Courtesy of Iris Pastor.
Sometimes I think I live under a rock.
Up until a week ago, I had never heard of Mel Robbins.
Have you?
Most probably you have.
At age 41, Mel Robbins was unemployed, $800,000 in debt and her husband’s business was crumbling. Today she is a New York Times best-selling author and a world-renowned expert on motivation and changing your behavior. Her work is translated into 41 languages and her podcast is top rated too.
Like many of us, she struggled for years with envy, jealousy, fear of change and being overly sensitive to other’s opinion of her.
How’d she get past all that baggage? She shares her groundbreaking insights in her book “Let Them.”
Here are some of her most salient points on the path to self-empowerment:
• Let go of things we cannot control.
• Allow other people in our lives to take charge of their own destinies and navigate their own challenges, thus abdicating our responsibility for other’s personal happiness.
When faced with a plethora of unpleasant tasks, who wants to get up in the morning? Not me. Probably not you. Not Mel Robbins either. But she did.
She forced herself out of bed.
She pushed herself to take action.
She fought through her fear, self-doubt and myriad excuses
All this revolves around Mel Robbins “let them” mantra. It’s all about controlling our own thoughts, actions and responses. It’s all about letting go of the belief that we can control other’s actions and choices. And it’s all about not letting other people’s behaviors bother us.
Robbins emphasizes “let them” is “not letting something go” — which implies surrendering to something. “Let them” is coming from a well of strength — where we release our grip on how we feel things should go and allow them to unfold the way they will go, thus freeing ourselves to put our energies into our own silo.
Who can’t relate to life’s aggravations?
A child who balks at practicing his Hebrew though his Bar Mitzvah is just days away.
An adult daughter who chooses a different religious path to follow than the one she was raised in.
A spouse who doesn’t eat healthy.
A parent — without a filter — who blurts out insults about the lack of our keeping a strictly kosher home.
A boss who doesn’t recognize our worth.
A friend who leaves us out of a break the fast at her home.
“Let me” is the next step in our personal quest for peace, success and joy.
“Let me” is our taking responsibility for what we do next when confronted with these situations and making it our personal choice to empower ourselves to be the change we want to see.
It’s hard work to change. It’s accepting the fact that very often life isn’t fair and that many people are dealt better hands than we were. It’s about not being jealous of other’s success but learning from them how they achieved it.
It’s hard work to change. It means showing up every day to do the tasks that are often boring, irritating and uncomfortable. As one of Mel Robbins’ friends, Jeff Walker, who is also a best-selling author, said, “You gotta do ‘the reps.’”
Let’s start right this minute to do the reps!
Keep Preserving Your Bloom,
Iris Pastor
