I’m currently having coaching at work and in the very first session the coach asked me this question: What do you think is the main thing holding you back in either your work or personal life?
I answered in a heartbeat. I told her I’m the ultimate people pleaser. That being liked is more important to me than being successful. And that the need to be liked makes me compromise on my boundaries and my values in all areas of my life.
She asked me if I knew where this need and the resulting behaviour had come from and again I answered in record time. I’ve done enough work on myself (and amateur psychoanalysis) to know that my biological father leaving when I was just old enough to remember him, then sporadically reappearing then quickly losing interest again every five years throughout my life was the catalyst. Even though I’ve had a fantastic Dad (my Mum remarried) and loads of amazing family and friends around me, there is always the nagging undercurrent. That if I’m just a bit nicer, a bit more compliant, a bit more fun, a bit more fabulous; people will like me… and if people like me; they’ll stay won’t they?
Throughout my twenties and thirties when my people pleasing was clearly not serving me well, my Mum used to say that I just needed to turn 40. Because turning 40 makes every woman a badass right? You wake up on your fortieth birthday and suddenly give zero f’s.
Well it couldn’t have been more different for me. My fortieth coincided with me doing the least people-pleasing thing of my entire life; ending my fourteen year marriage.
That decision, although undoubtedly the absolute right one, has taken my anxiety about what people think of me to new extremes. What do people in the schoolyard think about the type of woman who splits up her family? What do my family think about the way I’m choosing to live my life now? Have I disappointed people close to me?
At the time when I have felt most emancipated from a marriage which made me wholly miserable, I have also felt the most caged by other peoples opinions of me.
So when I heard a podcast where the Queen of self-help, Oprah no less, interviewed fellow self-help guru Mel Robbins about her new book The Let Them Theory, I knew I had to get my hands on a copy.
The Let Them Theory, for all the hype about it, is nothing you haven’t heard before. It is however a reframing of advice, offering a fairly practical way to change how you react to people and situations.
It’s the latest self-development concept which has taken not just the internet, but the book world by storm, and it’s based on a very simple but powerful mindset shift. At it’s heart, the Let Them Theory is about letting go of our need to control others and what they think about us, and instead shifting our focus and giving our precious energy to what we can control: our reactions, our boundaries, our peace.
When I told my best friend, who happens to be a psychologist, that I was about to start reading the book she said she couldn’t understand how Robbins had managed to write a whole book around those two words: Let them. And it’s true, there is a lot of repetition around those two words, but the repetition is what embeds the theory.
It’s a fresh take on old theories like Acceptance and Commitment Theory, on facets of Buddhism, Mindfulness and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.
In a nutshell it’s about helping you find ways to make your life easier, by freeing yourself of the frustrations that come from trying to control and micromanage situations, making space for healthier relationships, less anxiety and more peace.
Let them be disappointed in you.
Let them talk behind your back.
Let them cancel plans with you.
Let them act in ways that aren’t acceptable to you.
There were two main questions which immediately came up for me in the first couple of chapters of the book, and to be honest although I know how to deal with them in theory, I think it’s going to take me a lot of practice to master them, well, in practice.
The first question was; how does a people pleaser like me just shrug their shoulders and say ‘Let them’ dislike me/talk badly about me/be disappointed in me? It’s literally the thing I’ve spent my life trying to avoid…trying to control.
Aha… there’s the (admittedly quite dim) lightbulb moment. I have been wasting so much of my energy trying to control other people’s feelings, but undoubtedly people will still have been disappointed in me/hurt by me/angry at me. It’s the nature of human relationships. And think of all the positive things I could’ve achieved had I cared a little less about other people’s feelings and instead focused on my own reactions?
The second question I had was that if I just ‘Let them’ cancel plans with me, leave me out, drink too much etc won’t I just get walked all over by anybody and everybody in my life?
Well, this is where the second part of the theory comes in; Let Me.
This part is where, Robbins says, we can reclaim our power. It’s where we sit back and observe what happened when we ‘let them’, and then we decide how we react to that. What do we tolerate? What do we accept? What do we class as a deal breaker. It’s our choice, we have our own autonomy. We can model good behaviour and hope to see it in others, but we can’t force it.
Sounds good doesn’t it? Like any self-help concept, in fact like anything which will improve our lives, I think it’s going to take hard work and consistency. There will be times I’m going to fall off the ‘Let Them’ wagon, and go back to my desperate people-pleasing ways. But I do feel confident that I have a pretty nifty tool in my tool-box now. I’ve been so much more mindful of when I’m trying to control or engineer a situation to ensure people view me favourably. I’m learning to stop in my tracks, pause and say… Let them. And I’m noticing gradually that this not only gives me more peace, but let’s my relationships feel more authentic. We are all a work in progress aren’t we? The key takeaway from The Let Them Theory is that people will really only do what they want to do. So the more us people-pleasers can relinquish control over what other people do or don’t do, the more love, energy and care we’ll have left to pour into ourselves.
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