Let Them, Sometimes
Self-help for the Me First crowd
The popular book “The Let Them Theory” by Mel Robbins advocates for the acceptance of other people’s behavior. Someone cuts you off in traffic, don’t sweat it. Your adult child decides to move to China to teach. Plan to visit them. A friend decides to quit your weekly card game. Think about other ways to engage with them.
While Robbins touts her book as a breakthrough, radical acceptance is not a new idea. It has been around since the time of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, Stoic philosophers who both talked about accepting what cannot be controlled. They lived at the beginning of the Christian era, and emphasized that acceptance of fate is a key part of the path to inner peace. This thinking was incorporated into Buddhism in around the 6th century.
It’s interesting that psychology has developed a variety of ways to use acceptance in clinical treatments. In the 1940s psychologist Carl Rogers emphasized unconditional positive regard which focused on accepting the person as they are. This became a core part of many humanistic therapies. It was later explicitly included in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), developed by Steven C. Hayes in the 1980s. ACT works by helping people to accept difficult thoughts and feelings while continuing to move forward in their lives.
This idea can work well in our personal lives. As we move out in concentric circles to wider spheres — family, community, state, nation, and world — things get more complicated, and “let them” becomes not only harder to do, but often means losing rights and moving away from personal values. Allowing others to make laws and regulations becomes onerous. In these wider contexts, “let them” means giving up or giving in, and most of us aren’t willing to do that.
Sometimes I wish others would follow this advice. I’d love it if conservative Christians would just let other people be who they are: gay, trans, or otherwise. It would be great if women could choose what to do with their own bodies. Just let them. And why do we have to eliminate DEI programs? It seems like we should let companies be able to do what works for them.
Of course, this is why “let them” is just an interesting thought, and not a practical way to behave outside of particular situations. Everyone seems to know how others should live, and then wants to inscribe their beliefs in law to force others to do things their way. Everything is all rainbows and beautiful music until someone decides that your backyard would make a good toxic waste site. Then you really don’t want to let them.
There are plenty of times when you need to stand up for yourself, particularly if you or those you love are faced with harmful or abusive behavior. Then you should not “let them,” but rather engage in confrontation and advocacy, even going to the authorities if necessary. One difficulty that Robbins doesn’t address is how to decide when to be passive and when to act. This may be because she just does what she wants in each situation.
Robbins is trained as a lawyer. In this book, her advice ranges from relationships to parenting to psychological change theory. I think maybe the biggest problem that Robbins has is a lack of a moral foundation. How does she decide when to “let them” and when to act to stop them? It’s just up to each individual to decide. In a recent interview she was asked, “Who or what is your moral compass?” Robbins’s answer was immediate: “Me. I’m my moral compass.” (Sound familiar?) She continued to say that there were no external influences on her moral calculus. (Morality requires other people, Peter W. Marty, The Christian Century, March 2026 p. 1)
In the political sphere, this is a particularly bad time to embrace the “let them theory.” Much of what MAGA followers are doing is wrong — people are being harmed, traditional values are being upended (see my post Basic Ethics), and valued institutions are being destroyed. If we “let them” we are allowing global warming to get worse, making it harder for some citizens to vote, and approving the use of military-style power against ordinary people.
It may be better to use some ancient wisdom to choose when to act. Years ago, Reinhold Niebuhr put it this way:
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
