The First Steps to Reducing Your Anxiety with author Mel Robbins

Life can feel overwhelming, especially when we're too drained to even get out of bed. So, how do we push through those days? For Mel Robbins, facing this very question turned her life around. Struggling with $800,000 in debt and at rock bottom, she became obsessed with finding practical ways to regain control. Fast-forward to today, and Mel is a bestselling author and podcast host who has helped millions transform their lives. In her latest book, The Let Them Theory, she reveals how shedding the weight of others' expectations can help us live more authentically. I sat down with Mel to dive into how we can take action when we're emotionally spent, why our need for control ties us to other people's opinions, and how giving others the freedom to be themselves allows us to align with our true values. This…is A Bit of Optimism. For more on Mel and her work, check out: The Mel Robbins Podcast and her book, The Let Them Theory

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Simon Sinek?

  I love the way you speak. I'm captivated this entire time, taking in every word. Not agreeing with all of them, but taking them in.

• 0:08Speaker 01

  Let them.

• 0:08Simon Sinek?

  Uh, let them.

• 0:10Speaker 01

  I don't care.

• 0:13Simon Sinek?

  Control freaks, breathe easy. Mel Robbins is here. And she's clearing a space to help us let go of our anxiety and help all of us live our best lives. Mel has one of the most popular podcasts in the world. And she has a new book called The Let Them Theory, which is profound in the impact it's having in people's lives. Mel is a force of nature and one of my favorite guests that I've ever had on the podcast. This is A Bit of Optimism.

• 0:46Simon Sinek?

  So, one of the things that you and I have in common is that it's amazing that we're still around.

• 0:56Speaker 01

  Who the hell are you calling old, Simon?

• 0:58Simon Sinek?

  Given, no, no. Given that, given that the work that we did on TED that sort of helped the world know what we were thinking about the world was many years ago.

• 1:09Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:09Simon Sinek?

  Yours, 13 years ago.

• 1:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13Simon Sinek?

  Mine 15 years ago.

• 1:14Speaker 01

  15?

• 1:15Simon Sinek?

  I know, painful.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  So you're the dinosaur. I'm the younger one.

• 1:18Simon Sinek?

  Yes.

• 1:20Speaker 01

  At least in TED years.

• 1:21Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, at least in TED years. Did you know that your work would resonate as loud as it has?

• 1:29Speaker 01

  Are you kidding me? So, so literally, let me give you the backstory.

• 1:32Simon Sinek?

  Okay.

• 1:33Speaker 01

  So it is 2011. And my husband is in a failing restaurant business. We have liens on the house and we're 800 grand in debt.

• 1:44Simon Sinek?

  Okay, that sucks.

• 1:46Speaker 01

  Oh, it sucks, all right. Three kids under the age of 10. Friends and family have invested.

• 1:50Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 1:50Speaker 01

  And I am scrambling to make money however I can, to put gas in the tank and groceries on the table. A couple of years prior, I had created this little thing that I call the five-second rule, which is this technique of counting backwards, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, to launch yourself through an excuse, or doubt, or anxiety, or whatever, and just do what you need to do. And I invented it to help me get out of bed on those mornings when the anxiety was so crushing that I couldn't get out of bed. And so I would five, four, three, two, one, get out of bed. And I started using this little countdown thing to push me through all the excuses

• 2:33Speaker 01

  and take all the little actions, one by one, that slowly put my life back on track. But I got a phone call from a friend of mine from college who said, hey, there's this person putting on this thing out in San Francisco and they're looking for somebody who has changed their career a lot. And she said, I thought of you. She said, they're offering two plane tickets and two nights at the St. Regis. And Simon, when you're $800,000 in debt, that sounds like a vacation. And so I said, sure. Now, keep in mind, I'd only taken a speaking class, like a public speaking class in high school. I was not a professional speaker. I had never stood on a stage in front of an audience and delivered any kind of keynote.

• 3:18Speaker 01

  But I wasn't thinking about that because I was thinking about, okay, I'm going to get to San Francisco. Chris and I are going to have a couple of days away from our kids. This is going to be amazing. I get there and it's like, oh, my God, I got to give a speech? I forgot about this part. So when you watch my TEDx talk, you are literally witnessing a 21-minute-long panic attack. If you look closely a minute in, you will notice I have this gigantic neck rash that people get when they drink too much or they have anxiety. I'm darting around the stage in and out of the spotlight. And around minute 19, I forgot how to end it. And I couldn't remember how I was supposed to end it. And so I blurred out the five-second rule, which I had never shared with anybody except for my husband.

• 4:02Speaker 01

  And at the end of saying, oh, there's this thing I do. I call it the five-second rule. The moment you have an instinct to act, you got to move within five seconds or your brain kills your motivation to act. Thank you very much. And then I said, and if you have any questions, here's my email address. And I walked offstage. And that was that. And a year went by. And then TEDx put it online. I didn't even know it was online. And another year goes by, so I'm now in my life. We're paying our bills. My marriage is back on track. I'm still using 54321 in my own life. And all of a sudden, emails start coming in to that email address. And it's from people around the world who were using the 54321 countdown technique to do amazing things.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  And I would stay up late at night after working all day, answering strangers' emails. Because I felt this obligation to respond to people because they were using something. I never, ever thought that it would be anything other than a couple nights in San Francisco. And I look back on it now, and I think there are these moments in your life when you look backwards, where you say there was something so much bigger happening, and I didn't realize it. And that was one of those moments.

• 5:19Simon Sinek?

  Well, it's an amazing thing, because now the five-second rule is a thing.

• 5:21Speaker 01

  Oh, it's massive.

• 5:22Simon Sinek?

  And the thing that I think is wonderful is you've contributed to the zeitgeist, like that people don't even know that it's you.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  I love that.

• 5:30Simon Sinek?

  It is now part of, it is now woven into the vernacular.

• 5:34Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 5:35Simon Sinek?

  And people recommend it to each other. They say it. They know what it is. And it doesn't matter if your name is attached to it. The point is, is you've made a contribution to people in a way that, like, the idea that you can mechanically produce something that will tap into the zeitgeist and take off, I think is false. I don't know if that's possible. And I think the things that your work, my work, they're accidents. They're accidents. You know, looking back, I think we can both say, I understand why it resonates. Because it was born out of reality. It wasn't born out of a, I read a thing in a magazine, you know? It was born out of something you needed to do, something that you were struggling with, that clearly other people were struggling with the same thing.

• 6:17Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 6:18Simon Sinek?

  Which is, how do I motivate? How do I get out of bed? How do I do these things?

• 6:20Speaker 01

  How do I do the things I know I need to do, but I can't make myself do it?

• 6:22Simon Sinek?

  How do I do the thing I don't want to do it?

• 6:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:24Simon Sinek?

  And it's so obvious. It's kind of like a little kid standing at the deep end going, "Okay, 54321," and you jump.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 6:29Simon Sinek?

  I mean, it's the same thing.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 6:31Simon Sinek?

  So the question where I started was, could you have predicted what has happened?

• 6:37Speaker 01

  I think you would have to be an arrogant sociopath to think.

• 6:40Simon Sinek?

  But looking back, you can understand it.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  Oh, I understand now.

• 6:44Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  And the reason why it connected is because there is so much information. I personally believe that most people know what they need to do. Or you're one Google search away from it. But there's not a lot of how. And for me, I'm fascinated by intellectual concepts and philosophy and all this stuff. But I don't know how to apply it. Like, I've always been the kind of person that wanted to let things go, but I never can. Because I feel like if I let it go, I'm admitting defeat. And so for me, the experience of sharing. One simple thing that helped me during one of the hardest moments of my life. It taught me a number of things.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  Number one, absolutely everyone who is struggling. And at some point, everybody struggles, everybody feels stuck, everybody feels lonely. You think you're the only one, and you're not. The second thing it taught me is that in life, when things feel overwhelming and complicated. The more complicated the solution, the less likely it's going to work. You need something obvious and simple, because when you're already overwhelmed and stuck. You're missing hope. And you're also not able to leverage the full capacity of your brain. Because you're stressed out and you're overwhelmed and you're up in your head. And so the simpler the idea, the more likely you're going to be able to use it.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  And the third thing that it taught me is the extraordinary power of ignoring how you feel and forcing yourself to do something.

• 8:20Simon Sinek?

  All right, talk about that one more. Because that, that's, I have no problem letting myself down.

• 8:26Speaker 01

  What do you mean?

• 8:27Simon Sinek?

  So, so for example, I know I need to get back in shape. I know I need to go to the gym. And I'll wake up in the morning and say, like, all right, workout. I got all the workout stuff at home, you know, I don't need to even go anywhere. Well, you're up early, why don't you, why don't you work out? And I'd be like, meh.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  You didn't feel like it.

• 8:43Simon Sinek?

  Do the crossword puzzle instead.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:45Simon Sinek?

  And I don't mind. Like, it doesn't bother me that I let myself down. Like, okay, I don't feel guilt, shame. But if I'm meeting somebody to work out, I will be there 100%.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  Of course. So do you actually want to solve this?

• 8:58Simon Sinek?

  Go on, yes.

• 8:59Speaker 01

  Well, because people only change when they feel like it. And this does not, to me, sound like a compelling enough reason in terms of your why. And I don't think you're committed to changing it, so I don't think you're gonna do it. If you really wanted to do it, you're a smart enough person that you would solve this problem. See, I think the issue is-

• 9:15Simon Sinek?

  I don't think it's a question of intelligence.

• 9:16Speaker 01

  No, I don't either. I think it's that you listen to your emotions in the moment and you allow them to dictate what you do.

• 9:23Simon Sinek?

  Nah, I think it's, I think it's routine. Like, when you're in a routine, it's hard to get out of it.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  But do you agree-

• 9:29Simon Sinek?

  Like, if I'm working out on a regular basis, it's very hard. So, when, I used to run a lot.

• 9:33Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 9:33Simon Sinek?

  And when I was running a lot-

• 9:35Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 9:37Simon Sinek?

  I just loved running. And I was in the routine, and I would, I'd be, it'd be the afternoon, I'd look at my watch and I'd be like, "I don't have a meeting for another hour, I'm gonna go for a run." I would just go for a run. Like, when I, when I was in the routine, I loved being in the routine. And so, I'm in the routine of not working out. That's my routine. So I think it's hard to change routines.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  True.

• 9:57Simon Sinek?

  And I'm in the routine of not doing.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  See, I believe people only change when they want to.

• 10:02Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 10:02Speaker 01

  And that if you don't feel like doing something, you're not going to. And the truth is, that waiting around to feel like doing this-

• 10:12Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  Or waiting around for you to be motivated or inspired to break your routine, that's not enough.

• 10:18Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 10:19Speaker 01

  And it's not a matter of will, it's a matter of skill. And it is a skill in life to be able to feel what you feel and then do what you need to do. You know, one of the most famous taglines in the world is Nike, "Just do it."

• 10:32Simon Sinek?

  Sure.

• 10:33Speaker 01

  What's the most powerful word of those three words?

• 10:36Simon Sinek?

  The do.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  No.

• 10:38Simon Sinek?

  The just.

• 10:38Speaker 01

  Yes. If their tagline had been, "Do it!"

• 10:41Simon Sinek?

  Oh yeah, you would have hated that.

• 10:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course, because pressure-

• 10:44Simon Sinek?

  It's aggressive.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  It's, not only that it's aggressive, if you look at basic brain wiring-

• 10:49Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 10:50Speaker 01

  That type of pressure doesn't motivate. It actually creates resistance to change.

• 10:55Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  Because it is an assault on your fundamental need to control yourself.

• 11:00Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 11:00Speaker 01

  But the tagline, "Just do it,"

• 11:02Simon Sinek?

  Hmm.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  appeals to your humanity.

• 11:04Simon Sinek?

  Hmm.

• 11:05Speaker 01

  It's acknowledging something we all struggle with, which is that moment of hesitation, that moment of self-doubt, that moment where you're standing on the sideline aching to jump in the game, but you are holding yourself back. The just is everything. And that's what the five second rule is. It's acknowledging that we all have this habit of hesitating in the small moments, this bias towards thinking, where we consider how we feel about the thing that we're about to do, instead of doing the small thing that we need to do. And for me, it was the moment of hesitation when the alarm rang. And I knew I needed to get out of bed.

• 11:50Speaker 01

  I knew I needed to get the kids on the bus. I knew I needed to get a job. I knew I needed to not drink so much. I knew I needed to stop screaming at my husband. I knew I needed to ask for help. I wasn't doing any of it. Because in that moment when that alarm rang, and I knew what I needed to do, I stopped and considered how I felt about doing it. And when you stop and consider how you feel, your brain is wired to do what's easy. We naturally move towards it. We are also wired to push away from what feels hard. And the reason why it is so difficult to break patterns is because the patterns that you're in feel easy because you know them. Lying in bed is easy. That's why we do it. Picking up your phone and scrolling on social media. It's easy. That's why we do it. In order to change anything about your life, or to replace any pattern in your life,

• 12:36Speaker 01

  you have to work against basic wiring in your brain. And you have to develop a skill of being able to ignore how you feel and choose to take action, even when you don't want to. And that's what the five second rule taught me. You know, when I look at the success that I've built, and the things that I've done since even the TEDx talk, or that moment in my life 14 years ago, I don't think I'm particularly special. I just did what a lot of people won't do. I got up in the mornings when I didn't feel like it. I did the boring ass tedious grueling crap that needs to get done every day. And I refused to quit.

• 13:17Speaker 01

  And it is a skill to learn how to feel what you're feeling and then align your action with the thing that you know you need to do that's good for you.

• 13:27Simon Sinek?

  Were you always like this? Were you always A-type in like in school? Like what was your?

• 13:30Speaker 01

  Oh, I was a walking red flag for a long time.

• 13:32Simon Sinek?

  What does that mean?

• 13:33Speaker 01

  Uh, that means that I was like, I struggled with a lot of stuff. I think this is why I'm obsessed with, it's why I'm obsessed with uncovering any kind of shortcut or any kind of knowledge or tool that can help you create a better life or solve a problem. Because I spent so much of my life hurting myself or hurting other people because I just didn't know. I mean, there's so many examples of this from trauma in your childhood to I had dyslexia and ADHD. I had no fucking clue I had those things. And part of the reason why I had no clue is because when they were researching ADHD in the seventies, they only looked at boys. And we now know that girls have ADHD just as much as boys.

• 14:17Speaker 01

  They just have the opposite symptoms. And if you're in a classroom and your brain doesn't learn the way that public school or whatever school is asking you to learn, if you don't address dyslexia, dysgraphia, ADHD, what develops on the surface is anxiety. So there are generations of women, I am one of them, who got diagnosed with anxiety in their late teens and early twenties, who were medicated for anxiety.

• 14:45Simon Sinek?

  The wrong thing.

• 14:46Speaker 01

  The wrong thing.

• 14:47Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 14:47Speaker 01

  And I didn't discover that I had ADHD or dyslexia until I was 47 years old. And you want to know how I discovered it? I discovered it the same way the majority of women discover it. Because one of my kids was going through the process of getting evaluated by a neuropsychologist for school. And as I looked at his profile, I'm like, well, that looks like me. And then I went through it and lo and behold, it explained everything. I didn't know. And suddenly knowing gave me a completely different vantage point about the things that I struggled with, about the things that I did that I regret, about the opportunities that I squandered. You know, I recently had on our podcast a really incredible guy by

• 15:30Speaker 01

  the name of Dr. Stuart Ablon. He's a psychologist that's been practicing at Mass General Brigham for 30 years. And he had this thing that he said just a week ago that I will never forget. He said, "People do well when they can. And if you're not doing well, or if somebody in your life is not doing well, it's because they can't right now. There's a, there's a skill. It's not a willpower issue. If somebody is expressing challenging behavior, there's typically some sort of skill that is missing. There's a problem underneath the behavior that hasn't been discovered." And so what I've found in my life is that I have struggled silently. I have felt very stuck in patterns of behavior

• 16:11Speaker 01

  that I didn't feel like equipped to be able to replace or understand, which only leads you to feel worse about yourself. Like, how can I keep doing this to myself? How can I keep making the same mistakes? Why am I so damn hard on myself? And so when you don't know what's going on, or you don't understand kind of the, the trap that you're in, then you have no ability to get out of it. And so for me, it was a revelation to understand that simply counting 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, it allowed me to not be ruled by emotion. It allowed me to not let the patterns of my past dictate the person I was in the present.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  And when you start to gain that kind of control over yourself, it's liberating.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  So no, I wasn't always that person at all.

• 17:06Simon Sinek?

  But were you sort of, did you have, always have a lot of grit, sort of work hard at school?

• 17:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I, I, because I was, I was like, super competitive and like, a lot of people, I got a lot of positive attention. When I got great grades, or when the track team won, or when I was elected president of whatever, and so, yeah.

• 17:23Simon Sinek?

  So it was not that you had the skill of grit and motivation and you lost it? And the 50321 helped you?

• 17:31Speaker 01

  See, I don't think it's an issue of motivation.

• 17:34Simon Sinek?

  Go on.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  I don't, because I think motivation's complete garbage. It's never there when you need it. And that's the paradox of it, is that we're all sitting there waiting to feel motivated.

• 17:43Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  And it's not coming.

• 17:44Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 17:45Speaker 01

  Because, basic wiring of the brain is that you will always default to what's easy. And you always push against what's hard. And if motivation were available on demand, we'd all have a million dollars and six pack abs. And so, sitting around waiting for motivation is the kiss of death. Because it's in the action, that you dissipate the emotion. And it's in the action that you actually prove to yourself through the action, because you see yourself operating differently. That you are a different person, that you are not defined by your emotions. I mean, emotions are just chemical reactions that explode within six seconds. And the research shows that if you can learn how to let them rise and fall like a wave, most emotion dissipates in 90 seconds.

• 18:28Speaker 01

  Instead, what we do is we feel it, and then we think the emotion needs to guide our response to it. And it's actually the opposite, you can choose your response, if you understand what emotions are. And I felt trapped, and I was a hostage to my emotions all the time. And you can either be sunny, and you can be a storm cloud. You get to choose. And for a large part of my life, I was violently oscillating between those two things. And learning how to be in control of the actions that you take, and learning that you do have agency, and that you don't have to wait to feel like it. That you're not going to sit around and wait for motivation, that you're the kind of person

• 19:11Speaker 01

  that is building the skill of doing what needs to get done. And that's an incredible thing.

• 19:17Simon Sinek?

  But do you allow yourself then to feel sad?

• 19:19Speaker 01

  Of course, absolutely. Absolutely, but I get to choose how I sit with it.

• 19:26Simon Sinek?

  So give me an example.

• 19:27Speaker 01

  So you know, like if you're sad, like being sad is a mentally healthy response.

• 19:32Simon Sinek?

  For sure.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  To situations in life.

• 19:34Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  And the thing about it is that there's going to become an amount of time that being in your sadness is helping you process grief, or helping you process heartbreak, or helping you process disappointment. Like for me, the thing that comes to mind is when we moved, so we lived outside of Boston for 26 years. And then about four years ago, we moved to Southern Vermont. And so at the age of 52, all of a sudden, I'm in this tiny little town and I don't know anybody. I don't have any friends. I was very sad. I was very lonely and I sat with it for quite a while. And I think that I over indexed on sadness for probably six months too long.

• 20:20Speaker 01

  And at some point, there's this tipping point with your emotions where you go from needing to process something to truly drowning in it. And that's when I think you need to do something.

• 20:34Simon Sinek?

  Where do other people factor into all this? The idea of asking for help or having a support network. You know, I hear everything you're saying and it's true and inspiring. But where, where do other people fit into this?

• 20:47Speaker 01

  Other people are everything.

• 20:48Simon Sinek?

  Because, you know, we're social animals and none of this works in a vacuum.

• 20:54Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 20:56Simon Sinek?

  So even in your story, at what points would this not have been possible if there wasn't another person involved? I mean, there's only so many times you can say five, four, three, two, one.

• 21:05Speaker 01

  So, so five, four, three, two, one changes your relationship to yourself.

• 21:09Simon Sinek?

  Right. I mean, you, you asked me like, what's the reason you want to be in shape?

• 21:13Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 21:13Simon Sinek?

  Right? And service is the greatest motivator of all. Your family, your friends, whatever it is, the greater good. And I said, I'm okay letting myself down, but I don't want to let other people, I won't let other people down. And I also know that my ability to deal with stress skyrockets if I have at least one person in my life who says, you got this. They don't have to go on the journey with me.

• 21:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 21:36Simon Sinek?

  But if I can call them at the end of the day and be like, I'm not so sure, they're like, yeah. I believe in you and if it all goes south, I'm still gonna love you. And then all of a sudden, I'm golden.

• 21:45Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 21:46Simon Sinek?

  Where is the person sitting next to you? Like, you were there for your husband, who was going through this debt with you. You know, it's his restaurant. I just wanna know the role that other people play or need to play.

• 21:57Speaker 01

  They're everything, but here's the thing. So, that changed my relationship with myself.

• 22:04Simon Sinek?

  Yep.

• 22:04Speaker 01

  And it made me acutely aware that I'm responsible for creating what I want in life. And I'm also responsible for doing the work to make it happen.

• 22:15Simon Sinek?

  So self-reliance.

• 22:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. And the thing that changed everything when it comes to relationships for me is what I discovered two years ago, which I call the let them theory. The let them theory flipped absolutely everything on its head about the way that I approach relationships. I've been married for almost thirty years. I have three adult children. I have now a great friend group. And I realize, looking backwards on my life before the let them theory, that I was approaching relationships and approaching other people in the exact opposite way that I should have been. And I think most people are.

• 23:01Simon Sinek?

  For example?

• 23:02Speaker 01

  Well, I think that most of us waste too much time and energy worrying about managing and trying to control other people and change them. When you learn to let other people be and you learn to love people as they are, and when you learn to let people heal when they're ready, and when you learn that people are who they are and people change when they're ready to change and do the work to change, and when you understand that the best way to love somebody is to not try to change them, but to actually see them as they are and see them as they aren't, and then instead of pouring all the time and energy into trying to fix, manage, worry, change them, you just let them and you detach from the control.

• 23:48Speaker 01

  And then you say the second part, which is let me, let me, instead of controlling them, let me focus on what's within my control. Which is, there's only three things that you can control. You can control what you think in response to something. You can control what you do or don't do. And you can control what you are going to do with your emotions. That's it. That's it. And ultimately, as you know, we all have a very hardwired need for control. And when we don't feel in control, we feel unsafe. And every person that you know has the same need for control. What happens is that in our need to be in charge and in control and to feel safe, we end up trying to control things that are not controllable. And number one on the list is trying to control what other people think,

• 24:33Speaker 01

  trying to control people's emotions, trying to make sure everybody's not disappointed or let down by you. We pour so much energy into that, that we are giving power to other people and we are creating friction for ourselves and stress for ourselves. And we're creating friction and frustration in relationships. And you don't have to live like that. And so I used to be somebody that was micromanaging my kids, trying to control everything that they did. I had massive opinions about what people should be doing. I bent over backwards to try to make sure people weren't disappointed or not letting people down, or that I matched everybody's expectations. It's absolutely exhausting.

• 25:15Speaker 01

  And not only that, you actually will never be able to control the thought that somebody is having in their mind. You are never going to be able to control the emotions that somebody feels in response to what you do. And it is not your job to do that. And so, learning to allow people to be who they are, learning to allow adults to be adults, has created a set of boundaries. And it has also created space for true connection, love and mutual exchange to happen.

• 25:50Simon Sinek?

  What happened that you came to this theory?

• 25:52Speaker 01

  So I was at, I can't believe this is where it happened, but I was at a high school prom.

• 25:59Speaker 01

  And I had gone, no, I discover all this life-changing stuff. And this is the single most important thing I've ever discovered by far. This is the legacy I will leave on this planet. I'm at a high school prom. I have had, mind you, two daughters who have gone through high school prom. So we have done the dramatic five months of bullshit, picking out the dresses, the spray tans, the limos, like the craziness. So I figure, okay, we got this on lock. I know what's going to happen. I thought Oak was going to be a breeze. It was the worst because he didn't know if he was going to go. He was really nonchalant. So I couldn't get like, I didn't know what was happening. And then 48 hours before prom, it's like, I'm going, I'm like, oh my God, where are we going to find a tux in Vermont? Like, you want those tennis shoes? Like, it was a last minute scramble. And so we get to the night of prom.

• 26:43Speaker 01

  We go to the party where we're taking all the photos before prom. And everything is different in Vermont than it was in Boston. So I'm starting to be like, what do you mean? Like, you're driving. Like, you're driving? Isn't there a bus? Like, what? And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, it starts to pour rain. Like, the storms roll in, it's pouring rain. Now all the parents are kind of milling about, what are you guys doing for dinner? I'm like, you don't have dinner reservations? What do you mean? And Oakley's like, well, I think we're just going to the taco stand. And for me, that was just like the end of it. Like, I'm like, taco stand, rainstorm, you're not going, you're going to ruin it. And I start to just lose it. And my daughter was home from college and she reaches over and grabs my arm.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  She's like, Mom, you're annoying, stop it. And I'm like, but, but, but they're going to get soaked. And she's like, let them. And I'm like, but the restaurant's not, let them. But he's going to ruin his tennis, let them. But her hair, let them. Mom, it's their prom, not yours. Let them do what they want. And there was something about the moment and her saying, let them, in this cascading fashion, that every time she said it, it was like a sledgehammer hitting my nervous system. And by the time she said it the last time, let them do what they want.

• 28:08Speaker 01

  I felt this instant peace. And then it occurred to me, why, why the hell do I care about this? Like, why am I not worried about where I'm meeting? And so I walk up to our son Oakley, and as I'm appr- he's like, "What?" You know, because it's been so annoying. I'm like, "Nothing, dude. Here's 40 bucks. Go have fun." And you could see him relax. And, you know, they run out the door, and of course, they splash mud right up her dress, and shoes are ruined. Who cares? And so the next morning, I wake up, and I'm at like, a garden center, buying some plants. And I'm standing there in line. And you know how you're in line? And there's like, five people in front of you, and it's like, beep, beep, beep. Chit chat for small talk.

• 28:52Speaker 01

  And then you start to feel the stress rising. And then you start to think, "Why don't they have another cashier?" And you start to get irritated. And now you think that you can run the garden center better than everybody else. And now you're fidgeting, and you're looking, and you want to turn to the per- and you're like, "Can you believe..." Let them. They're doing traffic. They're doing construction on it. Let them. Your mother's disappointed you're not coming. Let her be disappointed. It is extraordinary how often other people's behavior, or their opinions, or what people are doing pisses you off, stresses you out, or upsets you. And you have zero control over it. So why on earth would you want to give your precious time and energy to something that

• 29:37Speaker 01

  you have zero control over? And as I went through my day, I get home from the garden center, and the dog has taken a dump on the like, front walk, and I'm like, "What is... Let him. Like, I can't control it now. Why would I let this now get me..." Let him. And it was so interesting to just watch how many times I was pulling this lever. How many times I was allowing things out there to get in here. And this is a really big deal, because if you look at burnout, if you look at chronic stress, if you look at how overwhelmed people feel right now, how people are- they don't have any time, they're exhausted at the end of the day. I'm here to tell you, if you feel that way, the problem isn't you.

• 30:19Speaker 01

  The problem is the power you give to other people and things outside your control. And as I started to engage with this, like, wow, there I am. I'm like giving power to people's opinions. Oh, wow, I'm worried that that person's in a bad mood at work and it must be my fault. And so I better be extra nice or help them out so they can... Now, let them be in a bad mood. Why is it my job? That doesn't mean you're not supportive, because here comes the second part. Then you say, once you detach, "Let me. Let me remind myself of my values." And if you're a supportive person, if you're a compassionate person, maybe you are gonna offer support. But if you're exhausted and you've already spent all this time taking on too much, maybe right now is when you say, "You know what? I'm gonna let them deal with themselves and I'm going to let me take a step back,

• 31:03Speaker 01

  because that's actually what I need to do based on my values and my priorities." And so I experimented with this for like three days and I was so blown away by how peaceful I felt, how present I felt, how I wasn't triggered by a particular person in my life who has a kind of narcissistic personality style, because I could just let them be who they are. If your friends don't invite you out this weekend, let them. If the person you're dating doesn't want a commitment, let them. If your kids don't want to go to the flea market with you this weekend, let them. Stop worrying about managing and stressing about other people. Stop forcing them to change. Let people be who they are, because they are revealing themselves to you

• 31:47Speaker 01

  and they're revealing their priorities and what matters to you. And then you get to choose. You get to choose how to respond. And that's where your power is. I used to struggle with guilt all the time. I desperately did not want to let anybody down, didn't want to disappoint anybody. So if the holidays are coming up, my parents live in Michigan. If we're not gonna go home to Michigan, they're gonna be disappointed. Let them. Because let's think about disappointment. Isn't it good? I mean, isn't it a good thing that people want to see you? That they're disappointed that you're not coming home? I mean, doesn't that mean they love you?

• 32:31Speaker 01

  Of course, it means that they love you. I mean, what's the alternative? Thank God Simon's not coming. He's a dickhead. Like, I don't want him here. So let them be disappointed. And then you say the second part, which is let me. And you ask yourself, well, what do I value? And if you truly value family, and it's important to you, then make a decision to go. Not because you don't want to let them down.

• 32:52Simon Sinek?

  It's for you.

• 32:53Speaker 01

  But because it's for you. Because if you operate from a model of, I don't want to let other people down. I don't want to feel guilty. I don't want to disappoint them. You make them the villain.

• 33:01Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 33:02Speaker 01

  And you give your power away.

• 33:03Simon Sinek?

  And you're doing everything for other people. The thing that I really, I mean, you may have already come to this realization, this conclusion. Those two ideas are the same thing. They're two sides of the same coin. It's accountability.

• 33:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:14Simon Sinek?

  And one is taking accountability, five, four, three, two, one. And the other one is ensuring that they have accountability, that you're not taking accountability for them and their actions.

• 33:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 33:22Simon Sinek?

  It's one is being responsible for yourself and making sure that they're responsible for themselves. It's the same thing.

• 33:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 33:27Simon Sinek?

  Which I think is really powerful. And it doesn't surprise me that you came upon both ideas. I learned this a long time ago. And I had a similar experience. I was doing consulting. And I cared that my clients did well, obviously. I took their success personally because I wanted to support them. And I'd give them advice. I have objectivity that they don't have because I'm an outsider. I'm not emotionally connected to whatever it is their business.

• 33:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 33:51Simon Sinek?

  I can see things much more clearly than they can. Not because I'm smarter, just because I'm on the outside. And I would give advice and they would fight with me. And I'd be forced to defend my advice. And I would be passionate about it. I'd have sleepless nights because I really wanted them to succeed. And I realized, same thing. I was like, why the hell am I getting upset over his business? Like, I don't care. And so the next day, I shifted accountability. I gave some advice, gave an observation, and he fought with me. He's like, no, that's not what we should do. We should do this. And I said, look. This is your business. If you are wildly successful, or if you go completely bankrupt, I just want you to know, I don't care. I'm gonna sleep well tonight, regardless of the decision you make. Every decision you make is gonna be the right one,

• 34:36Simon Sinek?

  because it's your decision and it's your business. And I'm, I'm just here to show you stuff that you maybe can't see by yourself.

• 34:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 34:43Simon Sinek?

  So, take my advice or ignore my advice.

• 34:45Speaker 01

  And he took your advice.

• 34:46Simon Sinek?

  It's, and of course, the minute, and I realized what was happening is, the reason I got emotional is because I was taking on accountability, which is why I defended the idea, because it's, I'm taking accountability for the decision. The minute I pushed it in his court, all of a sudden, he started taking the advice. Yes, exactly.

• 35:02Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 35:03Simon Sinek?

  All of a sudden, he, he started listening more.

• 35:05Speaker 01

  People need to think it's their idea.

• 35:07Simon Sinek?

  They need, and, and, oh, it's, I just think that the reason people fight, I think the reason people fight is because they're trying hard not to take accountability. Because if I take accountability, that means I'm responsible for the outcome. But if I can blame you for the outcome, you know?

• 35:23Speaker 01

  I actually think it's deeper than that.

• 35:26Simon Sinek?

  Go on.

• 35:27Speaker 01

  Well, if you have a hardwired need for control.

• 35:29Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 35:31Speaker 01

  And somebody pushes, it is an assault to your agency.

• 35:37Simon Sinek?

  I'm not the one pushing.

• 35:38Speaker 01

  You are by challenging an idea that makes him uncomfortable.

• 35:42Simon Sinek?

  I think that's how it plays out some of the time. Some of the times it's like, hey, we did this research. I recommend you do this. I, it's, sometimes it's very.

• 35:49Speaker 01

  Well, you might have just been dealing with somebody very argumentative.

• 35:51Simon Sinek?

  I, I mean, but, but that's just it, which is that argumentative, defensive person that happens in relationships as well.

• 35:57Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 35:57Simon Sinek?

  Which is we become argumentative because we're triggered by something or we're defending ourselves on something. But the minute the accountability is shifted, and that's what Let Them does. It shifts accountability, which I absolutely adore. And Let Me, like 54321, is me taking accountability and then there's the relationship in between.

• 36:13Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:14Simon Sinek?

  And so if you take accountability for you, and I promise to take accountability for me, I guarantee we're both gonna be happier and more relaxed.

• 36:19Speaker 01

  Yes, and if you stop focusing on things you can't control, you're gonna feel less stressed and frustrated in your life.

• 36:24Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 36:24Speaker 01

  And you're gonna see that no matter what the situation is, you always have power.

• 36:29Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 36:30Speaker 01

  Because you can always focus on your response. And if you look at the word, taking responsibility, it's your ability to respond.

• 36:36Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 36:37Speaker 01

  And, you know, the other area where I think you might be very interested, where this has had a huge impact in my life, is it's changed my entire approach to adult friendship.

• 36:47Simon Sinek?

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:48Speaker 01

  And I know you've been talking about this a lot recently. And I have a philosophy about friendship. That when you are 20 and under, friendship is a group sport. Your entire life is organized so that it is easy to spend time with people your age. And every milestone in your life is measured at the same time. You move through one grade to the next grade, to the next grade, to the next grade. You are able to locate yourself in space and time because you are with people your age, all doing the same thing. And so the conditions for friendship are set up. And you also have a tremendous amount of time with people going through the same things. And then all of a sudden, your twenties hit.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  And what I call the great scattering happens. And nobody sees it coming. And friendship goes from a group sport where everybody expects to be included because you've always been included on teams or in classes or whatever, to an individual one. And what people don't understand is that there's a massive shift from expecting to be included, expecting to be best friends, expecting it, to actually having to create it. And understanding that there are three things that have to be present in order for a friendship to happen. Number one, you have to have proximity. And the reason why proximity matters is because time spent with people matters.

• 38:15Speaker 01

  And they've done studies on how much time you need to spend with somebody in order to become a friend. And it's a huge amount of time. To be a casual friend, the study is something like 70 hours. To be a close friend, it's something like 200 hours. This is why you easily made friends in college because you were living with people, you were eating with people, so the conditions of proximity were there. It's also why you weren't friends with the person at the end of the hall. They've done research on this too, that if you study who you're friends with in a dorm, the people across the hall or next door are more likely going to be your friends. Why? Proximity matters. The person that you don't see much who's at the end of the hall, you're not going to spend that much time with. The second one is the timing of your life. And so if you're now in your twenties,

• 38:59Speaker 01

  the timing of everybody's life is very different. Because some people are going to graduate schools, some people are going into the military, some people are moving, some people are getting married, some people are chasing the corporate ladder, some people are traveling. So the timing of what's relevant for you is off.

• 39:18Speaker 01

  And it used to be the same because you're all moving through grades, right? The third is energy. Sometimes energy clicks, sometimes it doesn't. And friendships in your adult life are gonna come and go for the rest of time. Which is why you have to have a very flexible approach to friendship from the moment you turn 20. You have to learn to let people leave and let new people come in. And if you don't understand this, you start to think that you're the problem, you start to think that you're being left out. If you have a friendship that starts to fade, I want you, before you X them out, before you judge, before you judge yourself,

• 40:01Speaker 01

  I want you to ask yourself, are the three conditions present? Or is proximity changed? Or has the timing of our lives changed? They're gotten engaged, I'm still single. They're in graduate school, I'm across the country doing something else. Has the energy shifted? Because that happens too. If you're suddenly not drinking, the energy is gonna shift with you and the friends of yours that partied all the time. And what I love about understanding this is that it makes it not personal. And when you understand that friendship is also now an individual sport and it's yours to create, it allows you to understand that the whole tool is not let them create my social life, not let them keep up with the text chain,

• 40:44Speaker 01

  but let me figure out what I want friendship to be and let me go first. Let me be the one that's making the plans. Let me be the one reaching out. Not because I'm expecting them to respond, but because this is a value of mine that I wanna create for myself. And what you'll find when you shift this perspective is that you find your people.

• 41:05Simon Sinek?

  Tell me a specific story, something you've done in your career that if a project, something you were involved in, doesn't have to have been commercially successful, but that if every project you did was like this one, you'd be the happiest person alive?

• 41:22Speaker 01

  I loved actually writing this book because I did it with my daughter and it healed our relationship.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  It allowed me to see my daughter in a completely different light. My daughter had never wanted to work with me. I respect that. She wanted to have her own path in life. She wanted to do her own thing. And when she graduated from college, she went and worked for this huge cybersecurity firm and was in the marketing and analytics department. And then after a couple of years of doing that, she went on a solo backpacking trip in Asia and came home from that broke, moved in with my husband and I and looking for a restaurant job so that she could save up a bunch of money and move to New York and then go on with her life.

• 42:11Speaker 01

  And so I said to her, you know, I'm about to hire a research assistant to research this thing that I'm calling the let them theory. And you need money and I know you don't want to work for me, but if you would like to make some money, I can have you work with somebody else. So you don't have to talk to me, but it's like a three week long project. Here's a podcast episode. Here's a couple YouTube videos. Here's some articles and here's about 15,000 comments. Why don't you dig into all of this and come back to me and kind of tell me, give me some sentiment analysis? She said, fine, fine. Okay, okay.

• 42:50Speaker 01

  So 36 hours later, she presents a 27 page Excel columned, color coded dropdown menu source linked guide to all of her research, including a two-page distillation of everything she had discovered with a gigantic warning that

• 43:19Speaker 01

  She didn't think that I should write this book because she was deeply concerned that she was seeing a lane of people who were saying that the theory was making them lonelier. Because when you say "let them" and you allow people to be who they are, you start to realize that you have a lot of friendships that are fake. Or you have a lot of relationships in your life that are one-sided, where you're putting in a lot of effort and it's not getting returned. And when you see that somebody doesn't reciprocate, you then start to feel like, "My God, my siblings, they don't ever reach out. My friends don't reach out. Now I'm really lonely." And so she said, "You can't write this book unless there's a second part.

• 44:00Speaker 01

  There has to be a part, Mom, where this flips and you feel empowered again." And it was her and her research and her brain that created the second step, which is "let me." And it was an extraordinary experience to have her hand me that 27-page document because it was the first time I understood her brain. And she is an extremely driven human being. And it made me realize, "Oh, my God, like, she's got a computer processor upstairs." And I now understand for the first time that if she doesn't have something big to aim it at, she aims it at herself.

• 44:43Speaker 01

  Which is why she's hard on herself. And it had me see a side of her that I never fully understood. But the bigger thing was as we worked through all of the different aspects of writing this book, and you know, like, you've written unbelievable books. It's a bitch to write a book. We had to say "let them, let them, let them" with each other every day, all day long. And...

• 45:15Speaker 01

  We were the kind, we had the kind of relationship where we're really close, but there was just this like invisible distance. And I think there's a lot of relationships like that where you want to be closer. You want to have more fun. You want to feel like the tension or whatever the things are that you start to get irritated with one another, that they would just disappear. And every one of us has somebody like that in our life, whether it's a parent or it's an adult child, or it's a sibling, or it's somebody that you're a friend with. That there's just sort of like this, like.

• 45:49Simon Sinek?

  So of all of the amazing things you've done in your life, what specifically is about this one that you cling on to and you want to talk about it right now? I asked for you for a single example of something you love that is everything you did in your life was like this thing?

• 46:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:01Simon Sinek?

  You'd be the most fulfilled person in the world. What specifically is about this story? That stands out amongst all the other things?

• 46:07Speaker 01

  It allowed me to clear out the friction and bullshit between us.

• 46:10Simon Sinek?

  Okay.

• 46:11Speaker 01

  It allowed us to create space.

• 46:14Simon Sinek?

  Okay.

• 46:15Speaker 01

  For both of us to be. Because look, people are irritating, especially the people that you love. I often think that family is around so that it teaches you to love people you hate sometimes. And when you're working with somebody in the trenches like that, there are going to be things all day long that piss you off or frustrate you. And when you say let them, you don't have that death by a thousand cuts that start to build up the resentment, the frustration, the annoyance. You create space for the other person to be human.

• 46:46Simon Sinek?

  Okay. Tell me an early, specific, happy childhood memory, something I can relive with you, something specific.

• 46:51Speaker 01

  Oh, boy.

• 46:54Speaker 01

  Childhood memory. When, I grew up in North Muskegon, Michigan. And it was back when winters were really bad, although the winters are bad now. And my mom used to shovel off a big ice skating rink. And my best friend and I would go down.

• 47:13Simon Sinek?

  Is this one memory you're thinking of? Is this something that recur?

• 47:15Speaker 01

  Oh, no, I'm thinking of a particular day.

• 47:16Simon Sinek?

  Okay, good.

• 47:17Speaker 01

  And my best friend and I, Jody Bricken, we would trudge down there. And I have this one memory where I have this hideous. Like, when I think about what my daughters looked like when they were 14.

• 47:27Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 47:27Speaker 01

  Versus me with my buck teeth and braces and middle part and feathered hair and hideous acid wash jeans and my, like, leg warmers and just ugly ass corduroy. Like, what the hell? I looked like a troll. And so we had this big boombox and we had, I think it was Journey on it. And Jody and I would sit out there for hours and create ice dancing routines.

• 47:52Simon Sinek?

  Brilliant. Okay. What I think is so interesting about the memory, that memory.

• 47:59Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 48:00Simon Sinek?

  And the Victoria you told about.

• 48:03Speaker 01

  My daughter's story.

• 48:03Simon Sinek?

  Your daughters and writing the book with her. Is in both cases, there was a clearing that happens.

• 48:10Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 48:10Simon Sinek?

  Right? And you said it. You said as much. You said it cleared a space. It created a space for us. Right? It relieved something.

• 48:17Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 48:18Simon Sinek?

  And it's not too different than your mother creating the space for ice dancing to happen.

• 48:25Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 48:26Simon Sinek?

  And in some way, you have become your mother. Where your theories clear snow off the ice so that other people can go create, do, be whoever they are. Live their best lives. Everything we've talked about, in all of your theories, you are shoveling snow away. You are creating space. The storms and snow that we add to our brains that don't allow ourselves or other people to go create ice dances. And this living best self by let them or counting down, all of it is shoveling snow.

• 49:05Speaker 01

  That makes perfect sense.

• 49:06Simon Sinek?

  And.

• 49:07Speaker 01

  It's a great visual.

• 49:08Simon Sinek?

  And this is who you, you've become, your mother, where you're this. Minor character in a big story. A minor character that does a big thing. All of your stuff is very, very simple. Like shoveling snow. It doesn't require a lot of effort, doesn't require a lot of skill. It is a skill, it is an effort. You gotta do it. It's something to be done. But when that snow is cleared, when that space is made, the only thing that happens is joy and happiness, is clarity and ice dancing, and certainty, and accountability, and all of it. That has been the constant theme in everything that you've said today.

• 49:44Speaker 01

  It's a beautiful way to wrap it up. And you know, what's funny is that this morning, my mom sent me a text. She was in a Chico's.

• 49:54Speaker 01

  Of course. And it was a photo of her with this awesome woman between my mom and my dad. And she wrote me this note that said, "Hey, I'm in Chico's and this is Ellen. And she's a huge fan of yours. And she wants you to know that because of your podcast, she has gone back to singing opera, something she hasn't done in 15 years. And it's Let Them and The Five Second Rule that have cleared the path for her."

• 50:28Simon Sinek?

  To go make ice dances.

• 50:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 50:31Simon Sinek?

  This is who you are. You've devoted your life and you are your best self and you're probably your most fulfilled when you are clearing space for other people to go take accountability for their own lives and be their best selves, however you want to put it.

• 50:44Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 50:44Simon Sinek?

  And like I said, it is small things that have big impact. These little, little, little rules that can be applied so quickly and so easily.

• 50:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, because I feel like one of the things that is missing for most people is hope.

• 50:58Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 50:59Speaker 01

  That it's easy to listen to you or to me or to read our books. But if you don't think it's going to work for you.

• 51:08Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 51:09Speaker 01

  You won't do it.

• 51:10Simon Sinek?

  Yeah. Well, I think this is the thing that. I think you and I have in common, which is, I've really practiced over the years, that I don't say you, I say we. I don't stand on stage and say, you know what you need to do to thrive? You know, like, who the hell am I? Right? I say, you know what we need to do to learn how to thrive? We need to be better at taking care of each other. We need, and I always include myself, as do you. And both of our stories are not because we're smarter. Both of our stories is because we had no choice. Like, you had no choice but to come up with something. Otherwise, who knows what would have happened? My story is the same. Like, all of the discoveries I've made is not because I'm smart.

• 51:54Simon Sinek?

  It's not because I sat down and like, hmm, I'm gonna think about things that have an impact on the world. Not at all. It's because I had no choice. Like, a kid with ADHD who couldn't read a book and ADHD wasn't a thing when I was a kid. I was just hyperactive, selfish, and unfocused. That's how I was described. But I couldn't study, and I wasn't good at school. And I was gonna fail school unless I figured out ways to pass school. And so I learned how to ask really good questions and be a really good listener. Because I had no choice. And I'm a great believer that the, the solutions we find to the struggles we have in work kids become our strengths as adults.

• 52:30Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 52:31Simon Sinek?

  And

• 52:31Speaker 01

  Or they become the prison you're in as a

• 52:33Simon Sinek?

  Or they become the prison that, yeah, hundred percent, hundred percent. And I love the way you speak. I'm been captivated this entire time, taking in every word. Not agreeing with all of them, but taking them in.

• 52:46Speaker 01

  Let them.

• 52:46Simon Sinek?

  Uh, let them.

• 52:47Speaker 01

  I don't care.

• 52:49Simon Sinek?

  But it's not a question of caring. I like the intellectual pursuit.

• 52:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:53Simon Sinek?

  It's not that I disagree because I, I think you're wrong. That's not what it is.

• 52:57Speaker 01

  No, you're, you're, you can tell your mind is like

• 52:59Simon Sinek?

  I wanna understand the nuance.

• 53:01Speaker 01

  You can tell.

• 53:02Simon Sinek?

  It's not that I, I, it's not that I wanna be, I want you to be wrong. That's not what it is. It's a question of really wanting to understand all the nuance that goes with a really beautiful, rich idea. Because I love ideas, and I love understanding how the world works. And like you, I believe we overcomplicate things. And some people overcomplicate things because it makes them look smart. And some people become, overcomplicate things because they can't help themselves. But if you really boil it down, human beings are pretty simple, pretty predictable, pretty consistent.

• 53:34Simon Sinek?

  And if you understand some basics of anthropology and human biology, it all kind of just makes sense. And this is why your ideas are so elegant. They're so elegant in their simplicity. They're so elegant. I walk away richer, having had you here. Thank you so, so much.

• 53:50Speaker 01

  Well, thank you for having me.

• 53:53Simon Sinek?

  Such magic. Such magic.

• 54:01Simon Sinek?

  If you enjoyed this podcast and would like to hear more, please subscribe wherever you like to listen to podcasts. And if you'd like even more optimism, check out my website, simoncinek.com, for classes, videos, and more. Until then, take care of yourself. Take care of each other. A Bit of Optimism is a production of The Optimism Company. It's produced and edited by Lindsay Garbenius, David Ja, and Devon Johnson. Our executive producers are Henrietta Conrad and Greg Ruderchan.