NO, DON'T "LET THEM" - PART I
The High Cost of Checking Out: How “Let Them” Undermines True Maturity
“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”
H.L. Mencken, Prejudices: Second Series, Chap.4, 1920
This is not the full takedown. Just the first swing. What follows is a summary of part one of my two-part essay on Mel Robbins’ Let Them Theory: its viral charm, its psychological blind spots, and what happens when “peace” becomes a shortcut for disengagement.
The full Part I essay is free to read and download on my website Newsletter ‘(almost) Everything is Context’
1. The bestseller
If you have wandered the aisles of an airport bookstore in recent years, you already know the promises by heart. Transform your life. Simplify your relationships. Unlock your true potential, all before your boarding group is called. Mel Robbins’ The Let Them Theory (2024) slots neatly into this tradition, upgraded for an age of viral captions.
Let Them has struck a cultural nerve: a two-word mantra that promises instant serenity in the face of other people’s chaos, a sleekly packaged “philosophy” marketed as a life-altering revelation. But beneath its glossy cover lies a tangle of structural flaws and intellectual shortcuts, the kind that have become endemic to contemporary self-help publishing and podcasting.
This genre has always been an overgrown garden of slogans, but every so often one blooms with such algorithmic precision that it feels almost engineered for virality. The Let Them idea is seductively simple: let people do as they wish, stop trying to control their actions, and in doing so, reclaim your own peace of mind. In Robbins’ framing, our suffering stems from our futile efforts to control others - what they think, how they act, whom they invite, how they perceive us. Freedom, she insists, begins the moment we cease resisting and simply, you guessed it, let them.
One has to acknowledge, even begrudgingly, that The Let Them Theory has been a phenomenal success. The book rocketed to bestseller lists - it still sits at number one in the New York Times “Advice and Miscellaneous” category. Robbins has appeared on every major podcast in the country, and social media is flooded with reels and tattoos (yes, tattoos) of those two talismanic words. For millions, Robbins’ idea feels like an act of liberation, a release from the slavery of managing the moods and expectations of others.
2. The Illusion of Control
And yet, under closer scrutiny, Robbins’ architecture begins to crumble. True to the self-help playbook, she misappropriates key philosophical, psychological, and therapeutic concepts, simplifying them to the point of distortion and ultimately enshrining a version of autonomy that feels less like maturity and more like retreat.
At first glance, Robbins’ argument seems to nod in the direction of serious psychology, with her references to how much individuals believe their lives are shaped by internal versus external forces. An internal locus emphasizes agency; an external locus attributes outcomes to chance, fate, or other people’s actions. Robbins claims to promote internal focus, but in practice Let Them often encourages a passive disengagement disguised as self-possession. When a friend excludes you from brunch, let them. When a colleague undermines you, let them. When a partner violates basic expectations, let them. This isn’t a deepening of internal control; it’s a reflexive retreat from the relational field.
Psychology warns us of the dangers here. Persistent disengagement is not maturity. Robbins’ framework collapses the distinction between strategic acceptance and habitual resignation. The former is an intentional, context-sensitive decision to step back for the sake of peace or perspective. The latter is an automatic reflex, a shutting down of engagement. People often sustain “positive illusions” to preserve internal calm, but such illusions tend to fracture under the strain of real relationships. It’s a bit like locking yourself in a panic room and mistaking isolation for peace.
At the core of Robbins’ framework lies a seductively simple distinction: Let Them versus Let Me. Let others act as they wish, she tells us, and turn your attention inward to your own energy, time, and peace. This binary feels soothing, like finally dropping the heavy burden of managing other people. And again, the marketing is pitch-perfect, the kind of Instagrammable elegance that all but begs to be printed on two sides of a coffee mug. But Robbins sweeps aside the critical wisdom embedded in the Serenity Prayer’s middle clause: the ability to discern what can be changed and what cannot. The result is a cognitive shortcut masquerading as depth.
Serious psychology suggests otherwise. Emotional maturity is not defined by a blanket withdrawal from the messy, unpredictable nature of other people. It is defined by the ability to discriminate: when to engage, how to engage, and why it matters. That seemingly insurmountable concept that context matters - a lot.
3. No Leadership
One of the most troubling aspects of The Let Them Theory is its wholesale absence of leadership thinking. Robbins positions herself as an authority on relationships, personal growth, and influence, yet her framework wilts in the face of adult responsibility within complex relational systems. If you are a leader, coach, parent, or partner, you do not always get to “let them.” More often than not, you are called to intervene, to assert, to challenge, to hold accountable, whether it feels serene or not. Leadership has been described as the art of “disappointing your own people at a rate they can absorb.” It is the painstaking act of holding tension between competing needs: yours and theirs, the present and the future, comfort and growth.
4. Misunderstood Wisdom
Robbins claims her two-word prescription is grounded in ancient wisdom (Stoicism and Buddhism), but these connections are tenuous at best. Stoicism, far from endorsing withdrawal, demands moral clarity and civic engagement. Epictetus urged us to act nobly in what is ours to do, not to retreat into algorithmic calm when affronted. Robbins’ reinterpretation hollows out this rigor, packaging Stoicism as a mood-board slogan about “protecting your peace.”
Her invocation of Buddhism fares no better. The Buddha’s teaching of non-attachment (anattā) is not a license for disengagement but a call to fully inhabit life without clinging. Zen teachers warn that true non-attachment means staying present, not turning away. Yet Robbins repurposes these ideas into a self-help bromide: walk away, stay serene, avoid discomfort. It’s a distortion endemic to Western wellness culture, one that flattens spiritual practice into stress management.
5. Cartoon Emotions
Throughout the book Robbins also doubles down on another tired trope: emotions as the enemy of clarity. She repeats the familiar line - “don’t let your emotions drive your decisions”. But neuroscience paints a very different picture. Antonio Damasio’s Descartes’ Error shows that without emotions, even trivial decisions become impossible. Lisa Feldman Barrett pushes further, arguing that emotions are not primitive disruptions but predictive models shaping cognition and action. Robbins’ framing reflects a preposterous dualism: as if peace requires the suppression of feeling, rather than integration.
6. A journey with no Map
The critique closes with a warning: for leaders, parents, or partners, Robbins’ philosophy is not a roadmap to wisdom but a subtle endorsement of disengagement. True growth - emotional and relational - requires the courage to stay present, navigate discomfort, and act with discernment. Leadership is not about “letting them.” It is about holding complexity with integrity. Emotional rebalancing is not the same as emotional wisdom. Her framework - despite its nods to neuroscience, psychology, and ancient wisdom - lacks the developmental scaffolding to move people beyond the first exhilarating steps of reclaiming self-focus. There is no map for the next stage: how to re-enter the relational field with clarity, integrity, and the courage to stay present in discomfort.
Can you imagine someone whistling while Robbins records her wildly successful podcast? Would she “let them” whistle? Or would she intervene -politely, firmly, but unmistakably - to protect the integrity of her work? The very success of her brand depends on her capacity to draw boundaries, not float above them.
In the end, Let Them risks becoming its own kind of prison: a philosophy of withdrawal dressed up as liberation.
Part II coming soon
In Part II we will pull apart Robbins’ fragile scaffolding - anecdotes dressed as theory, borrowed “wisdom” passed off as scholarship, and a fixation on simple answers. And we will sketch an alternative: one that ditches the fake calm of disengagement for the harder work of relational courage. Because leadership isn’t about floating above the mess; it’s about staying in it, holding complexity with integrity, and facing the discomfort real engagement demands.
The full Part I essay is free to read and download on my website Newsletter ‘(almost) Everything is Context’
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Federico Malatesta
Transformational & Executive Coach | Author