It\u2019s not indifference that drives Robbins to counsel letting go of things beyond one\u2019s control, but instead acknowledgment that, as Buddhists say, \u201csuffering comes from resisting reality.\u201d The reality of the world is that everyone wants to rule it: We crave control, but that control is illusory, and people will for the most part do whatever they want. Let them, Robbins counsels in her frequently voiced mantra: \u201cWhen you stop managing everyone else,\u201d she holds, \u201cyou\u2019ll realize you have a lot more power than you thought\u2014you\u2019ve just unknowingly been giving it away.\u201d Neither is it indifference to stop caring what others think, Robbins suggests, but you can of course model such good behavior that you don\u2019t deserve another\u2019s negative opinion. Some of Robbins\u2019 advice is easy enough to adopt, such as her inspired \u201c5 Second Rule,\u201d counting backward from 5 before launching into an activity that one might not want to do, like paying the bills. Other strategies require of readers the patience of a saint, as when, instead of raising a stink when a fellow airplane passenger refuses to cover his mouth as he coughs and wheezes, she covers her mouth and nose with a scarf and puts on headphones. \u201cProblem solved,\u201d she writes, adding that the corollary to Let them\u00a0is Let me, as in Let me adjust my behavior to cover what I can actually control. Robbins tours through a host of situations, from breaking up with a bad friend to interrogating yourself about why you\u2019re upset about something, with sometimes surprising answers that often boil down to simple solutions, such as \u201cStop choosing to chase people who clearly do not want to be with you.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s not indifference that drives Robbins to counsel letting go of things beyond one\u2019s control, but instead acknowledgment that, as Buddhists say, \u201csuffering comes from resisting reality.\u201d The reality of the world is that everyone wants to rule it: We crave control, but that control is illusory, and people will for the most part do […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1429,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1428"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1428\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}