[CHAPTER 2]

[Getting Started: Let Them + Let Me]

Not too long after I discovered the Let Them Theory, I was sitting on my couch, scrolling through social media, when I saw a photo of an old friend of mine. She looked fantastic. I glanced down to read the caption, where she was describing an amazing weekend she’d just had with her friends. And I could tell she meant it.

As I stared at the photo, I admired how tan, happy, relaxed, and refreshed she looked. And I found myself thinking,Wow. I could really use a weekend like that. Hell, I could just use a spray tan. I started swiping through the carousel of photos and realized I was seeing photo after photo that showed an epic girls’ weekend away.

Brunch. Dancing. Shopping. Laughter. Swimming. Cocktails.

Then I took my thumb and my pointer finger and pinched so I could zoom in for a closer look at the group shot, only to realize that I knew every single one of the women smiling back at me on my screen. My heart sank. My friends had all gone away together.

You know that awful feeling in your stomach, the one that hits you when you realize you’ve been left out. It’s like a punch. You try to brush it off, telling yourself it’s not a big deal, but the hurt is real. I should have put my phone down, but I didn’t.

I looked through those photos one by one—seeing a girls’ trip through the eyes of the very same women who I had raised my kids with in our small suburban town—I tried not to let it bother me. But it did.

My mind started filling in all the details. I imagined how much fun they were having and how close they had become. I had known these women for years. We bonded over barbecues, carpools, soccer games, date nights with our spouses, and hard conversations about parenthood. So, naturally, I started to spiral.

I’m talking: Full. Stalker. Mode. I sat there, on that same spot on the couch, and felt it meld to my back as I poured over each and every one of their accounts. Five minutes before, I had been perfectly fine. But now? Well now, I found myself feeling the familiar swirl of emotions take over: rejection, insecurity, confusion.When did they plan this? Why wasn’t I included? Why am I never invited anywhere? When was the last time I went away with friends?

As I kept on scrolling through their photos, turning those questions over and over in my head, Chris walked into the room, took one look at me, and asked, “What’s wrong?”

I sighed, and told him the truth: “I just found out a bunch of my girlfriends went away for the weekend on a really fun trip. I obviously wasn’t invited.”

“That sucks,” he said.

“Maybe I did something wrong,” I said. “Maybe they’re mad at me.”

He crossed his arms and asked me, “Why do you care so much?”

I looked at him.

“It’s not like you’re close friends with them anymore, Mel.”

He was right. I knew he was. But I still felt this urge to reach out and smooth things over. I’m sure you’ve experienced this before. You find out that you weren’t included in something, and all you want is some kind of reassurance that there wasn’t something you had done wrong.

Because honestly I didn’t know. And if you are anything like me, when it happens you immediately assume that you have done something wrong. As I sat there on the couch wracking my brain for any evidence as to why I wasn’t included, I couldn’t think of anything. And that made me even more nervous.

I mean, sure, we had known each other for years. We had gone through early motherhood together, we had lived a lot of life together, and I really liked everyone who was on that trip. But, at the same time, I hadn’t really spent time with them as a group in a long, long time. I had seen them around town at large gatherings, but I hadn’t invested in those individual friendships; and I hadn’t planned anything fun or reached out to them recently either. Intellectually, I knew this, but emotionally I was devastated. I felt like I was back in middle school again: the one left out of the sleepover, the one who didn’t make the team, or who wasn’t part of the inside joke.

Putting the Theory into Practice

I felt myself wanting to reach out to them and fix it. Call, text. Anything to make the anxiety go away. That’s when those two words came in and saved me from myself.Let Them.

The old me would have obsessed over this for days. For weeks, really. My emotions would have gotten the best of me. I would have tried to pretend it didn’t bother me. I would have tried to convince myself that I didn’t care. I would have tried to rationalize it over and over in my mind. I would have turned my friends into villains to make me feel better. All of which would have made me feel worse and withdraw even more from these women who I genuinely liked.

But that didn’t happen. It bothered me for about 10 minutes. As soon as I saidLet Them, I felt a little better. The second time I said it, I felt a little better. The third, fourth, fifth, sixteenth time, thirtieth time I said it. . . I felt a little better.

I will be honest with you: In these types of painful situations, you’re going to have to keep sayingLet Them over and over, because when something hurts, the hurt doesn’t just disappear. It rises up again and again. So don’t be surprised when you find yourself having to repeatLet Them again and again.

Let Them go on the trip.Let Them take the weekend together.Let Them have their fun without you.

At first, those words felt like a rejection. Like I was giving in. But then I realized something important:Let Them wasn’t about giving in. It was about releasing myself from the control I never had in the first place. Because here’s the truth—no matter how much I tried to analyze the situation or how many ways I could try to control or fix it, nothing I did would change what had happened. Their choice to go away didn’t have to make me feel bad, but my attempts to control the situation were making me feel horrible.

Let Them.

And just like that, the knot in my chest began to loosen. The pressure to “fix” the situation faded, and I realized something that changed everything: Their weekend away had nothing to do with me.

It wasn’t personal. They weren’t plotting against me. They weren’t making a statement about my worth. And even if they were?Let Them.

What We’re Really Trying to Control

We all have moments where we try to control the world around us—especially when we feel hurt, left out, annoyed, or afraid. Maybe you’ve found yourself trying to manage every detail of a group plan to make sure everyone is included; or maybe you’ve stressed about whether people are upset with you when they don’t respond to your messages right away. It’s exhausting, isn’t it?

I’m a fixer by nature. I’ve spent most of my life believing that if I didn’t step in, if I didn’t manage the situation, things would fall apart. I had to be the one who kept everything together—relationships, work, friendships, even the emotions of the people I love. And when something didn’t go the way I expected, it felt like a reflection on me. If someone was upset, if something didn’t work out, if I wasn’t included, I automatically thought I had to fix it, change it, control it.

In talking to so many psychologists while researching this book, I learned that the urge to control things comes from a very primal place: fear. Fear of being excluded, of not being liked, of things falling apart if we’re not steering the ship. And it shows up in all kinds of ways. We hover over our kids, making sure they make the “right” decisions. We try to influence our partner’s habits, worrying that if we don’t step in, they’ll somehow get it wrong. We even impose our opinions on friends, believing we know better than they do about how their lives should unfold.

I’ve felt that fear a lot in my life. Fear that if I didn’t make things happen, I’d be forgotten. Fear that I wouldn’t be liked or accepted. Fear that without me at the helm, things would unravel. And let’s be real—control gives us the illusion of safety. When we’re in control, we believe we can protect ourselves from pain, disappointment, rejection.

But it’s just that—an illusion of safety. Because no matter how much we try to control people or situations, the truth is, we can’t. People will do what they want to do. They’ll make their own choices, live their own lives.

The fact is, none of that “control” actually makes you feel better. In fact, it has the opposite effect. Trying to control people and situations doesn’t calm your fears. It amplifies them. Any psychologist will tell you, the more you try to control something you can’t, the more anxious and stressed out you become.

Sitting on that couch, staring at my phone, I realized I wasn’t just trying to control what my friends might think of me—I was trying to control my own discomfort. I hated feeling rejected, so my immediate reaction was to fix the situation before I had to feel anything at all.

That’s when the Let Them Theory started to click at a much deeper level for me.

Let Them: A Tool to Implement Wisdom

The Let Them Theory isn’t just a mindset hack—it’s rooted in ancient philosophies and psychological concepts that have guided people for centuries. If you’re familiar with Stoicism, Buddhism, Detachment Theory, or Radical Acceptance, you’ll recognize thatLet Them andLet Me applies these teachings and turns them into a practical, everyday tool for improving your relationships and reclaiming your personal power.

In Stoicism, the focus is on controlling your own thoughts and actions—not the thoughts or actions of others. This philosophy aligns perfectly withLet Them, which is about consciously allowing others to make their own choices and live their lives, without feeling the need to manage or influence their behavior. By practicingLet Them and_Let__M_e, you’re applying the core principle of Stoicism: Focus on yourself, because that’s where your true power lies.

Buddhism and Radical Acceptance teach that suffering comes from resisting reality. The pain we feel often stems from wishing things were different than they are. The Let Them Theory helps you not only accept reality but also separate yourself from the need to change it. You acknowledge that others’ actions and choices are not yours to control, and in doing so, you reclaim your emotional freedom. This is Radical Acceptance in its most empowering form.

Detachment Theory teaches us how to emotionally distance ourselves from situations that trigger us. When you sayLet Them, you’re practicing emotional detachment. You create a mental gap between your emotions and the situation at hand, allowing yourself to observe what’s happening without being consumed by it. The result? You remain calm, clearheaded, and in control of your actions.

To me, this theory is not the same as “letting it go.” Personally, I’ve never been able to let anything go—because it never feels resolved. It feels like you’ve walked away from something that’s bothering you, and just swallowed your feelings and moved on.Let Them is different. When you sayLet Them, you’re not giving up or walking away. You’re freeing yourself. You’re releasing that grip you have on how things should go and allowing them to unfold the way they will go.

When you let others be who they are, you’re making an active, empowered choice to release control you never truly had. You’re freeing yourself from the endless cycle of stress, frustration, and emotional upheaval that comes with trying to manage everything and everyone. The beauty ofLet Them andLet Me is that it helps you master these practices, so you can stop being ruled by emotions and start living a more peaceful, intentional life.

How This Works in Real Life

Think about how this applies to different areas of your life. Let’s say you’re in a meeting at work and you’ve come up with an idea you’re excited about. You’ve put thought into it, you know it has potential—but when you pitch it, the room goes quiet. People nod politely, but they move on, and before you know it, someone else’s idea is getting all the attention. You feel invisible. You start second-guessing yourself, wondering if maybe you should’ve said it differently or tried harder to be heard.

In that moment, you can either let this dismissal crush you, or you can pause and sayLet Them. Let them dismiss it. Let them go with a different idea. Their response doesn’t change the value of your idea. It doesn’t change your worth as a contributor. They might have gone with a different strategy, but that doesn’t mean yours wasn’t a great idea. You’re still the same person with the same talents and ability to succeed, and the fact that you had an idea to pitch proves it!

The same goes for dating. Maybe you’ve been texting someone and things felt like they were going somewhere. But then, out of nowhere, they ghost you. No response, no explanation. It stings, doesn’t it? You wonder what you did wrong, replaying every conversation, trying to figure out where it went off the rails. The temptation to text them again, to find some way to get closure, is almost overwhelming. Been there.

But here’s whereLet Them comes in.Let Them show you who they are. Their disrespect doesn’t say anything about you. How you respond does. Stop asking why they are doing this. The question is, why do you want to be with someone who does this to you? You don’t. Don’t waste your energy chasing someone who’s already left. Focus on what you can control: Processing your emotions and reminding yourself that you deserve someone who treats you with respect.

In both of these situations—whether it’s work, dating, or anything else—when you sayLet Them, you are recognizing what’s in your control and what isn’t. Instead of spiraling, you’re choosing to steady yourself and detach. As I said earlier, other people hold no real power over you, unless you give them that power. And every time you sayLet Them, you choose to take it back.

Or take me and the situation on my couch. I wasn’t even aware that my friends had gone away together. The second I saw the photos from their trip, though, I reacted. My emotions took over. I felt insecure. I felt left out. I felt less than. And then I took it a step further and told myself that I had done something wrong. Which only made me feel worse.

The truth is, I did this to MYSELF. My friends didn’t do anything TO me. They were just living their lives. They are allowed to go away. They are allowed to plan a weekend with whomever they want. The way I reacted to their trip is what hurt me.

This is so important to understand that I want to truly unpack this with you in detail. Let’s use the visual of a seesaw on a playground to explain how the power dynamic between you and other people goes up and down, and how to use the Let Them Theory when it happens.

When someone does something (like planning something and not including you) you will react in an either positive or negative way. If you react negatively—and have self-destructive thoughts or heavy emotions—it will weigh you down. Your reaction is what tips the scales and changes the dynamic between you and someone else.

This graphic illustrates exactly how I felt when I saw that photo online.

A) WITHOUT LET THEM

What caused me to go down? I did.

Anytime you internalize other people’s thoughts, actions, and feelings as evidence that somehow you’re a bad person or you’ve done something wrong, you just gave other people power. And it shifts the dynamic and balance in the relationship. You feel beneath them.

That’s exactly what happened when I told myself I had done something wrong. I felt inferior, jealous, insecure, left out, and less than. Those thoughts and emotions are really heavy thoughts.

When you sayLet Them you free yourself from the weight of all the negativity that just made you sink. It’s like pushing off the ground on a seesaw. You go up and your friends on the other side go down. The power dynamic shifts.

B) SAYING LET THEM

It feels so good to rise above other people and the situations that bother you. That’s why people love sayingLet Them, because when you’re up, you now feel this false sense of superiority and confidence. You push through those heavy emotions and rise up. This will automatically make you feel better than someone else. You will feel wiser and weirdly above it all, which is why it is easy to detach from the situation.

And a little superiority can go a long way when you’re in an emotional spiral. That temporary feeling of power over other people can help you move through the situation, accept what’s happening, and process the frustrating or painful experiences in life.

It helps to feel better than the friend who doesn’t call you back, or the lazy roommate who doesn’t do their dishes, or the rude customer you have to deal with at work.

But then, that moment of Let Them is over.

Then you will think. . . now what? You’ll be sitting up there looking down on other people, and you’ll start to feel a little stranded in your superiority. And, after I initially started sayingLet Them, I didn’t really know what to do either. Saying it and getting that jolt of superiority felt good, and detaching from the emotion felt great. That was the easy part. But I didn’t know what to do next.

And here is the danger of only sayingLet Them: If all you ever do is sayLet Them, Let Them, Let Them, it will lead you to feel more isolated. It will make you want to withdraw or shut down.

And that is exactly what the old me would have done with the situation on the couch. If I had just stopped at theLet Them part—I can imagine it now—I would have sat there in my superiority. I wouldn’t have reached out. I would have gossiped about them behind their backs, sought out reassurance from other friends, and felt very awkward every time I saw them. And these are women that I actually like and want to be friends with!

I want you to stop and really think about a situation where you see friends of yours going out and doing things without you. When it happens, it hurts. It always hurts to be excluded. You want to be included on that golf trip. You want to be invited over to watch the game. You want to go away for the weekend. You would love to go out for drinks with your cool co-workers. You want to have great, fun friendships.

And I want that for you too. So let me ask you a question:How exactly is feeling morally superior going to help you create those great friendships? It’s not.

SayingLet Them simply relieves you of the hurt and pain you feel. . . but only momentarily. It feels so good to blame other people and feel better than others.

But as your friend, I feel obligated to warn you that if all you do is sayLet Them you’re going to find yourself without a lot of friends, without a lot of social plans, and confused as to why the theory “isn’t working” in your favor.

And that brings me to the major discovery that I made when I first started researching the theory.Let Them is just the first half of the equation. You cannot stop there. There is a second, critical part to the theory—Let Me.

The source of your power is not in managing other people; it’s in your response. When you sayLet Me, you’re tapping into that power by taking responsibility for what you do, think, or say next.Let Me makes you realize that you are in control of what happens next and that life is more fun and fulfilling when you’re not sitting alone in your superiority.

Let Me Is the Power Move

That’s why the theory only works if you say both parts. When you sayLet Them, you make a conscious decision not to allow other people’s behavior to bother you. When you sayLet Me, you take responsibility for what YOU do next.

What I love aboutLet Me is that it immediately shows you what you can control. And there’s so much you can control: Your attitude. . . your behavior. . . your values, your needs, your desires, and what YOU want to do in response to what just happened.

It’s the opposite of judgment.Let Me is all about self-awareness, compassion, empowerment, and personal responsibility.

Your friends who went away aren’t better than you. And you aren’t better than them.

This is the crux of the Let Them Theory:Let Them andLet Me.

The more you allow people to live their lives, the better your life will get. The more control you give up, the more you gain.

The Let Them Theory is not about superiority at all. It’s about balance. It’s about making room for both you and someone else. It’s about giving other people the space and the grace to live their lives—and then giving yourself the same.

C) SAYING LET ME

For example, with my girls’ weekend spiral, first I saidLet Them, which helped me rise above the situation and the hurt. It helped me separate myself from the emotions I was feeling. And that is the first step because getting emotional and blaming them or trashing myself, won’t magically improve my friendships.

The superiority gave me the mental space to really look at the situation from above. The more I saidLet Them, the more space I had to consider MY role in this situation, and what I wanted to do about it.

And when I stopped to look in the mirror, I saw a lot.

I had been so busy working the past few years, I had barely seen my friends. I hadn’t invited anyone to do anything in a long time. Maybe I wasn’t excluded. Maybe they didn’t think of me at all. And if I’m not making an effort, reaching out, or bumping into them around the neighborhood, why would they think of me? Plus, if I’m being perfectly honest, I’ve been so busy with my own life, work, and kids, unless I saw my old friends post online, I didn’t think about them much either.

No one owes me an invite. No one owes me a call. Yes, these things feel good; and yes, you deserve friends who reach out. But whose responsibility is it to create those friendships? And more importantly,Let Me be honest with myself: Have I been doing my part? When I stopped to ask myself that question, the answer was no.

When you are an adult, your social life is your responsibility. If you want more fun, you should get your butt off the couch and create a great social life (talking to myself here too).

Let Me stop expecting other people to always include me.Let Me take responsibility for what I want in life.Let Me figure out the deeper issue that I need to look at.Let Me be more proactive about reaching out to people.Let Me invite people to do something this weekend.Let Me throw a party for once.Let Me develop better boundaries with work so I have time for friendship.Let Me prioritize my social life, because clearly it matters to me, and it is my responsibility to create one.

Let Me reach out to a few of these women to reconnect. Not in a passive way. Not to smooth things over. And not to get an invite to their next getaway. But because once I saidLet Them andLet Me and rise above my emotion, I connect with the deeper truth that I actually really miss a few of these women, and seeing that post online made me realize that I work way too much and I want to make an effort to rekindle my friendship with them. . . and a few other people now that I am thinking about it.

Before We Dive in: Two Warnings

As I researched this book, two important questions came up repeatedly from people who were applying the Let Them Theory, and I want to address them now before we dive deeper into the rest of the book.

First: Does the Let Them Theory apply to children?

Yes, you can absolutely use the Let Them Theory with kids, (with some very important caveats), but this book is specifically focused on how you apply the theory with adults. Throughout the book, I make clear distinctions between adults and children to avoid any confusion. And for those looking for guidance on how to use this approach with children, teens, and young adults, I’ve included a special guide in theAppendix at the end of the book that breaks this down in detail.

Second: What if using Let Them makes you feel lonely?

This is a critical point. Some people have shared that they feel lonely after using the Let Them Theory. If you’re feeling this way, it’s a sign you’re applying the theory incorrectly. The Let Them Theory has two essential steps:Let Them andLet Me. These steps must go hand in hand. You cannot simply sayLet Them and stop there. Many people forget the second step,Let Me—and this is a major mistake becauseLet Me is where your real power lies. It’s inLet Me that you take responsibility for your next move, for creating the life, relationships, and connection you want. Without this step, you’ll find yourself disconnected rather than empowered.

As your friend, I feel obligated to warn you that if all you do is sayLet Them you’re going to find yourself without a lot of friends, without a lot of social plans, and confused as to why the theory “isn’t working” in your favor. It feels good to sayLet Them because we like to blame other people. And as we’ve discussed, a jolt of superiority can help when you feel down. However, that’s not the purpose of the theory.

Let Them is not an excuse to stop answering your phone, to shrug your shoulders, to refuse to talk it out with a friend or family member who is hurt, to stay in a situation that hurts you, or to ignore discrimination or dangerous behavior. It’s not a license to give someone the silent treatment, ghost people, avoid hard conversations, or withdraw from your relationships.

It’s not supposed to leave you feeling alone and invisible, but rather more connected and more fulfilled in every single one of your relationships. If you find that you’re using the theory and it’s making you lonelier please hear this: You are using it wrong. The theory is here to make your life better, not worse. So I am reminding you to ALWAYS remember to sayLet Me. Because that is the part that will change your life.

Using the Let Them Theory, I saw how often I blamed someone else for the fact that I was alone sitting on my couch. Or not making the money I wanted to make. Or how often I said yes due to guilt. Or the decisions I made because I didn’t want to disappoint someone else. Or how often I used the excuse of being too tired to make my health or fun a priority.

When you’re an adult, your life, happiness, health, healing, social life, friendships, boundaries, needs, and success are all your responsibility. If you’ve been secretly hoping someone else would come and rescue you, fix your problems, pay your bills, create a social life, heal your wounds, change into your dream partner, and motivate you to be your best. . . it’s not going to happen. No one is coming. And any time you spend blaming other people, or waiting for permission or an invitation, is wasted. Those days are over.

YourLet Me era is here.

You are capable of creating anything that you want if you are willing to put the time and energy into working for it. And that means you must stop wasting your time and energy on petty, shallow, and insignificant things. And it also means that you have to stop trying to control the one thing you can’t: other people.

In the next section of the book, we’re diving into four core areas of your life where the Let Them Theory will create the biggest and most immediate positive impact. You’ll learn how to stop allowing other people’s behaviors, opinions, reactions, and success to affect your happiness and stand in the way of what you want. And there’s no faster way to get started and to feel the power ofLet Them than using it to manage stress and protect your peace. So let’s jump in.