[CHAPTER 6]

[How to Love Difficult People]

In my opinion, it’s easier to use the Let Them Theory with strangers, co-workers, and even friends, because you will likely have a little distance from them to recharge after using it. You can walk into your bedroom and shut the door. You can go home after work. You can walk off the plane.

And most of the time, you won’t even know about it when someone is thinking something negative about you. Family, though? Family hits different. Family is with you for life.

Your family tends to be a lot more blunt and in your face with their opinions: They are mad that you aren’t coming home for the holidays. They constantly question why you are still single. They think you’ve ruined your life by dropping out of school. They hate your friend group. They disagree with how you are living your life. They make it clear they don’t like who you’re dating. They don’t want you to quit your job to start that business. They wish you would take better care of yourself and they are very vocal about it.

Family tends to be a lot harsher to your face because they have a stake in your happiness and your success. A lot of the time when your family cares, they show it by pushing you. When they don’t like your friends, or they think you’re headed down the wrong path, or they wish that you would take better care of yourself, they let you know it.

Most of the time, it’s how your family shows you that they care. They want more for you, they want you to be happy and they see all your potential when it’s going to waste. However, it can very easily cross the line from caring to control.

Family has had opinions about you since you were born. They have known you the longest. They feel entitled to their opinions because they think they know what’s best for you. (Which is typically also what feels best for them.)

Plus, everyone in your family has expectations about each other and the way the family should operate. These familial relationships cut deeper than the rest because you have known them for a long time—and these relationships form an interconnected system. Which also explains why your family tends to react more dramatically to any change you make—because you are part of that family system. Any change you make will send either positive or negative waves through the entire system.

Knowing that people will have a reaction because you’re part of an interlocked web of relationships that has been in place for generations can help you navigate this better.

I’m not saying that those expectations or that system is right. I’m just saying that it’s the reality. And I find understanding the larger context of any situation helps me stay in control of how I show up in my family.

For example, if you decide to get a divorce from your spouse, or you no longer want to follow the same traditions, or you marry someone outside your religion, or you pursue a unique career path, or you have different political beliefs, this will send shock waves through the entire family system because it disrupts everybody’s expectations and beliefs about who you are and how you should live your life.

Nowhere is this more apparent than when the dynamics of stepchildren and stepparents get added to the interlocked web. This is a major shock to the family system and can either make or break it, for better or for worse. All expectations for how the household runs when new individuals are introduced are thrown out the window. Change can be really hard to accept. Especially for the kids who are being forced to just accept this change and operate as one big happy blended family.

The Let Them Theory will be a game-changer in helping you navigate your role as a stepparent. As the adult, it’s your responsibility toLet Them grieve.Let Them see you (and your kids) as a threat, because no matter how good your intentions are, you are a threat. They have to compete with you for time with the parent. It’s true. They are seeking control, just like you are.Let Them feel their emotions.Let Them have time alone with their parent. If they don’t have to like you.Let Them.

Don’t ever forget that stepchildren, in particular, need understanding, grace, and compassion from you. They aren’t just learning to accept a new adult in their life; they are also grieving the loss of the family they wanted. This is NORMAL.

Understanding the larger context, will help you focus on theLet Me part and operate with more grace and be the wise and compassionate adult. The more grace and kindness you display, the more space you create for a change in the dynamic to happen.

These dynamics between stepchildren and stepparents are hard. There is nothing seamless about them. But they also have the potential to be a lot more beautiful with the help of the Let Them Theory and a specific tool you’re about to learn in this chapter.

I once heard a therapist say at a conference, “If it weren’t for families, I wouldn’t have a business.” When it comes to family, your relatives are entitled to their opinions, but that’s different from them rejecting your right to live your life, be your own person, and love who you choose to love. Whether their opinions are right or not is not the point. It’s how you relate to their opinions that matters.

So, what happens when your loved ones don’t agree with the way you are living your life or who you are as a person? I can relate. Here’s what you are going to do about it.Let Them.

Don’t try to change their opinion. Give them the freedom to have it. Whether it’s your stepkids, your sister-in-law, your grandmother, or your brother, they are allowed to think whatever they want. And they are even allowed not to like you or the person you love. So,Let Them. And then,Let Me choose how to respond.

Frame of Reference

My friend Lisa Bilyeu, who is a bestselling author, host ofWomen of Impact podcast, 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’ve 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 the Let Them Theory.

I’ll give you an example from my life. When I met my husband, Chris, I was ecstatic and madly in love. And when he proposed I was absolutely over the moon. At the time, I remember my mom not seeming as excited as I expected her to be.

So I had this conversation with her where I told her I wanted her to be excited for me, and I asked her to act as though she was the one who chose him for me.

And she said, “But I didn’t choose him for you, and if it were up to me, I wouldn’t have, so I am not going to act like I did.”

At the time, I was so angry I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to cut her out of my life, but I had no idea how to handle the situation. Here I am madly in love with someone I know is my soulmate, and my mom tells me to my face, “I would never have picked him for you,” and then refuses to act excited for me.

I went on to marry Chris, but I felt this tension of disapproval underneath the dynamic between me and my mom for years. It was hard for me to forget what she said. And I didn’t know how to let it go.

Over time, the tension dissipated, and 30 years later, my mother adores Chris. She likes to joke, “Chris, you’re my favorite son-in-law” (he’s also her only son-in-law).

So how did I navigate this? It’s only recently using the Let Them Theory and this tool, Frame of Reference, that I have really understood why she felt the way she did. It has been a real game-changer in my relationship with my mom and my ability to hold space for her when I disagree with her opinion.

See, if I stand in my mother’s shoes, knowing what I know about her life, I wouldn’t want me to marry Chris either. Why? Because Chris is from the East Coast and marrying him meant that I would probably settle in the East and never move back home to the Midwest or live near my mom and dad ever again.

Because my mother’s Frame of Reference is that once she left home and met my father, she never moved back home again either. My mom left the family farm she grew up on in upstate New York when she was 17 to attend college in Kansas. She met my dad there, and they fell in love. By the time she was 19, she was married and had me.

It’s not what she or my dad had planned, but it’s what happened. In fact, when my dad’s parents found out that my mom was pregnant with me, my grandmother said to my 19-year-old mother, “I hope you didn’t just ruin our son’s life.”

Can you imagine? When I think about how young my parents were and the fact that they were living in Kansas and had no family around them, it makes me so sad.

This was my mom’s lived experience, and it formed her Frame of Reference about raising a family so far away from parents, and how hard it is to have no support from family around you.

My mom and dad ultimately settled in Michigan after my dad finished his residency and medical school, and growing up I rarely saw my grandparents or extended family because they lived so far away. It was just me, my mom, my dad, and my brother. Our own little family of four against the world.

So when I left home to go to college on the East Coast, it must have triggered this whole fear that I might never come back home. And when I met Chris in New York, who was also from the East Coast, it solidified my mom’s biggest fear that I too would start my life far away and never move back home to my small Midwestern town.

And that’s exactly what happened. My mom’s biggest fear came true. When you look at it from my mother’s Frame of Reference, she saw her story playing out in front of her, all over again. I was going to move away and meet somebody and never come home.

And she was right. I’m sure she wanted me to marry someone from Michigan so I would settle down close to them. Thirty years ago when I met Chris, I didn’t think about my mom’s Frame of Reference. I was just offended and angry and concluded that she “didn’t support me.”

I can now see that she supported me—she was just scared of losing her daughter. She loves me and didn’t want me to live so far away. Using the Let Them Theory, I can give her the freedom to wish my life took a different path, and I can also really deeply understand where she is coming from.

I can also empathize with how hard it must be to see your daughter marry someone who will take her away from you. I wouldn’t choose somebody like that for my daughters and son either.

I wouldn’t want my daughter Sawyer marrying somebody from Europe and going to live in Paris. I mean if it makes her happy, she should. But would that be my choice? No. This may seem unsupportive or controlling, but I’m sure every parent can relate. And I’m not saying that to be controlling. I’m saying that because that’s how I feel. My opinion may be negative, but I am allowed to have it. Which I am sure my daughter would feel is very unsupportive.

And the same thing with my daughter Kendall. She currently lives in LA, and she could very well meet somebody that lives in California and proceed to settle down and raise her family out there. That would mean that I wouldn’t see her or her kids as much as I would if they were living here on the East Coast.

And I’m allowed to have that opinion, just like Sawyer is allowed to move to Paris and Kendall is allowed to decide to raise a family in LA.

My mom is also allowed to have the opinion that she wouldn’t have chosen someone from the East Coast for me. I’m glad it didn’t stop me from marrying Chris, and living and raising a family where we wanted to be.

But now I am grateful for the Let Them Theory because I also deeply understand my mom, and why she felt reluctant 30 years ago. It wasn’t judgment; it was grief. She wasn’t wrong. She was right. But I wasn’t wrong either.

In fact, we were both right. Because we have different Frames of Reference.

Seeing it through her lens helps me put our relationship back in balance. There was no longer a power struggle; there was understanding.

One reason why it’s so challenging to navigate these types of situations is because you both believe you are right. From their lived experience, or Frame of Reference, they believe their opinion is right. From your lived experience, or Frame of Reference, you know your opinion is right.

With the Let Them Theory, there is space, with acceptance and understanding, for both of our opinions to be true. There is space for a deeper connection, honesty, and love.

It takes an extraordinarily mature person to be able to detach from your emotions and want to step into someone else’s shoes. It’s hard to understand that someone can love you and have opinions that are deeply hurtful and at times bigoted.

When this happens in life, how you choose to respond is a deeply personal choice. I can’t tell you what you should do if someone in your family is judging you. What I can do is give you the tools to determine how you want to respond to the situation.

Do you want this person in your life? If you do, the Let Them Theory will create the space for it. What I’ve found in my own experience and in researching this book and hearing about the experiences of so many other people, is that when you give people the space to come to their own conclusions—and you focus on showing up as your full self in a loving and compassionate way—over time, people often change their opinions on their own.

So, as hard as it may sound,Let Them have their opinions and focus on how you are going to respond. What I love about this idea of stepping into someone else’s Frame of Reference is that understanding where someone is coming from may not change their opinion or yours, but it will deepen the connection that you have while you navigate your relationship.

It helps you create space for two things to be true at once, and that space is where love can exist. And trust me, I get it—it’s easy to be irritated or offended by your parents. It’s easy to blame them.

It’s also easy to feel frustrated and annoyed with the dynamics with your siblings, or your divorced parents, or your in-laws, or your stepparents, or your adult children. It’s easy to choose not to understand their perspectives.

You have to decide whether or not you’re going to accept people as they are (your family or stepfamily especially) or create the distance that you need. All it takes is one person to change the way they show up in a family, and the entire system can change for the better. And that person is you.

One of the reasons why I love the Let Them Theory is that anytime you improve yourself, it improves all your relationships, and this is particularly true with family. I have felt the impact in my own family.

The stuff that used to bother me doesn’t stress me out anymore. I don’t allow myself to get sucked into the drama. And I stay laser focused on how I show up and live my life in a way that makes me proud.

One of the things that I have determined for myself is that it is important for me to have a close relationship with my family. And wasting my time and energy allowing them to stress me out or trying to control situations that are beyond my control is a waste of time.

Because the truth is: You have limited time with your loved ones. At some point, you’re going to realize that your parents aren’t going to be here forever, and that this was their first time as a human being too.

People can only meet you as deeply as they’ve met themselves. Most people haven’t gone to therapy, haven’t looked at their issues, and they don’t want to.

Let Them. Let your parents be less than what you deserve. Let your family life be something that isn’t a fairy tale. They are doing the best they can with the resources and life experiences they have. Now you get to choose what happens moving forward.

I’m not saying this to justify anything bad that happens. I’m not saying that you don’t deserve better. Everyone deserves to feel seen, supported, and loved, particularly by their family.

But the fact is, most human beings have never done the work to understand themselves, heal their past, or manage their own emotions. If they haven’t done that for themselves, they are incapable of doing that for you and showing up in a way that you deserve.

Let Them. When you recognize that, you have a choice in your life. Let your family be who they are. Your dad is not changing. Your mom is not changing. Your siblings aren’t changing. Your in-laws aren’t changing. The only person you can change is you.

When you sayLet Them, you are seeing your family exactly as they are for the first time in your life, perhaps. They are human. You have no control over what happened. You have no control over who they are. You can only control what you do from this point forward.

Accepting the reality of your situation doesn’t mean you’re surrendering to it. Instead, it’s about reclaiming your power to shape your future. Learn how to let adults be adults and accept people as they are. Then decide how to make the best of it, and I promise you your family dynamics will get better.

This acceptance allows you to see your family with compassion, and more importantly, it allows you to see yourself as an individual who has their own unique Frame of Reference and path in life.

Then you move to the second part, which isLet Me.Let Me figure out what kind of relationship I want to create, based on the kind of person I want to be and the values that I have.

This could mean spending time with your family not out of guilt, but because it matters to you. That might mean defining your own traditions even though it upsets your family. That might mean being one that always makes the effort even when it is not returned. It might mean saying “I love you” or “I understand” or “I forgive you” for the first time.

That might mean having the hard conversations that you have been avoiding out of fear of their opinions or judgment. That might mean freeing yourself from guilt and making some changes. And it might mean separating yourself because you no longer are willing to accept less than you deserve. And it might mean going all in while you still have time.

So let’s summarize what you have learned about fearing other people’s opinions. You currently allow your fear of other people’s opinions to control you. The Let Them Theory teaches you how to stop giving other people’s opinions power over your life; and it empowers you to live your life in a way that makes you proud of yourself.

1. Problem: You are giving other people’s opinions too much power. When you let the fear of what people might think dictate your choices, you limit your potential and hold yourself back from pursuing what you truly want. This fear causes you to procrastinate, doubt yourself, become paralyzed by perfectionism, and, most importantly, give up on your dreams.
2. Truth: People will have negative opinions about you no matter what you do. It will happen.Let Them. You can’t control it. Allowing someone else’s opinion to distract or consume you is a waste of your time and energy.
3. Solution: When youLet Them think what they want, it gives you the freedom to do what you want. When you align your thoughts and actions with your values, you will be proud of yourself. And when you are proud of yourself, you won’t care what anyone else thinks.

When you sayLet Them, you make a decision to let people think negative thoughts about you. When you sayLet Me, you focus on the one person who’s opinion truly matters—yours.

You get one wild and precious life, so go live it in a way that makes you proud.