April 28, 2025 • 36 mins
If you've ever found yourself bending over backwards to meet other people’s expectations, or trying to control your loved ones’ emotions and behaviors, you are not alone. Bestselling author and podcast host Mel Robbins says the key is to stop micromanaging and start relaxing your grip. This conversation was an unexpected lesson in owning what’s yours and finding peace in ceding the rest.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:14):
Pushkin Hay Slight Changers. I have some exciting news. I've
written a book. It's called The Other Side of Change,
Who we become when life makes other plans. It's available
for pre order today at changewithmaya dot com slash book.
(00:36):
I would appreciate your early support of this project so much.
Is truly the thing I'm most proud to have created.
You can find the link to pre order in our
episode description. Thanks so much, and now onto the show,
(01:00):
Hay Light Changers. Just a heads up, there's a brief
mention of sexual assault in this episode at the five
minute mark. It's not explicit, but if you want to
skip over that minute, please do and take care.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
I actually thought that I would feel safe if everybody
around me was okay, that if everybody around me was happy,
if everybody around me was not disappointed, if everybody around
me liked me or thought I was cool, then I
(01:35):
would be okay.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Mel Robbins is a best selling author and podcast host.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
And the problem with that is that the one thing
you can't control in life is other people, and so
to hand your safety and sense of self over to
other people's moods and thoughts and expectations of you means
you will forever in your entire life, always feel as
though you're not in control of what's happening.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
On today's show. To all my people, pleasers, control freaks,
perfectionists and micromanagers, we're learning to let it all go.
I'm Maya Schunker, as scientist who studies human behavior, and
this is a slight change of plans. I show about
who we are and who we become in the face
(02:25):
of a big change. If you've ever found yourself bending
over backwards to meet other people's expectations or trying to
control their emotions and behaviors, I promise that you are
not alone. Mel Robbin's, host of the wildly popular The
(02:49):
Mel Robins podcast, has a new book out called The
Let Them Theory. It's all about how to stop giving
other people so much power and to let go of
our need to control them. To better understand her interest
in this philosophy, I wanted to know more about Mel's
relationship with control. What kind of messages do you feel
(03:11):
that you were absorbing as a child about what it
meant to live a good life, to live at a
happy life.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
You know this is a difficult question for me to answer,
I don't have a lot of memories from my childhood,
and I know why, and the reason why is because
I basically kind of lived in a constant state of
being on edge or being in fight or flight, which
(03:39):
is very common if you have any past trauma, or
if you have had any adverse childhood experiences, or if
you just live in a household where the moods of
the adults are chaotic, or there are things going on
that you shouldn't have to deal with as a child.
But what I would say is that when I think
(04:00):
about my childhood and very happy times, my mom and
I would always go to the farmer's market and all
the farmers would be at their various stalls. My mom
knew every single person there. She knew whether they had
kids or grandkids, she knew the name of the dogs.
As she would be picking up the radishes or squeezing
(04:23):
the peaches, they'd be chatting up a storm about the
weather or the crops, or how their.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
Kid is doing. And it really made.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
An impression on me. And so I would say, a
good life, in my mind, is one where you are
living your life in relation to other people, and you
are showing up in a way where you're interested in
them and their well being and what they're doing.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
It's so interesting because you said living a good life
is about living in relation to others, and I can
see that that can be a double edged sword. You
might become beholden to the views of others and their
impression of you. And I am curious to know you
mentioned that you were kind of in a constant state
of being on edge, probably hypervigilant. Tell me more about
(05:11):
what your relationship with control was like as it pertained
to trying to control your environment and the people in it.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
For me as a young kid, it was a lot
around wondering what mood certain people were going to be
in in the household, and this sense that I have
to behave a certain way in order to make sure
that things are peaceful or people are happy, or nobody's
mad at me. Like it was just this constant state
(05:41):
of something's wrong, I'm about to get in trouble, and.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
The you know, I like.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
The thing that I should say is that I had
this incident when I was in the fourth grade where
I woke up in the middle of the night at
a big family ski trip and there was an older
kid on top of me, and you know, they were
doing something very inappropriate, and I possmed. I just froze
and rolled over and I don't even remember how it
ended because I left my body. And I think from
(06:10):
that point forward, I had this intense sense in my
body that something was terribly wrong, and I didn't tell anybody.
And I didn't tell anybody because as an eight year old,
I thought somehow I had done something wrong, which meant
I was going to get in trouble. And that core
experience I did something wrong and waking up every morning
(06:33):
feeling like something bad has happened is what haunted me
all the way into my thirties because I suppressed the experience.
And so to your question, the way that control played
out for me is I outsourced it. I actually thought
that I would feel safe if everybody around me was okay,
(07:00):
that if everybody around me was happy, if everybody around
me was not disappointed, if everybody around me liked me
or thought I was cool, then I would be okay.
And the problem with that, when we unpack it, is
that that is the one thing and the one strategy
(07:23):
that actually will never put you in control of anything,
because the one thing you can't control in life is
other people. You can't control what they think, what they do,
how they feel, what they expect of you, the lies
they might tell, the disappointment they You can't control any
of that. And so to hand your safety and sense
(07:44):
of self over to other people's moods and thoughts and
expectations of you means you will, forever in your entire life,
always feel as though you're not in control of what's happening.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
What is so interesting to me, though, is that you
place an even greater burden on yourself because you are
both giving power to others while seating that their behavior
we're a direct function of you and your behaviors. What
an enormous weight to carry as a young child. And
I feel like what's coming to mind for me is
(08:20):
the illusion of control, where we overestimate the degree to
which we determine outcomes in our lives. But what's really
interesting is that they study people and they found that
there's a continuum here where you can move from either
an internal locus of control to an external locus of control,
and people with an external locus of control are much
(08:41):
more comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity and things not quite
going to plan because they understand that exogenous factors, the
external world actually plays a really big role in dictating
our lives. Then, people who are in the internal locus
of control, we ascribe events to our own doing, so
our successes are ours, and our failures are ours, and
(09:03):
the behaviors of others are ours. Right, And a strong
internal locus of control is association with greater happiness and
greater well being and greater purpose overall, except that when
things don't go according to plan, we're much more likely
to self blame. We're much more likely to self break
because we are the only explanation for why things didn't
(09:27):
go well. And so what I'm hearing is that young
Mele developed a really powerful internal locus of control where
everything fell back on you. That's a lot.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
It is a lot.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
So you have this relationship with control when you're a child,
and then as an adult you run up against the
limits of your ability to maintain that equanimity in your
environment when you and your family hit rock bottom, right,
your husband's business crashes as a result of the Great Recession.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
Oh, and stupidity.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
I mean, like, there's a lot of stupid, like myself
included like, I'm not going to blame it out there, like.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
There are some things that we did that were just dumb.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Yeah, I should have known internal locus of control. Gal.
Of course, you're going to make sure that you take accountability.
I love this. You're eight hundred thousand dollars in debt
at this point. You were in your early forty one,
forty one yep, trying to raise three kids. Bring me
back to that moment and what that might have taught
you or not taught you about kind of the limits
(10:29):
of your control, or how you might want to rethink
that relationship.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Oh my god, there's so much that it taught me.
You know, when you're in a rock bottom moment, the
worst thing somebody can say to you is you're going
to look back on this as a blessing, Like you
literally want to punch people in the face.
Speaker 4 (10:45):
No.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
I was forty one, and you know, look, I'm a
very ambitious person, and never in my life had I
made a vision board where I had cut out images
that said bankruptcy, alcoholism, million dollars in debt, foreclosure, divorce.
That was not part of the plan, of course, And
what's interesting is We can talk reinvention and pivots and
(11:08):
everything saying all we want right, but when it's happening
to you, it's a different experience because what happens is
your emotions takeover and you start to tell yourself a
story that you're never going to get out of this.
And for me, what that meant is, I lost my job.
(11:29):
We were eight hundred thousand dollars in debt because we
were complete freaking idiots by cashing out our life savings
and shoving it into his business. After one location of
a pizza restaurant went okay, and then all of a sudden,
you know, two thousand and seven hits two thousand and eight,
the recession hits our houses upside down. We have leans
on it. We've cashed out everything we own. I've got
(11:53):
three kids under the age of ten. Friends and family
have invested in this business, and the bills are starting
to pile up on the counter, and I'm pulling a
kid out of town soccer because we can't afford one
hundred and twenty five dollars. And I'm having trouble some
weeks because Chris is not getting paid and I don't
have a job. Putting gas in the car tank. Financial
(12:15):
stress is crushing and you can't escape it, and there's
a lot of shame around it, and so I drank
myself into the ground. I became very angry and avoidant.
I started blaming everything on my husband, and I became paralyzed.
I was in like a frozen trauma response, which is
(12:36):
the exact same thing that happened to me when I
was eight years old. And because I felt like I
couldn't control everything that was happening, I just ran away
from it. I got drunk, I yelled at my husband.
I became a person. I didn't recognize the kids were
missing the bus. I couldn't or I didn't think I
could control the demise that was looming. But I could
(13:00):
control avoiding it. I could hit the snooze button six times.
I could numb myself at night, I could avoid the bills.
Because avoidance is a major form of control, anger is
a major form of controlled and so my control was
(13:21):
still there, it was just being aimed at the wrong things.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Yeah, so that leads us to the need for let
them bring me back to the moment when you were
first exposed to it. Obviously, it's rooted in ancient wisdom.
But you know, I hear wise things all the time,
and they kind of can just go in one year
and out the other, Like I want to know what
made it stick for you in that moment in your life.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
I've been trying to be less controlling my whole life.
I've tried to be stoic. I have tried to be
more Buddhist. I have tried to manage my response. And
it's one thing when you're sharing ideas. It's a whole
other thing when the teacher shows up and the student
(14:05):
is ready. It's the difference between concept and the moment
when that concept hits you like a freaking sledgeing, exactly.
And so I was at the high school prom with
my son. I was being a super micromanagy mom, really annoying.
If you've ever been in a situation where you're all
(14:27):
stressed and the words are coming out of your mouth
and you wish you could shove them back in, that
was me.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
So I was just.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
Micromanaging him, you know, you got a tux and let
me tee the thing, and shoving the flowers at him
even though his date doesn't want a corsage. And now
it's starting to rain, and I'm like, you can't get
your shoes wet, and her hair is going to get ruined,
and you can't go to the taco stand before dinner
because then your tuxedo is going to be wet. And
my daughter was home and she reaches out and grabs
my bicep and she's like, you're being annoying. If she
(14:56):
doesn't want flowers, letter, if it's going to ruin his shoes,
let them. If he wants to get soaking wet, let them.
If she's going to ruin her hair, letter, And it
was just like this, let them, let them, let them.
It's their prom, not yours for crying out loud. Let
them do what they want to do. And there was
just something about the nails of my biceps and the
cringe in her voice and the cascade of the let,
(15:17):
let let that my shoulders has dropped, and I just
kind of had this obvious epiphany where I'm just like,
why am I worried about this?
Speaker 3 (15:28):
Seriously? Why why am I? Why am I concerned about this?
Speaker 2 (15:32):
And the second that I just stopped trying to control it,
I felt peace, And then I could see that everybody
around me felt peaceful, And so I just started to say,
let them in any moment in my life where things
just felt stressful, traffic, let them the person's root in
(15:54):
front of me. You know, some days I've got the
energy to step in and be like, hey, you know,
they're they're they're doing the.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
Best they can.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Some days they're just like, let them. I'm not going
to be the you know, manners police today. I just
don't have the energy for this. My mom's in a
bad mood, let her be in a bad mood. My
dad's disappointed, to be disappointed, let me show up with
a little bit more compassion. And so I just started
saying let them, let them, let them. And it was
so profound. And the first insight that I had was
(16:21):
I could not believe how much time I wasted on
stupid things. I couldn't believe how stressed out I was
due to dumb things. If you allow zoom calls and
(16:43):
traffic and you know, somebody's mood or a curt email
to constantly keep your amygdala humming and your body in
a stressed out state, you're gonna go home and take
it out in your family. And that's why you don't
have time and.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Energy because it's being sad.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Because it's getting drained all day long. Yes, And so
it became this like boundary with the world where I
started to recognize, wait a minute, my time and energy
has value, and I need to protect that time and
energy because I want to use that time and energy
(17:21):
to either better my life or to better the world
around me. And if I'm constantly allowing all this stuff
to drain me, I'm never going to have the energy
to do anything about what's wrong in the world or
what as bothering me in my relationships or with my health.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
We'll be back in a moment with a slight change
of plans. On the night of her son's prom, Mel
Robbins was trying to micromanage everything, like where her son
and his friend should go for dinner or whether his
(18:04):
date should wear a corsage. Then Mel's daughter said two
simple words, it's let them, And for whatever reason, it
was exactly what Mel needed to hear. She's held onto
those words ever since and has written an entire book
about it. I asked her to break it down in
more detail.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
For me, the let them theory is simple.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
The more you let other people live their lives the
better your life gets, and the more you learn how
to let people be who they are and who they're not,
the better your relationships get. And the theory itself is
about power and control, and the way that it works
is simple. There are two steps, and the first step
(18:49):
gets all of the fame, but it's the second step
that's actually where your power is. The first part is
let them. So when you're stressed out, when you're annoyed,
when you're hurt, when you're frustrated, when you're confused, when
you're just like feeling like somebody's disrespecting you or hurting you.
As weird as it sounds, you're going to quietly say
(19:11):
to yourself, let them. And I want to be very
clear about something. This is not a theory that says
you should let people hurt you. This is a theory
about where your control is and where your power is.
And the mistake that we make when we're in a
situation where there is disrespect or there is some kind
(19:32):
of hurtful behavior is we believe that that other person
is going to change. We get gas lit into thinking
that the power is in changing the other person. Let
them is simply a tool that reminds you that hoping
(19:54):
that they're going to change, or pouring time and energy
into trying to make someone else change isn't where your
power is. Let them is kind of you saying, Okay,
this is who this person is. Their behavior is the truth.
Let me is the second part. Let me is where
you say to yourself, I can't control this other person.
(20:16):
Let me decide what I'm going to think about this,
Let me decide what I'm going to do or don't
do about this, and let me decide how I'm going
to process my own feelings about this.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
And so in normal day to.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Day's circumstances, the way that this works is if somebody's disappointed,
let them be disappointed.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
You can't make it.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
To the thirty second birthday party where you're going to
meet at a Mexican restaurant and split a check with
fourteen people and not even talk to your friend that's
holding the birthday, and you've had a long day at
work and you just would rather go to a yoga.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
Out of my brain, mel how do you know my life? Like?
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Literally, let them be disappointed, because here's what I want.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
You to a meditarian and I don't drink alcohol so
I always get ripped off when you do the fourteen
persons split.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
Yes, because they're splitting the check and you didn't have
anything to drink, and it's loud as hell and you
don't want to be there, and it takes too long.
And so here's the thing. Let your friend be disappointed.
Tell them that you're not going to come tonight. It's
been a busy week at work. Let them be disappointed, acknowledgment,
and then let me remind myself that I need to
take care of myself. And let me ask my friend
(21:24):
if they'd be willing to go to a yoga class
this weekend and go get some tea, because I'd actually
like to catch up with you.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
One on one.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
And that's how you handle that situation and kind of
a day to day thing. In a more serious situation,
if you're dealing with somebody emotionally immature or that has
a very very challenging personality style, which I have in
my life, a person like this. The thing that I
can see now that I've been practicing let them and
(21:52):
let me, which is really about boundaries, what's mine to
own and what's yours? Down is I, for years just
expected this person to change. I wish they would. I
wish the dynamic would have been different, and so I
would go into every experienced And one of the things
that let them did is let them force me to
(22:14):
practice radical acceptance. Let them forced me to see the
situation and the person that I'm dealing with as they are,
instead of constantly explaining away behavior that I've been explaining
away for a very long time and somehow turning it
back as it's my fault. And then the let me
(22:36):
part helps me start to understand that if I'm going
to let this person be who they are, then let
me decide how much time and energy I'm going to
put with this person. Let me protect myself when I'm
around this person. Let me remind myself I can leave
a conversation or a dinner table, or a text chain,
(22:57):
or a date or an interview or like a family
thing anytime I want. And it starts to slowly remind
you in these dynamics that we get stuck with with
other people that there are little things you can do
when you first learn to separate yourself from managing the
other person and focus more on protecting yourself in the situation.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
When it comes to accountability, which is something that you
raised when I reflect on my personal life. Granted, this
is also growing up in an Indian immigrant family where
my parents had no filters around giving me feedback. Some
of my greatest moments of growth stemmed from the people
in my life not just letting me be a certain way.
(23:43):
They didn't use let them. Instead, they were very forthcoming
with me about my weaknesses or their needs or maybe
how I'd even let them down. And so in their
articulating those feelings to me, I in turn was challenged
in some way. I was able to think differently. I
was able to do things differently. And so, how can
we apply the let them theory in the right places
(24:05):
so that it doesn't stop other people from engaging in
difficult conversations that could help us become better people, or
us engaging with other people to try to help them.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
Yeah, let me is where you engage in the conversation.
Let me is where you tell the truth. Let me
is where you approach the people in your life that
you worried about, and instead of judging them, you approach
it with compassion and concern and support. Hey, I'm worried
about you. I notice you're not acting like yourself now
(24:38):
that you're dating this person? How are you feeling about
the relationship. I'm here to support you, you know, is
there anything I can do to support you? Is there
anything you want to do about this? Instead, what we
do is we avoid the conversation. We judge, We just
kind of don't have the hard conversation. We don't push
the people in our lives because we're afraid of having
(25:02):
any kind of tension with somebody. And so instead, I
think we have an epidemic of people walking around very
emotionally immature, stressed out, avoiding the conversations and avoiding taking
accountability for your needs and actually asking for it in
(25:23):
a way that is respectful and not emotional, instead of
constantly avoiding the conversation, then resenting people, and then being
pissed off. And so let's go back to what we've
been talking about. We've been talking about control. Every single
one of us needs to feel in control of our lives.
When we don't feel in control of our decisions or
our future, what we're doing this afternoon, or what's going
(25:44):
to happen at work tomorrow, we start to feel unsafe
and a little on edge, and the mistake that we
make is when someone else's behavior because they're dating somebody
we hate, or they're letting themselves go, or they're not
quote trying at school, or they can't get a job,
and now you're starting to worry that they're unmotivated. When
their behavior worries us, we now feel out of control.
(26:07):
So we step in and try to fix it. And
what happens when you do that is that you bump
up against that person's need for autonomy and control, and
so they're not going to do what you ask them
to do.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
They might do it once to appease you and get
you authors back, yes.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
But they're not actually going to create lasting change because
the change for a person has to come from within.
And so one of the reasons why the let them
theory is going to help you in situations where somebody
is in your life and you want to change them,
and we all we want to change everybody in our lives,
got opinions about everybody.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
So the way that you do is you let them
be there and let me try a different approach.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
You know, what I'm hearing, what I'm reflecting on as
you're sharing these sorts of stories, is that there's a
dynamic interplay between let them and let me throughout the
entire duration of the experience. These are like flexible categories.
You can start with let me, maybe you sit down,
you have a conversation. But what I say, see let
(27:09):
them serving as is a psychological safeguard such that if
you engage in the let me in good faith and
you explore all the options, you have a safe landing
with let them, which is, if I'm not able to
change them, I'm not going to allow it to erode
my well being and mental health.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
Yes, or this relationship or this.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Relationship, because part of what actually creates friction and tension
and distance in a relationship is the opinion that somebody
else should change.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
Yeah. And what I've.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
Found is if you create this space where you let
people be, you let people have their feelings, You let
people have their opinions, You let people have their expectations,
you let people have their timeline for their own healing,
and you hold a boundary that creates acceptance of that
person as they are, or at least witnessing them clearly
(28:05):
as they are. Now you have a separate boundary in
relation to them, which has let me, let me remind
myself that the only power that I have in this
relationship is myself, and if I want the relationship to change,
the only thing that will change it is me. And
if I focus on what's in my control, which is
(28:29):
what I think about this, what I do or don't do,
and how I process my emotions, I change how I
relate to this person, how much time I give, how
much energy I change, how reactive I am, and that
shifts the dynamic entirely. You know, the truth is this
thing brings you closer to people in your life because
(28:50):
when you create space for people to have different opinions
or disappointments or expectations and you don't make it your
job to change them or manage them, you're now actually
in relation with the person as they are, and you're
not in relationship with the possibility or what they hope
they'd be, or trying to change them or the tension
of the die. Now, I just see you exactly as
(29:12):
you are, And even though I don't understand your opinion,
if I'm the kind of person that wants to understand it,
let me try to understand why you think the way
that you do.
Speaker 3 (29:21):
Instead of judging you and not talking to you about it.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
I love what you just said because I just interviewed
Amanda Knox for the show and she was saying, true
freedom for her is seeing the world as it actually is,
not as you believe it should be. And you know,
this is a woman who's faced wrongful conviction after wrongful conviction.
She knows what she's talking about, and she felt like
that was the one definition of freedom that no one
(29:45):
could ever take away from her. And when you're saying
that to me, it's like, actually, what a beautiful thing
to engage with the world and that people in it
as they are. Yes, what a wonderful way to live.
Just even hearing you say that sends tingles down my spine. Yeah,
to free ourselves of every expectation and every preconceived notion
(30:05):
and every hope of what we want them to be
or could be, or how we want to be with
them whatever. It is, Like, we come to every social
interaction with so much, like we carry so much mental
and emotional baggage that just surrounds that interaction. And imagine
you just like strip away that artifice. What a raw
and beautiful interaction you could have. There's no agenda anymore.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
No there's no agenda because you just see people as
they are, and you know, to your point, I think
so much of this comes from the conditioning that we
have about human relationships as children.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
If you think about the experience of being a child,
your entire conditioning around relationships is from a power dynamic
where somebody expects things of you and tells you what
to do and parents you, and that's their job. But
then we become eighteen years old and we think that
(31:01):
that's what relationships are, that we're supposed to parent other people,
and that's not what adult relationships should be. Learning how
to see somebody exactly as they are and exactly as
they're not, and then choosing how you're going to show
up with them as they are that is a just groundbreaking, late, freeing,
(31:25):
beautiful idea. It's certainly brought me closer to people in
my life, and it's made me confront how much expectation
and judgment and opinions that I have about my kids,
about my husband, about anything. Yeah, and learn how to
have boundaries between your desire and conditioning, to manage people's
(31:47):
happiness and moods and hold space for people's experience instead,
and one of the other beautiful things that's happened for
me as a parent is that something was happening with
one of my kids that was upsetting. A breakup, problems
with friends, issues with money, anxiety, all this stuff that's
just normal stuff of life, right. I would just rush
(32:08):
in and try to take it away. I would come
in with the advice. I would tell them what to do,
and I was stepping over the actual thing that needed
to be done, which is literally listen, validate somebody's feeling,
let them have the experience. And then here's the most
important thing. If you believe in the person's capacity and
(32:34):
capability to move through this challenge and learn from it,
then your role in their life is very different because
you move from a fixer to a person who stands
on the sidelines, reminding and coaching that you have the
ability to deal with this, to learn from it, to
(32:59):
survive this, to come stronger from it. You put people
back into the driver's seat of their life. As you're
sitting there next to them saying, I can see your
heart broken. You know, I'm sorry is happening to you,
and I believe in your ability to move through this.
I believe that you're going to be okay. But is
(33:20):
there anything that you want to do about this right now?
Speaker 1 (33:23):
Yeah, when you look back now on young mel and
what she felt she needed in order to have a
stable existence, which is to manage and control her environment
right the people in it, and for all of them,
to make them all happy, do all the right things,
check all the boxes. And then you reflect on yourself today.
(33:44):
I mean, the evolution's extraordinary. How would you summarize what
your current relationship with control is in relation to other people?
Speaker 2 (33:54):
Well, it is a daily practice because everybody has a
hardwired need to feel in control and that's never going away.
But boy, has it been transformational to really have tools
to be able to help me decipher what's in my
(34:18):
control and what's not. What do I have power over
and what do I not? Where do I want to
give my time and attention because time and intention and
your energy those are the single most valuable things you
have in life because where you put your time and
what you pour your energy into determines the experience you
(34:38):
have in life. I mean, it's just been life changing
because I actually do feel more in control and I
more importantly feel very peaceful most of the time.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
Hey, thanks so much for listening. Just as a reminder,
you can pre order my new book, The Other Side
of Change at the link in our episode description or
at Change with maya dot com slash book and join
me next time when we hear from best selling author
and podcast host Glennon Doyle about her lifelong search for belonging.
Speaker 4 (35:33):
Many times in my life, I've had moments where I'm like, Oh,
I'm out of here. I won't spend another moment in
this cafeteria, in this high school, in this marriage, in
this life.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
That's next week on A Slight Change of Plans. See
you then. A Slight Change of Plans is created, written
and executive produced by me Maya Schunker. The Slight Change
family includes our showrunner Tyler Green, our senior editor Kate
Parkinson Morgan, our producers Britney Cronin and Megan Lubin, and
our sound engineer Erica Huang. Louis Scara wrote our delightful
(36:08):
theme song, and Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocals. A
Slight Change of Plans is a production of Pushkin Industries,
so big thanks to everyone there, and of course a
very special thanks to Jimmy Lee. You can follow a
slight change of plans on Instagram at doctor Maya Schunker
see you next week.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
Can I just tell you something, the worse I look,
the better our content does. And I'm looking pretty decent today.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
So we're fun.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
We're totally screwed.
Pushkin Hay Slight Changers. I have some exciting news. I've
written a book. It's called The Other Side of Change,
Who we become when life makes other plans. It's available
for pre order today at changewithmaya dot com slash book.
(00:36):
I would appreciate your early support of this project so much.
Is truly the thing I'm most proud to have created.
You can find the link to pre order in our
episode description. Thanks so much, and now onto the show,
(01:00):
Hay Light Changers. Just a heads up, there's a brief
mention of sexual assault in this episode at the five
minute mark. It's not explicit, but if you want to
skip over that minute, please do and take care.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
I actually thought that I would feel safe if everybody
around me was okay, that if everybody around me was happy,
if everybody around me was not disappointed, if everybody around
me liked me or thought I was cool, then I
(01:35):
would be okay.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Mel Robbins is a best selling author and podcast host.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
And the problem with that is that the one thing
you can't control in life is other people, and so
to hand your safety and sense of self over to
other people's moods and thoughts and expectations of you means
you will forever in your entire life, always feel as
though you're not in control of what's happening.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
On today's show. To all my people, pleasers, control freaks,
perfectionists and micromanagers, we're learning to let it all go.
I'm Maya Schunker, as scientist who studies human behavior, and
this is a slight change of plans. I show about
who we are and who we become in the face
(02:25):
of a big change. If you've ever found yourself bending
over backwards to meet other people's expectations or trying to
control their emotions and behaviors, I promise that you are
not alone. Mel Robbin's, host of the wildly popular The
(02:49):
Mel Robins podcast, has a new book out called The
Let Them Theory. It's all about how to stop giving
other people so much power and to let go of
our need to control them. To better understand her interest
in this philosophy, I wanted to know more about Mel's
relationship with control. What kind of messages do you feel
(03:11):
that you were absorbing as a child about what it
meant to live a good life, to live at a
happy life.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
You know this is a difficult question for me to answer,
I don't have a lot of memories from my childhood,
and I know why, and the reason why is because
I basically kind of lived in a constant state of
being on edge or being in fight or flight, which
(03:39):
is very common if you have any past trauma, or
if you have had any adverse childhood experiences, or if
you just live in a household where the moods of
the adults are chaotic, or there are things going on
that you shouldn't have to deal with as a child.
But what I would say is that when I think
(04:00):
about my childhood and very happy times, my mom and
I would always go to the farmer's market and all
the farmers would be at their various stalls. My mom
knew every single person there. She knew whether they had
kids or grandkids, she knew the name of the dogs.
As she would be picking up the radishes or squeezing
(04:23):
the peaches, they'd be chatting up a storm about the
weather or the crops, or how their.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
Kid is doing. And it really made.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
An impression on me. And so I would say, a
good life, in my mind, is one where you are
living your life in relation to other people, and you
are showing up in a way where you're interested in
them and their well being and what they're doing.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
It's so interesting because you said living a good life
is about living in relation to others, and I can
see that that can be a double edged sword. You
might become beholden to the views of others and their
impression of you. And I am curious to know you
mentioned that you were kind of in a constant state
of being on edge, probably hypervigilant. Tell me more about
(05:11):
what your relationship with control was like as it pertained
to trying to control your environment and the people in it.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
For me as a young kid, it was a lot
around wondering what mood certain people were going to be
in in the household, and this sense that I have
to behave a certain way in order to make sure
that things are peaceful or people are happy, or nobody's
mad at me. Like it was just this constant state
(05:41):
of something's wrong, I'm about to get in trouble, and.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
The you know, I like.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
The thing that I should say is that I had
this incident when I was in the fourth grade where
I woke up in the middle of the night at
a big family ski trip and there was an older
kid on top of me, and you know, they were
doing something very inappropriate, and I possmed. I just froze
and rolled over and I don't even remember how it
ended because I left my body. And I think from
(06:10):
that point forward, I had this intense sense in my
body that something was terribly wrong, and I didn't tell anybody.
And I didn't tell anybody because as an eight year old,
I thought somehow I had done something wrong, which meant
I was going to get in trouble. And that core
experience I did something wrong and waking up every morning
(06:33):
feeling like something bad has happened is what haunted me
all the way into my thirties because I suppressed the experience.
And so to your question, the way that control played
out for me is I outsourced it. I actually thought
that I would feel safe if everybody around me was okay,
(07:00):
that if everybody around me was happy, if everybody around
me was not disappointed, if everybody around me liked me
or thought I was cool, then I would be okay.
And the problem with that, when we unpack it, is
that that is the one thing and the one strategy
(07:23):
that actually will never put you in control of anything,
because the one thing you can't control in life is
other people. You can't control what they think, what they do,
how they feel, what they expect of you, the lies
they might tell, the disappointment they You can't control any
of that. And so to hand your safety and sense
(07:44):
of self over to other people's moods and thoughts and
expectations of you means you will, forever in your entire life,
always feel as though you're not in control of what's happening.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
What is so interesting to me, though, is that you
place an even greater burden on yourself because you are
both giving power to others while seating that their behavior
we're a direct function of you and your behaviors. What
an enormous weight to carry as a young child. And
I feel like what's coming to mind for me is
(08:20):
the illusion of control, where we overestimate the degree to
which we determine outcomes in our lives. But what's really
interesting is that they study people and they found that
there's a continuum here where you can move from either
an internal locus of control to an external locus of control,
and people with an external locus of control are much
(08:41):
more comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity and things not quite
going to plan because they understand that exogenous factors, the
external world actually plays a really big role in dictating
our lives. Then, people who are in the internal locus
of control, we ascribe events to our own doing, so
our successes are ours, and our failures are ours, and
(09:03):
the behaviors of others are ours. Right, And a strong
internal locus of control is association with greater happiness and
greater well being and greater purpose overall, except that when
things don't go according to plan, we're much more likely
to self blame. We're much more likely to self break
because we are the only explanation for why things didn't
(09:27):
go well. And so what I'm hearing is that young
Mele developed a really powerful internal locus of control where
everything fell back on you. That's a lot.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
It is a lot.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
So you have this relationship with control when you're a child,
and then as an adult you run up against the
limits of your ability to maintain that equanimity in your
environment when you and your family hit rock bottom, right,
your husband's business crashes as a result of the Great Recession.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
Oh, and stupidity.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
I mean, like, there's a lot of stupid, like myself
included like, I'm not going to blame it out there, like.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
There are some things that we did that were just dumb.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Yeah, I should have known internal locus of control. Gal.
Of course, you're going to make sure that you take accountability.
I love this. You're eight hundred thousand dollars in debt
at this point. You were in your early forty one,
forty one yep, trying to raise three kids. Bring me
back to that moment and what that might have taught
you or not taught you about kind of the limits
(10:29):
of your control, or how you might want to rethink
that relationship.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Oh my god, there's so much that it taught me.
You know, when you're in a rock bottom moment, the
worst thing somebody can say to you is you're going
to look back on this as a blessing, Like you
literally want to punch people in the face.
Speaker 4 (10:45):
No.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
I was forty one, and you know, look, I'm a
very ambitious person, and never in my life had I
made a vision board where I had cut out images
that said bankruptcy, alcoholism, million dollars in debt, foreclosure, divorce.
That was not part of the plan, of course, And
what's interesting is We can talk reinvention and pivots and
(11:08):
everything saying all we want right, but when it's happening
to you, it's a different experience because what happens is
your emotions takeover and you start to tell yourself a
story that you're never going to get out of this.
And for me, what that meant is, I lost my job.
(11:29):
We were eight hundred thousand dollars in debt because we
were complete freaking idiots by cashing out our life savings
and shoving it into his business. After one location of
a pizza restaurant went okay, and then all of a sudden,
you know, two thousand and seven hits two thousand and eight,
the recession hits our houses upside down. We have leans
on it. We've cashed out everything we own. I've got
(11:53):
three kids under the age of ten. Friends and family
have invested in this business, and the bills are starting
to pile up on the counter, and I'm pulling a
kid out of town soccer because we can't afford one
hundred and twenty five dollars. And I'm having trouble some
weeks because Chris is not getting paid and I don't
have a job. Putting gas in the car tank. Financial
(12:15):
stress is crushing and you can't escape it, and there's
a lot of shame around it, and so I drank
myself into the ground. I became very angry and avoidant.
I started blaming everything on my husband, and I became paralyzed.
I was in like a frozen trauma response, which is
(12:36):
the exact same thing that happened to me when I
was eight years old. And because I felt like I
couldn't control everything that was happening, I just ran away
from it. I got drunk, I yelled at my husband.
I became a person. I didn't recognize the kids were
missing the bus. I couldn't or I didn't think I
could control the demise that was looming. But I could
(13:00):
control avoiding it. I could hit the snooze button six times.
I could numb myself at night, I could avoid the bills.
Because avoidance is a major form of control, anger is
a major form of controlled and so my control was
(13:21):
still there, it was just being aimed at the wrong things.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Yeah, so that leads us to the need for let
them bring me back to the moment when you were
first exposed to it. Obviously, it's rooted in ancient wisdom.
But you know, I hear wise things all the time,
and they kind of can just go in one year
and out the other, Like I want to know what
made it stick for you in that moment in your life.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
I've been trying to be less controlling my whole life.
I've tried to be stoic. I have tried to be
more Buddhist. I have tried to manage my response. And
it's one thing when you're sharing ideas. It's a whole
other thing when the teacher shows up and the student
(14:05):
is ready. It's the difference between concept and the moment
when that concept hits you like a freaking sledgeing, exactly.
And so I was at the high school prom with
my son. I was being a super micromanagy mom, really annoying.
If you've ever been in a situation where you're all
(14:27):
stressed and the words are coming out of your mouth
and you wish you could shove them back in, that
was me.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
So I was just.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
Micromanaging him, you know, you got a tux and let
me tee the thing, and shoving the flowers at him
even though his date doesn't want a corsage. And now
it's starting to rain, and I'm like, you can't get
your shoes wet, and her hair is going to get ruined,
and you can't go to the taco stand before dinner
because then your tuxedo is going to be wet. And
my daughter was home and she reaches out and grabs
my bicep and she's like, you're being annoying. If she
(14:56):
doesn't want flowers, letter, if it's going to ruin his shoes,
let them. If he wants to get soaking wet, let them.
If she's going to ruin her hair, letter, And it
was just like this, let them, let them, let them.
It's their prom, not yours for crying out loud. Let
them do what they want to do. And there was
just something about the nails of my biceps and the
cringe in her voice and the cascade of the let,
(15:17):
let let that my shoulders has dropped, and I just
kind of had this obvious epiphany where I'm just like,
why am I worried about this?
Speaker 3 (15:28):
Seriously? Why why am I? Why am I concerned about this?
Speaker 2 (15:32):
And the second that I just stopped trying to control it,
I felt peace, And then I could see that everybody
around me felt peaceful, And so I just started to say,
let them in any moment in my life where things
just felt stressful, traffic, let them the person's root in
(15:54):
front of me. You know, some days I've got the
energy to step in and be like, hey, you know,
they're they're they're doing the.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
Best they can.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Some days they're just like, let them. I'm not going
to be the you know, manners police today. I just
don't have the energy for this. My mom's in a
bad mood, let her be in a bad mood. My
dad's disappointed, to be disappointed, let me show up with
a little bit more compassion. And so I just started
saying let them, let them, let them. And it was
so profound. And the first insight that I had was
(16:21):
I could not believe how much time I wasted on
stupid things. I couldn't believe how stressed out I was
due to dumb things. If you allow zoom calls and
(16:43):
traffic and you know, somebody's mood or a curt email
to constantly keep your amygdala humming and your body in
a stressed out state, you're gonna go home and take
it out in your family. And that's why you don't
have time and.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Energy because it's being sad.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Because it's getting drained all day long. Yes, And so
it became this like boundary with the world where I
started to recognize, wait a minute, my time and energy
has value, and I need to protect that time and
energy because I want to use that time and energy
(17:21):
to either better my life or to better the world
around me. And if I'm constantly allowing all this stuff
to drain me, I'm never going to have the energy
to do anything about what's wrong in the world or
what as bothering me in my relationships or with my health.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
We'll be back in a moment with a slight change
of plans. On the night of her son's prom, Mel
Robbins was trying to micromanage everything, like where her son
and his friend should go for dinner or whether his
(18:04):
date should wear a corsage. Then Mel's daughter said two
simple words, it's let them, And for whatever reason, it
was exactly what Mel needed to hear. She's held onto
those words ever since and has written an entire book
about it. I asked her to break it down in
more detail.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
For me, the let them theory is simple.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
The more you let other people live their lives the
better your life gets, and the more you learn how
to let people be who they are and who they're not,
the better your relationships get. And the theory itself is
about power and control, and the way that it works
is simple. There are two steps, and the first step
(18:49):
gets all of the fame, but it's the second step
that's actually where your power is. The first part is
let them. So when you're stressed out, when you're annoyed,
when you're hurt, when you're frustrated, when you're confused, when
you're just like feeling like somebody's disrespecting you or hurting you.
As weird as it sounds, you're going to quietly say
(19:11):
to yourself, let them. And I want to be very
clear about something. This is not a theory that says
you should let people hurt you. This is a theory
about where your control is and where your power is.
And the mistake that we make when we're in a
situation where there is disrespect or there is some kind
(19:32):
of hurtful behavior is we believe that that other person
is going to change. We get gas lit into thinking
that the power is in changing the other person. Let
them is simply a tool that reminds you that hoping
(19:54):
that they're going to change, or pouring time and energy
into trying to make someone else change isn't where your
power is. Let them is kind of you saying, Okay,
this is who this person is. Their behavior is the truth.
Let me is the second part. Let me is where
you say to yourself, I can't control this other person.
(20:16):
Let me decide what I'm going to think about this,
Let me decide what I'm going to do or don't
do about this, and let me decide how I'm going
to process my own feelings about this.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
And so in normal day to.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Day's circumstances, the way that this works is if somebody's disappointed,
let them be disappointed.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
You can't make it.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
To the thirty second birthday party where you're going to
meet at a Mexican restaurant and split a check with
fourteen people and not even talk to your friend that's
holding the birthday, and you've had a long day at
work and you just would rather go to a yoga.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
Out of my brain, mel how do you know my life? Like?
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Literally, let them be disappointed, because here's what I want.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
You to a meditarian and I don't drink alcohol so
I always get ripped off when you do the fourteen
persons split.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
Yes, because they're splitting the check and you didn't have
anything to drink, and it's loud as hell and you
don't want to be there, and it takes too long.
And so here's the thing. Let your friend be disappointed.
Tell them that you're not going to come tonight. It's
been a busy week at work. Let them be disappointed, acknowledgment,
and then let me remind myself that I need to
take care of myself. And let me ask my friend
(21:24):
if they'd be willing to go to a yoga class
this weekend and go get some tea, because I'd actually
like to catch up with you.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
One on one.
Speaker 2 (21:30):
And that's how you handle that situation and kind of
a day to day thing. In a more serious situation,
if you're dealing with somebody emotionally immature or that has
a very very challenging personality style, which I have in
my life, a person like this. The thing that I
can see now that I've been practicing let them and
(21:52):
let me, which is really about boundaries, what's mine to
own and what's yours? Down is I, for years just
expected this person to change. I wish they would. I
wish the dynamic would have been different, and so I
would go into every experienced And one of the things
that let them did is let them force me to
(22:14):
practice radical acceptance. Let them forced me to see the
situation and the person that I'm dealing with as they are,
instead of constantly explaining away behavior that I've been explaining
away for a very long time and somehow turning it
back as it's my fault. And then the let me
(22:36):
part helps me start to understand that if I'm going
to let this person be who they are, then let
me decide how much time and energy I'm going to
put with this person. Let me protect myself when I'm
around this person. Let me remind myself I can leave
a conversation or a dinner table, or a text chain,
(22:57):
or a date or an interview or like a family
thing anytime I want. And it starts to slowly remind
you in these dynamics that we get stuck with with
other people that there are little things you can do
when you first learn to separate yourself from managing the
other person and focus more on protecting yourself in the situation.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
When it comes to accountability, which is something that you
raised when I reflect on my personal life. Granted, this
is also growing up in an Indian immigrant family where
my parents had no filters around giving me feedback. Some
of my greatest moments of growth stemmed from the people
in my life not just letting me be a certain way.
(23:43):
They didn't use let them. Instead, they were very forthcoming
with me about my weaknesses or their needs or maybe
how I'd even let them down. And so in their
articulating those feelings to me, I in turn was challenged
in some way. I was able to think differently. I
was able to do things differently. And so, how can
we apply the let them theory in the right places
(24:05):
so that it doesn't stop other people from engaging in
difficult conversations that could help us become better people, or
us engaging with other people to try to help them.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
Yeah, let me is where you engage in the conversation.
Let me is where you tell the truth. Let me
is where you approach the people in your life that
you worried about, and instead of judging them, you approach
it with compassion and concern and support. Hey, I'm worried
about you. I notice you're not acting like yourself now
(24:38):
that you're dating this person? How are you feeling about
the relationship. I'm here to support you, you know, is
there anything I can do to support you? Is there
anything you want to do about this? Instead, what we
do is we avoid the conversation. We judge, We just
kind of don't have the hard conversation. We don't push
the people in our lives because we're afraid of having
(25:02):
any kind of tension with somebody. And so instead, I
think we have an epidemic of people walking around very
emotionally immature, stressed out, avoiding the conversations and avoiding taking
accountability for your needs and actually asking for it in
(25:23):
a way that is respectful and not emotional, instead of
constantly avoiding the conversation, then resenting people, and then being
pissed off. And so let's go back to what we've
been talking about. We've been talking about control. Every single
one of us needs to feel in control of our lives.
When we don't feel in control of our decisions or
our future, what we're doing this afternoon, or what's going
(25:44):
to happen at work tomorrow, we start to feel unsafe
and a little on edge, and the mistake that we
make is when someone else's behavior because they're dating somebody
we hate, or they're letting themselves go, or they're not
quote trying at school, or they can't get a job,
and now you're starting to worry that they're unmotivated. When
their behavior worries us, we now feel out of control.
(26:07):
So we step in and try to fix it. And
what happens when you do that is that you bump
up against that person's need for autonomy and control, and
so they're not going to do what you ask them
to do.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
They might do it once to appease you and get
you authors back, yes.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
But they're not actually going to create lasting change because
the change for a person has to come from within.
And so one of the reasons why the let them
theory is going to help you in situations where somebody
is in your life and you want to change them,
and we all we want to change everybody in our lives,
got opinions about everybody.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
So the way that you do is you let them
be there and let me try a different approach.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
You know, what I'm hearing, what I'm reflecting on as
you're sharing these sorts of stories, is that there's a
dynamic interplay between let them and let me throughout the
entire duration of the experience. These are like flexible categories.
You can start with let me, maybe you sit down,
you have a conversation. But what I say, see let
(27:09):
them serving as is a psychological safeguard such that if
you engage in the let me in good faith and
you explore all the options, you have a safe landing
with let them, which is, if I'm not able to
change them, I'm not going to allow it to erode
my well being and mental health.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
Yes, or this relationship or this.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Relationship, because part of what actually creates friction and tension
and distance in a relationship is the opinion that somebody
else should change.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
Yeah. And what I've.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
Found is if you create this space where you let
people be, you let people have their feelings, You let
people have their opinions, You let people have their expectations,
you let people have their timeline for their own healing,
and you hold a boundary that creates acceptance of that
person as they are, or at least witnessing them clearly
(28:05):
as they are. Now you have a separate boundary in
relation to them, which has let me, let me remind
myself that the only power that I have in this
relationship is myself, and if I want the relationship to change,
the only thing that will change it is me. And
if I focus on what's in my control, which is
(28:29):
what I think about this, what I do or don't do,
and how I process my emotions, I change how I
relate to this person, how much time I give, how
much energy I change, how reactive I am, and that
shifts the dynamic entirely. You know, the truth is this
thing brings you closer to people in your life because
(28:50):
when you create space for people to have different opinions
or disappointments or expectations and you don't make it your
job to change them or manage them, you're now actually
in relation with the person as they are, and you're
not in relationship with the possibility or what they hope
they'd be, or trying to change them or the tension
of the die. Now, I just see you exactly as
(29:12):
you are, And even though I don't understand your opinion,
if I'm the kind of person that wants to understand it,
let me try to understand why you think the way
that you do.
Speaker 3 (29:21):
Instead of judging you and not talking to you about it.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
I love what you just said because I just interviewed
Amanda Knox for the show and she was saying, true
freedom for her is seeing the world as it actually is,
not as you believe it should be. And you know,
this is a woman who's faced wrongful conviction after wrongful conviction.
She knows what she's talking about, and she felt like
that was the one definition of freedom that no one
(29:45):
could ever take away from her. And when you're saying
that to me, it's like, actually, what a beautiful thing
to engage with the world and that people in it
as they are. Yes, what a wonderful way to live.
Just even hearing you say that sends tingles down my spine. Yeah,
to free ourselves of every expectation and every preconceived notion
(30:05):
and every hope of what we want them to be
or could be, or how we want to be with
them whatever. It is, Like, we come to every social
interaction with so much, like we carry so much mental
and emotional baggage that just surrounds that interaction. And imagine
you just like strip away that artifice. What a raw
and beautiful interaction you could have. There's no agenda anymore.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
No there's no agenda because you just see people as
they are, and you know, to your point, I think
so much of this comes from the conditioning that we
have about human relationships as children.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
If you think about the experience of being a child,
your entire conditioning around relationships is from a power dynamic
where somebody expects things of you and tells you what
to do and parents you, and that's their job. But
then we become eighteen years old and we think that
(31:01):
that's what relationships are, that we're supposed to parent other people,
and that's not what adult relationships should be. Learning how
to see somebody exactly as they are and exactly as
they're not, and then choosing how you're going to show
up with them as they are that is a just groundbreaking, late, freeing,
(31:25):
beautiful idea. It's certainly brought me closer to people in
my life, and it's made me confront how much expectation
and judgment and opinions that I have about my kids,
about my husband, about anything. Yeah, and learn how to
have boundaries between your desire and conditioning, to manage people's
(31:47):
happiness and moods and hold space for people's experience instead,
and one of the other beautiful things that's happened for
me as a parent is that something was happening with
one of my kids that was upsetting. A breakup, problems
with friends, issues with money, anxiety, all this stuff that's
just normal stuff of life, right. I would just rush
(32:08):
in and try to take it away. I would come
in with the advice. I would tell them what to do,
and I was stepping over the actual thing that needed
to be done, which is literally listen, validate somebody's feeling,
let them have the experience. And then here's the most
important thing. If you believe in the person's capacity and
(32:34):
capability to move through this challenge and learn from it,
then your role in their life is very different because
you move from a fixer to a person who stands
on the sidelines, reminding and coaching that you have the
ability to deal with this, to learn from it, to
(32:59):
survive this, to come stronger from it. You put people
back into the driver's seat of their life. As you're
sitting there next to them saying, I can see your
heart broken. You know, I'm sorry is happening to you,
and I believe in your ability to move through this.
I believe that you're going to be okay. But is
(33:20):
there anything that you want to do about this right now?
Speaker 1 (33:23):
Yeah, when you look back now on young mel and
what she felt she needed in order to have a
stable existence, which is to manage and control her environment
right the people in it, and for all of them,
to make them all happy, do all the right things,
check all the boxes. And then you reflect on yourself today.
(33:44):
I mean, the evolution's extraordinary. How would you summarize what
your current relationship with control is in relation to other people?
Speaker 2 (33:54):
Well, it is a daily practice because everybody has a
hardwired need to feel in control and that's never going away.
But boy, has it been transformational to really have tools
to be able to help me decipher what's in my
(34:18):
control and what's not. What do I have power over
and what do I not? Where do I want to
give my time and attention because time and intention and
your energy those are the single most valuable things you
have in life because where you put your time and
what you pour your energy into determines the experience you
(34:38):
have in life. I mean, it's just been life changing
because I actually do feel more in control and I
more importantly feel very peaceful most of the time.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
Hey, thanks so much for listening. Just as a reminder,
you can pre order my new book, The Other Side
of Change at the link in our episode description or
at Change with maya dot com slash book and join
me next time when we hear from best selling author
and podcast host Glennon Doyle about her lifelong search for belonging.
Speaker 4 (35:33):
Many times in my life, I've had moments where I'm like, Oh,
I'm out of here. I won't spend another moment in
this cafeteria, in this high school, in this marriage, in
this life.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
That's next week on A Slight Change of Plans. See
you then. A Slight Change of Plans is created, written
and executive produced by me Maya Schunker. The Slight Change
family includes our showrunner Tyler Green, our senior editor Kate
Parkinson Morgan, our producers Britney Cronin and Megan Lubin, and
our sound engineer Erica Huang. Louis Scara wrote our delightful
(36:08):
theme song, and Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocals. A
Slight Change of Plans is a production of Pushkin Industries,
so big thanks to everyone there, and of course a
very special thanks to Jimmy Lee. You can follow a
slight change of plans on Instagram at doctor Maya Schunker
see you next week.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
Can I just tell you something, the worse I look,
the better our content does. And I'm looking pretty decent today.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
So we're fun.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
We're totally screwed.
Host
Dr. Maya Shankar
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