:29

It's so funny.

Laura 6:30

Yeah, and I think even when we read books, um, you might say, Oh, it took me two hours to read, and I think, okay, well, I'm gonna have to put in four hours work. It's just like clockwork, it's beautiful. Anyway, my list in no particular order: Heart the Lover by Lily King, Lead Us Not by Abby Lay. Gonna repeat, you know, books that we've talked about many a time. In fact, I'm gonna put a podcast book on here: Babel by R. F. Quang, Betty by Tiffany McDaniel, Evenings and Weekends by Ocean McKenna, The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chigi, Intermezzo by Sally Rooney, The God of the Woods by Liz Moore, Homegoing by Yar Jesse, and Strange Loops by Liz Harmer. They were all really good books. I guess you can't have the highs without the lows, but the lows are so low. And then there's so many books where I'm like, but why did I persevere reading that? And I don't know. Like, did I really think that book was gonna get better? I think often yes. And I wish I somehow had a better rate after this.

Bridget 7:27

Yeah. I guess every one you read can't be the best book in the in your favourite book you've ever read, but it would be good if there were like 10 standout books.

Laura 7:34

Yeah. But am I holding them to an impossible standard? I don't know.

Bridget 7:37

And I might need to be a bit more discerning about which books I give five stars to. Makes you think.

Laura 7:43

It really does, doesn't it?

Bridget 7:45

Have you decided on your Goodreads goal for 2026 yet?

Laura 7:48

The past couple of years I've set a goal of 60 and met a goal of 60. I don't know. I could bump it up to 70, but more and more I'm thinking what is the point of the goal and who is the goal for? And another thing that I'm hoping to do with my reading next year is to read more challenging books or more books that I've been putting off. And I think if I'm doing that, then I'm probably not going to be reading as many, and that's fine because it's all made up. Yes. So I think I'll probably just keep it at 60. 60 is an incredible number of books to read in a year. So many. But it's a shame to have read so many and to have not enjoyed at least a third of them.

Bridget 8:28

And you know, there's gonna be 12 books at least, or thereabouts 12 books that we're not gonna enjoy. Yeah. So in our non-podcast reading, we need to be better at picking books that we're gonna enjoy.

Laura 8:40

How about you? What do you have any particular goals?

Bridget 8:43

Well, I set my goal as 10. I just wanted to experiment with how many books I would read if I didn't have a goal that I was aspiring to. So in 2024, I think my goal was 210, and I only read about 140, which is about the same as what I've read this year. So what I've realized is it doesn't matter what my goal is going to be. I'm just gonna read what I want to read, I think, which is probably good. So I think I might just do 10 again. I like that idea.

Laura 9:10

Another thing that I've been thinking about is that I would like to be better at keeping an like an analogue reading journal and sort of like writing down my thoughts about books, like nothing in depth, but just sort of like this is what I'm reading, these dates, here's some initial like emotions that it stirred up in me, good or bad. I think I will keep using good reads and story graph because of the nature of our jobs, yeah, because it's very useful for podcast purposes and like social media and that kind of thing. But there's this other side of reading that's like pretty personal to me, and I don't necessarily want to put those thoughts in a review for public consumption, or like sometimes I have embarrassing feelings about books, but they're still worth writing down in some way.

Bridget 9:52

A real high point for me in our first episode last year was going through our ins and outs for the year, which is our little version of resolutions and goals for the new year. We've each had to think about where we are currently in our lives, where we hope to be in 12 months' time, and we've come up with some things that we want to either start doing or keep doing for our ins, and things that we want to banish to the ends of the earth for our outs. Laura, would you like to kick us off with your first in?

Laura 10:21

I would love to. My first in for 2026 is star charts.

Bridget 10:25

Oh.

Laura 10:28

I just think I need a lot more external validation than I'm currently willing to admit. And I'm not great at keeping a track of things, so I need a simple solution. Uh so in 2026, I'm planning to introduce more star charts in my life. Namely. Wait, okay. I thought you meant like astrology, like no, like star charts.

Bridget 10:50

Not at all. Oh, like stickers. Yeah. Gotcha. Yeah. Because I was like, oh my god, for your birthday, I could buy you Co-Star Premium. You can just get me a multi-pack of star stickers.

Laura 11:03

I've got them. I actually have so many, there's no I'm there's no way I'm gonna meet that many goals. Brush my teeth. Sticker.

Bridget 11:12

Yeah.

Laura 11:13

I was planning to get started by charting days not purchasing clothes because I still to this day, I don't know if this was a goal last year or just something that's been simmering under the surface, have a problem with overconsumption. It is op shops though. It is op shops. No, it's definitely not chi and hauls, but it's still things that I don't need. I have so many clothes, but I always have that thing where I feel like I have nothing to wear. I have so much to wear, I'm just not being very creative. So I'd like to remedy that. And I think the first thing is to cut it off at the source and implement a star chart. I can't wait to see. How about you? What's your first in?

Bridget 11:49

My first in is something that I've already started doing. Living your life as if you are a celebrity, mainly edge hearing. So I'm gonna live my life as if I'm edge her and by that I mean when someone give me iPad, I use social media. I'm not gonna put it on my phone like him. I'm just gonna have it on my iPad and then have it far away from me. And then maybe you know, once every few days, just go log on and have a look. This is such a crazy way of saying use social media less. But I've tried so many. This is the only way this worked.

Laura 12:24

Yeah.

Bridget 12:24

I've tried to implement limits, I've tried doing this. No, iPad only, please. Bring me my iPad. Take it away from me.

Laura 12:33

We will rue the day. They're like, hang on a minute here. We gotta make this iPad app way better. Yeah, because at the moment it sucks.

Bridget 12:42

And it's so good. Yeah. So I'm gonna just I'm I need to find out more about Ed Sheeran and just live the same way as him. I need to go and like, you know, go to different cultures and start taking their music. And I thought you were gonna build a bar in your house and invite the Game of Thrones cast over and then I'm gonna get on Game of Thrones and I'm gonna do the weirdest acting, become a Rastafari. I'm gonna start rapping.

Laura 13:04

Um The club is the best place to be at the club and the club. Me and my friends are at the club or at the club, and the club is a way we go.

Bridget 13:16

And the club's in my house, and my house is a club. And my wife's named Jerry. Whoa. So yeah, call me Ed from now on, please, because that's uh it's the only way I can do it. I need I need restrictions, and it's an Ed shearing kind of restriction an Ed shirish. No, it's really hard to do it. You've got it. Restriction. It's really hard to say you're gonna get it. You try to say it. Ed shirish. It's so hard. You it feels like it should be easy. Restriction. Oh, you gotta just throw it away. Restriction. Take take it away like the iPad. No, I don't know. Anyway, that's my first in. Love it. Celebrity. Also, I forgot to say the thing about the celebrity, like, not just a cherry, but like, you know how when you watch interviews with celebrities that don't have social media, they're so aloof. Oh. And they're like above it all. They're like, I don't know about this, and I don't care to know. I don't wish to know about this.

Laura 14:16

I actually have something I could contribute to. And I I don't want to go off on attention on goal one. But my whole life I've been sickeningly obsessed with Emma Watson. Like, I think I've mentioned on the show before that I'd get on like Yahoo! answers or how to be like Emma Watson. And like I once got a virus on the family computer because there was this internet. One of many is correct, but this time it was because I was on this like Emma Watson fan site where you could like download images of like paparazzi shots of her and like see her candid fashion and stuff like that. And I remember I clicked on one, dodgy link, virus. Anyway, all that to say, at some point in the blur between Christmas and New Year's, I was having a pretty woozy nap on the couch. I was scrolling on my iPad. I came across this Instagram page that was just all pictures of Emma Watson recently. And I have not been hooked up to the source of Emma Watson candidates in so long. And I like watched, I think maybe Vogue, What's in My Bag, and things like that with her recently. And every crumb of her personality I get is so tantalizing. It's so exactly who I want to be. Like, I think in an interview I saw that she had done her yoga teacher training. She had this like special tincture for like not getting sick. And she was like, Oh, I know it's probably just like pseudoscience, but like it looks so cool in this bottle. Like I saw she had these um corded headphones, but they had like the rainbow wrap kind of thing around them, like the the colorful cord. And I was like, Oh, I perfect, everything I want to be. Like, she's just so cool. I just was like, wow, I'm really right back where it all started. Yeah. Confused with internet wanting to be Emma Watson. Well, coming off the back of me doing all that talking, I'm here with some more talking. And my second in for 2026 is liking things with my whole chest. I think I'm a little bit too old to be playing these coy games, like pretending like I don't care about stuff. The example I'm thinking of here is actually it's very embarrassing for me to admit to, but it's liking NRL. It's so embarrassing to me. It's been a like hating it has been a cornerstone of my personality for my entire life. And then I started liking it ironically, as I do so many things. And now I'm at the point where it's not really cute to be like, wait, what's the rules? Like, hang on, who's that guy?

Bridget 16:43

For years now.

Laura 16:44

For years, and like I do this thing where I'm like, um I saw like a little something about like one of the guys, uh, his name was it's on the tip of my toe. I know, like I know exactly what I'm talking about, and I don't know why I'm doing this. Like, this is just one of many examples. But if you're gonna like something, just like something, I think. What's your number two?

Bridget 17:06

My number two is the Apple Music DJ mode. And I don't know if you've updated your phone yet, because you've got to have iOS 26, but it's sick, and by sick, I mean really bad. It's not generative AI, but whatever you're listening to, your playlist, your library, it will pick two songs that it thinks go together and meld them together, and it's so funny, it's a source of endless entertainment for me. I I wish I had an example of some crazy things that I've had like mixed together, but like it has no respect for genre, it has no respect for like theme of the song or like content of the lyrics. It's insane, it's so funny, and I will never turn it off. I love it. But everyone should update their phones right now and start using it. What's your number three? What's your third in?

Laura 17:54

My third in is fermented shit. Um if you'll allow me to elaborate, what I mean when I say that is I want to eat sauerkraut, kimchi, kombucha. Yum. I've strayed from that life because I was making my own for a while there, and then someone was like, what about botulism? And I got scared. Um some kind of botulism.

Bridget 18:19

It's like a medieval disease from improperly canned food. Well, that's just the way the cookie crumbles.

Laura 18:25

I just want to start eating more of that. It's yummy, it's good for me. I don't want to fear it. I believe I can create a sanitary cooking environment and learn and monitor these new culinary challenges. Have faith. Also, I want to get back to buying that $15 sour that I've done. So obsessed with that what it was? Yes.

Bridget 18:44

Shout it out with the brand. Actually, don't say it until they sponsor us. Yeah. Withholding. That's I think that's how sponsorships work. It's like me and that one toothpaste. I learned my lesson. My next in for the year is singing like Alanis Morissette. Anytime, but I think it's easier to emulate when you've got like the goddess herself in front of you. Like I've been listening to uh the Jagged Little Pill album probably for the last year. Certain phrases just really feel good coming out of my mouth. And when I went in gather to meet a kindred, that's a good one.

Laura 19:20

Oh, you're good at that. Yeah, I do it all the time. That's Brian. I was listening to Alan Smorissette on the karaoke mode the other day. Oh that would be good. I felt like a rat star. I'm the meh.

Bridget 19:38

I hate to bug you in the metal lab dinner. That's a good one. Yeah, that's good. It's just so fun. It is. But yeah, that's my in. I think it's just so fun. Splintered ruler. Yeah, lock it in. So good. Keep going.

Laura 19:56

Okay, my next one is um really hot off the press. I just thought about this on my way here. And so I fully reserve the right to take this back. I thought maybe an in could be getting my boobs out slightly. And what I mean when I say that is I just want to stop being terrified of like even more than one centimeter of cleavage. Because it's not my fault that I have boobs. They are just there. Like, they're never gonna look better than they do right now. They're already looking worse than they did. And so, like, there's no time like the present to get used to that fact.

Bridget 20:38

Are you maybe traumatized from the one time we got banned from TikTok live because of your boobs?

Laura 20:44

Yeah, maybe. I forgot about that.

Bridget 20:46

You've been shamed by the algorithm.

Laura 20:48

I don't want to be afraid of my body. So I will try my best. And if other people are afraid of your body, let them.

Bridget 21:00

That was the obvious gag. Yeah, not silver. See you in court. My next in is something that I just want to continue doing, and it's listening to music like I did in high school. And so what I would do in high school is I would make my merry way to JB Hi-Fi, I would buy an album, and I just listen to that for like three months on repeat. And that's kind of what I do, but I would like to get into the habit of newer music that I do that with. Go back to my roots, obsess over an album for like a month.

Laura 21:28

Such an excellent in and something that I've been thinking about as well. Because before I deleted TikTok, I was seeing a bunch of stuff, ironically on TikTok, about attention span and creating dense memories. And it was talking about how, like, you know, as we get older, we our routines become set in stone. We go to work, we make our lunches, we come home, like rinse and repeat, all of that stuff. Maybe not necessarily in that order. Whatever, I'm not saying it again. And obviously, our youth is filled with dense memories where we're learning things for the first time and like trying new things, and it can be as simple as. Listening to a new album or an album in its entirety. And I just felt so shamed when I heard that because I was like crikey, I just listened to the same old music on repeat. I never listen to an album in full almost ever, unless it's one that I know I really like. So amazing goal. Yeah. Stealing that.

Bridget 22:17

It's also hard because it's just so much. Like, what do I like that isn't 15 years old?

Laura 22:23

Nothing much. My next in is sandwiches and cereal. I think life can be sustained on sandwiches and cereal. It's really all you ever need. It's really all you ever want. A long-term dream of mine since maybe like grade five has been to have one of those school camp cereal distributing walls. Yeah, yum. Little neutrograin, a little just rice. Rice bubbles. What's your pick of the cereal though? What's your fave? Great question. I do really love a crunchy nut. I don't know what they're called. Those like the shredded wheat pillows that are filled with something. It's like a berry thing. I don't know if they even exist. If they're a once-remembered dream Pokemon cereal. Do you remember that? No, no. We didn't have that shit. It was so good. Yeah. Whatever.

Bridget 23:14

I love wheat beaks. And I love even more than wheat beaks, the wheat big spites. The little like cubed wheat beaks. Yeah, they're good. With the berries and the matried berries. Shit, yeah. So good.

Laura 23:25

Oh, I just remembered Cheerios.

Bridget 23:27

I love Cheerios. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Cool. That goes like not mentioning brands until we have a sponsor. My next one is only buying new books that I've read and loved, other than the podcast books, because I don't really have a choice. Use your freaking library. I use it constantly. Stop buying books that you haven't read. Sing it, sister. Yeah. You don't need to buy a whole series of things you haven't read. That's it.

Laura 23:52

My next in is not being embarrassed about exercising. Yeah. And I think this is a long-fought battle. As long as I can remember, I've been embarrassed about exercising in all of its forms. And I guess that comes for a lot of reasons. Like I feel awkward and ungainly. There were probably some formative experiences, like sans a sports bra. Like in budding puberty in primary school that were a little embarrassing. I don't like doing things that I'm not immediately good at, i.e., any form of exercise. I don't really like group activities. I don't really like to be seen. And then there's always that like ever-pervasive diet culture that tells you that you should be skinny, but you should just be naturally skinny and you shouldn't have to try. So I'm just trying to get over that and just get on with it. Just living your life. Yeah. And I'm gonna sing it from the rooftops. Yeah, I go to the gym. What of it? What of it?

Bridget 24:52

Meet me at the gym and fight meet me. My next one is one that I might not do. Cool. And this has come about because I watched Interview with the Vampire. And it's watched one movie I haven't seen before every month. Oh. If I look at my letterboxed for 2025, I'll just quickly read to you the movies that I watched.

Laura 25:14

It's so funny to me that you even have letterboxed.

Bridget 25:17

Well, the reason why I downloaded Letterboxd was because every time I went to Maddie's house, she was like, What do you want to watch? And it would be three hours of me like nah, nah, because I hate movies. And we thought if we have letterboxed, we just look at each other's lists and see which one we want to watch. But it hasn't happened. And also, if I didn't have letterboxed, we wouldn't have this amazing data to look at. Okay. These are the movies that I've watched this year. Twilight, 27 Dresses, Bridget Jones, Sense and Sensibility. First new movie, The Hunger Games. And then I watched Pride and Prejudice twice in one day. That was on the plane to England. Um, and I fell asleep right at the end. So I was like, I'm just gonna watch it again. Interview with the Vampire, the Taylor Swift official release party of the show Life of a Showgirl, cheaper by the dozen. Oh god. Twilight, New Moon Eclipse, Breaking Dawn Part One and Two in the same day, Wicked for Good, the Lizzie McGuire movie, Shrek, and then I watched Taylor Swift The End of an Era, and the final show of the Eras 2 or twice. Shit. So I think I need to broaden my horizons a bit because there was I think three movies that I hadn't seen before, and I don't think that's very good. So one movie a month that I haven't seen before is my goal. I think that's so doable. We'll see. You're gonna love it. Yeah, I love cinema.

Laura 26:38

My next in is very short and sweet. It's just going to the pub, having a beer, some chips at the table, and maybe playing a little pool. Love it. Yeah. I don't want to live that life. I'm happy that you do. Depends on the pub, also. That's important to say. Yeah.

Bridget 26:52

I'm meant to be going to the pub tonight and I don't want to.

Laura 26:55

So it's got to be like a real yuppie pub.

Bridget 26:59

With a beer. I think that's even worse.

Laura 27:01

Sometimes I think that's worse. It depends on how many men are there standing around the pool table.

Bridget 27:05

If it was a like a fernwood kind of pub, women only, I'd be into that.

Laura 27:10

Oh my god, that's an amazing business venture. Yeah, maybe we should start that. Women's only pubs, hell yeah.

Bridget 27:16

My next one is getting up earlier. This is gonna sound really wanky, but according to my DNA, I'm a morning person. But I have never lived this life, and I don't really want to live this life, but I was looking at my ancestry DNA, whatever that thing is, the app, and there's like three traits that I have to look at, and it says that I am a morning person. I love staying up late and I love not waking up. I don't understand the science behind that, I'll be honest. I mean, neither, but I'm not a whatever the scientist is of and of DNA. I'm not a DNAologist, okay? So don't shoot the messenger. I'm just telling you what it said on my phone. Being a morning or night person is at least 17% genetic. It's not that much really. And at most 83% environmental. Ancestry scientists found more than 7,900 DNA markers connected to being a morning person or a night person. We can attribute 17% of this trait to genetics, but the real number may be much higher. Am I gonna think that's being like, here's something crazy we made up, or here's something crazier. We compared your DNA to the DNA of more than 770,000 people who answered a question about whether they're a morning person or a night person. Seems real.

Laura 28:31

It checks out. So what do you hope to achieve as a morning person?

Bridget 28:35

Um, I would like to sit in the sun and read a book and maybe have a cup of coffee. And I like I would like to go to the gym because at the moment I go at like nine o'clock at night and then I can't get up early because I'm up late.

Laura 28:46

Yeah.

Bridget 28:47

That wouldn't be what I would like to achieve.

Laura 28:49

My last in is just following my creative impulses and not caving to my perceived inconvenience. I did see a video about this and I thought, yeah, I'll take that. That's good. It was talking about, oh, maybe I want to join a choir, or maybe I want to do a painting, or I kind of feel like knitting today, and then thinking, uh, but I don't know if I want to do a choir in the evenings, because like maybe I'll want to go out to dinner with my friends, or like, uh, but if I got into pottery classes, like that would mean there's less weekends to do, whatever. But it's like it's all made up, like those things aren't real, and I do that all the time. So I would like to try to overcome that hurdle in at least one small way.

Bridget 29:29

Hmm. Love it. Yeah. My last in is making a notes app list of things and phrases that are here all the time in passing reference, or like if I'm having a conversation with someone and they say something, and I'm like not quite sure if I know what it means, or like if I'm using that word correctly, or like things I don't really know about, or like maybe once new and have forgotten, I make a quick note in my notes app, and then when I'm bored, I can look them up instead of getting distracted in the moment. So the things that I have on my list Guantanamo Bay, Vanity Project, Litmus Test, Freud.

Laura 30:07

All good so far. It's like I'm laughing in this incredulous way, but could I tell you anything about any of those things? Absolutely not.

Bridget 30:14

And they're things I hear a lot. Like here, uh people say these things a lot, and I'm like, I think I know what that what that is, but I just want to double check.

Laura 30:22

So that's my list. That is a good habit. Well, if you're still with us, we are now about to move on to the outs, and remarkably, we both actually have less outs than we have ins. So we're cured. Would you like to take us away with the outs, Bridget?

Bridget 30:37

My first out for 2026 is hot takes. Hate 'em about anything, about everything. People are just rage baiting me constantly. Why am I listening to people who I I'm gonna be honest, who I think are dumb, talk about dumb things.

Laura 30:52

When you say hot takes, do you mean like a broad, sweeping, inflammatory statement?

Bridget 30:57

Yes, and they're not doing it to promote any good in the world or like educate people, they're just doing it to make content.

Laura 31:04

Yeah, okay.

Bridget 31:05

Just jumping on the bandwagon of whatever's trending at the time. I think if it was well researched and like had a point or like had evidence to back it up or whatever, but I think just like the phrase, hot take, you shouldn't be doing this, is a way to engineer engagement. It's just rage baiting, and I hate it. So that's my first out. Maybe that's a hot take.

Laura 31:29

I was kind of feeling sweaty because I was thinking, like, what do I offer on this show of not hot takes? But uh, I guess there's a little bit more substance, hopefully, to the opinions we share.

Bridget 31:40

Yeah, no, this is a very specific brand of TikToker that I don't like people that I follow or like we follow on the podcast, that's not who I'm talking about. It's like people that come up on my for you page.

Laura 31:53

Like those people that are like, hot take, fat people shouldn't do Pilates. Yeah, yeah. That's actually just a rancid opinion. Yeah. My first out is LED headlights slash any four-wheel drives. Hate them all, especially the headlights, but I do hate four-wheel drives, and I hate this idea that it's safer to drive a four-wheel drive. If everybody stopped buying four-wheel drives, you wouldn't need a four-wheel drive to protect yourself from the slightly larger four-wheel drive. I think there's such a disgusting and embarrassing outward manifestation of your own frail masculinity. This is a sweeping statement. I obviously know this isn't true for everyone, but I feel like people who have four-wheel drives overwhelmingly have a lack of personality and try to funnel that into owning a car and driving a car and freaking out inside their car. I just hate them. And I feel like the bigger these cars get, the more people should be required to do like some additional tactical driving skills or like parking. Yes. Yeah, or like not tailgating. I think honestly, like this is me on a real tangent now, but any road rage should be like an involuntary admission to a healthcare facility for like some sort of psychological assessment. Because what the hell is going on in your mind? Like, honestly, it's j it's genuinely quite scary to me. And back to the lights, burn them, burn them in hell.

Bridget 33:30

I think I I'm part of the problem here because I don't know how bright my lights are, but they're bright.

Laura 33:35

But that's not my fault. No, it's not your fault. I don't know how to change that. Feels so you can't change it because it's like a car manufacturing problem. Oh, I feel like I've got a hate rash up my neck.

Bridget 33:46

Feels good to be a hater. Next one for me is the phrase here's the media I consumed instead of doom scrolling this week. Hate it.

Laura 33:56

I don't care what Zubstack you read. I do feel like one of the straws that broke the camel's back for me with social media was watching so much stuff about not being on social media and liking and saving videos about like getting offline and consuming other media and becoming disgustingly well educated and like doing these. Um, like I saw, I think one that like really pushed me over the edge was what to put in your analog bag. And it was like all of these things that you should buy or have in a bag so that you don't scroll on your phone. And they'd all be from Amazon. I mean, it's hard because I think things like that begin as a good faith trend, and then they just become bloated and commercialized to the point of nonsense. Yes. My next one is buying anything except a soft toothbrush. I accidentally bought a medium, medium bristled toothbrush. It's hell, it's hell on the mouth. Are your gums bleeding? They feel raw on so I honestly I was like, should I buy a baby toothbrush? Maybe you should. I love them when they're so gentle. Yeah. Um, so that's my truth. Sweet little kisses from a toothbrush.

Bridget 35:06

Don't ever say that again. I thought it was quite nice. Tender, sweet lovin'. Okay, my next one is AI. A bold thing to say from someone who was just like, I love Apple Auto Mix, but I probably should say like generative AI. The worst person you know is using it for everything, and that should be enough to turn you off. Yeah, it sucks, it's not funny. I don't want to, it's not 2022 anymore. I don't want to hear about how funny it is that you use Chat GPT. It's embarrassing at this point. It is, and that's the most basic hot take ever. But nah, just stop. I don't want if if you're gonna use it, if you're gonna waste all that water, don't poison my ears with it. I don't want to hear about it. Shut up about it.

Laura 35:57

Yeah, go delete some emails, like do something good for the climate for once. Plant a tree. My next out is a little bit of a buzzword, but I would really like to stop experiencing pastor syndrome. Yeah. Uh but unfortunately, tying into my earlier goal of liking things with my whole chest, I feel like, yeah, I just need to get over myself. That's the overarching theme. I just want to believe that I can do anything I want to do. Yeah. I just want to have a little more faith in myself.

Bridget 36:28

This is a a bit related to mine. Mine is thinking too much about yourselves. Currently, my favorite meme is of Jemima Kirk from Girls doing the QA on Instagram, and the question says, Any advice to unconfident young women? And she's got like a great selfie. And she says, I think you guys might be thinking about yourself too much. And I honestly have thought about that at least once an hour for the last like month. Because it's everyone is. Everyone is thinking too much about themselves and in a bad way. It's not in a self-reflective way, it's not in a transformative way. Let's just move through life, think about other people. How can we help other people? What can we do to make the world a better place? Not just for us.

Laura 37:09

Agree. My last out on a hill I'm willing to die on is that I am done with being mocked for drinking cordial. I love cordial and I'll sing it from the roof. Who's mocking you?

Bridget 37:24

Well, you offered me cordial the other day, and I was like, ew.

Laura 37:27

Yeah, I wish. So maybe it was me.

Bridget 37:29

And then I went to Lauren's my sister's house for Christmas, and she was like, What do you want to drink? I've got, you know, coke, I've got I've got cordial, this flavor. And I was like, why is everyone drinking cordial? And like everyone being you and Lauren.

Laura 37:43

It's I will look, it's I'll be honest, you have judged me for cordial on multiple occasions. Like at least three hours. I think it's every time we've been to Beatros, you've been like, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bridget 37:55

Cordial, who buys it? But also So you'd probably drink like the pine crush. You wouldn't have like the good shit, like lime or raspberry.

Laura 38:03

Excuse me, I have lime in my bottle right now. In your water bottle. Cordial. Yeah.

Bridget 38:08

Oh, you're that kid.

Laura 38:09

And also, but uh just a touch, you know, just a whisper of cordial.

Bridget 38:13

I love it. Well, actually, when I said to Lauren, why do you have so much cordial? She was like, Well, I've got mineral water to go with it. And that is that's good.

Laura 38:21

Yeah, I've got carbonated water at my disposal, and let me tell you.

Bridget 38:25

Lauren's onto something. No, I love that. I love that. I don't like plain water with I just like water. One of the best beverages I ever had was when I went to my aunt's house in Brisbane when I was a kid, and she had the natural confectionery cordial, and she paired it with like a soda water, and it was delicious.

Laura 38:42

Hang on, what do you mean you think I would have pine?

Bridget 38:45

Something lame like pine lime. You know, pine crush. You just seem like an orange kind of orange cordial kind of girl. How dare you? What the hell? So you don't have you don't have orange. No. Okay, well that that's interesting.

Laura 38:57

Red or green only.

Bridget 38:59

Yeah, yeah, yum. Okay, I take it back. I'm sorry. This is a formal apology. Thank you.

Laura 39:05

Okay, Bridget, I would be lying if I said that I wasn't glad we've already talked for like an hour and a half about things that aren't this book because I do think it takes the heat off how much we have to dwell on this book. That said, let's get into this part of the show. Would you care to give me your initial thoughts, expectations, hopes, and dreams heading into reading The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins? Yes.

Bridget 39:32

I'm always holding out like a glimmer of hope that maybe this will give me something. I was kind of disappointed when we read Atomic Habits because I thought it was so basic and obvious, but also like sort of bland. There wasn't any outrage to be had about that book. So I was kind of hoping that either it's gonna be something that will be really helpful or it's gonna be something that will make a really good podcast episode. And I was also thinking 99% sure I'm not gonna like it. How about you?

Laura 39:58

Yeah, I was also 99% sure I wouldn't like it. And without ever reading the book, I also thought with full confidence, I've already read this book. And Bridget Bell wrote it a couple years ago. It's called Who Cares. Who cares was a transformative phrase that you introduced into my life. And I just thought, what could I possibly learn from this book that I haven't already learned from Bridget by embracing a who cares lifestyle? I should have written a book about it. I would have been a multimillionaire by day.

Bridget 40:30

If you haven't already established the gist of this book from the title alone and don't want any of the finer details spoiled, then it's your time to say let them continue with their discussion of the Let Them theory by Mel Robbins. And let me leave the episode and subscribe to Talk Lit Get Hit Podcast.

Laura 40:47

Content warnings for this episode include fat phobia and conversations about mental health and suicide.

Bridget 40:54

What if the key to happiness, success, and love was as simple as two words? If you've ever felt stuck, overwhelmed, or frustrated with where you are, the problem isn't you. The problem is the power you give to other people.

Laura 41:07

Two simple words, let them, will set you free. Free from the opinions, drama, and judgments of others. Free from the exhausting cycle of trying to manage everything and everyone around you. The let them theory puts the power to create a life you love back in your hands, and this book will show you exactly how to do it.

Bridget 41:26

In her latest groundbreaking book, The Let Them Theory, Mel Robbins, New York Times bestselling author and one of the world's most respected experts on motivation, confidence, and mindset, teaches you how to stop wasting energy on what you can't control and start focusing on what truly matters. You. Your happiness. Your goals, your life.

Laura 41:46

Written as an easy-to-understand guide, Robins shares relatable stories from her own life, highlights key takeaways and relevant research, and introduces you to world-renowned experts in psychology, neuroscience, relationships, happiness, and ancient wisdom who champion the let them theory every step of the way. Alright, before we get into the nitty-gritty, Bridget, would you care to share just the initial vibe of how you're feeling about this book? I'll paint you a picture of the vibe.

Bridget 42:18

Yesterday I was walking around the house with my headphones in, listening to The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins. And I was singing one of my favorite songs. I want to kill Mama. Oh my god. I was singing that. I want to kill Maggie. I have been in a fury for the last week. I hate it.

Laura 42:56

I cannot believe this book elicited the same emotional musical response from us both. It's so niche.

Bridget 43:06

I want to kill Mum. I want to kill my dad. I hate it. I I hate it. How did you feel?

Laura 43:16

I hate it too. And I know a lot of times on the show I've said this book made me want to scream into a pillow. But this time, I think largely due to listening to the audiobook.

Bridget 43:26

Yes.

Laura 43:27

I did. I did actually scream into a pillow. I stuck my face in the pile and I just let it rip because I could not believe what I was hearing.

Bridget 43:36

Shut up, shut up. I think this is my most hated podcast book ever. Really? I think I I hated this more than Credence. I hated this more than Fifty Shades. I hated this book.

Laura 43:47

That is a great place to start. That is a great mood setter. So if you are feeling any sort of sense of protectiveness or like shred of um loyalty, yeah, to this.

Bridget 44:00

Book, you've been warned. Yeah, this is your warning to get out now. To let them let them be haters and let you leave. And yes, we've made that joke already. It won't be the last time because I've heard that phrase more times in the last week than I've heard like the word the or uh or and it's an article at this point.

Laura 44:22

Okay, so as we mentioned at the start of the show, we're discussing the let them theory by Mel Robbins. Now, this professes to be a life-changing tool that millions of people can't stop thinking about. But who exactly is Mel Robbins? That is a very, very good question because it depends on who you ask.

Bridget 44:44

It depends on if you ask the author of the Let Them Theory, Mel Robbins, and allegedly her daughter Sawyer Robbins. Or it depends if you ask any of the stuff on the internet that has been said by Mel Robbins herself pre-the Let Them Theory of 2024. So in the book, Mel Robbins introduces herself as a wife, a mum of three. She's somebody who has had a lot of different jobs, and at the time she started her public speaking journey, she had been recently fired from her job. And her husband, Chris, owned a pizza business near Boston, and that was also failing. She describes her journey into self-help and like motivational speaking as sort of just falling into it. And she was asked by somebody to present at some sort of conference. And she says that she had a panic attack for 19 of the 21 minutes on stage. From that, she sort of started talking at like women's conferences and doing little speaking engagements until, through the help of social media and virality of her theories, she just gained more and more and more notoriety. If you're listening to Mel Robbins in the book, she's had a few different good ideas. And when I say good ideas, just imagine the air quotes. So the first one that she champions is something that she alleges that she blurted out during her conference talk, which turned out was a TEDx talk, right? And she says it's one of the most watched TEDx talks ever. And so the first theory that she has, it's called the five-second theory or the five-second rule or something. And basically, if you're trying to do something but you're feeling stuck, you're feeling like you're in a rut, there's so many things you're overwhelmed. All you need to do is count down from five. Because, you know, she was watching something on NASA, like a rocket launch. And she thought, okay, 5-4-3-2-1, I'm gonna get out of bed. Five, four, three, two, one, I'm gonna open the bills that I haven't opened for months. And she said that during her panic attack, during her TEDx talk, she just blurted it out. That became viral. She released what she calls her first book in 2017, and that's called the Five Second Rule. And then she came up with another theory, or she, you know, found out about another thing called the high-five habit, which is if you want to increase your self-confidence, all you need to do is high-five yourself in the mirror every day. And that was released in 2021. So she also has a podcast. She released this in 2022, the Mel Robbins Podcast. And then in 2024, she wrote and released the book, The Let Them Theory. However, I've been doing a lot of reading, old profiles and old articles that have been written about her. And this isn't quite the truth, Ellen. It's not true. So she is portraying herself in this book as a mother of three who was just helping out her husband whose business was failing, and she was like, honey, I don't know how we're gonna pay all these bills. I've got to do what I can do to support my man. And so she pulled herself and her family up by the bootstraps and she created this business because she was $800,000 in debt. Her family was $800,000 in debt. Astonishing. It is astonishing, but also could that just be her mortgage? People are $800,000 in debt. So I had a look at her where she lived just to be a bit of a freak. And she lived in a place called Sherbourne in Massachusetts. And Google tells me that the average house price is very high, with recent data showing median sale prices around a million dollars. Now, this is obviously a long time after she lived there. It wouldn't have been as much in the 90s or 2000s or whenever it was they bought the place. But she also um described the house as a rambuckle farmhouse that had needed a lot of work. But I found articles from 2007 that described her house as absolutely beautiful. So that's very interesting. That's one thing that's very interesting. I've created a bit of a timeline for all of the jobs that she's had over the past 30 years. It doesn't quite match what was in the book, what was told to us by Mel Robbins herself in the book. So she studied law, and then she sometime in the 90s, she was a public defender in New York. And then in 1996, she worked for the Legal Aid Society. And then these are the things that I'm sort of unsure about the timeline, but I've just sort of slotted them in where I think they might go. So she had failed attempts at a number of corporate jobs, tech company, out agency, um, like a website startup sort of thing. And then at some point she booked an appointment with a New York life coach, Lauren Xander. And so for two years, Mel trained with this woman over the phone in email because this woman said to her, You know what you should be? You should be a life coach. And she was like, shit, yeah, sign me up. So apparently she was also paying over $600 an hour for a Manhattan voice coach around this time. So that's probably contributing to that $800,000 in debt. Oh my god. She was also a CNN legal analyst. So I saw a video of her speaking with Pierce Morgan about the Zimmerman trial. And then from 2007 onwards, she was writing a column for the Boston, New York, and Philadelphia editions of The Metro, and she was an on-air correspondent for Good Morning America. In 2010, she wrote her actual first book, not mentioned in the Let Them Theory at all, and it is not mentioned on her website. So her actual first book was called Stop Saying You're Fine, Discover a More Powerful You. And this is what led to the TEDx talk. So she said that she was just offered the job. She didn't know what was going on, even though in the TED talk, she's like, You guys think you're so fancy, you read a TED Talk. She didn't know. She didn't know. So the book was called Stop Saying You're Fine, Discover a More Powerful You. 2011, she did the TED Talk, which was called How to Stop Screwing Yourself Over, and she introduced the five-second rule. So she alleges in the book that she blurted this out as a result of a panic attack. I watched the TED Talk. Did you watch the TED Talk? Yes. Do you? I mean, I don't I don't know if I would as uh question someone's mental sanity. But do you say the behavior in that TED Talk is someone who's having a panic attack?

Laura 50:49

No, she did seem quite collected, and I would say she did have a PowerPoint.

Bridget 50:55

Yeah. She had a PowerPoint where she introduced the 54321 method. I don't think I've ever been as cool, calm, and collected as she was in that TED Talk. She's very good at what she does. I could never even aspire to be like her. She was relatable, she was funny, she was engaging. If that's you in a in a panic attack, imagine what she'd be like in with a clear headspace.

Laura 51:19

It's just so strange to fabricate a narrative around something that's very easily fact-checked.

Bridget 51:24

By your own digital footprint.

Laura 51:26

Yeah. I get where she could be maybe trying to be a little self-deprecating. I just said some stuff. You guys know how it is, like blah, blah, blah. But that's not really how it came across.

Bridget 51:37

She's been working at this for the last however many years. Yes. And that's fine.

Laura 51:42

It's weird, isn't it? Because she's kind of contradicting her own message. Not to get too deep before we even get into it. But it's okay to say you worked hard at something and these were the fruits of your labour, but she's acting like she just fell into it.

Bridget 51:54

Somewhere in amongst all of this, she also had a radio show and she also had a talk show like Ellen for I think one season. That was in 2021. Since then, her podcast has just been like blowing up. And so the last thing that she's sort of released to the public was the Let Them Theory in 2024.

Laura 52:12

It is triggering to me that you've brought up Ellen twice in this episode so far because I thought her voice and her same cadence. Cadence. Yeah, had a real note of Ellen. Yes. And I did not like that.

Bridget 52:27

So I think the short answer is she's a podcaster, motivational speaker, and a self-help author. And if you would like to hire her to speak at your event, if it's virtual, you're looking at 200,000. And if it's in person, 300.

Laura 52:44

Oh, maybe we need to start being a little bit more delusional. Yes. So what exactly is the let them theory and where did the let them theory come from? Well, it's not so easy to untangle. In her book, Mel Robbins writes, Let me introduce you to the simplest, most life-changing idea I've ever discovered. The let them theory. The let them theory is about freedom. Two simple words, let them, will free you from the burden of trying to manage other people. When you stop obsessing over what other people think, say or do, you finally have the energy to focus on your own life. You stop reacting and start living. Instead of driving yourself crazy trying to manage or please other people, you'll learn to let them. So what does this look like? Imagine you're at work and your colleague is in a bad mood. Instead of letting their negativity affect you, just say let them. Let them be grumpy. It's not your problem. Focus on your work and how you feel. Or maybe your dad makes another comment about your life choices and it hits you like a brick. Instead of letting it ruin your day, just say let him. Let him have his opinions. They don't change who you are or what you've accomplished or your right to make decisions that make you happy. The truth is other people hold no real power over you unless you give it to them. Further down the page, she says the let them theory will teach you that the more you let other people live their lives, the better your life gets. And the more you let people be who they are or feel what they feel or think what they think, the better your relationships will be. I think in one of the first twists in this story, Mel Robins says that she discovered the let them theory at a high school prom. So this was her son Oakley's high school prom, and she was getting a little bit bent out of shape because he didn't have things organized, he was wanting to go, did a little snack at a restaurant before the prom. It was raining, the restaurant was small, she was trying to organize things and dictate where they should and shouldn't go. And her daughter Kendall said, let them. In the book, Mel says, and that's when she reached out and grabbed my arm, pulled me toward her and looked me in the eyes. Mom, if Oakley and his friends want to go to a taco bar for pre- I shouldn't do the accent. No, you should.

Bridget 54:57

You really should.

Laura 54:59

Mom, if Oakley and his friends want to go to a taco bar for pre-prom, let them. But it's too small for all of them to fit in. They're gonna get soaked, I said. Mom, let them get soaked. But his new sneakers are gonna get ruined. Let them get ruined. Candle, they're brand new. Mom, you're being annoying. Let them show up to prom in wet tuxedos and dresses. Let them go eat anywhere they want. It's their prom, not yours. Just drop it. Mel says the effect was immediate. Something inside her softened. She could feel the tension disappearing. Her mind stopped racing, and the stress of trying to control what was happening evaporated. According to her, over the next few weeks, it revolutionized her life. Her husband noticed the change in her. She felt that the more she said let them, the more she had time for herself. Time to think, time to breathe, time to have fun, time to spend on what mattered to me, time to take care of myself. I felt at ease, I felt happy, I felt centered, the impact was undeniable.

Bridget 55:59

So after Chris and everybody in her life noticed the difference, she decided to share Let Them online. She posted a 60 second video explaining the Let Them theory on social media. And so she's transcribed this into the book. If your friends are not inviting you out to brunch this weekend, let them. If the person that you're really attracted to is not interested in a commitment, let them. If your kids do not want to get up and go to that thing with you this week, let them. So much time and energy is wasted on forcing other people to match her expectations. And the truth is, if somebody else, a person you're dating, a business partner, a family member, if they're not showing up how you need them to show up, do not try to force them to change. Let them be themselves because they are revealing who they are to you. Just let them, and then you get to choose what you do next. And then she says within 24 hours, more than 15 million people had seen it. And within a week, 60 million. And there were tens of thousands of comments. And then they started writing articles about it. And then they started using it in psychology offices and therapists' offices and doctors' offices, and they were writing blog posts about it. And then she recorded a podcast episode about the theory, and it was amazing. It was shared so many times. Apple named it the sixth most shared podcast episode of the year globally. And then the best thing, in Mel Robin's opinion, was the tattoos. That was when they started coming. So if you're not lucky enough to have a physical copy of the book, there are two and a half pages of honestly awful tattoos. Either that tattoo you'd get in Bali in the 90s, sort of font, or like a Ray Dunn kind of font. She loves the tattoos. She really does love them. After the TikTok took off, after the podcast episode took off, she decided to turn it into a book. And then this book, I mean, has there ever been a more successful book in the whole world? In the history of books. In the history of books? I don't think so. Watch out the Bible, watch out the Da Vinci Code, let them as coming for you.

Laura 58:02

I sort of was thinking to myself that the way that she speaks, the way she describes things, really kind of gives me the vibe of the way Donald Trump.

Bridget 58:11

Oh my gosh. Yes. Yes, this is my very next note. Really? Yes. This is what I've written. Leading scientists, best college, best-selling book, best-selling podcast. Brian actually said this, and he said she's been to the same school of thought as WWE Announcers and Donald Trump. It's the same, isn't it?

Laura 58:29

It really is. And that's actually the same section I'd highlighted where I was like, what's going on here? I hate this. Yes. I think to me, when I hear people describing things in that way, it either loses all meaning or I think, okay, this must be a pretty flimsy idea.

Bridget 58:44

Yeah. It's bold claim after bold claim, major discovery after major discovery. Not every single chapter and not every single sentence can be a life-changing idea or like the idea that you will use to transform your life. Like it's just not possible.

Laura 58:59

Like something as well that really irked me about this book was that she said, um, like she spent the last two years researching it. And she's so excited to share the science and all the evidence, and like she rattles off psychology, neuroscience, behavioral science, relationship, stress, and happiness experts. All part of this discussion. Where is the science in this book? Unsure. Where is the evidence? And I think something that really irked me is that this is called the let them theory. And she keeps saying, I'm so excited. The thing about this theory, that the way this theory works, putting this theory into practice, but this is not a theory. By definition, a psychological theory is a scientifically backed systematic explanation for human thoughts, emotions, and behavior. It goes beyond a mere guess to provide a framework for understanding why things happen and predicting what happens next. So it's supported by evidence, it's testable, and it has been tested through research. These frameworks help organize observations, they help guide research, and they can help form the basis for therapeutic interventions evolving as new data or research emerges. I saw one reviewer say, this is not a theory, it's a vibe. And I think that's so right. I was feeling so frustrated reading this because I guess you've got to meet people where they're at. I think it's insulting to the reader to not even give more than a sentence worth of a mention to the schools of philosophy that the let them theory is like rooted in or borrowing like broadly from. Things like stoicism, Buddhism, radical acceptance, detachment theory, all of these are mentioned fleetingly. Like genuinely, she says, um, when I started researching the let them theory, as if there's going to be information published on that, well, we'll get to that later. Yes, we will. But like in her research, what do you mean that you're a motivational expert but you don't know about things like Buddhism or Stoicism or like radical acceptance? Isn't that like the whole thing? Yeah, I don't know. And I think I read somewhere that her husband, Chris, is a Buddhist. I get that she's selling a product. And if somebody wanted to read a book on Stoicism, they would read a book on Stoicism. And like those theories and words may not connect with people. So this is her way of repackaging them so that you know it'll break through to someone. But I don't know, it just really tilted me the wrong way.

Bridget 1:01:28

Yeah. I think if we think about books like Atomic Habits, where James Clear up front he was like, hey, this is not new information, but I've put this together in a way that works for me and it might help you. And like I didn't really enjoy that book, but I think the way that he presented it didn't make it seem like he was grifting.

Laura 1:01:48

I was struggling with this because I really didn't want to hold her to a higher standard than James Clear. Because at the back of my mind, I was like, the patriarchy is at place somewhere here, and I'm not sure where. But I do think he never professed to be an expert. No, he never professed to have invented these concepts. I mean, there was some dumb stuff like the paperclip theory or whatever. But even that, that was like repackaging something someone else had done, and he would present that upfront then and there.

Bridget 1:02:17

Yes. And like another book that's coming to mind as well is The Daily Stoic, 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living. And that is upfront. It's like saying it's new modern translations of ancient philosophers, you know, well-known speakers of the modern era, but that's saying this is someone else's idea, but in a way that's understandable to us. Like at no point they're saying this is our idea. And that's what she's doing.

Laura 1:02:46

A glaring omission in all of her research is a poem by an author named Cassie Phillips that was penned in 2019, but that got popular in 2022, like it went viral.

Bridget 1:02:58

The poem Let Them by Cassie Phillips was published in 2019, which is five years before the publication of the Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins. The poem goes a little something like this Just let them. If they want to choose something or someone over you, let them. If they want to go weeks without talking to you, let them. If they are okay with never seeing you, let them. If they are okay with always putting themselves first, let them. If they are showing you who they are and not what you perceive them to be, let them. If they want to follow the crowd, let them. If they want to judge or misunderstand you, let them. If they act like they can live without you, let them. If they want to walk out of your life and leave, hold the door open and let them. Let them lose you. You were never theirs because you were always your own. So let them. Let them show you who they truly are, not tell you. Let them prove how worthy they are of your time. Let them make the necessary steps to be a part of your life. Let them earn your forgiveness, let them call you to talk about ordinary things, let them take you out on a Thursday, let them talk about anything and everything, just because it's you they are talking to. Let them have a safe place in you, let them see the heart in you that didn't harden, let them love you. And so as someone who has just spent the last week consuming any and all content made by Mel Robbins, that rings uh a very familiar bell to me. And look, I'm not saying that like the words let them are owned by Cassie Phillips, and I don't think anybody's saying that. I don't really feel like either one is a groundbreaking concept. I think many people would have said just let them do it in their life. But it's just very interesting timing because she said that she had been researching for two years. The book came out in 2024, so two years before it was 2022, and the poem became quite viral in 2022.

Laura 1:04:45

Yeah, and apparently Cassie Phillips even has a let them tattoo. Some of her fans had let them tattoos. Yeah. And I mean, obviously the internet is a big, big place, but I I truly don't believe that she didn't at least come across this in her research.

Bridget 1:04:59

I just feel like if you're starting a business and it or if you have a business, you would be quite like switched on to that and you would be searching things. I would be searching things. If I'm gonna name everything this, I would be writing, hmm, let them, just to see what comes up.

Laura 1:05:12

And also at this point, she's very successful. Yes. And she's very famous. And I think surely she would not be researching this in isolation. I think she would have a team of researchers, she would have a publisher that would be like fact-checking. She was a lawyer because there is, spoiler alert, no credit to Cassie Phillips in this book, no mention of Cassie Phillips or this poem. I think she knows she can't even mention it because then it's like, well, so you did plagiarize it.

Bridget 1:05:39

Also, like if you look at her past behavior of changing her backstory, it's also like, well, you lied about that. So what's a little bit more? I saw somebody say that the date that the first video was posted was actually the the day before her son's prom as well.

Laura 1:05:55

Oh, that's they've gone deep. Yeah, we have a copy of Marcus Aurelius' meditations. At home, and I'd seen some threads on Reddit where people were saying in certain translations, he's actually quoted as saying, if someone wants to do whatever, let them, blah blah blah, let them, or like you know, let it be so, or whatever it is. It wasn't translated the same way in the copy I had, but isn't that interesting? Same vibe, yeah, yeah.

Bridget 1:06:19

In March of 2025, Mel Robbins actually issued a response to questions about her alleged plagiarism. And she said in a statement to the New York Post, people can obsess over any detail, but the facts are simple. I have not seen her poem. I have not read her poem, and it was not and will never be the source of inspiration for my book. This is nonsense. I have spent 10 years shining a light on other people's work, so the allegation that I would steal someone else's work is ridiculous. As I write in the Let Them theory, you cannot control what people say, do, feel, or choose to make up about you. People can say anything about you at school, at work, on the internet, and you can't control it. Let them.

Laura 1:07:04

Oh god, she's good. She's so good. Oh wow. And actually, that was something I was thinking the whole time reading this book. I was having like a self-help Ali Hazelwood experience because I was like, God, she's got us. She's got us by the plot.

Bridget 1:07:19

Every criticism I had, she answered in the next thing. She's thought of everything.

Laura 1:07:23

Or every criticism, let them let them have that criticism.

Bridget 1:07:27

They're just jealous. One part I really loved in the book. Some people said that they've been using let them in their life and now they're lonely because they have no friends. And she said, if you're feeling this way, it's a sign you're applying the theory incorrectly.

Laura 1:07:42

That's so and this kept happening again and again because I wrote a note in my phone. Is this not an antisocial attitude? Should we be teaching this? And like two seconds later, she comes up with that. I'm like, did she get her number one hater to read this book?

Bridget 1:07:58

I think so. And the thing that really gets me is yes, she has got us by the plot because she says let them. And then the step two, many people forget the second step is let me. And that is how you react to whatever is happening and like your responsibility for how you behave. Which all of this is so obvious. Of course, you shouldn't be thinking about what other people are saying. Of course, you need to think about a better way to react. But what you just said, is this the world that we want to create? Do we want to create a world that is so divisive, that is so selfish? As I said at the start of the episode, we're thinking too much about ourselves. Granted, she was born in the 60s. She's not of our generation, but I was thinking to myself, aren't we past this level of self-reflection? Haven't we evolved as a species? So we're not thinking about our neighbor's house. We're not thinking about our body and what other people think about our body. We're not thinking about how much money our friends have. If our sister is prettier than us, are we thinking about like how this person has everything and this person's husband is hotter than my husband, and my husband's a fat idiot? Like, is this really what we're thinking? There's no mention at all as to like, you know, disadvantaged people in society or racism or classism or sexism or like wars around the world. I mean, there's one right now.

Laura 1:09:23

And she does briefly bring in politics. She's like, you can even apply it to politics.

Bridget 1:09:28

Yeah.

Laura 1:09:29

But I wouldn't recommend it. No, let's not talk about it.

Bridget 1:09:33

That doesn't mean you have to switch off from politics. It just means, you know, be the change you want to see in the world. But let them so much nothing. So much nothing. And like I've read this book twice, read it, audiobook. I listened to hours of podcasts. I watched videos. I read articles about it. Can I tell you more than three facts or theories about it? Not really. Because it it just goes around and around and around. And it's like, this is something that happened to me when I was in high school. She's like Elizabeth Gilbert. She's just telling stories for the sake of telling stories.

Laura 1:10:08

Yeah, I think there is a kernel of something good in here. I think you're right. I think everybody could benefit from this advice. We should be thinking about ourselves less. We should be centering other people's opinions about us less. We should be conscious of our responses to situations more. I think this simple advice became borderline incomprehensible through her trying to write a 320-something page book about it. It should have stayed as a TikTok. It could have been a podcast episode. But the more she tried to extrapolate it, the more confusing it became. Because some of her examples did make sense. Like some of it was like, okay, your friends talking shit about you. They don't invite you out to lunch. Let them. They've shown you who they are. Now it's up to you. Let you decide what you want to do here. Do you want to cut them out? Do you want to go and like do your own thing? Do you want to confront them? That's kind of makes sense, but also there was a line she constantly crossed, which was like, okay, well, but that's not really letting them though, because now you're involved in that situation again.

Bridget 1:11:15

So she's like, you don't want to react, but like everything is a reaction. Yeah. If you ignore them, that's a reaction. If you cut them off, that's a reaction. If you ask them out to lunch, that's a reaction. You're still reacting. You're taking those six seconds to absorb the feelings back into your body. Because remember, they're just chemicals and they will be reabsorbed into your body in six seconds. Cured of all anxiety, hate, everything.

Laura 1:11:40

Something we talked about with atomic habits was how useless we find self-help because you cannot really meaningfully give useful, constructive advice in a sweeping statement. Some of the statements she was making were absurd. I think one you read before was like, if your partner or your family are treating you badly, let them. No, you should not let them treat you badly. And I think I guess maybe what she means is like, okay, fine.

Bridget 1:12:09

Yeah.

Laura 1:12:10

It's like acceptance.

Bridget 1:12:11

I think that let them is not even true because she's not even saying that. It's a silly title because you're not letting them. You're changing your like it should be called change your response, or like that's what she keeps saying. She's like, Well, you're not letting them, you're changing the way you feel about it. So then it doesn't matter what they do. But that's not letting them.

Laura 1:12:33

I don't think it's I don't yeah. It's it's but it's hard to work out. It's like let them. I I think like there are sit there are situations where let them is the wrong terminology because it's like um acceptance of the behavior that's being done, but sometimes the behavior is not acceptable. And I think um acceptance, I mean it's not very catchy, but like maybe that is what we're rising above.

Bridget 1:13:00

It's not up to you to dole out the consequences, it's up to you to change your path so you're not which is the consequence. Yes, exactly.

Laura 1:13:08

It's it's so infuriating, and it's like, you know, the example. So she gave an example in the book that was like she's walking in a national park, and one of the rangers comes up and is like, Hey ma'am, um, we've had a problem with dogs off the leash and dogs pooing in the park. Yeah, if this keeps happening, we're gonna shut it down, just so you know, FYI. Keeps on a leash. I cannot believe people would do that. That's disgusting. I've always prided myself on being someone that leaves a space better, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, me, me, me. Who cares? Okay, cool. And then she sees someone whose dog is running around, then starts shitting. Because of course she does. Yeah. Perfect. This is going in the book. Yes. So happy this happened to me today. Yes. In the midst of research for this book. Yeah.

Bridget 1:13:49

Perfect.

Laura 1:13:51

So she thinks, okay, well, I can't stop that lady from letting her dog do that. Correct. Some of the choices she presents us with are like go up and confront the lady, pick up the poo herself, um, go on a to the ranger. Go and job on her to the ranger. Excellent choice, mom. But that's not letting someone. That's like that is a direct consequence.

Bridget 1:14:13

And you're someone's actually pissing yourself off about it. Yeah. You're still thinking about it. You're still going out of the way to let that woman's actions affect your day.

Laura 1:14:22

And because then that becomes the anecdote where you're like, oh my god, this lady's dog was pooing in the park, and I had to go and tell her the ranger.

Bridget 1:14:28

And like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's absolutely wild the stories that she picks to be in this book because she presents them as if they're the worst things that's ever happened. She's like, you know, you this happens to you guys all the time, I'm sure. Like, off the top of my head, if I think about the anecdotes that she shared, she's got a pretty cruisy life. She said, like, a girl in high school gave her the silent treatment. Her mum wasn't really that thrilled when she was getting married to Chris. Her friends that all lived in a little commune stopped inviting her over for dinner midweek. The dog story, the guy coughing on the plane. The daughter had anxiety when she was 12.

Laura 1:15:03

That out-of-touch note came up again and again throughout her book, but it really struck a chord with me in this section of the book entitled Chapter 9: Yes, Life Isn't Fair. She had this really crazy way of extrapolating information. It was very much giving shit, shit, shit. I've got to meet a word count. She says, You are failing because of your chronic habit of comparing yourself. You are the problem. And the first step is accepting the truth. Life isn't fair. It's just not. It's not fair that you're drowning in student debt because you couldn't afford the tuition. It's not fair that your sister looks like a supermodel and everyone flocks to her at the bars while you're sitting there off to the side buying your own drinks. It's not fair that your supervisor keeps giving you the crappy shift at work. It's not fair that your country is torn apart by war. It's not fair that you were born diabetic and have to manage your own salin for your entire life. It's not fair that your friend has a nice house or apartment because their parents paid for it. It's not fair that your colleague got promoted and you didn't. Blah blah blah blah blah. When I heard that, I thought, surely not.

Bridget 1:16:11

And you know, I feel like this is the point of the book where it turned from like ridiculous but harmless into truly harmful. From this point on, she starts to tackle things like addiction and like mental health disorders with I don't know, absolute tenacity and disregard for anyone else's feelings other than her bank account, I feel like, because she was just writing anything that she could.

Laura 1:16:39

Yeah, I think that you're so right. The first part of the book was less egregious than the rest. I think this is reasonably useful advice, although it doesn't completely make sense to like interpersonal relationships. It should have been like a shorter book or a book solely focused on friendships and interpersonal relationships and like your circle of control. It's good to have that sort of like, okay, I can't control what that person does, but it never really goes any further into the what's next. Uh, and I think that's the part that people struggle with. Like, yeah, what can I actually control? Wow, it's almost as if you can't give out that highly circumstantial advice.

Bridget 1:17:21

We've mentioned that the second half of the book is a real train wreck, and I think it's time that we maybe take a deep dive into that train wreck, search for some survivors. I think one of the worst chapters in the book for me was chapter 15, which is called Unlock the Power of Your Influence. And I think this woman is too obsessed with the concept of power and like power over other people. I think like fine to have power over yourself, but like she's constantly talking about having power, like who's got the power in the relationship, who's got the power in the marriage or whatever. And like I feel like that's not a priority. I mean, not for me. I don't I don't go to bed and think, hmm, how can I get the power back? God damn it. I'm a weakling, I'm the beta in this relationship. How can I become the alpha? I just don't think that's what you should be thinking about. I think you should be thinking, how can I be a good partner? How can I be a good friend? How can I be a good daughter? Not how can I have the upper hand in every single situation. Anyway, beside the point. One of the worst things and like one of the only sort of strategies or like tools that she gives is called the ABC loop. And even the name I have problems with because you know, like if you have something like ABC, okay, well, there's one word starting with A, there's one word starting with B, and there's one word starting with C. Of like obviously. No, that's not the case. She's got two words starting with A, two words starting with B, and two words starting with C. So it's actually the A B B C C loop. But that's not how these things work, Mel. Anyway, the A B C loop. You have three steps. A apologize, then ask open-ended questions. B back off and observe their behavior. C, celebrate the progress while you continue to model the change. And so this is a tool that you can use when someone in your life isn't doing what you want them to do. So you instead of just letting them what does this have to do withstead of just letting them, you need to take the power. You need to get the power in your hands and harness it for good and evil. And so to do that, the power of your influence is the A B C loop. And she has this like stupid, stupid thing about how, like, when you're at your desk and you're shoveling food, sandwiches, and candy into your mouth at lunchtime, and you see your coworker, they go outside in the sunshine, they go for a walk. In six months' time, you'll be doing the same thing. You're no longer a fat ass sitting at the computer. She talks about one of her friends whose husband is 20 pounds overweight. And the wife is livid. She hates this about her husband. And like every time she comes home, she sees him, she thinks, You're fat.

Laura 1:20:16

I hate it. Fatty, funny two by four.

Bridget 1:20:18

Yeah. Oh my god, the fat man's watching TV again. What a surprise. Oh my god, the fat man's eating chips. What a surprise. Like in every single stereotype is illustrated in this book. Like he's lying on the couch, crumbs all over him. Apparently, also she bought him gym membership. She bought him like a Peloton, which is like what, a two grand bike? And so this is what she says, wishing someone would change. A good friend of mine is married to and deeply in love with a guy who needs to get healthier. Over the years, she's tried everything to get her husband to take control of his health. She's asked, pleaded, hinted, and even occasionally broken down in tears about it in front of him. It worries her a lot. She's gotten angry with him and made passive aggressive comments. She signed him up for gym memberships. She's bought him new sneakers, she's cooked the healthy dinners, and she even got them a Peloton to work out at home. At this point, everything makes her mad, whether it's his order off the menu, his resistance to working out, his post-dinner desserts, or the hours he spends watching television every night. It doesn't matter what the poor guy does. It frustrates the hell out of her. Now to his credit, he's tried. He started diets, he's gone to the gym and spurts, and he's even taken some Peloton classes. But nothing lasts, and so he and his wife remain in this deadlock with each other about his health. She's mad he won't change, and he's annoyed that she won't stop nagging him.

Laura 1:21:35

I thought this section of the book was really bleak. I can't imagine having my insecurities aired in this way. And then, like, reading this book and finding that I've been treated like a dog. Like I've been trying to have this sort of like positive reinforcement. Like, you know, I go, I go for a little walk around the block and I come back and she's like, here's a treat, here's a little biscuit for you, darling. You look handsome today. You're so hot. You're so hot. That's one of her suggestions, is to just say you look attractive after working out.

Bridget 1:22:05

This is a situation where the ABC loop is useful. Okay. So after you've been nagging, nagging, nagging, please, please get up, go to the gym, stop eating chocolate. She's like, you need to give it six months or more for your influence to work on them.

Laura 1:22:20

In this, she's telling us to really lean in, be compassionate, try to learn about how this person feels about the issue, and don't insert your own opinions. And then even though the whole thing is her own opinion. It's my opinion that you're too fat. Sorry. So for her friend, she writes the best way to start this conversation is to first apologize. You could say something like, I want to apologize for judging you and pressuring you. I realize I've never asked how you feel about your health. So this should set the tone for a compassionate and supportive conversation. From here, you can really lean in. So then you might follow up with an open-ended question. Sounds something like, so it sounds like you're feeling okay about your health. If they answer with a one-word response, okay, no problem. Just turn it into another open-ended question. What makes you feel okay about it?

Bridget 1:23:14

And then you're wrong, but why?

Laura 1:23:17

And then continue to just listen with curiosity and acceptance and respond only with open-ended questions that repeat back what they just said. It sounds like you're okay with your health because you've been this way for a long time. How do you feel about that? So it sounds like you've gotten used to it. I mean, you're saying you're comfortable. It almost feels a little bit more like resignation. Once again, don't insert your opinion. Do not. I'm not doing that here personally. That's just my opinion. But something else I could say is do you feel like it's gonna take too much work to change?

Bridget 1:23:52

I don't know if she knows what open-ended questions mean. None of these open-ended questions. Leading questions. Oh my god. Something crazy, she says down the bottom. What I love about that question is it shows that you aren't trying to make them do anything. It's the opposite. You want to work with them in trying to come up with a solution.

Laura 1:24:14

It's just so stupid. She's saying don't insert your opinion onto people. Just ask them really passive, aggressive, highly targeted questions. For example, and this is a real one that she gives if your friend says that they were out of breath at pickleball, ask them, wow, is there anything you'd like to do about that?

Bridget 1:24:32

It's like when we're sending each other voice messages and like you're going up the stairs. Oh, sorry. It's out of breath because I'm going up the stairs. Is there anything you'd like to do about that?

Laura 1:24:41

I would die. I'd like to stop being your friend. Let me stop being your friend.

Bridget 1:24:49

Let me get a divorce.

Laura 1:24:53

Another crazy section at the back end of this book is what you mentioned earlier, where she's trying to dabble in mental health. She has a couple of chapters. Um, one's called The More You Rescue, the More They Sink. Another one's called How to Provide Support the Right Way. This is before the section of the book where she starts dishing out romance advice that nobody asked for.

Bridget 1:25:14

Yeah. Also, no one's asking for 2025 dating advice from someone who's been married for 30 plus years.

Laura 1:25:21

In this section of the book, it's kind of hard to figure out what her angle is. She's sort of saying if people are having a hard time, sometimes you just kind of have to let them go through it, which I think to a degree is helpful as long as their behavior isn't like harmful or self-destructive. And I know even in those situations, there is a time where you have to bow out. Like there's always gonna be a line where it's not your place to take them beyond that.

Bridget 1:25:48

But I think that what you just said is so true because it's I know not always, or I know some situations are like you can't just give all-encompassing broad advice for like really life and death situations. Because some of the things that she's talking about have the potential to turn into life and death situations.

Laura 1:26:08

So in this section of the book, she's talking specifically about adult children who you are financially supporting, which I thought was kind of a weird niche angle to bring up in this book, and I thought, who is which one of her three kids is this targeting? In this section of the book, she's talking about loser slob kids that are mooching off their parents. She's talking about like when you were taking money, you were granting access to your life.

Bridget 1:26:32

Yeah, she's she's got a little message for the parents, and she's got a little message for the kids.

Laura 1:26:37

So she says, the hardest part is what happens when they don't agree to the conditions. Because if they refuse to go to the inpatient facilities or refuse to get a job, you're gonna have to take away all financial support, which means you stop paying their rent or kick them out of the house. And I mean all financial support. They're not on your phone bill, you're not paying the rent, you're not giving them logins for your streaming accounts, you're not buying their groceries or paying for their Ubers. And yes, you may have provided a guarantee on the lease for their apartment, you're gonna have to be willing to have that hit your credit. I hope the majority of people reading this are taking it with a grain of salt. Because I don't think that's very sound advice. It's also not very let them. It's not very let them. And then the message to the youngsters reading this, the little rascals. If you're reading this and your parents are paying for your therapy or your rent or your education or your phone bill or any aspect of your life, I have news for you. Listen up, punk. They get to vote on how you're living your life. You don't get to have someone else fund your life and then have an attitude when they have an opinion about how you're using their money. Having your parents pay for your therapy and then refusing to let them talk to your therapist is a form of gaslighting.

Bridget 1:27:49

It's just not. It's just not. That and isn't that kind of illegal as well? Like, isn't there it's like doctor patient confidentiality?

Laura 1:27:58

Yeah, if they're your adult children.

Bridget 1:28:00

Yeah. You're not their guardian. No. You have no right to their therapy. And look, I think fair enough, if you want to kick them off the streaming services, if you want to kick them off the phone bill, stop paying for their Ubers, all of those things are luxury items that are not necessary to remain alive. For some people, therapy is necessary to remain alive. For some people, rent is.

Laura 1:28:20

And also, Mel, that's not what gaslighting means.

Bridget 1:28:23

Yeah.

Laura 1:28:24

I just thought that was so absurd and so targeted. Another anecdote I found pretty laughable was called Frame of Reference. This was under the chapter How to Love Difficult People. In it, she says, My friend Lisa Bilieu, who's a best-selling author, host of Women of Impact podcasts, and co-founder of the billion-dollar nutrition company Quest Nutrition shared the concept of frame of reference with me. It is a tool to help you deal with situations where someone disapproves of who you are, who you love, what you believe, or how you are living your life and you want to navigate this at a deeper level. I have been there, and maybe you have too. Our global podcast audience went crazy over frame of reference when Lisa described it as a mindset tool that's helped her relationships. Frame of reference is a fancy way to say understanding the lens through which somebody sees something. And it works beautifully with a let them theory. Um so frame of reference is basic empathy. It's something a child is taught. Yes. Look outside of your own frame of reference, walk a mile in someone else's shoes, try to understand things from someone else's perspective. Why are we talking about this? And that's not very let them. It's not very let them to practice empathy because you you can't have those two things together. You can't have, I don't know why that's happening. I'll just let it happen. Yes. Alongside the curiosity it takes to go, why would that person be working that way? Is there more to the story here? I just like this is why I was freaking screaming into my pillow. Like it just doesn't make sense. And she tried so hard to put a square peg in a round hole, and I wish she hadn't. And wish she hadn't. Yeah. Yeah.

Bridget 1:30:09

Oh my god. Um, while you're in this mood, I I want to prompt you to talk about the audiobook because you have big feelings about the audiobook. So take it away.

Laura 1:30:18

Yeah, well, I do have big feelings about the audiobook. So if you are not aware, not only did Mel Robbins go to the trouble of writing this out, she also went to the trouble of speaking it. I really wish she hadn't done this. It is an audible original. It was very difficult to get this. I had to sign up to the free membership of Audible, which is something that I wasn't very interested in doing. I think if your book is an audible original, you're not out to help people with your theory. I'm sorry, you're just out for money. If access to the most accessible form of your message is behind a paywall, it's not for everyone. It's for you. Something else insane is that the audio version and the physical version are two different books. I felt a little bit insane when I first noticed this. There are a couple of things because I was doing them both at the same time, where I would go and backtrack in the physical copy after listening to the audio book and think, isn't it like did that really okay? I guess I wasn't paying attention. Or like I we were being gaslit. Yeah. That's gaslighting them. Oh my god. So here's one example I have. It's from the start of chapter 17.

Mel Robbins 1:31:26

Chapter 17. How to provide support the right way. When I was researching this book, there were so many of you that asked questions about how exactly do you balance supporting someone without rescuing them. And so I wanted to share a very specific suggestion that almost every single expert that I spoke with agrees with me. When you're supporting an adult who's struggling, one of the biggest levers that you have to pull is what you will spend money for and what you will not. If you're giving financial support to someone in an attempt to help them through a hard time, you must be very clear about the conditions upon which you are giving that support. If you give money without conditions, it will lead to massive resentment on your end. The money is not a gift. And unconditional love does not mean unconditional financial support.

Laura 1:32:25

This is just a really small example of what I'm talking about, but the actual start of chapter 17 says, Since there were so many questions about how to effectively balance supporting someone without rescuing them, I wanted to share a very specific suggestion almost every expert I spoke with raised. When you are supporting an adult who is struggling, one of the biggest levers you have to pull is what you will spend money for and what you will not. If you're giving financial support to someone in an attempt to help them through a hard time, you better be very clear about the conditions upon which you were giving that support. I don't understand why she can't just read the book. I thought her ad libs made the book worse. Like the book was annoying, but less annoying. The more I heard her speak, the more those like Trumpisms. Yeah. I mean that that's exactly what was happening there. It was like the most, the totally, the absolute most spectacular, amazing thing you will ever learn. You better be prepared, blah, blah, blah. The big beautiful thing. I don't understand. Like there was a section of the audiobook, I don't know if you listened to it, but she starts crying. Yeah. And she's like, God, I get choked up every time I just cut it out. She has a following and her personality resonates with all sorts of different people, but I just sort of thought, if I wanted to hear you acting like that, I would have listened to your podcast. Yes. I just want to hear the facts. Yes. I just want to hear what you wrote down. If you think it has to be changed, why did you write it down? Just get it right once. It was like a bonus chapter.

Bridget 1:33:53

There was a really fantastic article published by The Boston Magazine in 2007, and it was called Mel Robbins Is Not the Bashful Type. And it was quite interesting because this isn't the Mel Robbins that we know and love in 2026. This is the Mel Robbins before she sort of molded her personality and her backstory into something a little bit more palatable. I think this is like full girl boss era. Take no prisoners, I'm hot, I'm smart, listen to what I've got to say. Like this is the TED talk era. There's just some really interesting parts of the this article that I want to read out. One because I think some of them are really funny and quite indicative of the general public around Boston's opinion of her at the time. And it also shows us Mel's very high opinion of herself. This was a great start to the article. And it says, I believe I am a brilliant and gifted guide that I have been given a tremendous intuition. Robin says over a breakfast of eggs and wheat toast served up by her adoring husband Chris. As if on cue, the phone rings. It's a girlfriend who's feeling neglected because Mel's been so busy lately. They talk it out, friend feels better. Robins resumes. Plus, I'm really damn good at helping people get what they want. And when somebody gets what they want, they tend to go out and talk about it. Indeed, people around Boston are talking about Robins. It's just that brilliant and gifted aren't always among the words they're using to describe her.

Laura 1:35:27

It's actually amazing this hasn't been scrubbed from the internet.

Bridget 1:35:31

Yes, it really is. Another part of the article says, as much as it makes sense for stuck people to crave an insightful, brutally honest sounding board who comes complete with a confidentiality agreement and business connections, you can't help but wonder if women are attracted to Robins with her enviable marriage, family, home, body, and career. In an I'll have what she's having sort of way. As for male clients, Robins says it herself, Mad would rather stare at a very good-looking blonde woman than a slumpy guy. Wild.

Laura 1:36:06

That's wild.

Bridget 1:36:08

I want a crumb of that confidence. I know. Robins grew up in a small town in Michigan where she was her high school student body president and was voted both most likely to succeed and best legs.

Laura 1:36:23

The fact that you're still who told the interviewer that if not Mel? I wonder.

Bridget 1:36:28

This is a quote from a former client. She's very aggressive, very narcissistic. A lot of women I know don't want to be around her. If they know she's invited to a party or event, they won't come. I don't think I'd hire her now. I'd feel like a speck in her universe. Another thing she says, this is straight from Mel's mouth. The truth is, I probably will never have a weight issue because I run, I'm a healthy eater, and I'm disciplined. That's a liability. My challenge is: will they relate to me because I'm a mom and I'm from the Midwest? Or will they brush me off because they think I'm too arrogant or too confident or that my life is too perfect? This is another slam from the interviewer. At the taping of Robin's Borders TV interview with Mandy Moore in July, I count about 80 people congregating outside the bookseller's downtown crossing location. And then in brackets, Robins later swears it was closer to 350. It's like Trump at the inauguration. Why is this?

Laura 1:37:31

It's so nasty.

Bridget 1:37:33

A few weeks later, I run into Robins at Boston's annual Best of Boston party. Chris's restaurant has won an award. This is obviously before it went bust. She's wearing a tight, strapless, geometric print dress, and after a few beers, is feeling honest. Wanna see how I keep my marriage hot? She asks, whipping out her cell phone as she sways to the beat of the cover band. On screen is a message from Chris asking if they could squeeze in sex before the party. Why is she telling people this? To end off this little section, one more quote from Robbins. And she says she has a blissful life, a sick wardrobe, and she's proud of her body and how gifted she is at her job. I'm like the friend who's already won the marathon of life.

Laura 1:38:19

Oh yeah. We all have that friend, right? I mean, I know that was like it was a different time. The tone of that article was overwhelmingly negative as well. But it kind of did make me want to be her. Sort of. This has been quite a negative episode. We've had a lot of big feelings, we've had a lot of emotions to get off our chest. And so I was curious if there's any chance of redemption for any aspect of this book. Was there anything that you read or heard that resonated, even just a little bit with you in this?

Bridget 1:38:56

I've got two written down, but I'm not sure it's what you're hoping for.

Laura 1:38:59

I did not expect you to have anything.

Bridget 1:39:01

Okay. The first one is let boys be useless and not think about anyone but themselves. Because that's what she says about Oakley. Isn't it crazy? The girls were so annoying how they were so excited for their prom. He was like nonchalant and so cool, and I love him, and I'm a boy mom. And the second boy mom is just such a boy mom. The second let them I took away from the book was let them get hideous tattoos. And that's it. How about you?

Laura 1:39:35

Okay, as always, being the sickeningly earnest one is my cross to bear. I didn't hear anything I hadn't heard before. It didn't muster up any feelings I didn't already have inside myself. But some sections of the book that I thought are genuinely useful for people to hear were ones around imposter syndrome. Like, to be clear, all of these sections were clouded in delusion. Like most of the valuable lessons there were like overcome by just nonsense and like stupid anecdotes. But there were some sections about imposter syndrome and like how you just have to get over yourself, basically, because there are people out there that experience no imposter syndrome and they're just going for it and they're gonna do better than you. So you may as well, like, if you can't beat them, join them.

Bridget 1:40:20

And you know what? You're holding a book and you listen to an audiobook of that person that you just described. Yeah. Yeah.

Laura 1:40:26

She actually she is like a genuine imposter. Like she has no authority to be talking about this, really. Like she does have a talent. She's right. She has a talent for sharing information. Yes. I don't think she takes that responsibility as seriously as she should.

Bridget 1:40:41

And I think she's a great speaker. I think she's likable if you like that sort of person. And I think there are definitely people in the world that need to hear this information.

Laura 1:40:48

Yes.

Bridget 1:40:49

Some of it.

Laura 1:40:50

There was a section about work that I thought was probably one of the more applicable sections as well. It was sort of like, you're a cog in the wheel, let it wash over you. Those are things I tell myself constantly at work. I'm just here to do my job. And I think that is a good lesson. I thought that could probably be kind of groundbreaking for some older people reading this. Although I will say that the follow-up was like, work harder at getting another job. But I think the let me in that situation is a little more empowering and less confusing than it was in others. Because what you're saying is like, okay, well, that's a situation I can't control. What can I actually control? It's XYZ. I don't know. The more I talk about it, the more confused I get. And then there was another section that I think could be quite useful for maybe younger people to hear about like friendships and like the ebb and flow of relationships and like to not be so hard on yourself when you feel like it's hard to make friends or sustain friendships or meet people where they're at because like basically once you leave school, it's free fall and yeah, you know, everybody changes. I thought that was kind of interesting. The second half of the book was an absolute shit show. And then I came across this comment on Reddit that I thought highlighted like a good time and place for this book. The Redditor Organic Nothing 4846 says, This sounds ridiculous to me now, but when I came across Mel Robbins and the Let Them Theory in the thick of a traumatizing breakup last year, the concept blew my mind. I was miserable and desperately trying to control someone else's actions. I got so so much out of Mel's book, and it led me down an amazing path of self-development. You mentioned, in response to the original poster, that the back of the book is filled with assumptions that I'm not happy with my life. I think that's probably right and exactly the target audience for the book. People who, like I was, are unfathomably depressed and looking for something to drag them out of a toxic cycle. I'd say this is kind of a really level one self-help book. The concepts are basic, but for some people it's really the first time they read about relinquishing relentless attempts to have control over others' behavior. It doesn't sound like it's up your alley or really applicable to you if you are happy with most things in your life and you don't have any problematic, codependent relationships in your life. And I think that's a really sensible take. And if we could touch grass for a second, I think that we're very lucky to feel that we don't need this book, and I think we're very privileged to have the emotional tools already within us so that this isn't the first time hearing this kind of concept. There are definitely people I know at work in my family, some of my friends that would benefit from some aspect of this book, and I'm definitely not above it. I just hate this book.

Bridget 1:43:24

Yes. Yeah, I'm not opposed to the information. I hate the way it's been packaged.

Laura 1:43:30

Well, let's skip favorite and least favorite characters for this particular book. We've been mean enough. But we do have to bestow a little shit rating. Should we just say it on the counter three? Like we used to do in the good old days. Bring it back. One, two, three, shit!

Bridget 1:43:57

For our January bonus chapter, we are weighing in on what's been weighing on you with another Talk Lit With Us episode. Have your say in what we read next by keeping an eye on the link in our show notes and on our socials. And if you want to be on the same page as us, follow us at talklit.gethit on Instagram and TikTok.