Mel Robbins has a phrase for everything that is outside your control on a golf course. It is two words. And it might be the most useful thing you take onto the course.
When Mel Robbins returned to her parents’ golf course on a recent visit, a simple change in the landscape caught her off-guard.
Robbins’ parents are avid players and the best-selling author had played their course many times. But now she noticed what used to be fescue had been converted to waste areas.
“I was starting to get all p–sed off because I was like, Why isn’t that fescue?” Robbins says. “The emotion that rises up, because I have an opinion about it, I can’t control. But I can control whether I take a moment and settle the emotion.”
To do that, Robbins returned to the phrase she’s made famous: Let Them.
If they want to redesign the course and remove the fescue, Let Them.
It’s the basis of her best-selling book, The Let Them Theory, which has empowered readers to let go of things outside their control so they can focus on what they can control.
“I have become a way better golfer since The Let Them Theory,” Robbins, 57, says. “I play a few times a year and love it as a way to spend time with my husband, Chris, who carries a single-digit handicap. My three kids play golf as well.”
The Let Them Theory is Robbins’ third best-seller. She’s also the speaker in one of the most-viewed TED Talks ever and hosts a podcast focused on helping people maximise their potential.
LET THEM ON THE GOLF COURSE
Let Them arose when Robbins noticed her son was unprepared for his prom. He hadn’t made a dinner reservation and Robbins found herself scrambling to fix it.
But then her daughter told her that if this is how he wanted to do prom, let him.
The phrase stuck. Robbins backed off, and a stressful moment became a non-issue. She started applying it in other parts of her life.
On the golf course, she says it works the same way.
“If my husband is like, ‘You should hit a pitching wedge,’ and I want the 8, I’m like, Let him,” she says. “If my dad wants me to try his putter that weighs 700 pounds and looks like it should be illegal, Let him. But I don’t have to use it.”
Robbins believes even saying those two words helps reduce tension and allows you to focus on what matters.
“There’s that moment when you start to worry about what’s going to happen,” she says. “And inside that worry about what’s going to happen, there is always the concern about what other people are going to think: the concern about the score, the concern about how you’re going to show up. Let them.”
THE SHIFT TO CONTROL: LET ME
The next step in Robbins’ theory is Let Me.
“Let me focus on what I can control,” she says. “And taking your power back and then dropping into a peaceful and confident state.”
It takes self-awareness and discipline.
Robbins believes The Let Them Theory is a modern application of stoicism, which focuses on what we can and can’t control. Some golfers already operate this way. Rory McIlroy and Charley Hull have spoken about studying Stoic philosophy, while Russell Henley said after a record putting performance that he felt “at peace” when missing putts. This is stoicism: accepting the outcome. Let Them. If the putt lips out, let it. If it goes in, let it.
WHY IT WORKS: STRESS AND THE BRAIN
Let Them is also rooted in science. Dr Aditi Nerurkar of Harvard University, one of the experts in Robbins’ book, explains that stress is not just a feeling.
“When you allow yourself to get up in your head or feel stressed, medically speaking, you change your physiology and your brain,” Robbins says. “Your amygdala turns on and overrides your prefrontal cortex.”
That matters on the golf course because the prefrontal cortex is responsible for decision-making, strategy and focus.
“And that means that it is impossible, based on the research, for you to think clearly, stay calm and access your training,” Robbins says.
“The reason why most people choke is not because they’re thinking too much, it’s because they’ve activated a stress response.”
You’ve probably felt this spiral: a good start, then a slow group or a bad shot, and suddenly the round unravels.
“If you can catch it early, you can reset it,” Robbins says. “One of the ways is saying, Let Them. Because when you say Let Them, you’re recognising what is outside your control. Then Let Me focus on what I can control in this moment.”
FROM TENSION TO FLOW
Reducing stress is critical to accessing flow state, those stretches where everything feels effortless.
“Medically speaking, it’s impossible to be in a state of flow when your stress response is turned on,” Robbins says.
You’ve probably felt it before: those six holes where everything clicks and you’re under par.
“You weren’t tense or anxious,” she says. “That’s flow.”
Stress blocks it.
GOLF, CONTROL AND LETTING GO
Robbins sees her theory as closely aligned with Stoicism.
“The irony is, the more you give up control, the more you gain it on the course and in life,” she says.
Stress triggers are everywhere on the golf course, but so is opportunity.
“If you take Let Them to the course, you’ll find yourself less likely to get caught up in everything that can go wrong and more in tune with how to play your best golf,” she says.
“It is fundamentally a book about control and what is golf about? It’s a game about control.”
