Lifestyle
Control issues? These two simple words could help
“The single best thing” Mel Robbins has ever done began with a stressful moment on her son’s prom night.
The bestselling author, former attorney and host of one of the world’s most popular podcasts is talking about her latest book, “The Let Them Theory: A Life-Changing Tool That Millions of People Can’t Stop Talking About ” (Hay House).
The book — which demystifies ancient concepts from Stoicism, Buddhism and Greek philosophy for modern, plugged-in, multitasking audiences — arose that evening, when Robbins says she was “being a complete control freak” and “micromanaging every detail.”
Shelf Help is a wellness column where we interview researchers, thinkers and writers about their latest books — all with the aim of learning how to live a more complete life.
She was agonizing over the teens’ lack of dinner plans and the fact that it was raining and they might show up to the dance soaked. She was on her phone and shouting to other parents and trying to take control of the situation when her daughter repeatedly insisted that she let the kids do it their way.
Let them grab tacos instead of going to a restaurant. Let them ruin their shoes in the rain. “It’s their prom, not yours,” she said to Robbins.
After “like the 11th time,” it finally sunk in, Robbins said, and she felt herself relax.
After sharing the experience with her 8.3 million Instagram followers, and then to her legions of loyal podcast subscribers, the enthusiastic response made it clear: She needed to write a book. In December 2024, so came “The Let Them Theory.” In an interview with Robbins, Oprah Winfrey called it “one of the best self-help books I’ve ever read.”
The Times spoke with Robbins about how the simple phrases “let them” and “let me” can help us feel less stressed and more empowered, and help us better navigate the challenges of dating, family relationships and social media.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
(Mel Robbins author of “The Let Them Theory” (Jenny Sherman))
How did you realize that “let them” could work beyond the prom?
I’m the kind of person that’s always wanted to know how to be more stoic and let go, yet I’ve never really been able to apply philosophy when I’m already emotionally triggered. The way it hit me was at the prom.
From that point forward, any time either life was frustrating me or my husband did something that was annoying, or my mother — I just started saying, “Let them,” and I noticed that it was immediate peace in a way that I had never experienced in my life.
All that I’m doing is reminding people of what they know to be true. The issue of trying to control things that aren’t yours to control, and how it just creates stress for you, this is the fundamental law of human beings that has been around since the beginning of time.
There are two parts to the theory: let them and let me. Why is it important to use both?
The second part is the more important part, because the second part is where you actually cue yourself and remind yourself that your life is your responsibility. When you say, “Let me,” you remind yourself that in any situation — and this is literally the teaching in “Man’s Search for Meaning,” [Holocaust survivor] Viktor Frankl’s work — the only thing that’s in your control is your response to what’s happening. You can control what you think about what’s happening. You get to choose what you do or don’t do in response. And you get to choose how you process your emotions. That’s what you get to control and that’s where your power is.
You say the hardest part of “let them” is learning to feel raw emotions without immediately reacting. A lot of times, we’re already reacting before even thinking “let them.” How do we do this?
I’m still working on it. I think you deserve a gold medal if you have the presence of mind to even say, “I would like to be less reactive moving forward.” Just being aware that it’s a skill and it would benefit you and bring more peace to your life, that is the first step. Part of the reason we’re so reactive is because we feel this sense that we’re trapped because we’ve given so much power to other people. Every time you say, “Let them,” even if it’s after the outburst, you’re still diffusing the emotion. What I have found in my own life, because [I’m] a very emotional person, is that the more I said it, the more you close the distance between the impulse to flip somebody off and actually saying, “Let them.” And you’ll get to a point where every time you say it, you’re literally using it as a tool to catch that nervous system or emotional response.
How can we use “The Let Them Theory” to prevent that compare-and-despair feeling we often get from social media?
It took me a long time to flip from this really insecure, scarcity mind-set, where I truly believed that if somebody else got something that I wanted, it meant they were winning and I lost. I didn’t understand the beauty of the world we live in, which is the things that you want in life — whether it’s success or it’s money or it’s happiness or it’s friendship — these things are in limitless supply.
It took me too long to understand that I’m not actually competing against somebody else in the game of life. I’m playing with them. If my friend is able to do [something], then it is evidence that I — with work and with time and with patience — can do that for myself too.
You start to realize that other people are not standing in your way; you’re doing that to yourself. You’re the one using comparison to stop yourself. You’re the one telling yourself it’s never going to happen. You’re the one telling yourself that you’re not good enough or that you can’t figure it out. When you stand in your own way, you miss out on the fact that literally every single person that has something that you’re interested in or that you want in life, they can actually show you how to get it. They show you what’s possible.
Let’s talk about “let them” as it relates to dating. You say let them show us who they are, how responsive they are. But given today’s digital landscape, how do we use “let them” and still be present enough to allow for flirtation and mystery in relationships?
It’s understanding what part of the dating cycle you’re personally in instead of constantly trying to guess what part of the cycle the other person is in. If you’re in that phase where you’re just meeting a ton of people, really staying focused on, “I’m cool with playing the field right now.” But there’s going to come a point in time where you’re no longer interested in that, or where you say to yourself, “I actually like this person and I don’t want them to see other people.”
When you recognize that you’re no longer in that space of wanting to be casual, the mistake that everybody makes is we now give power to the other person we’re interested in. We now become detectives trying to figure out when they feel the same way we do. That’s when you start chasing the potential. That’s when you start overanalyzing everything you do. That’s when you start to cling, and you start to get weird, and you start to pretend that things are still casual, but you’re secretly looking to see if their Hinge profile is still up.
That’s where you lose power. Because the better thing to do when you no longer just want to be in the casual space is to have a conversation. They could say no, but this is how you respect yourself.
It seems like saying “let them” and “let me” requires self-confidence and self-compassion. How do we get there?
You don’t get there by hoping it comes. You have to use the tools. One of the reasons why we don’t have these conversations — or even something more subtle, like you have a roommate or sister or a parent who’s just negative or passive-aggressive and you’ve put up with it for years — is it takes courage to say to yourself, “I don’t want to have to deal with this, so I’m going say, ‘Let them,’ because I’m going to stop trying to manage their mood.”
It takes a lot of compassion and grace for yourself. And then you do the “let me” part, which is: Let me remind myself that I get to choose how much time and energy I spend with this person.
You say this is especially hard with loved ones. Why is that?
These people have known you since you were born, and they have expectations about who you are and who you should be and what should happen in this family.
Think about family like a spiderweb. Any tap on the web reverberates through everybody. Anytime you start to let your family have their opinions, or let them have their fears, or let them have their expectations and let them have their concerns — which they have, because they’ve always had them about you — when you start saying “let them” and create space, you’re widening out the space between the webs. People don’t like that.
Then you say: Let me live my life in a way that makes me happy; let me pursue a career I really want to pursue; let me love the person that I love. Those decisions actually force other people to have to deal with their own expectations and opinions. But that doesn’t mean you have to change what you’re doing in order to appease them or meet their opinions.
How do we apply the theory without becoming passive or aloof or waiting for a big blowup?
One of the things I see from people is like, “I’m supposed to let people abuse me? I’m supposed to let them disrespect me?” I’m like, no, that’s probably happening right now. Because we, especially in families and with loved ones, explain away bad, disrespectful and abusive behavior.
(Maggie Chiang / For The Times)
If we are in a family system or a relationship where there has been a cycle of emotional abuse or a cycle of narcissism, the psychology of it is very, very challenging, because you keep holding on to the hope that someone’s going to change. We keep a fantasy alive in our heads versus learning how to live with the reality in front of us. You start to realize, every time you say, “Let them” and “Let me,” that the power isn’t in what other people are doing. The power is in your values and how you respond.
TAKEAWAYS
from “The Let Them Theory”
The scoreboard shows the results of the women’s singles final match between Iga Swiatek of Poland and Amanda Anisimova of the U.S. at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, Saturday, July 12, 2025.
Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
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Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
Fifteen points in tennis? Nice. Thirty, 40 — even better. Advantage — that sounds good. “Love” — that also must be great, right? Well, not quite.
As the French Open rolls on and Serena Williams has announced her return to the sport, maybe you’ve been paying a little more attention to tennis. The sport’s scoring system is notably distinct, and can sometimes be hard to grasp for newcomers. But even tennis aficionados might not know why, or how, “love” became the unmistakable callout for zero points. For this installment of NPR’s Word of the Week, we’re exploring how a word that signifies trailing behind got such a sweet name.
“Love” comes from the heart — or an egg?
It’s hard to pinpoint when the first tennis ball went over the net. Tennis is a derivative of lots of other sports, such as “jeu de paume,” a handball game played in France, said JT Buzanga, the collections manager at the International Tennis Hall of Fame museum.
But tennis became a patented, official sport in 1874, said Steve Flink, a journalist whose tennis coverage got him inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. It has retained its unique, mysterious scoring system ever since.
“By and large, the original system has held up almost entirely,” Flink said.
The use of “love” goes back to the late 18th century, said Jesse Sheidlower, a lexicographer. But it was used earlier than that in card games such as whist and bridge. Before the term made its way to tennis, the sport favored plain old “nothing,” or “nil,” he said.
Why love in the first place, though? Historians don’t really know for sure, but there are a few theories.
The French could have something to do with it. Some historians believe “love” derives from “l’oeuf,” which means “the egg” in French. Because eggs are shaped like zeros, terms such as “goose egg” and “duck’s egg” have been used in other contexts to mean zero, Sheidlower said.
It’s also possible English speakers mispronounced l’oeuf as “love.” But Sheidlower isn’t convinced that’s the answer.
“It’s the French equivalent of an English expression. But since that expression doesn’t appear in French, the French word wouldn’t have been used,” he said.
To be sure, France has had a lot of influence on tennis culture, Buzanga said. For example, “deuce” or a game tied at 40 points, comes from the French word for “two”: “deux.” But he prefers another prominent theory: that “love” comes from the idiom “for the love of the game.” Even if a player hasn’t scored, it doesn’t matter, because their heart is in it. It’s the theory Sheidlower said is the most plausible, because the idiom was used by the English before tennis was popularized.
Another variation of the “love of the game” theory is that the word could have come from the Dutch “lof,” or “honor” — or the Latin “amare,” meaning “to love,” Flink said.
But if tennis’ “love” doesn’t come from a French word, the theory at least has a French sensibility.
“I think the ‘for the love of the game’ is kind of romantic,” Buzanga said.
“Love” probably isn’t going anywhere
Tennis used to be a sport of leisure. The style of play has changed a lot over the years; players are more athletic and competitive, for instance, Flink said. But the rules of the sport are more steadfast, he said.
“There’s this incredible, enduring respect for tradition in tennis,” he said. “Changes are not made easily.”
There has been one major change in modern history: the tie-break. Matches can go on and on because players have to score two consecutive points to break a deuce, or by two games to break a tied set. But the onset of television meant matches would have to get shorter if the sport wanted to capture a larger audience, Flink said.
Change even came for “love.” An alternative sprouted up in the 1970s, and is still used today: “bagel,” named for its zero shape, Sheidlower said. Novices may say “zero,” and insiders will understand what they mean, but they “will needle them about it,” Flink said.
But “love” still prevails.
“People kind of like it,” Flink said. “It’s different. Why say zero when you can say love?”
On a 75-mile cliff-hugging stretch of highway in California, traffic is way up, despite soaring gas prices. And locals expect the busiest summer in years.
The road is Highway 1 in Big Sur, which reopened in January after three years of repair and reconstruction following a pair of landslides. Drivers can once again embark on the state’s most famous road trip, covering the 100 miles between Cambria to the south and Carmel to the north without leaving the two-lane coastal highway. And they’re heading out in big numbers.
Caltrans estimates that as of May, Big Sur restaurant and retailer guest counts are up 40% from last year, and that northbound traffic at Ragged Point, the southern gateway to Big Sur, has risen 900% year-over-year.
People pose for photos near Bixby Bridge. Monterey County’s Board of Supervisors voted to explore a 12-month ban on parking around the bridge.
Safety cones prevent parking along Coast Road near the Bixby Bridge.
“Take your time,” said Kirk Gafill, co-owner of the popular Nepenthe restaurant and president of the Big Sur Chamber of Commerce, offering advice to travelers. “You’re going to be sharing the road with a number of people.”
As travelers rediscover the road, the cost of driving has been shooting skyward. California’s average gas price ($6.11 per gallon as of May 26) is up 26% from the year before. In early April, rates hit $9.99 at the isolated gas station in the Big Sur community of Gorda.
For spring and summer travelers, these numbers would seem to pose a stark question: Stay home and save money, or head for the coast because the road is finally open and it’s still cheaper than flying?
So far, the latter answer is winning big.
Fog lingers off the coast of Highway 1.
“We are definitely seeing a huge uptick in our reservations,” said Megan Handy, assistant general manager at the upscale Treebones resort. She estimated that bookings are 30% or more ahead of last year, and rates are unchanged since then. But “it’s still not feeling super crowded, which is nice. Everything still feels kind of calm.”
But added traffic has raised some anxiety. On May 19, Monterey County’s Board of Supervisors voted to explore a 12-month ban on parking at Bixby Bridge, one of the region’s top photo spots.
Over the years, the number of cars parking near the bridge — often illegally, sometimes impeding emergency vehicles — has risen. The proposed parking moratorium won’t take effect until the supervisors discuss it further.
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Busy as things are, several business owners pointed out that many international travelers have not yet returned — perhaps because most make their plans more than six months ahead, perhaps because of global politics, perhaps a little of each.
The biggest challenge for businesses during this resurgence? “Restaffing and retaining,” said Handy at Treetops.
At Nepenthe, Gafill said his business has seen a 45% boost in guest volume since the road’s reopening. Gafill said he would have expected a 35% pickup, “simply by virtue of reopening the highway.” The additional 10%, he said, might be “all that pent-up demand,” aided by “a very beautiful and very dry winter,” followed by a mild spring.
A lunch crowd dines at popular restaurant Nepenthe.
Another possible factor: Nobody can be sure how long the road will remain open.
To cope with the influx of people, Gafill said, “everybody is trying to recruit and retain their existing staff.”
At the Ragged Point Inn, where rates dropped as low as $149 nightly last fall, rates are back over $200 and staffers are suggesting that customers book at least six months ahead. The inn has reopened its snack bar for the first time since early 2023, and management is investing in capital upgrades and staging live music on weekends throughout the summer.
Business “is up over 100%,” said Diane Ramey, whose family owns the inn. “I know not all of our neighbors are having the same lift, but everybody is doing better.”
Traffic approaching Bixby Bridge.
A visitor poses in an oversized chair at Big Sur River Inn.
Even at the New Camaldoli Hermitage, a Benedictine monastery above Lucia, the road’s reopening and coming summer season have made a difference. Bookings are up an estimated 30% at the hermitage, which rent rooms and cottages (for two nights or more) to visitors who agree to its requirement of silence.
Big Sur business owners advise visitors to travel on weekdays for less traffic and the best hotel rates, and to get on the road as early as possible.
Since its opening in 1937, the highway has been vulnerable to landslides and shifting ground, operating on a longstanding cycle of landslide, closure, repair, reopening and then another landslide, or sometimes a fire. The U.S. Geological Survey has identified the Big Sur coastline as one of the most landslide-prone areas in the western United States. The 2023-2026 closure was the longest in the highway’s history.
Over time, road crews have used increasingly sophisticated strategies. In the most recent efforts, Caltrans said, it used drones to help survey the slopes and remotely operated bulldozers and excavators to reduce risks to workers.
During the closure, no traffic was allowed on 6.8-mile span from just north of Lucia until about a mile south of the Esalen Institute. Drivers detoured inland by way of U.S. 101.
Correspondents of CBS’ 60 Minutes pose for a portrait in 2023. From left to right, they are Sharyn Alfonsi, L. Jon Wertheim, Bill Whitaker, Lesley Stahl, Scott Pelley, Cecilia Vega, and Anderson Cooper. Former Executive Producer Bill Owens sits on the far right. Only Wertheim, Whitaker and Stahl remain at the program.
CBS Photo Archive/CBS via Getty Images/CBS
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When CBS fired Scott Pelley on Tuesday night, the new 60 Minutes executive producer, Nick Bilton, told Pelley it was for insubordination at a staff meeting the day before.
The veteran correspondent argues he was defending the DNA of 60 Minutes and the integrity of its journalism.
The battle royale over the network’s most prestigious and profitable news program is part of a broader fight over the direction of CBS News.
And given CBS’s acquisition by a billionaire family whose business interests have become intertwined with the political interests of President Trump, it reflects a larger war over control of the media in the current moment.
That father and son, Larry and David Ellison, bought CBS’ parent company, Paramount, last summer. In January, they became co-owners of TikTok’s U.S. operations. Now they’re seeking approval from Trump’s regulators to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of CNN.
A glamorous show shorn, for now, of most its stars
CBS fired Cecilia Vega, a correspondent, and Tanya Simon, the executive producer, from 60 Minutes last week. They are shown in this photo at the 2026 White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner on April 25, 2026 in Washington, D.C.
Kristina Bumphrey/Variety via Getty Images/Variety
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Kristina Bumphrey/Variety via Getty Images/Variety
But the specifics of this individual episode matter — for 60 Minutes, CBS, its audience of millions, and even the news business itself.
The program has been the most glamorous post in broadcast news. The correspondents are the stars of the show. And now, there are just three of them.
Anderson Cooper left last month, concerned over the direction of the network’s coverage. Last week was a virtual bloodbath: correspondents Cecilia Vega and Sharyn Alfonsi were fired. So were a producer and two show executives — including Tanya Simon, a longtime staffer who had stepped up as executive producer when her predecessor resigned in protest before the Ellisons’ takeover.
With Pelley’s ouster, only correspondents Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker, and Jon Wertheim remain. Now they are considering whether to resign, according to two associates with knowledge.
Their brand-new boss, Bilton, was previously a tech reporter for The New York Times and an investigative reporter for Vanity Fair. He executive-produced a documentary for Netflix about a couple accused of laundering Bitcoin and has been a producer on several other films.
Notably, he has no experience in television news.
Neither does Bari Weiss, whom David Ellison installed as the network’s editor in chief last October. The Ellisons also bought her center-right views-and-news site, The Free Press.
She has maintained that the network of Walter Cronkite needs a makeover for the digital moment. She has also contended for years that CBS, along with the rest of mainstream media, is too reflexively anti-Trump, anti-Israel, and too woke.
A rejection of CBS News executives’ overtures
The new executive producer of 60 Minutes, Nick Bilton, has been a tech journalist and documentary filmmaker, but lacks experience in broadcast news.
Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images/Getty Images North America
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Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images/Getty Images North America
Bilton attempted to set a conciliatory tone at Monday’s meeting — his first with the show. Pelley, a formidable veteran correspondent and former CBS Evening News anchor, wasn’t having it.
Pelley called Bilton unwelcome and unqualified. And Pelley said that Weiss was attempting to “murder” the program.
In firing Pelley on Tuesday, Bilton said the journalist had hijacked the meeting and rejected overtures to work constructively through their differences. (NPR obtained a copy of the firing notice.) Bilton wrote that Pelley’s “antipathy to the future of the show came through loud and clear.”
In his own statement late Tuesday evening, shared with NPR, Pelley accused CBS’s new news leadership of killing 60 Minutes‘ DNA and pushing him “to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story” and “to include assertions that are unverified.”
The accusations, to which CBS has not yet responded, echo those made by Alfonsi and Vega, the two correspondents fired last week.
Earlier this year, Alfonsi publicly complained after Weiss held one of her stories at the last minute, and kept it frozen for weeks, demanding an on-camera interview with a Trump White House official that never played out. It ran, unchanged from the intended version, with additional statements from the administration tacked on to the end.
After being fired, Vega said in a statement obtained by NPR that her team had “experienced efforts to insert political bias into our stories.”
“Let’s call this what it is: censorship, both censorship and self-driven” Vega continued. “It is dangerous for the show and dangerous for democracy.”
Weiss previously rejected Alfonsi’s and Vega’s allegations. (CBS said Vega’s claims, for example, were “not based in reality” while expressing appreciation for her work.)
Weiss and Bilton say digital threat requires a 60 Minutes overhaul now
In a meeting this morning, Weiss said that Pelley chose his own path — that is, to be fired rather than to find a way to work through his concerns, according to attendees. The network and Weiss have not yet publicly addressed Pelley’s accusations of interference.
Bilton and Weiss say they respect the show’s traditions, its accomplishments and its legacy of enterprise reporting, extended interviews and visual storytelling. It rose in the ratings 9% over the past season under Simon.
The two news leaders say, however, 60 Minutes needs to be overhauled before it becomes increasingly irrelevant in the era of streamers and other sources of news, information and entertainment in the digital age.
Interviews with 12 current and former CBS News staffers, from producers to executives, suggest great reservations and suspicions remain about Weiss’ judgment and her ability to handle the prominent and even famous journalists on whom her division relies.
Weiss had initially sought to reinvent the CBS Evening News, dropping a two-anchor format that had sagged in the ratings. Cooper turned down Weiss’ overtures to anchor it and left the network altogether, concerned about her approach, according to associates. (They spoke on condition of anonymity because Cooper has not chosen to speak publicly on the matter.)
David Ellison became chairman and CEO of CBS’ parent company, Paramount, after buying it last year.
Noam Galai/Getty Images for Paramount/Getty Images North America
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Noam Galai/Getty Images for Paramount/Getty Images North America
The ratings have continued to sag under new anchor Tony Dokoupil. And some CBS journalists, including producers who have left the Evening News, have publicly accused Weiss of making editorial decisions driven by politics. She has rejected those claims.
The decision to take on overhauling two key shows — one listing, one highly profitable, both high profile — carries significant risks for Weiss and the network, even apart from other considerations.
But the Ellisons’ presence cannot be ignored.
When Shari Redstone was negotiating the sale of CBS’s parent company, Paramount, to the Ellisons’ Skydance Media last year, the network announced the end of Stephen Colbert’s late night show. He had been one of the president’s most biting and acerbic critics.
David Ellison also made a series of concessions directly to Trump’s chief broadcast regulator, Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr, gutting CBS’s diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and appointing a conservative ombudsman to field complaints of bias against its news reporting.
Carr and other regulators approved the Paramount deal last summer.
The accommodations echo those made by other media titans.
Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos remade the editorial pages of the Washington Post, which he owns, into a far more hospitable zone for Trump at the outset of his second term. So did Los Angeles Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, a noted medical device inventor. Amazon and Blue Origin have multi-billion dollar contracts with the federal government. Soon-Shiong’s medical research firm routinely has patent applications up for review with federal regulators. One was approved Tuesday.
The Ellisons are hoping to win approval from federal regulators next month for their purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery in a deal valued at more than $110 billion. It would include Warner Bros. Studio, HBO and CNN, among other properties.
As Weiss routs CBS News’ old guard, the question of what role she might play at CNN — and what changes that portends at CBS — hangs over journalists at the two networks. The fate of 60 Minutes serves as a high-stakes case study for both.
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