Mel Robbins

Mel Robbins is a podcast host and self-help author. She was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and grew up in North Muskegon, Michigan. She graduated from Dartmouth College and earned a law degree from Boston College Law School in 1994. She worked as a public defender in New York, then from 1999 as a life and executive coach in Boston.

Radio and television work followed, including a period as a CNN legal analyst. In 2011 she published Stop Saying You're Fine and gave a TEDx talk that introduced her "five second rule": count down from five and act before your mind talks you out of it. The 5 Second Rule (2017) and The High 5 Habit (2021) became bestsellers. The Mel Robbins Podcast, launched in 2022, became one of the most popular podcasts in the United States.

The Let Them Theory (2024), written with her daughter Sawyer, argues that stress drops when you stop trying to control other people's choices and opinions ("let them") and put that energy into your own response ("let me"). Critics say the idea has little research behind it, and some note its likeness to a 2022 poem by Cassie Phillips. Robbins lives in Vermont.