The yr 2020 was a nasty one for Cassie Phillips. Her husband had not too long ago returned from an abroad deployment, and whereas he was away, she informed me, she’d not often heard from him. The pandemic started, and the household moved to Savannah, Georgia, the place they didn’t know many individuals. Phillips felt remoted in her new dwelling, and her marriage was falling aside.
Late at evening, on her pc, she began writing out some traces—“In the event that they wish to go weeks with out speaking to you, LET THEM”; “In the event that they wish to comply with the group, LET THEM”—to remind herself that she couldn’t management her husband’s conduct. The writing was an try and “get via the day realizing I didn’t have anyone however myself,” Phillips stated; she was “studying not to surrender on different individuals, however understanding I needed to belief myself.”
The phrase Allow them to wasn’t solely Phillips’s personal invention—she was impressed, partly, by a video clip wherein Tyler Perry’s character Madea says, “If someone desires to stroll out of your life, allow them to go.” In 2022, Phillips left her husband and bought the phrases allow them to tattooed on her arm, with the L in print and the remaining in cursive. She posted an image of the tattoo on Fb, together with the traces she had been writing—she calls them a collection of mantras, however many individuals check with them as a poem. That publish went viral, for a poem no less than; presently, it has almost 50,000 shares.
Phillips noticed individuals reposting the poem on Fb and Instagram, and even screen-printing it on T-shirts. She thought that was cool, however it didn’t happen to her to attempt to earn a living from the “Allow them to” concept. On the time, she was working at a nursing dwelling and as a bartender, taking good care of her children, and making an attempt to carry it collectively psychologically. “I used to be in survival mode,” Phillips stated.
In Could of the next yr, Phillips noticed an Instagram video from the favored podcaster and self-help creator Mel Robbins wherein Robbins stated, “I simply heard about this factor known as the ‘Let Them Idea.’ I freaking love this. If your folks aren’t inviting you out to brunch this weekend, allow them to.” Initially, Phillips, who assumed the publish was referring to her work, was flattered; she despatched Robbins a message thanking her for sharing her phrases.
“I didn’t actually care about credit score,” Phillips stated. She didn’t know what Robbins had deliberate for the speculation. “I didn’t actually assume it was going to be”—she looked for the best phrase—“saved.”
A number of weeks after Robbins posted her Instagram video, she talked about “Let Them” on her podcast, which has greater than 37 million month-to-month downloads. “I shared one thing known as the ‘Let Them Idea’ in an Instagram publish lower than every week in the past, and I simply seemed it up; there are over 14 million views of this factor,” she shelp. The explanation the publish resonated, she added, is that “each single considered one of us struggles with controlling conduct, or we wrestle with controlling ideas, and the ‘Let Them Idea’ is a means which you could examine your self in order that your controlling nature or your controlling or obsessive ideas don’t management you.” The YouTube video for that episode now has greater than 3 million views.
In late 2024, Robbins launched a e-book known as The Let Them Idea, which turned the best-selling e-book of 2025 and has offered greater than 9 million copies. As her writer put it, “I’ve been working at Hay Home for 37 years, and we’ve had plenty of big-selling books, however nothing as large as this.” Robbins launched the e-book right into a market the place nonfiction gross sales—by no means particularly strong—had been notably abysmal, down almost 10 % from the earlier yr.
The Let Them Idea advises readers to cease making an attempt to regulate others and as a substitute take duty for themselves. I discovered components of it genuinely useful. Robbins consists of probably the greatest explanations of motivational interviewing—a way wherein an individual tries to assist a liked one provide you with their very own causes for altering their conduct—that I’ve learn in my 12 years of protecting psychology. And I appreciated her recommendation to not drive a friendship. Nonetheless, studying the e-book, I discovered some tonally jarring clunkers. A chapter arguing that folks ought to settle for that life isn’t truthful consists of the road “It’s not truthful that your nation is torn aside by conflict.” At instances, she assumes that her viewers has the worst attainable habits and intentions: In assuring the reader that they will “create something you need in life,” Robbins provides that they’re unlikely to take action in the event that they sustain “this silly and poisonous behavior of evaluating your self to different individuals. Cease it.” The e-book is unquestionably motivating, in the way in which that getting yelled at by your mom will be motivating.
Robbins writes that the speculation got here to her when, on the evening of her son’s promenade, her daughter Kendall urged her to cease micromanaging his alternative of pre-dance restaurant. “Mother, if Oakley and his pals wish to go to a taco bar for pre-prom, LET THEM,” she recounts Kendall saying. Robbins additionally acknowledges that many individuals and teams, together with the Stoics and the Buddhists, have beforehand lauded the virtues of detachment. Certainly, between Seneca and Mel Robbins got here “Let It Be,” I’m OK—You’re OK, and “Shake It Off.”
Of all of the e-book’s citations—203 in complete, in line with a consultant for Robbins—none of them credit Phillips’s work. Robbins has denied studying the poem or being impressed by it. Her consultant informed me, “neither Mel, the actual fact checkers, the researchers nor the publishers noticed the poem.”
Phillips doubts Robbins’s origin story. Her “Let Them” traces had been broadly shared on-line by the point Robbins was writing her e-book, and he or she thinks that Robbins, or her staff, would seemingly have encountered them. In her poem, Phillips writes, “If they’re displaying you who they’re and never what you perceived them to be, LET THEM.” Within the e-book, Robbins writes, “Let Them present you who they’re.” Phillips writes, “In the event that they wish to choose or misunderstand you, LET THEM.” Robbins writes, “Let Them choose. Let Them disapprove.” Robbins additionally writes that folks had been impressed by her podcast to get Let Them tattoos, however a number of of the tattoos pictured within the e-book appear to be Phillips’s, with comparable lettering. Phillips stated that Robbins by no means responded to her message or later makes an attempt to contact her.
Phillips is very incensed that in July 2024, Robbins filed a trademark for “Let Them,” in an utility that’s nonetheless ongoing. She nervous {that a} trademark would imply that she and others who needed to talk or write concerning the concept must pay Robbins a licensing price. She additionally appeared to seek out the transfer usually unsavory. “Don’t take a mindset and say, Effectively, now I’ve declared that is mine,” Phillips stated.
I don’t know if Robbins sees it that means—her consultant declined interview requests for this text. However after I learn her e-book, I did marvel. In a passage about beginning your individual enterprise, Robbins tells her readers to comply with the instance of a enterprise proprietor who’s already profitable, and to not be afraid about whether or not you’ll seem to be you “copied them.” “Let Them assume you copied them,” she writes. “Since you did.”
Phillips, together with her southern drawl and working-class background, is a perfect David to Robbins’s wealthy, polished Goliath. Many individuals—principally fellow writers—have come to her protection, urging Robbins to credit score her. Phillips has grow to be an emblem of kinds for authors who won’t ever earn out their advances, grow to be greatest sellers, or in any other case be like Mel Robbins.
A author named Andy Mort has posted a collection of movies on YouTube dissecting the said timeline of Robbins’s discovery of “Let Them,” making an attempt to poke holes in the concept that she realized about it on the evening of her child’s promenade. The movies now have greater than 100,000 views. (I’ve watched a number of of those and don’t discover them dispositive both means.)
Sage Justice, a author with a reputation oddly applicable for this controversy, has written a number of posts on her Substack accusing Robbins of cribbing from Phillips. “Mel Robbins made a mint off of somebody who had a smaller viewers however was constructing momentum,” she informed me. “If we don’t say one thing, it’s simply going to maintain taking place. Then how do writers like us ever get forward? How can we get that large break?” Justice talked about that she is coping with housing insecurity and monetary difficulties, and that she would love a profitable publishing deal.
Jeff Guenther, a therapist and a social-media influencer often known as Remedy Jeff, has additionally criticized Robbins on social media. He informed me that he believes that “Let Them” is an oversimplified model of an actual psychological technique; he doesn’t like that Robbins, who just isn’t an expert psychologist, “took a really particular remedy method” and “made it match on a tote bag.” He objects, for instance, to Robbins’s recommendation for methods to take care of political disagreements with members of the family. Guenther thinks that fairly than merely letting family members maintain doubtlessly dangerous beliefs, as Robbins has advocated, individuals with the opposing view ought to “communicate the fuck up.”
As Guenther and I had been winding down our dialog, he admitted, “There’s jealousy right here.” Guenther has a e-book out, however it’s offered far fewer copies than The Let Them Idea. He appreciates that he’s “web well-known,” however Robbins is web well-known and “e-book well-known”—and don’t all writers wish to be e-book well-known?
Past Guenther, lots of Robbins’s detractors are seemingly motivated, no less than partly, by envy. Folks are inclined to really feel most envious of people that appear much like them and who’ve achieved one thing spectacular in an space that’s related to their very own id, Nicole Henniger, a professor at Tennessee Tech College who research envy, informed me. A bronze-medal-winning determine skater is extra prone to envy a gold-medal-winning determine skater than they’re a pole vaulter or a plumber. One rationalization is that as our mind strains to inform us tales about our existence, we are inclined to look to comparable, profitable individuals as proxies for different lives we may have lived. “I really feel like I possibly ought to be capable of do what they’ve accomplished” is how Henniger defined the sensation. And naturally, in a zero-sum contest, people who find themselves much like you however barely forward of you might be your competitors.
If I’m sincere, skilled jealousy might be additionally a part of why I spent a major period of time reporting a narrative a couple of self-help e-book, regardless of All the things That’s Going On. In a shrinking nonfiction-book market, one wherein the victor has reaped an obscene quantity of spoils, one particular person’s overwhelming success—particularly if their core concept doesn’t appear very unique—will be jealousy-inducing. Nobody would have made such a fuss over Robbins if she had offered fewer than 1,000 copies, as the vast majority of books do.
Jealousy isn’t the one cause that somebody would possibly take Phillips’s aspect. Many individuals generally tend to root for underdogs out of a way of justice, Nadav Goldschmied, a psychologist on the College of San Diego, informed me. Regardless of what The Let Them Idea purports, individuals wish to assume that life is truthful, and the potential for a darkish horse prevailing makes it appear extra so, Goldschmied stated. He has studied this phenomenon in conditions comparable to Olympic matchups and the Israel-Palestine battle. Within the latter case, individuals had been proven a map, and he discovered that they tended to really feel extra sympathetic to whichever nation was portrayed as smaller relative to different international locations.
A part of the strain right here will also be defined by the truth that influencers, podcasters, and different web stars might not have the identical dedication to attribution that journalists and teachers do. An editor at a distinguished writer—who requested to not be named as a result of he wasn’t approved to talk to the press—informed me, “A few of that is individuals inserting a tutorial understanding of data onto podcasters, for whom mental credibility just isn’t a supply of hysteria.”
Past making an attempt to dam the trademark, there isn’t a lot Phillips or her supporters can do at this level. A two-word poem title isn’t copyrightable. Publishers typically even put out books with the identical precise title as a earlier e-book, the editor informed me. “That doesn’t actually matter until the title is, like, Gone With the Wind,” he stated. And self-help books are typically no less than a little bit by-product. Many authors—myself included—steadily dip from the identical effectively of time-worn psychological methods. Atomic Habits, a e-book about behavior change, closely cites The Energy of Behavior, an earlier e-book about behavior change; my e-book about character change builds on a number of different books about the identical subject.
The editor additionally stated that the important thing to promoting nonfiction books isn’t essentially a title or an concept, however an individual’s fan base—one thing that Robbins had already effectively established together with her podcast and a earlier greatest vendor, The 5 Second Rule. (Podcasts are a very essential engine behind nonfiction-book gross sales; some book-publicity companies now have publicists devoted solely to pitching podcasts.)
Taking a step again, one may argue that everybody on this drama is definitely doing fantastic. Robbins definitely appears fantastic. Phillips has greater than 20,000 followers on Instagram and is now working as a contract author. She isn’t positive she’d wish to pursue a settlement with Robbins, if it got here to that, as a result of it’d embrace a non-disparagement clause, and he or she’d need the liberty to debate “Let Them” nonetheless she happy.
The editor on the distinguished writer may additionally see the brilliant aspect of this saga: He stated that no less than it means “individuals nonetheless care about books.” Within the age of AI-written novels, he stated, “it’s sort of thrilling that there are readers on the market sufficient in policing the mental integrity of books that they bothered.”
Fervid dialogue about books tends to be good for different books. If individuals wish to argue over who really created the “Let Them Idea,” possibly we must always—effectively, you understand.
