Two words that can unlock better golf: ‘Let them’

When Mel Robbins noticed a change at her parents' golf course on a recent visit, she originally let it distract her. 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 pissed off because I was like, Why isn't that fescue?” Robbins recalled. “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. Those two words are the basis of her best-selling book, The Let Them Theory, which has empowered scores of readers to let go of things outside their control so they can channel their energy towards what they can.

“I have become a way better golfer since The Let Them Theory,” Robbins, 57, says. She plays a few times a year and loves golf as a way to spend time with her husband, Chris, who carries a single-digit handicap. Her three kids play golf as well.

The Let Them Theory is Robbins’ third best-seller. She’s the speaker in one of the most-viewed TED Talks ever, and hosts a podcast geared towards helping people maximize their potential.

Let Them arose when Robbins detected her son was unprepared for his prom. Late in deciding to go, he hadn’t made a dinner reservation, and Robbins found herself scrambling to fix his problem. But then her daughter told her that if this is how these teens wanted to do prom, let them. The simple phrase stuck. Robbins backed off and let him handle his own prom. A hectic moment was transformed into a non-issue. Robbins started applying it to other aspects of her life and became curious as to why it worked. The resulting book features input from 57 experts as to why saying Let Them works and various ways it can be applied.

Robbins says you can use Let Them all over the golf course. Identify something you can’t control that you have an adverse reaction to, and then say to yourself, Let It.

“If my husband is like, 'You should do a pitching wedge,’ and I want the 8, I'm like, Let him. Let him tell me to do a pitching wedge,” Robbins says. “If my dad wants me to try his putter that weighs 700 pounds and frankly looks like it should be illegal, Let him. But I don't have to use it.”

Robbins believes even saying those two words eases tension and allows your mind to lock in on something more helpful.

“There's that moment where you start to worry about what's going to happen,” Robbins says. “And inside the 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, the concern about how you're going to look as you take the swing or you rip it in the wrong direction: Let Them.”

The next step in Robbins’ theory is turning focus inward. It’s the phrase, Let Me.

“Let me focus on what I can control,” Robbins says. “And taking your power back, and then dropping into a peaceful and confident state, so that you can access your training and the magic in the moment that's available to you.”

It’s as simple as that, which is different than saying it’s easy. It takes self-awareness and discipline.

Robbins believes her The Let Them Theory is a modern application of stoicism, which similarly focuses on the delineation between what we can and can’t control. Some golfers are already on board. Rory McIlroy says he’s read books about stoicism and studied Roman Stoic philosopher and emperor Marcus Aurelius. Russel Henley, after making a record 207 feet of putts at the 2025 Tour Championship and taking the lead with a first-round 61, said of the performance: “I just felt like I was at peace if I missed [a putt].” This is stoicism: Accepting the outcome, regardless of whether the ball goes in or not. It’s Let Them. If the putt lips out, let it. If it goes in, let it.

Let Them is more than a mindset or philosophy, though. It’s science. Dr. Aditi Nerurkar, who studies stress at Harvard University, is one of the experts in Robbins’ book who emphasizes that stress is not a feeling. Robbins uses Nerurkar's research to help explain what's taking place in the brain.

“When you allow yourself to get up in your head or quote, 'feel stressed,' medically speaking, you just changed your physiology and your brain,” Robbins says. “What happens is your brain switches gears and your amygdala turns on, and it overrides the functioning of your prefrontal cortex.”

This is particularly problematic while you’re on the golf course, because your prefrontal cortex is responsible for decision making, strategy and focus. All of which you’re going to need if you plan on having a good round.

“And that means that it is impossible, based on the research, for you to think clearly, for you to stay calm, and for you to 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. They've turned on their amygdala. They've turned their nervous system into fight or flight.”

You’ve probably felt this spiral: You had a good first few holes but then hit a logjam. You’re stuck behind this slow group, and there’s nowhere to go. The good rhythm you had is lost, and there’s nothing you can do about it. That sensation of stress rises in your body. You hit a bad shot, which turns into a bad hole, a bad front nine, a bad round.

The good news is if you’re able to catch yourself at the start of the spiral, you can prevent a full meltdown.

“The better response is to reset it, and one of the ways [Dr. Nerurkar] says you can is by saying, Let Them. Because when you say Let Them, you're recognizing the situation, you're recognizing that there are things that are stressing you out that are outside of your control, and then when you say, Let Me, you're queuing yourself to say, Let me focus on what I can control in this moment. Let me take a deep breath. Let me recognize that I've allowed all this stupid stuff on the first three holes to piss me off, and let me just drop back in,” Robbins says.

Reducing your stress response is critical to being able to play your best golf, because stress gets in the way of accessing that mystical "flow state" athletes talk about when they’re performing at their highest level. You’ve probably experienced glimpses of it, too. That incredible six-hole stretch where you were somehow one under; that day you made every putt you looked at. Do you remember how you felt when you were doing it? You weren’t tense or anxious.

“Medically speaking, it's impossible to be in a state of flow like that when your stress response has been turned on,” Robbins 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 put yourself in a position to hit your best shots.

“It is fundamentally a book about control, and what is golf about? It's a game about control,” Robbins says. “The irony is, the more you give up control, the more you gain it on the course, and in life.”