A Bit of Optimism - Revisited: The First Steps To Reducing Your Anxiety with Author Mel Robbins

Episode Date: January 6, 2026

Happy New Year from Team Simon! We’re so excited to bring you more new episodes of A Bit of Optimism when we return on January 27, 2026. With your support, we’ll make 2026 an incredible year together. In the meantime, we’re revisiting some of our favorite episodes from last year.We kicked off 2025 with a guest most podcast enthusiasts probably have heard of—Mel Robbins. This insightful conversation answers an important question: how do we push through the days where life can feel overwhelming? Especially when we're too drained to even get out of bed.For Mel Robbins, facing this very question turned her life around. Struggling with $800,000 in debt and at rock bottom, she became obsessed with finding practical ways to regain control. Fast forward to today, and Mel is a bestselling author and podcast host who has helped millions transform their lives. In her latest book, The Let Them Theory, she reveals how shedding the weight of others' expectations can help us live more authentically.Simon sat down with Mel to dive into how we can take action when we're emotionally spent, why our need for control ties us to other people's opinions, and how giving others the freedom to be themselves allows us to align with our true values.This… is A Bit of Optimism.---------------------------For more on Mel and her work, check out: https://www.melrobbins.com/podcastand her book: https://www.melrobbins.com/letthemtheory

If your friends don't invite you out this weekend, let them. If the person you're dating doesn't want a commitment, let them. If your kids don't want to go to the flea market with you this weekend, let them. Stop worrying about managing and stressing about other people. Stop forcing them to change. Let people be who they are because they are revealing themselves to you. And they're revealing their priorities and what matters to you. And then you get to choose.

You get to choose how to respond. and that's where your power is. I love the way you speak. I've been captivated this entire time, taking in every word. Not agreeing with all of them, but taking them in. Let them. Let them. I don't care.

Control freaks, breathe easy. Mel Robbins is here, and she's clearing a space to help us let go of our anxiety and help all of us live our best lives. Mel has one of the most popular podcasts in the world. And she has a new book called The Let Them Theory, which is profound in the impact it's having in people's lives. Mel is a force of nature and one of my favorite guests that I've ever had on the podcast. This is a bit of optimism. So one of the things that you and I have in common is that it's amazing that we're still around.

who the hell are you calling old son given no no given that given that the work that we did on ted that sort of helped the world know what we were thinking about the world was many years ago yes yours 13 years ago right yeah mine 15 years ago 15 I know painful um so you're the dinosaur I'm the younger one yes at least in TED years in least in least 1010 years. And did you know that your work would resonate as loud as it has? Would you able Are you kidding me? So literally, let me give you the backstory. So it is 2011. And my husband is in a failing restaurant business. That sounds like all restaurant businesses. Yep. We have liens on the house and we're 800 grand in debt. Okay, that sucks. Oh, it sucks. Oh, it sucks.

right, three kids under the age of 10, friends and family have invested. And I am scrambling to make money however I can, to put gas in the tank and groceries on the table. And a couple years prior, I had created this little thing that I call the five second rule, which is this technique of counting backwards, five, four, three, two, one, to launch yourself through an excuse or doubt or anxiety or whatever and just do what you need to do. And I invented it to help me get out of bed on those mornings when the anxiety was so crushing that I couldn't get out of bed. And so I would five, four, three, two, and get out of bed. And I started using this little countdown thing to push me through all the excuses and take all the little

actions one by one that slowly put my life back on track. But I got to a phone call from a friend of mine from college who said, hey, there's this person putting on this thing out in San Francisco, and they're looking for somebody who has changed their career a lot. And she said, I thought of you. She said they're offering two plane tickets and two nights at the St. Regis. And Simon, when you're $800,000 in debt, that sounds like a vacation. And so I said, sure. Now, keep in mind, I'd only taken a speaking class, like a public speaking class in high school. I was not a professional speaker. I had never stood on a stage in front of an audience and delivered any kind of keynote. But I wasn't thinking about that because I was thinking about,

okay, I'm going to get to San Francisco. Chris and I are going to have a couple days away from our kids. This is going to be amazing. I get there and it's like, oh my God, I got to give a speech. I forgot about this part. So when you watch my TEDx talk, you are literally witness. missing a 21-minute-long panic attack. If you look closely a minute in, you will notice I have this gigantic neck rash that people get when they drink too much or they have anxiety.

I'm darting around the stage in and out of the spotlight, and around minute 19, I forgot how to end it. And I couldn't remember how I was supposed to end it. And so I blurt out the five-second rule, which I had never shared with anybody, except for my husband. And at the end of saying, oh, there's this thing I do. I call it the five second rule.

The moment you have an instinct to act, you've got to move within five seconds, so your brain kills your motivation to act. Thank you very much. And then I said, and if you have any questions, here's my email address. And I walked off stage. And that was that. And a year went by. And then TEDx put it online.

I didn't even know it was online. And another year goes by. So I'm now in my life. We're paying our bills. My marriage is back on track. I'm still using 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 in my own life, and all of a sudden, emails start coming in to that email address. And it's from people around the world who were using the 5, 4, 321 countdown technique to do amazing things. And I would stay up late at night after working all day, answering strangers' emails, because I felt this obligation to respond to people because they were using something.

I never, ever thought that it would be anything other than a couple nights in San Francisco. And I look back on it now, and I think there are these moments in your life when you look backwards, where you say there was something so much bigger happening, and I didn't realize it. And that was one of those moments. Well, it's an amazing thing, because now the five second rule is a thing. Oh, it's massive. And the thing that I think is wonderful is you contributed to the zeitgeist. Like, that people don't even know that it's you.

I love that. It is now part of, it is now woven into the vernacular. Uh-huh. And people recommend it to each other, they say it, they know what it is. And it doesn't matter if your name is attached to it. The point is, is you've made a contribution to people in a way that, like, the idea that you can, you can mechanically produce something that will tap into the zeitgeist and take off, I think is false. I don't know if that's possible. And I think the things that your work, my work, they're accidents.

They're accidents. They're, you know, looking back, I think we can both say, I understand why it resonates. Because it was born out of reality. It wasn't born out of a, I read a thing in a magazine, you know. It was born out of something you needed to do something that you were struggling with, that clearly other people were struggling with the same thing. Yes. Which is, how do I motivate?

How do I get out of bed? How do I do these things? do the things I know I need to do, but I can't make myself do it. Yeah. And it's so obvious. It's kind of like a little kid standing at the deep end going, okay, five, four, three, two, one, and you jump. I mean, it's the same thing. Yes. So the question where I started was, could you have predicted what has happened? I think you would have to be an arrogant sociopath to think. But looking back, you can understand it. Oh, I understand now. Yeah, yeah. But standing in that moment, I would never. No, but you can understand now why it connected.

I do. And the reason why it connected is because there is so much information. I personally believe that most people know what they need to do or your one Google search away from it. But there's not a lot of how. And for me, I'm fascinated by intellectual concepts and philosophy and all this stuff, but I don't know how. it. Like, I've always been the kind of person that wanted to let things go, but I never can because I feel like if I let it go, I'm admitting defeat. And so for me, the experience of sharing one simple thing that helped me during one of the hardest moments of my life, it taught me a

number of things. Number one, absolutely everyone who is struggling. And at some point, everybody struggles, everybody feels stuck, everybody feels lonely. You think you're the only one and you're not. The second thing that it taught me is that in life, when things feel overwhelming and complicated, the more complicated the solution, the less likely it's going to work. You need something obvious and simple because when you're already overwhelmed and stuck, you're missing hope. And you're also not able to leverage the full capacity of your brain because you're stressed out and you're overwhelmed and you're up in your head. And so the simpler, the idea, the more likely you're going to be able to use it.

And the third thing that it taught me is the extraordinary power of ignoring how you feel and forcing yourself to do something. All right. Talk about that one more. Because that's... I have no problem letting myself down. What do you mean?

So, for example, I know I need to get back in shape. I know I need to go to the gym. And I'll wake up in the morning They're like, all right, work out. I got all the workout stuff at home. You know, I don't need to even go anywhere. I'm like, all right, you're up early. Why don't you work out?

And I'd be like, yeah. You don't feel like it. Do the crossword puzzle instead. Yeah. And, but that's daily. Yeah. You know, and I don't mind. Like, it doesn't bother me that I let myself down.

Like, it's okay. I don't feel guilt, shame. But if I'm meeting somebody to work out, I will be there 100%. Of course. So do you actually want to solve this? go on yes well because people only change when they feel like it and this does not to me sound like a compelling enough reason in terms of your why and i don't think you're committed to changing it so i don't think you're going to do it if you really wanted to do it you're a smart enough person that you would

solve this problem see i think the issue is a question of intelligence no i don't either i think it's that you listen to your emotions in the moment and you allow them to dictate what you do i think it's i think it's nah I think it's it I think it's routine like when you're in a routine it's hard to get out of it but do you like if I'm working out on a regular basis it's very so when I used to run a lot okay and when I was running a lot uh-huh I just loved running and I was in the routine and I would I'd like it'd be it'd be the afternoon I'd look at my watch and I'd be like I don't have a meeting for another hour I'm gonna go for a run I would just go for a run like when I was in the routine I loved being in the routine and so I'm in the

routine of not working out. That's my routine. So I think it's hard to, I think it's hard to change routines. True. And I'm in the routine of not, of not doing. See, I believe people only change when they want to. Yeah. And that if you don't feel like doing something, you're not going to. And the truth is that waiting around to feel like doing this or waiting around for you to be motivated or inspired to break your routine, that's not enough. Yeah. And it's not a matter of will, it's a matter of skill. And it is a skill in life to be able to feel what you feel and then do what you need to do.

You know, one of the most famous taglines in the world is Nike, Just Do It. What's the most powerful word of those three words? The do. No. The Just. Yes. If their tagline had been, Do it. Oh, yeah.

You would have hated that. I would have hated, yeah. Yeah, of course, because pressure. It's aggressive. Well, it's not only that it's aggressive, If you look at basic brain wiring, that type of pressure doesn't motivate. It actually creates resistance to change because it is an assault on your fundamental need to control yourself.

But the tagline, just do it, appeals to your humanity. It's acknowledging something we all struggle with, which is that moment of hesitation, that moment of self-doubt, that moment where you're standing on the sideline, aching to jump in the game, but you are holding yourself back. The just is everything. And that's what the five-second rule is. It's acknowledging that we all have this habit of hesitating in the small moments, this bias towards thinking, where we consider how we feel about the thing that we're about

to do instead of doing the small thing that we need to do. And for me, it was the moment of hesitating. when the alarm rang and I knew I needed to get out of bed. I knew I needed to get the kids on the bus. I knew I needed to get a job. I knew I needed to not drink so much. I knew I needed to stop screaming at my husband. I knew I needed to ask for help. I wasn't doing any of it because in that moment when that alarm rang and I knew what I needed to do, I stopped and considered how I felt about doing it. And when you stop and consider how you feel, your brain is wired to do what's easy. We naturally move. towards it. We are also wired to push away from what feels hard. And the reason why it is so difficult to break patterns is because the patterns that you're in feel easy because you know them. Lying in bed is easy. That's why we do it. Picking up your phone and scrolling on social media, it's easy. That's why we do it. In order to change anything about your life or to replace any pattern in your life, you have to work against basic wiring in your brain and you have to develop

up a skill of being able to ignore how you feel and choose to take action even when you don't want to. And that's what the five second rule taught me. You know, when I look at the success that I've built and the things that I've done since even the TEDx talk or that moment in my life 14 years ago, I don't think I'm particularly special. I just did what a lot of people won't do. I got up on the mornings when I didn't feel like it. I did the boring-ass tedious grueling crap that needs to get done every day and I refuse to quit and it is a skill to learn how to feel what you're feeling and then align your action with the thing that you know you need to do that's good for you were you always like this were you always a type in like in school

like what was your what was your oh i was a walking red flag for a long time what does that mean uh that means that i was like i struggled with a lot of stuff i think this is why i'm obsessed with helping, like, it's why I'm obsessed with uncovering any kind of shortcut or any kind of knowledge or tool that can help you create a better life or solve a problem because I spent so much of my life hurting myself or hurting other people because I just didn't know. I mean, there's so many examples of this from trauma in your childhood to I had dyslexia and ADHD. I had no fucking clue I had those things. And part of the reason why I had no clue is because when they were researching ADHD in

the 70s, they only looked at boys. And we now know that girls have ADHD just as much as boys. They just have the opposite symptoms. And if you're in a classroom and your brain doesn't learn the way that public school or whatever school is asking you to learn, if you don't address dyslexia, dysgraphia, ADHD, what develops on the surface is anxiety. So there are generations. of women, I am one of them, who got diagnosed with anxiety in their late teens and early

20s, who were medicated for anxiety. The wrong thing. The wrong thing. Yeah. And I didn't discover that I had ADHD or dyslexia until I was 47 years old. And you want to know how I discovered it? I discovered it the same way the majority of women discover it. Because one of my kids was going through the process of getting evaluated by a neuropsychologist

for school. And as I looked at his profile, I'm like, well, that looks like me. And then I went through it, and lo and behold, it explained everything. I didn't know. And suddenly knowing gave me a completely different vantage point about the things that I struggled with, about the things that I did that I regret, about the opportunities that I squandered. You know, I recently had on our podcast a really incredible guy by the name of Dr. Stuart Ablon. He's a psychologist that's been practicing at Mass General Brigham for 30 years.

And he had this thing that he said just a week ago that I will never forget. He said, people do well when they can. And if you're not doing well or if somebody in your life is not doing well, it's because they can't right now. There's a skill. It's not a willpower issue. If somebody is expressing challenging behavior, there's typically some sort of skill that is missing. There's a problem underneath the behavior that hasn't been discovered.

And so what I've found in my life is that I have strong. struggled silently. I have felt very stuck in patterns of behavior that I didn't feel like equipped to be able to replace or understand, which only leads you to feel worse about yourself. Like, how can I keep doing this to myself? How can I keep making the same mistakes? Why am I so damn hard on myself? And so when you don't know what's going on or you don't understand kind the trap that you're in, then you have no ability to get out of it. And so for me, it was a revelation to understand that simply counting 5,4, 3,21, it allowed me to not be ruled by emotion. It allowed me to not let the patterns of my past dictate the person I was in the

present. And when you start to gain that kind of control over yourself, it's liberating. So no, I wasn't always that person at all. But were you sort of, did you have, always have a lot of grit sort of work hard at school? Yeah, because I was like super competitive in like a lot of people. I got a lot of positive attention when I got great grades or when the track team won or when I was elected president of whatever. And so, yeah.

So it was not that you had the skill of grit and motivation and you lost it. And the 503 to one help you? See, I don't think it's an issue of motivation. Go on. I don't because I think motivation's complete garbage. It's never there when you need it. And that's the paradox of it, is that we're all sitting there waiting to feel motivated. Yeah.

And it's not coming. Yeah. Because basic wiring of the brain is that you will always default to what's easy. And you always push against what's hard. And if motivation were available on demand, we'd all have a million dollars in six-pack abs. And so sitting around waiting for motivation is the kiss of death because it's in the action that you dissipate the emotion. And it's in the action that you actually prove to yourself through the action because you see yourself operating differently, that you are a different person, that you are not defined by your emotions. I mean, emotions are just chemical reactions that explode within six seconds.

And the research shows that if you can learn how to let them rise and fall like a wave, most emotion dissipates in 90 seconds. instead what we do is we feel it and then we think the emotion needs to guide our response to it and it's actually the opposite you can choose your response if you understand what emotions are and I felt trapped and I was a hostage to my emotions all the time you can either be sunny and you can be a storm cloud you get to choose and for a large part of my life I was violently oscillating between those two things. And learning how to be in control of the actions that you take and learning that you do have agency and that you don't have to wait to feel like it, that you're not going to sit around and wait for motivation, that you're the kind of person that is building the skill

of doing what needs to get done. And that's an incredible thing. Do you allow yourself then to feel sad? Of course. Absolutely. Absolutely. But I get to choose how I sit with it. So give me an example. So being sad is a mentally healthy response for sure to situations in life. Yeah. And the thing about it is that there's going to become an amount of time that being in your sadness is helping you process grief or helping you process heartbreak or helping you process disappointment.

Like for me, the thing that comes to mind is when we moved, so we lived outside of Boston for 26 years and then about four. four years ago, we moved to southern Vermont. And so at the age of 52, all of a sudden, I'm in this tiny little town, and I don't know anybody. I don't have any friends. I was very sad. I was very lonely. And I sat with it for quite a while. And I think that I over-indexed on sadness for probably six months too long. And at some point, there's this tipping point with your emotions where you go from needing to process something to truly drowning in it. And that's when I think you need to do something. Where do other people factor into all

this? The idea of asking for help or having a support network. I hear everything you're saying and it's true and inspiring. But where do other people fit into this? Other people are everything. Because we're social animals and none of this works in a vacuum. Correct. So even in your story,

at what points would this not have been possible if there wasn't another person involved? I mean, there's only so many times you can say 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Yeah. So 5, 4, 3,21 changes your relationship to yourself. Right. You asked me, like, what's the reason you want to be in shape? Yes.

Right? And, you know, and service is the greatest motivator of all. Your family, your friends, whatever it is, the greater good. And I said, I'm okay letting myself down, but I don't want to let other people. I won't let other people down. And I also know that my ability to deal with stress, discomfort, whatever, whenever one needs grit, sky rockets if I have at least one person in my life who says you got this they don't have to go on the journey with me right but if I can call them at the end of the day and be like I'm not so sure

they're like yeah I believe in you and if it all goes south I'm still going to love you and then all of a sudden I'm golden of course where is the person sitting next to you like you were there for your husband who was going through this debt with you you know it's his restaurant right I just want to know the role that other people play or need to play. They're everything. But here's the thing. So that changed my relationship with myself. Yeah.

And it made me acutely aware that I'm responsible for creating what I want in life. And I'm also responsible for doing the work to make it happen. So self-reliance. Yeah. And the thing that changed everything when it comes to relationships, for me is what I discovered two years ago, which I call the let them theory. And the let them theory flipped absolutely everything on its head about the way that I approach relationships.

And I've been married for almost 30 years. I have three adult children. I have now a great friend group. And I realize looking backwards on my life before the life. before the let them theory, that I was approaching relationships and approaching other people in the exact opposite way that I should have been. And I think most people are. For example. Well, I think that most of us waste too much time and energy, worrying about managing and trying to control other people and change them. And when you learn to let other people be,

and you learn to love people as they are and when you learn to let people heal when they're ready and when you learn that people are who they are and people change when they're ready to change and do the work to change and when you understand that the best way to love somebody is to not try to change them but to actually see them as they are and see them as they aren't and then instead of pouring all the time and energy into trying to fix manage worry change them you just let them, and you detach from the control. And then you say the second part, which is let me, let me, instead of controlling them, let me focus on what's within my control, which is, there's only three things that you can control. You can control what you think in response to

something. You control what you do or don't do, and you can control what you are going to do with your emotions. That's it. That's it. And ultimately, as you know, we all have a very hardwired need for control. And when we don't feel in control, we feel unsafe. And every person that you know has the same need for control. And what happens is that in our need to be in charge and in control and to feel safe, we end up trying to control things that are not controllable. And number one on the list is trying to control what other people think, trying to control people's emotions, trying to make sure everybody's not disappointed or let down by you. We pour so much energy into that, that we are giving power to other people and we are creating friction for ourselves and

stress for ourselves and we're creating friction and frustration and relationships. And you don't have to live like that. And so I used to be somebody that was micromanaging my kids, trying to control everything that they did. I had massive opinions about what people should be doing. I bent over backwards to try to make sure people weren't disappointed or not letting people down or that I matched everybody's expectations. It's absolutely exhausting. And not only that, you actually will never be able to control the thought that somebody is having in their mind. You are never going to be able to control the emotions that somebody feels in response to what you do. And it is not your job to do that. And so learning to allow people to be who they are

and learning to allow adults to be adults has created a set of boundaries and it has also created space for true connection, love, and mutual exchange to happen. What happened that you came to this theory? So I was at, I can't believe this is where it happened, but I was at a high school prom. And I had gone.

Now, I discover all this life-changing stuff And this is the single most important thing I've ever discovered. By far, this is the legacy I will leave on this planet. I'm at a high school prom. I have had, mind you, two daughters who have gone through high school prom. So we have done the dramatic five months of bullshit picking out the dresses, the spray tans, the limos, like the craziness. So I figure, okay, we got this unlock. I know what's going to happen.

I thought Oak was going to be a breeze. It was the worst because he didn't know if he was going to go. He was really nonchalant, so I couldn't get like I didn't know what was happening. and then 48 hours before prom, it's like, I'm going. I'm like, oh, my God, where are we going to find a tux in Vermont? Like, you want those tennis shoes? Like, it was a last minute scramble. And so we get to the night of prom and we go to the party

where we're taking all the photos before prom. And everything is different in Vermont than it was in Boston. So I'm starting to be like, what do you mean? Like, you're driving. Like, you're driving? Isn't there a bus? Like, what? And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, it starts to pour rain.

Like the storms roll in, it's pouring rain. Now all the parents are kind of milling about, what are you guys doing for dinner? I'm like, you don't have dinner reservations? What do you mean? And Oakley's like, well, I think we're just going to do the taco stand. And for me, that was just like the end of it. Like I'm like, taco stand, rainstorm, you're not going, you're going to ruin there. And I start to just lose it.

And my daughter was home from college, and she reaches over and grabs my arm. She's like, mom, you're annoying. And I'm like, but, but they're going to get soaked. And she's like, let them. And I'm like, but the restaurant's not bad. Let them. But he's going to ruin his tentative. Let them.

But her hair, let them. Mom, it's their prom, not yours. Let them do what they want. And there was something about the moment and her saying, let them in this cascading fashion, that every time she said it, It was like a sledgehammer hitting my nervous system. And by the time she said it the last time, let them do what they want. I felt this instant peace.

And then it occurred to me, why the hell do I care about this? Like, why am I not worried about where I'm meeting? And so I walk up to our son Oakley and as I'm a, he's like, what? You know, because I've been so annoying. I'm like, nothing, dude. Here's 40 bucks. Go have fun. and you could see him relax and you know they run out the door and of course they splash mud right up

her dress and shoes are ruined who cares yeah and so the next morning I wake up and I'm at like a garden center buying some plants and I'm standing there in line and you know how you're in line and there's like five people in front of you and it's like beep beep beep chit-chat for small talk and then you start to feel the stress rising and then you start to feel the stress rising and And then you start to think, why don't they have another cashier? And you start to get irritated. And now you think that you can run the garden center better than everybody else. And now you're fidgeting and you're looking and you want to turn to the person and

you're like, can you believe, let them. They're doing traffic. They're doing construction on it. Let them. Your mother's disappointed. You're not coming. Let her be disappointed. It is extraordinary how often other people's behavior or their opinions or what people are doing.

pisses you off, stresses you out, or upsets you. And you have zero control over it. So why on earth would you want to give your precious time and energy to something that you have zero control over? And as I went through my day and, you know, I get home from the garden center and the dog has taken a dump on the like front walk and I'm like, what is it? Let him. Like I can't control it now? Why would I let this now get me let them? And it was so interesting to just watch how many times I was pulling this lever. How many times I was allowing things out there to get in here. And this is a really big deal because if you look at burnout, if you look at chronic stress, if you look at how overwhelmed people feel right now, how people are, they don't have any time,

they're exhausted at the end of the day. I'm here to tell you, if you feel that way, the problem isn't you, the problem is the power you give to other people and things outside your control. And as I started to engage with this, like, wow, there I am. I'm like giving power to people's opinions. Oh, wow, I'm worried that that person's in a bad mood at work and it must be my fault. And so I better be extra nice or help them out so that I can say, now let them be in a bad mood. Why is it my job? That doesn't mean you're not supportive because here comes the second part. Then you say, once you detach, let me. Let me remind myself of my values. And if you're a supportive person, if you're a compassionate person, maybe you are going to offer support. But if you're exhausted and

you've already spent all this time taking on too much, maybe right now is when you say, you know what, I'm going to let them deal with themselves and I'm going to let me take a step back because that's actually what I need to do based on my values and my priorities. And so I experimented this with this for like three days and I was so blown away by how peaceful I felt, how present I felt, how I wasn't triggered by a particular person in my life who has a kind of narcissistic personality style because I could just let them be who they are. If your friends don't invite you out this weekend, let them. If the person you're dating doesn't want a commitment, let them. If your kids don't want to go to the flea market with you this weekend, let them. Stop worrying about managing and

stressing about other people. Stop forcing them to change. Let people be who they are because they're revealing themselves to you and they're revealing their priorities and what matters to you and then you get to choose you get to choose how to respond and that's where your power is I used to struggle with guilt all the time I desperately did not want to let anybody down didn't want to disappoint anybody so if the holidays are coming up my parents live in Michigan if we're not going to go home to Michigan they're going to be disappointed let them because let's think about disappointment Isn't it good?

I mean, isn't it a good thing that people want to see you? That they're disappointed, that you're not coming home? I mean, doesn't that mean they love you? Of course, it means that they love you. I mean, what's the alternative? Thank God, Simon's not coming. He's a dickhead. Like, I don't want him here.

So let them be disappointed. And then you say the second part, which is let me. and you ask yourself, well, what do I value? And if you truly value family and it's important to you, then make a decision to go, not because you don't want to let them down, but because it's for you. Because if you operate from a model of, I don't want to let other people down, I don't want to feel guilty,

I don't want to disappoint them. You make them the villain. Yeah, yeah. And you give your power away. And you're doing everything for other people. The thing that I really, I mean, you may have already come to this realization, this conclusion, those two ideas are the same thing. They're two sides of the same coin.

It's accountability. Yeah. And one is taking accountability, 5,4, 3, 2, 1, and the other one is ensuring that they have accountability, that you're not taking accountability for them and their actions. Right. It's one as being responsible for yourself and making sure that they're responsible for themselves.

It's the same thing. Yes. Which I think is really powerful, and it doesn't surprise me that you came upon both ideas. I learned this a long time ago, and I had a similar experience. Many years ago, I mean, I was doing consulting, and I cared that my clients did well, obviously.

I took their success personally because I wanted to support them. And I'd give them advice. I have objectivity that they don't have because I'm an outsider. I'm not emotionally connected to whatever it is their business. I can see things much more clearly than they can, not because I'm smarter, just because I'm on the outside. And I would give advice, and they would fight with me, and I'd be forced to defend my advice. And I would be passionate about it.

I have sleepless nights because I really wanted them to succeed. And I realized, same thing. I was like, why the hell am I getting upset over his business? Like, I don't care. And so the next day, I shifted accountability. I gave some advice, gave an observation, and he fought with me. He's like, no, that's not what we should do. We should do this.

And I said, look, this is your business. If you are wildly successful or if you go completely bankrupt, I just want you to know, I don't care. I'm going to sleep well tonight regardless of the decision you made. Every decision you make is going to be the right one because it's your decision and it's your business. And I'm just here to show you stuff that you maybe can't see by yourself. Right. So take my advice or ignore my advice. And he took your advice.

And of course, the minute, and I realized what was happening is the reason I got emotional is because I was taking on accountability, which is why I defended the idea because I'm taking accountability for the decision. The minute I pushed it in his court, all of a sudden he started taking the advice. Yes, exactly. All of a sudden, he started listening more. People need to think it's their idea. I just think that the reason people fight, I think the reason people fight is because they're trying hard not to take accountability. Because if I take accountability, that means I'm responsible for the outcome.

But if I can blame you for the outcome, you know, that's... I actually think it's deeper than that. Go on. Well, if you have a hardwired need for control... Yeah. And somebody pushes. it is an assault to your agency. I'm not the one pushing.

You are by challenging an idea that makes him uncomfortable. I think that's how it plays out some of the time. You know, some of the times it's like, hey, we did this research, I recommend you do this. Sometimes it's very, you know. Well, you might have just been dealing with somebody very argumentative. I mean, but that's just it, which is that argumentative defensive person. And that happens in relationships as well. Yes.

which is we become argumentative because we're triggered by something or we're defending ourselves and something but the minute the accountability is shifted and that's what let them does it shifts accountability which I absolutely adore and let me like 540321 is me taking accountability and then there's the relationship in between and so if you take accountability for you and I promise to take accountability for me I guarantee we're both going to be happier and more relaxed yes and if you stop focusing on things you can't control you're going to feel less stressed and frustrated in your life you're going to see that no matter what the situation is you always have power.

Yeah. Because you can always focus on your response. And if you look at the word taking responsibility, it's your ability to respond. Yeah. And, you know, the other area where I think you might be very interested, where this has had a huge impact in my life, is it's changed my entire approach to adult friendship. Mm-hmm. And I know you've been talking about this a lot recently. And I have a philosophy about friendship that when you are, you are, you know, you're talking about, and I know,

You are 20 and under. Friendship is a group sport. Your entire life is organized so that it is easy to spend time with people your age, and every milestone in your life is measured at the same time. You move through one grade to the next grade, to the next grade, to the next grade, you are able to locate yourself in space and time because you are with people your age all doing the same thing, and so the conditions for friendship are set up, and you also have a a tremendous amount of time with people going through the same things. And then all of a sudden,

your 20s head. And what I call the great scattering happens. And nobody sees it coming. And friendship goes from a group sport where everybody expects to be included, because you've always been included on teams or in classes or whatever, to an individual one. And what people don't understand is that there's a massive shift from expecting to be included, expecting to be best friends. expecting it to actually having to create it and understanding that there are three things that have to be present in order for a friendship to happen. Number one, you have to have proximity. And the reason why proximity matters is because time spent with people matters. And they've done studies on how much time you need to spend with somebody in order to become a friend. And it's a

huge amount of time. To be a casual friend that studies something like 70 hours. To be a close friend it's something like 200 hours. This is why you easily made friends in college because you were living with people, you're eating with people. So the conditions of proximity were there. It's also why you weren't friends with the person at the end of the hall. They've done research on this too, that if you study who you're friends within a dorm, the people across the hall are next door are more likely going to be your friends. Why? Proximity matters. The person that you don't see much who's at the end of the hall, you're not going to spend that much time with. The second one is the timing of your life. And so if you're now in your 20s, the timing of everybody's life is very

different because some people are going to graduate school, some people are going into the military, some people are moving, some people are getting married, some people are chasing the corporate ladder, some people are traveling. So the timing of what's relevant for you is off. And it used to be the same because you're all moving through grades, right? The third is energy. Sometimes energy, clicks, sometimes it doesn't. And friendships in your adult life are going to come and go for the rest of time, which is why you have to have a very flexible approach to friendship from the moment you turn 20. You have to learn to let people leave and let new people come in. And if you don't understand this, you start to think that you're the problem. You start to think that you're being

left out, if you have a friendship that starts to fade, I want you, before you X them out, before you judge, before you judge yourself, I want you to ask yourself, are the three conditions present? Or is proximity changed? Or has the timing of our lives changed? They've gotten engaged? I'm still single. They're in graduate school. I'm across the country doing something else. Has the energy shifted? Because that happens too. If you're suddenly not drinking, the energy is going to shift with you and the friends of yours at partied all the time. And what I love about understanding this is that it makes it not personal. And when you understand that friendship is also now an individual sport and it's yours to create,

it allows you to understand that the whole tool is not let them create my socialite, not let them keep up with the text chain, but let me figure out what I want friendship to be and let me go first. Let me be the one that's making the plans. Let me be the one reaching out. not because I'm expecting them to respond, but because this is a value of mine that I want to create for myself. And what you'll find when you shift this perspective is that you find your people.

Tell me a specific story, something you've done in your career, that if a project, something you were involved and doesn't have to have been commercially successful, but that if every project you did was like this one, you'd be the happiest person alive. I loved actually writing this book because I did it with my daughter and it healed our relationship. It allowed me to see my daughter in a completely different light.

So my daughter had never wanted to work with me. And I respect that. She wanted to have her own path in life. She wanted to do her own thing. And when she graduated from college, she went and worked for this huge cybersecurity firm. and was in the marketing and analytics department. And then after a couple years of doing that, she went on a solo backpacking trip in Asia.

And came home from that, broke, moved in with my husband and I, and was looking for a job and looking for a restaurant job so that she could save up a bunch of money and move to New York and then go on with her life. And so I said to her, you know, I'm about to hire a research assistant.

to research this thing that I'm calling the let them theory. And you need money. And I know you don't want to work for me. But if you would like to make some money, I can have you work with somebody else so you don't have to talk to me. But it's like a three week long project. Here's a podcast episode. Here's a couple YouTube videos. Here's some articles. And here's about 15,000 comments. Why don't you dig into all of this and come back to me and kind of tell me, give me some sentiment analysis and so she said fine fine okay okay so 36 hours later she presents a 27 page excel columned color-coded drop-down menu source linked guide to all of her research including a two-page

like distillation of everything she had discovered with a gigantic warning that she didn't think that I should write this book because she was deeply concerned that she was seeing a lane of people who were saying

that the theory was making them lonelier because when you say let them and you allow people to be who they are you start to realize that you have a lot of friendships that are fake where you have a lot of relationships in your life that are one-sided, where you're putting in a lot of effort and it's not getting returned. And when you see that somebody doesn't reciprocate,

you then start to feel like, my God, my siblings, they don't ever reach out. My friends don't reach out. Now I'm really lonely. And so she said, you can't write this book unless there's a second part. There has to be a part, mom, where this flips and you feel empowered again. And it was her and her research and her brain that created the second step, which has let me. And it was an extraordinary experience to have her hand me that 27-page document because it was the first time I understood her brain. And she is an extremely like driven human being. And it made me realize, oh my God, like she's got a computer processor upstairs.

and I now understand for the first time that if she doesn't have something big to aim it at, she aims it at herself, which is why she's hard on herself. And it had me see a side of her that I never fully understood. It was extraordinary, but the bigger thing was as we worked through all of the different aspects of writing this book, and you know, like you've written unbelievable books, It's a bitch to write a book. We had to say let them, let them, let them, let them with each other every day, all day long. And we were the kind, we had the kind of relationship where we're really close, but there was just this, like, invisible distance.

And I think there's a lot of relationships like that, where you want to be closer. You want to have more fun. You want to feel like the tension or whatever the things are that you start to get irritated with one another, that they would just disappear. And every one of us has somebody like that in our life, whether it's a parent or it's an adult child or it's a sibling or it's somebody that you're a friend with. There's just sort of like this, like. So of all of the amazing things you've done in your life, what specifically is about this one that you cling on to it and you want to talk about it right now? I ask for you for a single example of something you love that is everything. you did in your life was like this thing, you'd be the most fulfilled person in the world.

What specifically is about the story that stands out amongst all the other things? It allowed me to clear out the friction and bullshit between us. Okay. It allowed us to create space for both of us to be and for us to truly give, like, you know, because look, people are irritating, especially the people that you love. I often think that family is around so that it teaches you to love people you. hate sometimes. And when you're working with somebody in the trenches like that, there are things all day long that piss you off or frustrate you. And when you say let them, you don't

have that death by a thousand cuts that start to build up the resentment, the frustration, the annoyance, you create space for the other person to be human. Okay. Tell me an early specific happy childhood memory, something I can relive with you, something specific. Oh, boy. Um, Childhood memory. When I grew up in North Muskegon, Michigan, and it was back when winters were really bad, although the winter's bad now. And my mom used to shovel off a big ice skating rink.

And my best friend and I would go down. Is this one memory you think of? Was this something that recurred? Oh, no, I'm thinking of a particular day. Okay, good. And my best friend and I, Jody Bricken, we would trudge down there. And I have this one memory where I have this hideous,

Like when I think about what my daughters look like when they were 14 versus me with my buck teeth and braces and middle part and feathered hair and hideous acid wash jeans and my like leg warmers and just ugly ass color like what the hell I looked like a troll. And so we had this big boom box and we had, I think it was journey on it. And Jody and I would sit out there for hours and create ice dancing routines. Brilliant. Okay. What I think is so interesting about the memory, that memory, and the story you told about your daughter's daughter's and writing the book with her is in both cases, there's a clearing that happens, right?

And you said it, you said as much. You said it cleared a space. It created a space for us, right? It relieved something. And it's not too different. than your mother creating the space for ice dancing to happen. And in some way, you have become your mother, where your theories clear snow off the ice

so that other people can go create, do, be, whoever they are, live their best lives. And this is, this is, it all. make sense to me. Everything we've talked about in all of your theories are about you are shoveling snow away. You are creating space. The storms and snow that we add to our brains that don't allow ourselves or other people to go create ice dances. And this living best self by let them or counting down, all of it is shoveling snow. It makes perfect sense. It's a great visual. And this is who you you've become your mother, where you're this minor character in a big story, a minor character

that does a big thing. All of your stuff is very, very simple, like shoveling snow. It doesn't require a lot of effort, doesn't require a lot of skill. It is a skill, it is an effort. You've got to do it. It's something to be done. But when that snow is cleared, when that space is made, the only thing that happens is joy and happiness is clarity and ice dancing and certainty and accountability and all of it. And I, that has been the constant theme in everything that you've said today. It's a beautiful way to wrap it up. And, you know, what's funny is that this morning, my mom sent me a text and it was, she was in a Chico's. Of course. And it was a photo of her with this awesome woman between my mom and my dad, and she wrote me this note that said,

hey, I'm in Chico's, and this is Ellen, and she's a huge fan of yours, and she wants you to know that because of your podcast, she has gone back to singing opera, something she hasn't done in 15 years. And it's let them and the five second rule that have cleared the path for To go make ice dances. Yes. This is who you are. You've devoted your life and you are your best self and you're probably your most fulfilled

when you are clearing space for other people to go take accountability for their own lives and be their best selves, however you want to put it. And like I said, it is small things that have big impact, these little little rules that can be applied so quickly and so easily. Yeah, because I feel like one of the things that is missing for most people is hope. Yeah.

That it's easy to listen to you or to me or to read our books, but if you don't think it's gonna work for you, you won't do it. Yeah. Well, I think this is the thing that I think you and I have in common, which is I work, I've really practiced over the years that I don't say you, I say we. I don't stand on stage and say, you know what you need to do

to thrive, you know, like who the hell am I, right? I say, you know what we need to do to learn how to thrive? We need to be better at taking care of each other. We need, and I always include myself, as do you. And both of our stories are not because we're smarter. Both of our stories is because we had no choice. Like, you had no choice but to come up with something. Otherwise, who knows what would have happened. My story is the same. Like, all of the discoveries I've made It's not because I'm smart. It's not because I sat down. I'm like, I'm going to think about things that have an impact on the world.

Not at all. It's because I had no choice. Like a kid with ADHD who couldn't read a book and ADHD wasn't a thing when I was a kid, I was just hyperactive, selfish, and unfocused. That's how I was described. But I couldn't study and I wasn't good at school. And I was going to fail school unless I figured out ways to pass school. So I learned how to ask really good questions and be a really good listener, because I had no choice.

And I'm a great believer that the solutions we find to the struggles we have and where kids become our strengths as adults. For sure. Or they become the prison you're in as a adult. Or they become the prison. Yeah, 100%. 100%. And I love the way you speak. I've been captivated this entire time, taking in every word, not agreeing with all of them, but taking them in.

Let them. Let them. I don't care. But it's not a question of caring. I like the intellectual pursuit. It's not that I disagree because I think you're wrong. That's not what it is. No, you can tell your mind is like, I want to understand the nuance.

You can tell. It's not that I want to be it and I want you to be wrong. That's not what it is. It's a question of really wanting to understand all the nuance that goes with a really beautiful, rich idea. Because I love ideas, and I love understanding how the world works. And like you, I believe we overcomplicate things. and some people overcomplicate things

as it makes them look smart and some people overcomplicate things because they can't help themselves. But if you really boil it down, human beings are pretty simple, pretty predictable, pretty consistent. And if you understand some basics of sort of anthropology and human biology,

it all kind of just makes sense. And this is why your ideas are so elegant. They're so elegant in their simplicity. They're so elegant. I walk away richer, having had you here. Thank you so, so much. Well, thank you for having me. Such magic.

Such magic. A bit of optimism is a production of the optimism company. Lovingly produced by our team, Lindsay Garbenius, Phoebe Bradford, and Devin Johnson. Subscribe wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts. And if you want even more cool stuff, visit simic.com. Thanks for listening. Take care of yourself.

Take care of each other.