June 6, 2025 • 37 mins
We’re bringing you an episode of A Slight Change of Plans hosted by Dr. Maya Shankar - the behavioral scientist who also happens to be a former student of Dr Laurie.
Maya sits down with bestselling author and popular podcast host Mel Robbins to talk about letting go of perfectionism and people pleasing, and how to cope when you lose control of a situation. If you enjoy this episode, listen to A Slight Change of Plans wherever you get your podcasts.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin, Hey, Happiness Lab listeners. Today we're bringing you an
episode of A Slight Change of Plans, hosted by my friend,
doctor Maya Shankar. Maya's a behavioral scientist and a former
student of mine. In this episode, Maya sits down with
(00:37):
best selling author and popular podcaster Mel Robbins to talk
about letting go of perfectionism and people pleasing, and how
to cope when you lose control of a situation. If
you enjoy this, you should listen to more episodes of
A Slight Change of Plans wherever you get your.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Podcasts Heyl Changers.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
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 4 (01:22):
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
(01:43):
would be okay.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Mel Robbins is a best selling author and podcast host.
Speaker 4 (01:49):
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 2 (02:13):
On today's show.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
To all my people, pleasers, control freaks, perfectionists, and micromanagers,
we're learning to let it all go. I'm Maya Schunker,
a scientist who studies human behavior, and this is a
slight change of plans, a show about who we are
and who we become in the face of a big change.
(02:43):
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 Robin's, host
of the wildly popular The 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
(03:06):
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 did you feel that you were absorbing as
a child, about what it meant to live a good life,
to live at a happy life.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
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
(03:48):
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
(04:08):
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
(04:31):
the peaches, they'd be chatting up a storm about the
weather or the crops, or how their kid is doing.
And it really made 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
(04:52):
where you're interested in them and their well being and
what they're doing.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
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. 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 what
(05:19):
your relationship with control was like as it pertained to
trying to control your environment and the people in it.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
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
(05:50):
of something's wrong, I'm about to get in trouble, and the.
Speaker 5 (05:56):
You know, I like.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
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
(06:18):
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
(06:41):
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,
(07:08):
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
(07:31):
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 might You can't control
any of that. And so to hand your safety and
(07:52):
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 5 (08:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
What is so interesting to me, though, is that you
place an even greater burden on yourself because you were
both giving power to others while seating that their behaviors
were 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
(08:28):
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
(08:50):
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 than people who are in the internal locus
of control. We ascribe events to our own doing, so
our success us our ours, and our failures are ours
(09:11):
and the behaviors of others are ours. Right, and a
strong internal locus of control is associated 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
(09:35):
didn't 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.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
That's a lot.
Speaker 5 (09:48):
It is a lot.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
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 5 (10:07):
Oh and stupidity.
Speaker 4 (10:08):
I mean, like there's a lot of stupid like myself included,
Like I'm not going to blame it out there, Like
there are some things that we did that were just dumb.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Yeah, I should have known. You're an 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.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
Early forty 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 of your control or how you might want
to rethink that relationship.
Speaker 4 (10:41):
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. No, 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
(11:03):
said bankruptcy, alcoholism, million dollars in debt, foreclosure, divorce. That
was not part of the plan. And what's interesting is
we can talk reinvention and pivots and everything all we want,
right but when it's happening to you, it's a different
(11:25):
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. We were eight hundred
thousand dollars in debt because we were complete freaking idiots
by cashing out our life savings and shoving it into
(11:46):
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.
Speaker 5 (11:57):
We have leans on it.
Speaker 4 (11:58):
We've cashed out everything we own. I've got 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
(12:18):
Chris is not getting paid and I don't have a
job putting gas in the car tank. Financial stress is
crushing and you can't escape itah, 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
(12:42):
was in like a frozen trauma response, which is 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
(13:03):
demise that was looming. But I could control of 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
(13:25):
major form of controlled And so my control was still there,
it was just being aimed at the wrong things.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
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 4 (13:51):
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. And the teacher shows up and the student
(14:13):
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 problem with
my son. I was being a super micromanagy mom really annoying.
If you've ever been in a situation where you're all
(14:35):
stressed and the words are coming out of your mouth
and you wish you could shove them back in, that
was me. So I was just micromanaging him. You know,
you got a tux and let me try 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
(14:56):
home and she reaches out and grabs my bicep and
she's like, you're being annoying. If she doesn't want flowers, letter,
if it's going to ruin his shoes, let them. If
he wants to get soaking wet, let other if she's
gonna ruin her hair, letter And it was just like this,
let them, let them, let them. It's their problem, not
yours for crying out loud. Let them do what they
(15:17):
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 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 5 (15:36):
The seriously, why why am I? Why am I concerned
about this?
Speaker 4 (15:40):
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
(16:02):
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 best they can. Some days
they're just like, let them. I'm not gonna 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, let
him be disappointed.
Speaker 5 (16:18):
Let me show up with a little bit more compassion.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
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 I could not believe how
much time I wasted on stupid things. I couldn't believe
(16:41):
how stressed out I was due to dumb things. If
you allow zoom calls and 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
(17:02):
gonna go home and take it out in your family,
and that's why you don't have time.
Speaker 5 (17:05):
And energy because it's being sad, because it's getting drained
all day long.
Speaker 4 (17:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (17:10):
Yes.
Speaker 4 (17:11):
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 to either better my life or to better
(17:32):
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 3 (17:51):
We'll be back in a moment with a slight change
of plans, 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
(18:14):
for pre order today at changewithmaya dot com slash book.
I would appreciate your early support of this project so much.
It's 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.
On the night of her son's prom, Mel Robbins was
(18:36):
trying to micromanage everything, like where her son and his
friend should go for dinner or whether his date should
wear a corsage. Then Mel's daughter said two simple words,
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
(18:59):
asked her to break it down in more detail. For me,
the let them theory is simple.
Speaker 4 (19:05):
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
(19:28):
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
(19:49):
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
(20:11):
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
(20:33):
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.
(20:55):
Let me decide what I'm going to think about this,
Let me decide.
Speaker 5 (20:58):
What I'm going to do or don't do about.
Speaker 4 (21:01):
This, and let me decide how I'm going to process
my own feelings about this, and so in normal day
to day's circumstances. The way that this works is if
somebody's disappointed. Let them be disappointed. You can't make it
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
(21:23):
holding the birthday and you've had a long day at
work and you just would rather go to a yoga.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Out of my brain, well, how do you know my life?
Speaker 3 (21:32):
Like?
Speaker 4 (21:32):
Literally, let them be disappointed, because here's what I want you.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
To vegetarian and I don't drink alcohol, so I always
get ripped off when you do the fourteen person text
split yes.
Speaker 4 (21:40):
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.
Speaker 5 (21:50):
It's been a busy week at work.
Speaker 4 (21:52):
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 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 one on one, and that's how you handle that
situation and kind of a day to day thing. In
(22:14):
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 let me, which is really about
boundaries what's mine to own and what's yours to own,
(22:34):
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 experience bracing.
And one of the things that let them did is
let them force me to practice radical acceptance. Let them
(22:56):
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'd been explaining away for a very
long time and somehow turning it back as it's my fault.
And then the let me part helps me start to
(23:17):
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, or a date or an interview
(23:38):
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 3 (24:00):
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.
(24:21):
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
(24:43):
so that it doesn't stop other people from engaging us
in difficult conversations that could help us become better people,
or us engaging with other people to try to help them.
Speaker 4 (24:54):
Yeah, let me is where you engage in the conversation.
Speaker 5 (24:58):
Let me is where you tell the truth.
Speaker 4 (25:02):
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 that you're dating this person. How are you
feeling about the relationship. I'm here to support you, you know.
(25:23):
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 any kind of tension with somebody, And so instead,
(25:44):
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 a way that is respectful and not emotional, instead
(26:05):
of constantly avoiding the conversation than 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, or what we're doing this afternoon,
or what's going to happen at work tomorrow, we start
to feel unsafe and a little on edge. And the
(26:28):
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. So we step in and try to
fix it. And what happens when you do that is
(26:50):
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. They might do it once
to appease you and get you off their back, yes,
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
(27:10):
theory is going to help you in situations where somebody
is in your life and you want to change them,
and all we want to change everybody in our lives,
got opinions about everybody.
Speaker 5 (27:19):
So the way that you do is you let them
be there and let me try a different approach.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
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 see let them
(27:48):
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.
Speaker 4 (28:06):
Health, yes, or this relationship relationship, because part of what
actually creates friction and tension and distance in a relationship
is the opinion that somebody else should change.
Speaker 5 (28:19):
And what I've found is if.
Speaker 4 (28:20):
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,
(28:41):
or at least witnessing them.
Speaker 5 (28:43):
Clearly as they are. Now.
Speaker 4 (28:45):
You have a separate boundary in relation to them, which is,
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 what I think about this,
(29:08):
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. Yeah,
you know, the truth is this thing brings you closer
to people in your life because when you create space
(29:31):
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. No,
I just see you exactly as you are. And even
(29:52):
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
instead of judging you and not talking to you about it.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
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
(30:23):
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.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
As they are.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
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 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
(30:55):
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 4 (31:05):
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. Yeah, if you think
about the experience of being a child, your entire conditioning
around relationships is from a power dynamic where somebody expects
(31:30):
things of you and tells you what to do and
parents you, and that's their job.
Speaker 5 (31:36):
But then we become eighteen years.
Speaker 4 (31:38):
Old and we think that 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, beautiful idea.
(32:05):
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 happiness and moods
(32:27):
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 in and try
(32:47):
to take it away. I would come in with the advice.
I would tell them what to do, absolutely, 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
(33:08):
you believe in the person's capacity and 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
(33:35):
with this, to learn from it, to 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 heartbroken. You know,
I'm sorry is happening to you, And I believe in
your ability to move through this. I believe that you're
(33:57):
going to be okay. But is there anything that you
want to do about this right now?
Speaker 5 (34:02):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (34:04):
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. I mean,
the evolution's extraordinary. How would you summarize what your current
(34:28):
relationship with control is in relation to other people?
Speaker 4 (34:33):
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
(34:56):
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
(35:17):
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 3 (35:49):
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 life search for belonging.
Speaker 6 (36:12):
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 3 (36:23):
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 Shunker. 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 theme song,
(36:47):
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 Mayah Schunker.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
See you next week.
Speaker 4 (37:24):
Can I just tell you something, the worse I look,
the better our content does. And I'm looking pretty decent today.
Speaker 5 (37:31):
So we're fucked.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
We're totally screwed.
Pushkin, Hey, Happiness Lab listeners. Today we're bringing you an
episode of A Slight Change of Plans, hosted by my friend,
doctor Maya Shankar. Maya's a behavioral scientist and a former
student of mine. In this episode, Maya sits down with
(00:37):
best selling author and popular podcaster Mel Robbins to talk
about letting go of perfectionism and people pleasing, and how
to cope when you lose control of a situation. If
you enjoy this, you should listen to more episodes of
A Slight Change of Plans wherever you get your.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Podcasts Heyl Changers.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
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 4 (01:22):
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
(01:43):
would be okay.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Mel Robbins is a best selling author and podcast host.
Speaker 4 (01:49):
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 2 (02:13):
On today's show.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
To all my people, pleasers, control freaks, perfectionists, and micromanagers,
we're learning to let it all go. I'm Maya Schunker,
a scientist who studies human behavior, and this is a
slight change of plans, a show about who we are
and who we become in the face of a big change.
(02:43):
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 Robin's, host
of the wildly popular The 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
(03:06):
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 did you feel that you were absorbing as
a child, about what it meant to live a good life,
to live at a happy life.
Speaker 4 (03:27):
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
(03:48):
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
(04:08):
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
(04:31):
the peaches, they'd be chatting up a storm about the
weather or the crops, or how their kid is doing.
And it really made 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
(04:52):
where you're interested in them and their well being and
what they're doing.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
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. 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 what
(05:19):
your relationship with control was like as it pertained to
trying to control your environment and the people in it.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
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
(05:50):
of something's wrong, I'm about to get in trouble, and the.
Speaker 5 (05:56):
You know, I like.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
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
(06:18):
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
(06:41):
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,
(07:08):
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
(07:31):
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 might You can't control
any of that. And so to hand your safety and
(07:52):
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 5 (08:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
What is so interesting to me, though, is that you
place an even greater burden on yourself because you were
both giving power to others while seating that their behaviors
were 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
(08:28):
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
(08:50):
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 than people who are in the internal locus
of control. We ascribe events to our own doing, so
our success us our ours, and our failures are ours
(09:11):
and the behaviors of others are ours. Right, and a
strong internal locus of control is associated 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
(09:35):
didn't 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.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
That's a lot.
Speaker 5 (09:48):
It is a lot.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
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 5 (10:07):
Oh and stupidity.
Speaker 4 (10:08):
I mean, like there's a lot of stupid like myself included,
Like I'm not going to blame it out there, Like
there are some things that we did that were just dumb.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Yeah, I should have known. You're an 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.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
Early forty 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 of your control or how you might want
to rethink that relationship.
Speaker 4 (10:41):
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. No, 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
(11:03):
said bankruptcy, alcoholism, million dollars in debt, foreclosure, divorce. That
was not part of the plan. And what's interesting is
we can talk reinvention and pivots and everything all we want,
right but when it's happening to you, it's a different
(11:25):
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. We were eight hundred
thousand dollars in debt because we were complete freaking idiots
by cashing out our life savings and shoving it into
(11:46):
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.
Speaker 5 (11:57):
We have leans on it.
Speaker 4 (11:58):
We've cashed out everything we own. I've got 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
(12:18):
Chris is not getting paid and I don't have a
job putting gas in the car tank. Financial stress is
crushing and you can't escape itah, 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
(12:42):
was in like a frozen trauma response, which is 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
(13:03):
demise that was looming. But I could control of 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
(13:25):
major form of controlled And so my control was still there,
it was just being aimed at the wrong things.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
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 4 (13:51):
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. And the teacher shows up and the student
(14:13):
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 problem with
my son. I was being a super micromanagy mom really annoying.
If you've ever been in a situation where you're all
(14:35):
stressed and the words are coming out of your mouth
and you wish you could shove them back in, that
was me. So I was just micromanaging him. You know,
you got a tux and let me try 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
(14:56):
home and she reaches out and grabs my bicep and
she's like, you're being annoying. If she doesn't want flowers, letter,
if it's going to ruin his shoes, let them. If
he wants to get soaking wet, let other if she's
gonna ruin her hair, letter And it was just like this,
let them, let them, let them. It's their problem, not
yours for crying out loud. Let them do what they
(15:17):
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 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 5 (15:36):
The seriously, why why am I? Why am I concerned
about this?
Speaker 4 (15:40):
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
(16:02):
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 best they can. Some days
they're just like, let them. I'm not gonna 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, let
him be disappointed.
Speaker 5 (16:18):
Let me show up with a little bit more compassion.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
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 I could not believe how
much time I wasted on stupid things. I couldn't believe
(16:41):
how stressed out I was due to dumb things. If
you allow zoom calls and 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
(17:02):
gonna go home and take it out in your family,
and that's why you don't have time.
Speaker 5 (17:05):
And energy because it's being sad, because it's getting drained
all day long.
Speaker 4 (17:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (17:10):
Yes.
Speaker 4 (17:11):
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 to either better my life or to better
(17:32):
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 3 (17:51):
We'll be back in a moment with a slight change
of plans, 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
(18:14):
for pre order today at changewithmaya dot com slash book.
I would appreciate your early support of this project so much.
It's 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.
On the night of her son's prom, Mel Robbins was
(18:36):
trying to micromanage everything, like where her son and his
friend should go for dinner or whether his date should
wear a corsage. Then Mel's daughter said two simple words,
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
(18:59):
asked her to break it down in more detail. For me,
the let them theory is simple.
Speaker 4 (19:05):
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
(19:28):
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
(19:49):
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
(20:11):
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
(20:33):
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.
(20:55):
Let me decide what I'm going to think about this,
Let me decide.
Speaker 5 (20:58):
What I'm going to do or don't do about.
Speaker 4 (21:01):
This, and let me decide how I'm going to process
my own feelings about this, and so in normal day
to day's circumstances. The way that this works is if
somebody's disappointed. Let them be disappointed. You can't make it
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
(21:23):
holding the birthday and you've had a long day at
work and you just would rather go to a yoga.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Out of my brain, well, how do you know my life?
Speaker 3 (21:32):
Like?
Speaker 4 (21:32):
Literally, let them be disappointed, because here's what I want you.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
To vegetarian and I don't drink alcohol, so I always
get ripped off when you do the fourteen person text
split yes.
Speaker 4 (21:40):
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.
Speaker 5 (21:50):
It's been a busy week at work.
Speaker 4 (21:52):
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 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 one on one, and that's how you handle that
situation and kind of a day to day thing. In
(22:14):
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 let me, which is really about
boundaries what's mine to own and what's yours to own,
(22:34):
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 experience bracing.
And one of the things that let them did is
let them force me to practice radical acceptance. Let them
(22:56):
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'd been explaining away for a very
long time and somehow turning it back as it's my fault.
And then the let me part helps me start to
(23:17):
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, or a date or an interview
(23:38):
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 3 (24:00):
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.
(24:21):
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
(24:43):
so that it doesn't stop other people from engaging us
in difficult conversations that could help us become better people,
or us engaging with other people to try to help them.
Speaker 4 (24:54):
Yeah, let me is where you engage in the conversation.
Speaker 5 (24:58):
Let me is where you tell the truth.
Speaker 4 (25:02):
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 that you're dating this person. How are you
feeling about the relationship. I'm here to support you, you know.
(25:23):
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 any kind of tension with somebody, And so instead,
(25:44):
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 a way that is respectful and not emotional, instead
(26:05):
of constantly avoiding the conversation than 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, or what we're doing this afternoon,
or what's going to happen at work tomorrow, we start
to feel unsafe and a little on edge. And the
(26:28):
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. So we step in and try to
fix it. And what happens when you do that is
(26:50):
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. They might do it once
to appease you and get you off their back, yes,
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
(27:10):
theory is going to help you in situations where somebody
is in your life and you want to change them,
and all we want to change everybody in our lives,
got opinions about everybody.
Speaker 5 (27:19):
So the way that you do is you let them
be there and let me try a different approach.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
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 see let them
(27:48):
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.
Speaker 4 (28:06):
Health, yes, or this relationship relationship, because part of what
actually creates friction and tension and distance in a relationship
is the opinion that somebody else should change.
Speaker 5 (28:19):
And what I've found is if.
Speaker 4 (28:20):
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,
(28:41):
or at least witnessing them.
Speaker 5 (28:43):
Clearly as they are. Now.
Speaker 4 (28:45):
You have a separate boundary in relation to them, which is,
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 what I think about this,
(29:08):
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. Yeah,
you know, the truth is this thing brings you closer
to people in your life because when you create space
(29:31):
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. No,
I just see you exactly as you are. And even
(29:52):
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
instead of judging you and not talking to you about it.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
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
(30:23):
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.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
As they are.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
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 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
(30:55):
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 4 (31:05):
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. Yeah, if you think
about the experience of being a child, your entire conditioning
around relationships is from a power dynamic where somebody expects
(31:30):
things of you and tells you what to do and
parents you, and that's their job.
Speaker 5 (31:36):
But then we become eighteen years.
Speaker 4 (31:38):
Old and we think that 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, beautiful idea.
(32:05):
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 happiness and moods
(32:27):
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 in and try
(32:47):
to take it away. I would come in with the advice.
I would tell them what to do, absolutely, 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
(33:08):
you believe in the person's capacity and 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
(33:35):
with this, to learn from it, to 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 heartbroken. You know,
I'm sorry is happening to you, And I believe in
your ability to move through this. I believe that you're
(33:57):
going to be okay. But is there anything that you
want to do about this right now?
Speaker 5 (34:02):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (34:04):
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. I mean,
the evolution's extraordinary. How would you summarize what your current
(34:28):
relationship with control is in relation to other people?
Speaker 4 (34:33):
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
(34:56):
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
(35:17):
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 3 (35:49):
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 life search for belonging.
Speaker 6 (36:12):
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 3 (36:23):
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 Shunker. 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 theme song,
(36:47):
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 Mayah Schunker.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
See you next week.
Speaker 4 (37:24):
Can I just tell you something, the worse I look,
the better our content does. And I'm looking pretty decent today.
Speaker 5 (37:31):
So we're fucked.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
We're totally screwed.
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