Being yourself means disappointing someone: Bilyeu and Robbins on family guilt

The Short Version

Mel Robbins and Lisa Bilyeu both start from the same uncomfortable fact: if you choose a life your family did not picture for you, someone you love will be disappointed, and that disappointment is not evidence that you chose wrongly [4][5]. Robbins makes it the first of her seven truths about being yourself, and Bilyeu lived it: her father refused to bless her marriage, and she decided by asking what her future self would have to live with if she gave up the man she loved to please him [4]. Robbins applies the same idea to a listener called Kelsey who feels guilty about moving away from a close family, to a law student called Katrina who is held back by guilt toward her parents, and to a new novelist called Jennifer whose mother-in-law called her decision crazy [1][2][3]. What they offer in place of guilt is practical: understand where the other person is coming from, say out loud what you need, let them have their reaction, and do not let that reaction make the decision [1][2][4][5].

Table of contents

What They Said

Mel Robbins: the first truth is that someone will be disappointed

In a solo episode on what she calls the seven truths of being your authentic self, Robbins puts disappointment first, ahead of energy, confidence, self-love and everything else [5]. Her recap of it is blunt: "when you start putting yourself first, you're going to disappoint other people. I want you to expect it." [5] She does not present this as a risk to be managed down to zero. She presents it as a constant: "someone is always going to be disappointed by the choices that you're making." [5]

From that constant she draws the only choice she thinks you really have, which is who the disappointed person will be. Her line for it is "if someone's going to be disappointed by the way that you're living your life it better not be you." [5] And she names what happens when you choose the other way: "there is no faster way to be disappointed with your life than living it in a way that makes other people happy but you miserable." [5] In her closing recap she puts the same thing in one sentence: "when you don't live a life that is true to you, you're disappointing yourself." [5]

Her own example is her marriage. She grew up in the Midwest, and her husband Chris's family is from the Northeast [5]. "My parents were not that thrilled. I mean they liked Chris but they had always hoped that I would marry somebody that would bring me back to the Midwest." [5] She does not mock that hope. As a mother of three, she admits to feeling the same pull: "And now of course that I'm a parent I secretly hope that my three kids that their partners you know keep them close to me I get it." [5] But understanding the feeling does not hand it the decision. "So they were really disappointed that I married somebody that had me build a life with him far away. But the truth is it doesn't matter that they're disappointed because it's my life." [5]

The skill she says she had to learn has two halves, and she states them together: how to "make decisions that make me happy and hold space for the people in my life that might be disappointed about it." [5] In the summary of that episode, the advice is to hold space for other people's disappointment without letting it change your decision, because you are not responsible for someone else's reaction: they are adults who can sit with their feelings [5]. She lists the situations where this comes up most: leaving a corporate job to start a business, moving across the country, or setting boundaries as a recovering people pleaser, where people who "got a lot of mileage" out of the old you will not like the new one [5]. She reframes the discomfort of letting someone down as a sign of growth and resilience and not of failure, and warns that staying silent to avoid disappointing people makes a little part of you die and erodes your sense of self [5].

The same truth returns later in the episode as her sixth: what you think about your life matters more than what anyone else thinks [5]. People will be disappointed no matter what you do, so she offers her Let Them Theory: let them judge, let them be disappointed, and then turn the time and energy you would have spent managing their opinions back toward yourself with "let me" [5]. She is careful to say this is not about not caring, and she stresses that "two things can be true at the same time": people can have opinions about your choices and still love you, just as you love family members whose actions you often dislike [5].

Robbins also plays a clip of psychologist Dr. Ramani Durvasula, who puts the price of all this more starkly: "The hardest thing in the world is to be authentic because to be authentic is to be unpopular." [5] As that episode's summary reports her view, authentic people are clear on their values, still feel guilt, and often have smaller social circles because they have cut away unhealthy, invalidating relationships, and others may call them selfish or cold when they are simply drawing boundaries [5]. Robbins agrees that as she has lived more authentically, her own friend group has become smaller [5].

Robbins answers Kelsey: guilt about leaving a close family

In an episode built from listener questions, the first one comes from a listener named Kelsey: "I want to move away, Mel, but my close family ties are killing me. How do I deal with the guilt?" [3] Robbins does not begin with the guilt. She begins with the decision: "the first thing I will say is move. At least once in your lifetime, you need to move." [3] She says the pull toward a change has to be listened to, particularly when it is a pull away from your hometown, and that moving during your twenties is hugely important [3].

Then she takes the weight off the decision by pointing out that it can be undone: "Your move isn't forever. But when you change the environment you live in, it changes you forever." [3] Later she repeats it: "And remember, you can always come back home." [3]

On the family's side, she offers a reading of their reluctance that removes the accusation from it. "Your family may be feeling hesitant because they're used to having you close," she says, and "your family's hesitancy is all about them. They love having you close." [3] She goes further and argues that distance can improve the relationship. When people are right next to you, you take them for granted; "When you have distance and you move somewhere new, you stop taking your family for granted. You actually feel closer." [3]

Her treatment of the guilt itself is the most distinctive part of the answer. She does not call it irrational. She says it is information about the relationship and not about the move: "if you're feeling guilty about it, that's because you have close family ties. But it doesn't mean you shouldn't do it." [3] The instruction that follows is "So don't focus on the guilt. Focus on the gift that you love your family," a family that matters so much that leaving them is one of the hardest parts of moving [3]. And she pairs it with what is on the other side of the move: "But you're also moving toward a new version of yourself." [3] Her phrase for the result is that pushing yourself to change and grow "is how you come home to yourself." [3]

She gives her daughter Kendall as the example: Kendall moved from the East Coast to Los Angeles and was there for seven years, long enough that Robbins started to think she would be out there forever [3]. According to the episode's summary, Kendall grew in ways Robbins says she could not have elsewhere, then recently felt she had outgrown the place and wanted another change; Robbins's rule of thumb is "if you change nothing, nothing changes" [3].

Robbins coaches Katrina: guilt as the thing holding her back

Katrina, a 25-year-old finishing law school in Indianapolis, wrote to Robbins after her boyfriend of five years ended the relationship [1]. She is thinking of moving to a state that has everything she loves [1]. Robbins tells her early that she already knows the answer, and that this kind of answer does not come from the part of her that law school trained: "the kind of decisions that change your life are not made in that analytical brain." [1] The truth Robbins says the session teaches is that "you have to know the difference between the right decision and being afraid of the right decision." [1]

The guilt comes out when Katrina says she wants to bet on herself but feels guilty toward her parents, who plan to stay in Indiana [1]. Robbins replays the moment in her takeaways: "I do want to bet on myself. It's just that feels a little guilty towards my parents." [1] Robbins answers first as a parent. She says there is nothing she would hate more than to hear from her own children that "they gave up on something they wanted to do because they felt guilty about me." [1] In the summary of the session she also points out that parents are adults who can travel and FaceTime [1].

Katrina agrees at once, and what she says shows how much of the guilt was assumption. She says she knows deep down that her parents want the best for her: "They want me to be happy." [1] So Robbins gives her the conversation to have, almost word for word: "I need to do this for myself. And the only thing holding me back is my fear about you guys being upset with me. So can I ask for your support in doing something that I desperately need to do for my own growth? And I promise I can always come back." [1] When Katrina says, "I think I need that reassurance for sure," the reply is "Well, you can ask for it." [1] The summary adds Robbins's caveat that whether her parents give that support is up to them [1].

Two of the ten takeaways Robbins draws from the session are about this guilt, and they are the hardest-edged things she says on the subject anywhere in these conversations. The third takeaway: "If you're going to hold yourself back and play a really small game in life, you give up the right to blame other people for that." [1] She explains what she heard in Katrina's sentence about her parents: "If you're going to hold yourself back, own it. I'm too scared to move. Do not saddle your parents or your friends or anybody else with this guilt stuff." [1] And: "So be very clear when you're holding yourself back that you're the one doing it to yourself." [1]

The fourth takeaway is about the disappointment you have only imagined. "How many times have you been afraid to disappoint somebody?" she asks, and answers: "99% of the time you haven't even freaking asked them." [1] Her instruction is "Be an adult. Just ask them," and then you will find out whether there was a reason to be afraid [1]. She uses her own parents again, and this time the point is that their disappointment and their support exist together. She says her parents can't stand that she moved from the Midwest and lives in the East, and that they are still her biggest supporters [1]. "People can be two things at once. They can be disappointed that you don't live closer and they can still support you in pursuing your dreams." [1] She ends the takeaway with "Go have the conversation because I think you're going to be shocked." [1]

She also asks Katrina to check which way she is moving. Katrina's own estimate was "It's 60% being called somewhere else, 40% of me feeling that I need to move away." [1] Robbins's first takeaway is to describe any move by its destination, asking "what are you moving toward?" In Katrina's case that is growth, freedom, a new beginning and confidence [1]. And she tells Katrina, in the summary's words, "you will always regret not doing it" and "you can always come back." [1]

Robbins coaches Jennifer: the mother-in-law who disapproves

In a live call-in episode about her Let Them Theory, Robbins takes a call from Jennifer in Baltimore, who left a 21-year teaching career, with her wife's support, to write a novel she had wanted to write for over 30 years, and is finishing her first draft [2]. Her mother-in-law told Jennifer's 11-year-old son that the decision was crazy and ridiculous, and has since stopped visiting and skipped his baseball games [2]. Jennifer worries that her mother-in-law gossips about her [2].

Robbins starts by taking away the hope that this can be prevented: everybody forms opinions about you whether they know you or not, and the opportunity is to unhook from that concern [2]. Then she does something close to what Bilyeu teaches, offering other ways to read the outburst. It may come from love and financial fear. Or Jennifer's bold move may stir up a dream her mother-in-law never had the courage to pursue, which makes people look in the mirror [2]. She also celebrates that the son defended his mother [2].

What Robbins treats as the real issue is not the mother-in-law at all. Jennifer admits that after 20 years the two have never really gotten to know each other, and that she goes quiet and isn't herself around her mother-in-law [2]. Robbins tells her she has been protecting the peace in the relationship, and "in doing so, you have started this war with yourself." [2] The shift takes two things at once: letting her mother-in-law have her reactions without getting hooked, and giving herself permission to show up as herself, to say when she does not feel supported, and to make requests of her spouse [2]. The division of responsibility is explicit: other people are responsible for their emotional reactions; she is responsible for expressing her needs and feelings [2].

That is the general shape of the Let Them Theory as Robbins lays it out. "Whenever someone is doing something that you don't like, let them," she says, and one of her examples is squarely a family one: "If your parents don't want to come see you over the holidays this year, let them." [2] But she insists the theory's weight is on the second half. To a caller who survived cancer and has spent her life as everyone's fixer, she says: "The Let them theory is not about other people. It's about you." [2] It is about noticing how often you are "managing other people's reactions, managing other people's happiness," tiptoeing around topics, shrinking yourself, "staying silent, not asking for what you need, showing up when you don't feel like it, doing things out of guilt." [2] She warns that caller that people used to her caretaking will throw tantrums and guilt, and that she should let them [2]. Her closing description of the whole idea is that "the art of letting other people being themselves is the pathway to you actually being responsible for your own life and being fully yourself" [2].

Lisa Bilyeu: a traditional family, a father who said no

Lisa Bilyeu, the co-founder of Quest Nutrition and author of Radical Confidence, came on Robbins's show to talk about exactly this problem: the guilt and friction of wanting a life that does not match what your family, spouse or friends expect [4]. Robbins opens the episode by describing listeners weighed down by guilt because the life they want (a career change, not marrying, not having kids, leaving the family religion) clashes with others' expectations [4].

Bilyeu grew up in a traditional Greek Cypriot family in the UK that expected her to marry and support a husband [4]. As a girl she was patted on the head and told little girls do not speak until spoken to, and when she scraped her knee her grandmother consoled her that she would be okay by the time she got married [4]. She dreamed of winning Academy Awards. When she wanted to study film, her father resisted for two weeks and finally said it did not matter what she studied because she would be a stay-at-home wife anyway [4].

She later came to understand that comment through his history. He grew up in a small mountain village in Cyprus with no running water, where only a few boys were sent away at 12 to be educated, because girls, without contraception, were expected to marry and have children [4]. His remark was not an insult but his belief system [4]. The lesson she took from it is the centre of her method: "I have to understand where people come from before I defend or judge their opinion." [4]

She calls the tool "frame of reference": how someone perceives the world, words and actions [4]. Her example is yelling. To someone from a verbally abusive home it signals danger; to her, from a loud Greek family, it sounds like everyone is happy [4]. When someone reacts in a way you did not expect, that is a sign your frames of reference differ [4]. Her way of working it out comes from filmmaking: "if I was writing a script right now what would have to be true about their frame of reference for them to say that to me." [4] She reserves the effort for people she cares about, because it takes time and energy [4].

The test of all this was her marriage. After a film degree she persuaded her father to fund an eight-week course at the New York Film Academy, where she met her teacher, Tom Bilyeu [4]. After about a year of long distance, Tom asked her father for his blessing. Her father asked a thousand questions about religion, career and providing for children, and then said no [4]. Tom respectfully replied that he would propose anyway, and promised that the man her father saw that day would not be the man who ended up with his daughter [4]. Her father stayed respectful: he paid for and attended the wedding, while urging her to wait [4].

Bilyeu made her decision by rolling the clock forward. Her father would likely die before her, and if she gave up the man she loved to please him, she would have to live with that forever [4]. She went into the conversation determined not to back down but also to show respect, since everyone wants to be seen and heard [4]. And she made one more commitment in advance: to be proud that she had tried even if the marriage failed, so that she would not return with her tail between her legs [4]. Robbins frames this as the moment of collision between someone else's story for your life and your own, and suggests betting on "what if it does work out." [4]

Bilyeu adds something neither of Robbins's solo episodes says: sometimes the person who disapproves is right about the facts. When her father said she could not make it in Hollywood, his reasons were accurate: she knew no one, had no visa and no education in the field [4]. "It's not that they don't believe in you they believe in the laws of physics," she says [4]. Instead of taking offense and letting it damage her self-esteem, she asks what she can learn and uses the valid points to get stronger [4]. She admits she did not always think this way and that she knows how devastating it feels when someone tears down your dreams [4].

The disappointment came round again when she and Tom decided not to have children, about 15 years ago, when being child-free was rarely discussed, especially among Greek women [4]. Relatives assumed either that her marriage was unstable or that she could not conceive, because that was their frame of reference [4]. Her answer to that pressure is to do the inner work first, because without clarity she is permeable to other people's opinions [4]. She examined each reason people give for having children, including her father's argument about dying alone, which she felt could be answered with friendship and community and would not be fair to a child [4]. Her favourite tool for this is to ask "what does your average Wednesday look like" in every possible scenario, which moves you from the glory of an idea to its daily reality [4].

Her story has an ending many people stalled by guilt would wish for. She went from stay-at-home wife to helping build Quest, and when her father visited and toured the company's facilities, Tom reminded him of his old question about how he would take care of his daughter and asked how he was doing now [4]. Her father burst into tears, hugged him and said he was proud [4]. The lesson she draws is that giving people grace and space to feel how they feel, while living your choices, lets them change authentically [4]. But she refuses to make the happy ending the justification: even if the company or the marriage had failed, she says, she would have made the same choice [4].

Robbins's own mother, in the Bilyeu conversation

In the same episode Robbins tells a story about her mother that fills in the other side of her own marriage example. As her wedding to Chris approached, her mother became increasingly cold and snarky toward his East Coast family [4]. A friend suggested Robbins ask her mother to act as if she had picked Chris herself, and her mother replied, "i didn't pick him for you and i'm not happy." [4] Robbins was furious, though the request did bring her mother's warmth back [4].

Years later, using Bilyeu's tool, she understands it. Her mother was raised on a large upstate New York farm and her father came from a working-class New Jersey bakery family; they moved to Michigan and almost never saw their families again [4]. In her mother's world, marrying someone far away meant losing your daughter [4]. Robbins also recalls telling a friend 20 years ago that she was starting a life coaching business and being asked who would ever hire her: "I felt myself disappear." [4]

Where They Agree, and Where They Don't

Disappointment comes with the choice. Robbins states it as a rule, that someone is always going to be disappointed by the choices you make [5]. Bilyeu's story is a case of it: a father who said no to the marriage and relatives who assumed the worst about a child-free life [4]. Neither treats the disappointment as a reason to reverse. Robbins says of her own parents "it doesn't matter that they're disappointed because it's my life" [5]; Bilyeu says she would have made the same choice even if it had failed [4].

The disapproval says more about the other person's world than about you. Bilyeu's whole tool rests on this: her father's remark was his belief system, formed in a village where girls were expected to marry [4]. Robbins says the same in her own words to Kelsey, "your family's hesitancy is all about them" [3], and offers Jennifer readings of her mother-in-law that have to do with fear or with an unlived dream [2]. In the Bilyeu episode Robbins applies the tool to her own mother [4].

Love and disappointment sit together. Robbins says it twice in almost the same words: "People can be two things at once" [1] and "two things can be true at the same time" [5]. Bilyeu's father is the picture of it, a man who said no and still paid for and attended the wedding [4].

You are responsible for saying what you need. Robbins gives Katrina a script for asking her parents' support [1], tells Jennifer she is responsible for expressing her needs and feelings [2], and Bilyeu sits her husband down with what she calls a cheat sheet to say she loved him but hated cooking and cleaning and was unhappy [4].

The tensions are real, though, and worth naming.

First, how often the feared disappointment actually arrives. In Katrina's session Robbins is optimistic: "But I guarantee you, if you explain to somebody what you want to do and why, you're going to get the support that you need." [1] In the seven-truths episode she says someone will always be disappointed [5], and Bilyeu's father heard the full case and still said no [4]. These fit together only if you take Robbins's own bridge between them: people can be disappointed and supportive at once [1]. Her guarantee, read alongside the other conversations, is about support, not about the absence of disappointment, and the summary of Katrina's session records her caveat that whether the parents give support is up to them [1].

Second, what guilt is. To Katrina, Robbins calls it an excuse: "Do not saddle your parents or your friends or anybody else with this guilt stuff." [1] To Kelsey, she calls it a sign of love: guilt means "you have close family ties." [3] The difference follows from what each listener was doing with the guilt. Katrina was naming it as the reason she might not bet on herself, so Robbins makes her own the fear underneath [1]. Kelsey asked how to carry a feeling she expects to have anyway, so Robbins tells her what it means [3]. Dr. Ramani Durvasula's view, as reported in the seven-truths summary, is that authentic people still feel guilt [5], which supports the second reading without excusing the first.

Third, how much work to do on the other person's point of view. Robbins's default is to unhook: let them have their opinions and take your energy back [2][5]. Bilyeu's default is to investigate: work out what would have to be true about their frame of reference [4]. Bilyeu limits that effort to people she cares about [4], and Robbins does a version of it for Jennifer's mother-in-law [2], so in practice they meet in the middle. But Bilyeu adds two cautions Robbins's solo episodes do not. People usually are not aware of their own frame of reference, so you should never tell them what theirs is; the tool is for your own understanding and how you show up [4]. And the criticism may contain a true point you can use [4], where Robbins tells Kelsey the hesitancy is all about the family [3].

Fourth, whether they come round. Bilyeu's father wept with pride [4]; Robbins's parents are her biggest supporters and still can't stand the distance [1]. Neither promises a conversion.

Why It Works

The sources give reasons, not studies, for why this approach holds up.

Regret outlasts disapproval. Bilyeu's clock runs forward to a time when her father is gone and she is still living with the choice she made for him [4]. Robbins tells Katrina "Living with regret is the worst thing in the world" and closes that episode's takeaways with "What you'll actually regret are the things you didn't do" [1]. Both are weighing a temporary reaction in someone else against a permanent fact in your own life.

Much of the feared disappointment is a story. Robbins's claim is that most of the time the person has not been asked [1]. Katrina shows it inside one exchange: she feels unable to go without disappointing her parents and, in the next breath, says she knows they want her to be happy [1]. In the Let Them episode Robbins puts the general principle this way: "The stories that you tell yourself are way more painful than the actual thing that's happening" [2].

Guilt and reluctance come from attachment. Robbins's account is that a family hesitates because they love having you close, and that you feel guilty because the ties are close [3]. On that account the feeling tells you the relationship matters. It does not tell you the move is wrong [3].

Reactions come from conditioning. Bilyeu's father and Robbins's mother were each responding from a world with its own rules: a village where girls married and did not study, and a family history in which a daughter who married far away was lost [4]. Robbins stresses that people live by conditioning from a world that may no longer exist [4]. Seeing that is what lets you stay respectful without giving way.

Managing other people's feelings costs you yourself. Robbins says staying silent to avoid disappointing people makes a little part of you die [5], that pretending to be someone you are not is exhausting [5], and that keeping the peace with a disapproving relative can start a war with yourself [2]. Her test for which choice is yours is energy: "You literally feel expanded when you are living in your truth." [5] The same test appears in Katrina's session, where the choice aligned with you feels more expansive and the wrong one makes you shrink [1], and in the listener-questions episode, where expansion is a yes even if you are nervous [3].

Reversibility lowers the stakes. "Your move isn't forever," Robbins tells Kelsey [3], and "you can always come back," she tells Katrina [1].

Clarity is protection. Bilyeu says that without doing the inner work she is permeable to other people's opinions [4]. Robbins observes in that conversation that the real skill is not letting other people's opinions and emotions derail you, which paradoxically frees you to hold space for them [4].

Where It Applies, and Where It Doesn't

The cases in these conversations are all of one kind: an adult choosing where to live, whom to marry, what work to do and whether to have children, against the expectations of parents or in-laws who love them or are at least bound to them [1][2][3][4][5]. That is where the advice is strongest.

It is not an instruction to stop caring. Robbins says of her sixth truth that it is not about not caring but about caring more about your own happiness [5]. Bilyeu went into the conversation with her father determined to show respect [4], and Robbins tells Kelsey to focus on the gift of loving her family [3].

It does not excuse abuse. Robbins says in the Bilyeu episode that frame of reference is not about excusing abuse or toxic behavior [4]. The Let Them Theory has stated exceptions: you do not let a drunk friend drive, you do not leave someone in suicidal ideation, and you do not let people discriminate or do something dangerous [2]. When a caller living with a spouse who torments her tries to simply stop reacting, Robbins tells her to own the choice she is making to stay and urges her to move in with family: "You are not a burden if you go to your family and say, can I move home for six months while I save some money and get my own place?" [2] Where a situation involves abuse, danger or thoughts of self-harm, a qualified professional's advice matters more than any podcast, and Robbins herself says her show is not a substitute for it [2].

It is not a licence to act tonight. In the listener-questions episode Robbins separates the decision from its execution: "Your head gives you the when and the how." [3] Knowing today that you will change careers does not mean quitting today, since you need the money and need to build a runway [3]. Bilyeu softened even a change at home, proposing to cook and clean six days the next week, then five, then four, to respect her husband's adjustment [4].

It is not a tool to use on other people. Bilyeu warns against telling someone what their frame of reference is and against throwing the phrase around and assuming you are healed [4].

It does not mean every objection is empty. Bilyeu's father was right about her lack of contacts, visa and training [4]. And Robbins's test of which way you are moving applies: a choice framed only as getting away from someone gives your power to them [1].

Finally, it does not come free. Durvasula says authenticity means being unpopular and often a smaller circle [5], and Robbins says her own friend group has shrunk [5].

What To Do With It

1. Decide who is going to be disappointed. Start from Robbins's rule that someone always will be, and apply her test: "if someone's going to be disappointed by the way that you're living your life it better not be you." [5]

2. Check the decision with your body before your head. Picture each option and notice whether you expand or contract; expansion is a yes even when you are nervous [1][3]. Then let your head plan the when and the how [3].

3. Do the inner work until you are clear. Use Bilyeu's question, "what does your average Wednesday look like", for each life you are considering, so that other people's opinions meet a settled answer and not a permeable one [4].

4. Roll the clock forward. Ask, as Bilyeu did, what you will have to live with after the person you are pleasing is gone [4], and weigh Robbins's warning that the things you regret are the ones you didn't do [1].

5. Work out their frame of reference, for people you care about. Ask what would have to be true about their world for them to say what they said [4]. Keep the answer to yourself; never tell them what their frame is [4].

6. Take the true part of the criticism. If the objection names a real gap, as Bilyeu's father's did, use it to get stronger without letting it touch your self-esteem [4].

7. Ask before you assume. Have the conversation Robbins scripts for Katrina: "I need to do this for myself. And the only thing holding me back is my fear about you guys being upset with me. So can I ask for your support in doing something that I desperately need to do for my own growth?" [1] Go in, like Bilyeu, intending both to hold your ground and to show respect [4].

8. Let them react, and stay yourself. Hold space for the disappointment without letting it change the decision [5]. Around a disapproving relative, stop going quiet: say when you do not feel supported and make requests of your partner [2].

9. If you hold back, own it. Say "I'm too scared to move" and do not put the decision on your parents [1].

10. Describe the move by where it leads, and remember it can be undone. Name what you are moving toward [1], decide in advance to be proud you tried even if it fails [4], and keep Robbins's reassurance in view: "Your move isn't forever." [3]

Sources

1. How to Make Hard Choices After a Breakup: Mel Robbins Coaches a Listener on Staying or Going · The Mel Robbins Podcast
2. Mel Robbins Takes Live Calls on Using the Let Them Theory in Relationships · The Mel Robbins Podcast
3. Mel Robbins Answers Listener Questions: Moving Away, Passion, Health, Emotions, Breakups and Career Change · The Mel Robbins Podcast
4. Lisa Bilyeu on the Mel Robbins Podcast: Using Frame of Reference to Speak So People Listen · The Mel Robbins Podcast
5. Mel Robbins' 7 Truths for Building Real Confidence and Being Your Authentic Self · The Mel Robbins Podcast