Melissa Urban: The Boundaries We Need
Melissa Urban is a woman who can do everything. Not only is the founder of Whole30, she’s a six-time New York Times best-selling author. Her latest is the subject of our conversation today: It’s called The Book of Boundaries: Set the Limits That Will Set You Free, which is the result of helping her community navigate through their relationships to…pretty much everything as they begin to fix and adjust their relationship to their own bodies and food. She is a fierce proponent of self-efficacy and a commitment to showing up for yourself in all aspects of life.
In our conversation, we discuss what a boundary even means—and how difficult it is for us to address what’s at the root of establishing them, which is our NEEDS. Melissa guides us through relatable scenarios, like with the in-laws or a boss, where boundaries might be missing. And we talk about the qualities of niceness and how they can get in the way of caring for ourselves: Melissa, who is fierce in her directness, distinguishes between the quality of niceness and the quality of kindness in a very profound way. And it all comes to this: We must first be kind to ourselves before we can show up with kindness in the world. Okay, let’s get to our conversation.
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:
Direct not rude…15:00
Boundaries don’t tell other people what to do…28:00
Set limits, set expectations…34:00
Make the goal showing up for yourself…41:00
MORE FROM MELISSA URBAN:
The Book of Boundaries: Set the Limits That Will Set You Free
Check out Melissa's Website
Follow Melissa on Instagram and Twitter
TRANSCRIPT:
(Edited slightly for clarity.)
MELISSA URBAN:
Are you going to dive right in talking about our moms? We're just going to jump right in. Going straight to Moms.
ELISE LOEHNEN:
Let's start with moms. No, let's start with the Enneagram. When you revealed that you were an eight, I was like, of course you're an eight. Because as I read The Book of Boundaries, and knowing you as I do, I'm always so impressed by your bravery. And I think I'm an unfiltered person, but you just go for it. Have you always been like that?
MELISSA:
To some degree. So I have definitely always been known for not being shy about speaking my feelings. I have definitely often been accused of being too direct or too blunt. Empathy is not a skill that came naturally to me for a variety of reasons. I had no empathy for myself, so it made it really hard to have empathy for anybody else. So I would always show up to conversations like super direct and blunt. Don't care about your feelings, I'm just going to tell you what needs to be said. I didn't like small talk. I wanted to get straight from to the point. But that also comes from, I think growing up in New England. In New England, we're not rude, we just don't need to talk to you. It's very transactional, conversational style. So I think all of that kind of plays into my personality and what makes me kind of more natural at setting boundaries. But over the course of the last couple decades, I've definitely learned to soften my communication style and speak to people the way they want to be spoken to. Right? Recognizing that not everyone appreciates the bluntness that I appreciate.
ELISE:
Well, I appreciate your bluntness and I find you fascinating. And in my experience of eights, and I don't know if this is true of you, but I'm going to guess that it might be, but that sometimes I wouldn't even call it a fierceness or quality of the way that you engage with the world, that I think actually protects a very tender heart. And in the eights that I've observed, there is this desire of, I wish someone would actually do this for me, I'm going to show the world how I want to be protected by being protective. But that sometimes it's hard to find that beneath such a strong veneer of truth telling.
MELISSA:
You know that meme that's like, hey, check on your strong friends. That's us <laugh>. That’s the eight, check on us once in a while. And I will say, I have done so much therapy and so much self work that I no longer feel like that because I'm very comfortable expressing vulnerability and telling you exactly what I need from you or exactly how you can support me. People are not mind readers. And if I'm not saying to you like, oh, I'm not okay in this moment, can you sit on the couch next to me? But let's not talk. I just want you present. Or can we get an hour so I can download my feelings onto you? Unless I say that very directly, people aren't going to know how to best support me. And then yeah, I'm gonna feel like, wow, why am I always proactively taking good care of other people and advocating for them and no one's advocating for me? The answer is I have to advocate for myself. And so I've become comfortable doing that and expressing the fact that, yeah, there are certainly soft pieces of my heart and I want those to be cared for and here's how we can do that together.
ELISE:
Yeah. Are you good at letting other people take care of you now?
MELISSA:
I am better. I’ve got to tell you, my husband has made great inroads in this. He is such a good man, but he also knows how to talk to me. And he's also very direct in his own way. So we got together and he would always be like, What can I do? Can I help? Can I do this for you? Can I get you lunch today? And I really struggled with letting him help me because for five years I was a single mom. I ran my own business, I did my own parenting by myself. I didn't technically need him for anything that I was doing in my life. And he finally sat me down and he was like, first of all, if I'm going to show up in equitable partnership and our relationship, you’ve got to let me start doing things. Second of all, this is how I can contribute to the relationship. I can support you in your career by taking care of some of these things. And if you don't let me help, it makes me feel like you're holding me back from the kid, from the household, and from your life and that doesn't feel very good. So I've become much better at letting other people, certain people, help me where needed.
ELISE:
And I know that you are in recovery. When you think about those tender parts of yourself or whatever it was that you, and I know a little bit about your backstory and I'm very interested in addiction touches me closely and the conversation around it is also fascinating to me and something that I really want to try to understand more deeply. Is it a disease, Is it a trauma wound? Is it all of these things? Is it a spiritual assault? How do you reconcile that with your boundary at work? I mean, I understand how clearly you articulate boundaries about your addiction, and I do want to talk about that, about recovery and that conversation that you have internally am I think it's true of all addicts, right? And all of us are addicted to something. I would also argue it's a big tent. I just asked you three questions at the same time.
MELISSA:
I mean, yes, there is a lot there, of course. So here's how I think about it: I believe that allowing everyone to identify with and identify their relationship with their addiction and recovery in whatever way serves them best is the most helpful model. So I know that we have incredible experts out there Doctor, he pronounces it, Mate, is that correct?
ELISE:
Yes.
MELISSA:
So he's out there talking about how it's not a disease and it's not a choice. It it stems from trauma. I think that's incredibly impactful and powerful because the disease model of addiction really never resonated with me. The 12 step model of powerlessness really never resonated with me. For me, my recovery required me to reclaim my power and to share with myself all of the ways in which I had power to rebuild my life. And also, I think it's really important just to allow people the space to create that relationship for themselves. So if you want to call yourself an addict because it still serves you, wonderful. If you want to say, I'm no longer addicted, I am recovered because that still serves you, absolutely. I don't think we should try to define that for anybody else. It is a journey and it's a process. And how I thought about it five years ago is not how I think about it today. And hopefully if I continue to do the work, won't be how I think about it five years from now. And I think that's the way that it should be. But I'm very grateful for people like Dr. Mate’s voice to help destigmatize it and help people make connections that perhaps weren't there before about their experiences.
ELISE:
And I think anyone who's listening, whether you would classify yourself as an addict or not, I mean, I certainly have my tendencies, particularly with things like work, which is more venerated in our society than stigmatized, unfortunately. But I think anyone can understand, and again, I've been told by people who are, our language fails us, but who are addict addicts who are sort of like, you'll never really understand. But I think we understand that initial impulse of numbing or using or hiding or distancing from whatever it is that's emergent in us. And I think about your work, I think about your recovery, and I also think about boundaries in some ways as a way to create the space before that overwhelm drives you elsewhere. Is that accurate?
MELISSA:
Yeah. One of the pre-steps of any boundary practice. So in the book I talk about, the first step is to identify the need for a boundary. And that usually comes from a sense of dread or a sense of anxiety. But there's a pre-step there that we have not only have been conditioned not to practice, but we've been strongly conditioned not to do this by the patriarchy and stereotypically rigid gender roles, religious influence, diet, culture, trauma, what have you. We have been purposefully taught not to check in with ourselves and in even more dire language that our bodies are not to be trusted. We can't trust the signals that our own body is sending us. And I felt a little bit that way when I first entered into my 12 step program, that 12 steps was like, you are absolutely powerless against this. It is a disease and you have to sort of relinquish and give that power up. And I was like, but I should be able to trust the signals that my body is sending me and touch in and touch base with myself. So all of that to say yes, when we create the space throughout the day, on a regular basis with whatever that practice looks like, whether it's prayer, whether it's meditation, whether it's journaling or just moments of quiet to say, what do I need? What do I feel? There's this underlying sense of anxiety, there's a fear, there's a resentment, but where is that coming from and what is the feeling underneath it? And what limit could I set to help me relieve that? I think that can be an incredibly powerful practice that keeps us from holding it in, holding it, and holding it in and then exploding. And when you're really close to addiction, the way you explode is to immediately numb or distance or distract with the most immediate form of instant gratification that you can find.
ELISE:
That's so powerful. And I think for a lot of people who are listening who aren't necessarily addicts, that explosion, it might be anger, it could be anger turned inward, there are manifolds and anger turn inward I think is silently killing women in particular, whether it's internalized as resentment, self-hatred, judgment, frustration, they're all temperature variations on that don't tread on me energy that as you articulate so well in your book, are the foundation of boundaries. And yes, as women, going back to your comment on the patriarchy, we are conditioned to believe that we don't have needs or shouldn't have needs or that other people's needs, of course, should take priority.
MELISSA:
Yes, Yes. I have been taught and have been modeled by my family and teachers and other influences the media, especially when I became a mom, you think about moms are praised the most when we are selfless, when we have no needs. And then when we do have a need, that need is questioned. Think about the trope that women just, they never say what they mean. Women never say what they mean. So when they say one thing, they really mean something else. This goes back to school-aged kids where boys hit you because they like you and you have to interpret what a woman is really saying when she says something. So we have that to counteract. And then when we do have a need, we are immediately told that we're selfish, that we're cold, that we have too many rules, that we're creating distance. So yeah, no wonder we eat it and we swallow it, and we always say yes, even when we don't have capacity or when we don't want to. And we go along just to keep the peace. And we shove all of this so far down inside us until one day we can't and we explode. And whatever that explosion looks like, whether it's addiction, whether you're turning it inward, whether you're blowing up in anger at the other person and cutting off the relationship because at that point you feel like you have no other options. Yes, it's incredibly harmful. And it does us a disservice because it just continues to teach us that we can't trust the signals that we are feeling. Every time I swallow that sense of resentment or I swallow the, I want to say something, but I have to bite my tongue, it's like reminding my body that the signals that are coming up from me can't be trusted or should not be enacted. And that's problematic.
ELISE:
That they're invalid, too.
MELISSA:
Yeah.
ELISE:
One of the things that I think is so powerful about your work and the book, it truly made me uncomfortable in very powerful ways, because most women, I struggle with this, again, trying to find some sort of middle ground where how do I land this nicely? How do I make myself likable while still not steamrolling or abandoning myself? And you just put it out there. So for people who are listening who haven't bought the book of boundaries, it's essentially, I don't know, hundreds of scripts. And with green, yellow, red stages to certain interventions, effectively you escalate your approach with people who really are struggling to understand that you're laying down a boundary. But even with some of the greens, I was like, wow, brave. That's brave. Whoa. Wow. And clearly you have practice at this, you stand for so many of us by standing up at all. How does it feel when people respond to you with criticism or that's unlikeable or how do you process that feedback?
MELISSA:
I've had a lot of practice with that feedback, for one. I do think, and I've heard many times, almost always from women, when I share a green response, people will say, That still sounds rude to me. And I gently invite them to unpack why. Is it because I'm not a man? Because if I was a man and I said that in the workplace, nobody would think twice. Is it because you've been told by other people who benefit from you not having boundaries that when you set any limit whatsoever, it is rude or colder off putting? So I really invite people to question why they automatically assume that something spoken directly is automatically rude. If I share a boundary and somebody close to me says, wow, that came off as harsh, the first thing I'm going to do is ask myself, Can I find it? Can I find it? Wow. Okay, hold on. Let me take a quick hot second. Was I maybe a little more harsh than I could've? Was there a way to frame it just as directly but a little more kindly? Have I been holding onto this for so long that I came out of the gate a little hotter than I might have wanted to? I'm going to ask myself if I can find it. If I can't truly believe in my integrity that the boundary I just shared, please call before you come over and give us at least an hour's notice. If I can't find any way that that boundary is actually rude or cold, and I can see all of the ways that that boundary would benefit the relationship, then I acknowledge their disappointment. And I say, your response to my boundary is not my responsibility. Your feelings are not mine to manage. That takes practice.
ELISE:
So I'm just looking because I'm wondering too if there is a difference, in the etymology of nice versus kind because you're a very kind person, I think. The etymology of kind is ‘kin,’ the etymology of nice, this is interesting. Middle English in the sense stupid, ‘nescuis,’ ignorant, to not know. I don't know where to take either of these.
MELISSA:
I talk about the difference between nice and kind often because I say, I'm not nice. I don't offer to do things if I don't want to do them, I'm not that nice. And then people say, No, but you are nice. And I'm like, No, I'm kind. And there's a difference When I think about people doing things to be nice, what I think about is this isn't something that I have capacity to do, that I have interest in doing, that I have the time or energy or money to do. This is not something that in my own boundaries, I would normally say yes to you, but I want to be nice because I want to be likable. So I'm going to say yes to you in an effort to be nice. And what ends up happening is that I end up showing up resentfully, begrudgingly, coldly in a way that is not my fullest happiest self because I said yes when I didn't really want to.
And what I think is kind, and if that comes from the root meaning kin, that makes so much sense in the effort of creating safety and trust in our relationship. If you ask me to do something and I cannot do it, I'm going to tell you no. And I'm going to do it nicely, but I'm going to do it clearly. And that is the best thing to do in the interest of our kinship because I'm going to tell you exactly where my limits are and you're going to know that I say what I mean and that you can trust what I say when I feel free to say no to you, it means my yeses hold that much more value and meaning and it improves our relationship. It is a true gift to the relationship when each of us say what we mean.
ELISE:
That's really powerful. And I think, too, of nice in this context. And we obviously hear it's circulating in the vernacular, nice white people, et cetera. But nice does seem in some way you're trying to perform something, manage, there's something manipulative about it, that you are trying to perform your niceness for someone. It's an act of self-reflection, whereas maybe kindness is more of an internal expression of something that you actually want to do for someone because you care about them. And that intention shouldn't be maligned. And I think we should, culturally, obviously we have a lot of work to do to unstrap women from this idea that we need to be always likable, always “nice” and that being direct assertive is somehow inappropriate for women.
MELISSA:
But there's also an element of safety to this. I am nice as a woman, as a woman to strange men to men I know to men anywhere, I'm nice because I don't want to get murdered, because I don't want to be assaulted, because I don't want to be harassed. So there's also an element where I understand why and I'm talking about this from the privilege of being a white, straight, cis, able-bodied woman. When you take that down to additional layers of privilege, there is a reason why niceness is of value to us in society. So it is a lot to unpack and sometimes I think we have to wield our niceness strategically in an effort to keep ourselves safe.
ELISE:
Yeah. Do you think that that's a trauma response for you?
MELISSA:
I mean, probably. Sure. Probably. In my sexual assault when I was a teenager, 16, I learned a lot about what I thought was sex and love in a way that I now recognize was so incredibly messed up. But it colored all of my relationships for the next few decades. And yes, I definitely think I was the pleasure to have in class because I didn't want to rock anybody's boat anywhere. I didn't want anyone to even look twice at me because I was afraid if they looked twice, they would say, what is wrong with you? You're not okay. And I wasn't prepared to have that conversation. So now that you mention it, probably.
ELISE:
No, I mean I should tell people who are listening too, that we share an editor, Whit, the wonderful, brilliant Whit. And in my manuscript at certain point she was like, do you understand this is a trauma response? This is not a natural, normal response. Particularly around things like that. I can't remember if it's in my final book, but I wrote about expecting that I would lose my virginity by rape. I just thought that was what was going to happen. And she was like, I don't think that that's a belief that a lot of people share, I think you need to unpack why you would think this. I wrote it in such a way as to imply that everyone thought that.
MELISSA:
Yeah. Yeah. Wow.
ELISE:
Yeah. But it's interesting that you think, and we don't need to go on a major detour here, but it's interesting to me that you think being nice would keep you safe. My belief was if I am invisible or do not do anything to draw any attention to myself, that is how I will be safe.
MELISSA:
But that's how I did it. I did it by always turning my homework in on time and never talking back and not getting in trouble and showing up at all of the family things anyway and not saying a word and smiling and being happy. I accomplished that by not ever giving anyone a reason to look at me. And I did that through my niceness. My malleability, my compliance.
ELISE:
Your compliance. And now I would say you are physically one of the strongest people I know. I know because I watch your Instagram videos while I sit on the couch <laugh> and I think about what that would feel like to try to do a chin up. It's very mesmerizing to watch you, but have you always been so physically strong?
MELISSA:
No, I didn't set foot in the gym until I got out of rehab in my twenties. I didn't play sports as a kid. I was very uncoordinated, unathletic. I thought that was sort of my story. And I always preferred books to being outside and being physically active. So it wasn't until I got out of rehab in my twenties that I was like, okay, I need to reinvent myself as a healthy person with healthy habits. What would this healthy person do? She would start getting up at 5:00 AM and going to the gym five mornings a week before she did her full-time job. So I mean, I have a 20 plus year history with fitness, and I have been incredibly consistent with my routine. We are talking five mornings a week and a regular schedule. I also have very good limits around my fitness. It is very much coming from a place of self care and not punishment or any of that kind of negative mindset.
But it took me decades to build to this level of strength. And I gain and lose strength relatively regularly as I flow in and out of whatever I'm choosing to do for movement. So when I'm hiking a ton, my pullups and my squat go down and now it's winter and I'm back in the gym and I'll probably work on my pullups and my squats a little bit more. But my only goal in the gym is to show up. It's just to show up and to check in with my body and think what would feel good today. And sometimes that's lying around on a yoga mat and stretching and rolling around. And sometimes it's doing a really hard heavy workout. And sometimes it's going for a 10 mile hike and sometimes it's taking my dog for a walk around the block. But I show up, I check in with myself, I ask myself, what would feel good today? And I just do that thing.
ELISE:
Yeah. It's interesting how core so much of this seems to be to your process of self-healing. And the book of boundaries is another example. You're not a therapist. This is work that you've been practicing for decades. You're not an expert by learning, you're an expert by practice and mechanizing a lot of these “healthy actions”until they become just part of who you are in a way that I think is really beautiful. You're not prescribing something that you haven't lived.
MELISSA:
I have a really strong policy that I do not talk about things in which I feel like I don't have enough lived experience. I have a rule that I don't talk about any aspect of parenting, including setting boundaries with kids beyond the age of my own son. So he's nine. So if you wanna talk about boundaries with kids between the ages of one and nine, I'm your person. If you wanna talk about boundaries with teenagers, I'm gonna send you to someone else because I don't have personal experience with that. So that's definitely something that I always work into the things that I talk about. But I always say with every newsletter, every Instagram post, I am always only just talking to myself. And if other people get great things out of it, I think that's wonderful. But I'm always just reminding myself affirming myself, supporting myself, relearning things for myself. I think and I believe in, I think it's the Glennon Doyle practice of I don't share anything until it can become about not just me, but about the collective. And every time I have to think about what I share this with other people, it helps me clarify how I feel about it myself. And I find that an incredibly beneficial act.
ELISE:
Well, and so often the personal is universal, but it takes a lot of work to process before you're really sharing the moral of the story and not all of the unprocessed material. And the thing that I think is so interesting about boundaries, and obviously they've been having a cultural moment for a bit as though it's the first time that any of us have encountered this concept, which in a way it kind of is, right? Because I think so many of us were raised thinking or believing, particularly women maybe, but that it was our job to manage other people. That part of our way of showing up in the world is one, just fulfilling needs. There would be no problem, nothing to see here, but also that we should try to control our environment and control others. And boundary work is actually the opposite, which I think most people don't understand that it is, you can only control yourself. Can you talk a little bit about that?
MELISSA:
Yes. So I think most people have a squishy idea of what boundaries are, but I think one of the most common misconceptions is that they are controlling. They're about telling other people what to do. And that goes hand in hand with feeling like you are responsible for managing other people's feelings. And it's exactly the opposite, which is, if you think about it, so incredibly empowering boundaries don't tell other people what to do. They tell other people what you are willing to do to take responsibility for your own needs and your own feelings and keep yourself safe and healthy. And they actually are, as we've discussed, a gift to your relationship, they make relationships better. And when you turn it around on its head like that, I think number one, that helps people understand all of the benefits to your relationship when each party does take responsibility for how they feel and for their needs. And it also gives you a sense of empowerment. I think people feel like, oh, I can't set boundaries because what if the other person won't do it or doesn't say yes? And when I tell them, Oh no, no, no, your boundary boundary cannot depend on somebody else. It is only dependent on what you are willing and able to do. And they go, oh, well that feels like something I actually can do because I know what the end result is. I know if push comes to shove and the other person is unwilling or unable to respect this limit that I've extended between us, I know what I can do to preserve that limit all by myself, without needing their cooperation and input. And the end result isn't always ideal. It won't always make you happy. It won't always be easy, especially if we're talking about limiting communication with a family member, starting to look for another job, going to therapy to talk about whether your marriage is actually viable. They're not easy, but at least it is an area in which you have power.
ELISE:
So I know that the book was built over a long time, a lot of emails, a lot of people responding to you to tell you about what they were encountering in their lives. What do you think is most present? And obviously maybe it depends on the time of year, but what do you hear all the time?
MELISSA:
I hear a lot of mother-in-law stories. I do not want to kind of pile on the trope of the mother-in-law, but I do hear a lot of issues within in-laws. And I think that's such a complex area because boundary issues within in-laws affects so many different relationships. You and your spouse, you and their parents, them and their parents, their parents with your kids, if you have kids, it affects everybody. And you have this other layer to dig through, which is, can my spouse and I get on the same or my partner and I get on the same page with the limit that we need to set to protect our family unit from their parents' harmful behavior. So that is a very complex and really common issue that I spend a lot of time talking about right now as we're recording this we're heading into the holidays and I'm having a lot of conversations with a lot of very anxious people wondering how they are going to survive dinner with their racist uncle or their comment always commenting on your plate or your parenting style or your relationship or your baby making status. All of these sort of unwanted, unsolicited comments, feedback questions, advice giving, that's a very common issue. So those are kind of two that are coming up for me a lot right now.
ELISE:
Well it makes sense. I mean, going to this idea too that as women we're taught or we are programmed to believe that it's our job, our responsibility to manage other people. So you can understand giving in-laws, understanding they probably have really good intent or have no other way of being in relationship otherwise than trying to manage, control situations. It's like a terrible cultural programming that we're all trying to undo simultaneously. So for someone who's going into the holidays, going to Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, whatever it may be, and they're facing a mother-in-law who wants to know when they're having a child, what's the way to just make it very clear that this is not a conversation you want to have?
MELISSA:
So I encourage people to set boundaries well ahead of the event. If you know that a family member is always bringing up politics that you disagree with or always commenting on your baby making status or always over parenting when you are there in their presence with your kids, have the conversation well ahead of time. Like have a phone call or send an email. Hey, just checking in on holiday plans, looking forward to seeing you, who's bringing what. By the way, when John and I show up, I need you to please not ask us about our relationship status or when we're getting married. It makes us both incredibly uncomfortable and it's not great for our relationship, so I'm asking you now to please respect that.
Set the limit ahead of time so you set expectations, right? And if this is a real make or break situation, if you show up to your family and you call your mom and you say, Look, here's the deal, we don't agree on politics or social justice issues, we all know that and nobody has a good time at Thanksgiving when either side bring something up. Can we all agree to not discuss or bring up politics or religion at any point during the holiday? Can we agree to that? If your family says yes, now you've got an expectation set and you can hold the boundary in the moment if someone forgets. If they say, no, absolutely not, I'm going to talk about whatever I want to talk about, and you're just going to have to deal with it now that there might be a different limit you need to set, which is understood, we won't be coming for Thanksgiving this year. Understood, we're not going to come for dinner. We'll pop by for about an hour after dessert because these conversations tend to happen around the dinner table. But at least now you have the power and the information to be able to set the limit that actually protects you and keeps you safe and preserves the relationship. Because blowing up at people over Thanksgiving dinner is not a great way to preserve it. So set the expectation ahead of time and then use a yellow boundary in the moment to remind them. And the red boundary is, got it, I understand that this is not a conversation topic that you're willing to change. I'm going to excuse myself from the table. We're going to take off early. I'm going to go for a walk.
ELISE:
And politics obviously. I mean, we're just out of an election. And then where do you draw the line? And I guess we know this, we can't change each other's minds. It's not going to happen at dinner, so is really the only recourse, again, going to what you can or cannot control, to just not participate in the conversation? Or is there an injunction or social responsibility to have a confrontation?
MELISSA:
There is no right answer here in that I know with certain family members that I disagree with that during calm, relaxed moments, I can have really productive conversations where I share how I feel about some of their views and how I find them harmful and how it could be problematic and they listen and receive. And even if we don't end up on the same side of things, it can be a productive discussion where I feel heard and I feel like at the very least I have said, I'm not okay with this kind of language. And if you share that in my presence, I'm going to call you out on it and either ask you not to, or I'm going to excuse myself. In other situations and with other families, if you want to maintain any kind of connection, the only recourse you have is if this is a subject that you do not discuss and I will not fault anyone for saying I want to maintain a relationship with my mom, and the only way I can do that is if we don't talk about social justice. I completely understand and respect that, and I want you to be able to maintain that relationship. So it's very individualized. And again, I think the most important thing is I'm not going to judge anybody else for how they choose to handle it.
ELISE:
As someone who obviously, as you mentioned food is a huge issue around the holidays for a lot of people, then a new year, new you full of judgment and desire to change habits. And you've obviously done a lot of this work in your process of becoming a healthier person post recovery, did you start all of this work by setting boundaries with yourself? And then how do you uphold those boundaries with yourself with kindness?
MELISSA:
Self boundaries are so tricky. They're really tricky in that, first of all, I think a lot of people don't even realize that you can set boundaries with yourself, you always talk about boundaries in relationships, but you can and should absolutely set boundaries with yourself and they can be so powerful because number one, you're the only person who has to agree. You don't need anybody buy-in or cooperation. And number two, setting a boundary with yourself can help you instantly reclaim time, energy, capacity. I think about the boundary I have where I don't check my phone in the morning before I'm done with my morning routine. If you set that boundary with yourself tomorrow and held it, think about how your entire day would flow differently, knowing that you were showing up proactively instead of reactively, that you were creating space to do whatever morning routine served you, even whether it was five minutes or an hour long, it would be an instant game changer. So those are the benefits.
The challenges are that if you don't hold a boundary with yourself, what's going to happen? Nobody's going to spring out of my closet and slap the phone out of my hand if I do roll over and check it in the morning. So it's really important, I think, to frame self boundaries from the perspective of future you. I talk to future Melissa all the time. What decisions can I make today that sets future Melissa up for success, for happiness, for health, for success, for not being burned out, for not being overcommitted, for not being resentful. And in the case of my phone in the morning, me picking up my phone isn't just me picking up my phone. It means future Melissa is going to have a way crappier day than if I don't. And when I think about it from that perspective, it makes it easier to ignore the immediate temptation in favor of the significant long-term gains.
It does take practice. I don't always get it right. And that is okay because I do believe boundaries are a practice for a reason. And I think a self boundary with kindness, is if I do pick up my phone and look at it, I don't beat myself up for it. I'm not mad at myself. I don't punish myself with a $10 fine in the swear jar because now that does feel punitive. Instead I'm like, oh, okay. What happened to my day because I picked my phone up? Oh, it went sideways really fast. I read election news, it bummed me out, et cetera, et cetera. And I just say, okay, what can I learn from this? Tomorrow night, why don't you charge your phone in the kitchen that way? It's not even here and you don't even have to worry about picking it up. And now I feel like future, Melissa is high fiving current Melissa because I'm making a decision that is guaranteed to make my life better.
ELISE:
I mean, obviously you have Whole 30 challenges, which are a great way to participate with other people, not clearly as helpful and supportive when you're trying to change the way that you're eating. I finally have energy back after breaking my neck this summer, and I'm trying to move my body more. I tend to be judgmental towards myself and punitive and harsh. And yet I can feel that part of myself that's like, I want to be strong. I'm doing this for the right reasons. I just want to move. It's not about vanity. How do you help people start better habits?
MELISSA:
That's a big question. So I've often talked about the idea of making the goal, just showing up for yourself. I think very often we create these lofty, very specific goals. And I get why, I know that smart acronym and why goals that are specific and measurable and actionable. I understand that, but that can feel like a whole lot of pressure, especially if you have a habit of if you miss one day or you don't do it exactly the way you said, you would say, well screw it. Forget it. I've ruined it all and now it's not even worth doing anymore. And you're just going to revert back to old habits. If you make the goal showing up, so say you want to get stronger, cool, what does that look like? It looks like I'm going to wake up every single morning and put on my exercise clothes and go into my basement gym or my garage gym if I get out there and I don't want to do anything. I don't have to because guess what? I showed up for myself today and moving my body. I got up, I didn't hit snooze, I put on my fitness gear, I went out into the garage, I checked in with my body. My body was like, you kind of need a rest day today. And that's what I did. Awesome. If you get out there and you decide you wanna work out for five minutes, you want to do something hard, you want to do something heavy, you want to go for a walk, whatever it looks like, if the goal is showing up, you can be really consistent with that. And that consistency is really what builds motivation. You can't rely on motivation for any new habit change because you won't always be motivated. But if you commit to action and you do that action consistently, that’s what's going to keep you motivated? You'll be able to look back and go, I showed up for myself every single morning.
Every single morning I put my workout gear on and I went out into my garage. That is amazing. And when you become consistent, that's when you automatically, naturally just start wanting to do more. I see this all the time with people on the Whole 30 where I'm like, your only job is to put Whole 30 food in your mouth for 30 days. That's it. Just today. If it's Whole 30, put it in your mouth, don't worry about anything else. And then naturally they're like, okay is this snack really serving me? Would it be better if I added more protein to this meal? Where is my meat coming from? And could I start going for a walk in the afternoons now that I have more energy? It's a very natural process with consistency. So I recommend people chase consistency.
ELISE:
Yeah, I like that mean it goes to what we were talking about earlier too, that so much of this is about building trust and learning how to listen to ourselves and those internal messages, including as you mentioned days when you're like, I'm too tired. And to that end, having really fallen off the fitness wagon, I'm like, I can recognize and have sympathy or empathy for myself that I have been really tired and now that I have more energy I can look back at at these months with a little bit more kindness toward myself I very quickly go to, you're lazy. It's not good. It's not good messaging.
MELISSA:
Have you read the book by Dr. Devon Price called Laziness Does Not Exist?
ELISE:
Yes.
MELISSA:
Oh, it's great.
ELISE:
Yeah.
MELISSA:
It's great. And it's so funny because people, inevitably, anyone who comes to me and says, I feel like I should skip my workout today, but I feel like if I do, I'll be lazy. I'm like, you're the least lazy person. You are the person that is so deeply committed, so you're committed to a fault. It's not the people who just don't feel like it or they just get demotivated or they just rather scroll Netflix again, which is fine. It's always the people, my sister, who are so deeply committed and have told themselves what it means, like a story in their head about what it means that they show up six days a week for their workout and what happens if they miss that one day, what it says about them. Those are the people that I have to talk off a ledge and I'm like, I'm ordering you to take a rest day. How's that? The best thing you could do for your fitness today is to take a rest day.
ELISE:
Yeah, it's so interesting. And how much of our programming runs counter to that, which is just do it. And sometimes of course, I've had those moments where I'm like, oh, I'm really glad I did that. I'm really glad I made myself do that. But more often than not, I think we just push to the point of exhaustion. And again, it just overrides or runs over all of those internal messages that are actually important to listen to.
MELISSA:
Yeah.
ELISE:
I thought one of the most powerful sections of the book was about setting boundaries at work. And I know obviously you have a company and you lead people, and I would imagine that has its benefits as someone who is probably willing to accept other people's boundaries and limits. And I'm sure you're extra conscious, but do you find as a leader that you are, this, I guess would be of antithetical to what you're talking about, but that you are pushing your team to set their own boundaries? Do you see your team members not setting boundaries?
MELISSA:
No. So I think my team is very good at setting boundaries. I also though remind myself all the time, you can't set boundaries for other people.
ELISE:
Right.
MELISSA:
Just because I would set a boundary around X, Y, Z, I don't take meetings before 9:00 AM doesn't mean that it works for the rest of my team. So I don't encourage people to adopt my boundaries. Instead, what I do is I model healthy boundaries. I display them. I make sure that my actions match my words. If I'm saying, we really value work life balance, and I really want all of you to enjoy your Christmas vacation, and then they see me sending emails over my vacation, that's a huge mismatch. So I'm very conscientious about not doing that. I am also conscientious about creating a very safe space for people to come to me with bad news, with complaints, with uncertainties or insecurities or questions or challenges. I am very careful to hold my reaction. I think I do a good job of, I don't get defensive, I don't respond right away.
I want to create that safe space so that people feel like they can set boundaries with me and I receive them gracefully. If I need to process them on my own time, I take it offline. I talk to my husband, I talk to my sister, I work it through in my own. If I'm mad about something, I kind of don't let them see it. And that's something that I'm very conscientious about too, because people are really, it's hard to set boundaries. And if the first boundary they try to set with me as their boss, I respond poorly, that's not gonna bode well for future conversation. So I think I'm very aware of my role in helping my organization set and hold healthy boundaries while allowing other people to discover what those needs are on their own.
ELISE:
And do you find that, obviously there's a lot of conversation culturally about quiet quitting, and I haven't been in a corporate environment in a long time. Do you find that most people, I would imagine is the experience of most people, as much as we love to tell stories about millennials or whatever the generation is that we're sort of shitting on, but do you find that most people struggle to set appropriate boundaries or that it's more because I think the cultural narrative would be, oh, everyone's taking advantage and setting a boundary as being obdurate or whereas nobody in America takes vacation? It's terrible. And I know things have shifted, but have you found that most people, the boundaries that they're trying to set are not only entirely reasonable, but very healthy? Or do you feel like people don't know what's an appropriate boundary to set?
MELISSA:
Oh, I think our culture of capitalism and work 24/7, and I'm working while you're sleeping and hustle and grind, I think that has pushed people so far away from what is actually reasonable and healthy. I can't tell you the number of people who say to me, I could never tell my boss not to text me when I'm on vacation. And I'm like, that's wild. This is your paid time off. You have every right, and I guarantee it's in your company charter that unless the place is on fire, you should be able to leave your workplace for a week and not be in communication. This is the most reasonable boundary I can imagine. And if you're in a management role and you can't leave for a week and not have people contact you, you're not doing your job well. You're a bad manager. Because if, as the ceo, I can't leave for a week and take my vacation time and the company falls apart, I'm not doing my job. So I think it's, we've aired way on the side of, we've continually pushed to ask so much above and beyond without recognition, without compensation, without acknowledgement. It's just become expected that employees go above and beyond in a way that is so unhealthy and so toxic that now we think even reasonable boundaries are asking a lot of our organization. And that's definitely a narrative I'm trying to reset.
ELISE:
Yeah, I think that's very powerful. And I don't know exactly how we got here, maybe it's just as you said, the slow fog of capitalism and I think a lot of it is the conversation that we have where we make work equivalent with family and there's been a lot of conversation about this throughout covid, like your coworkers might be very close friends, they might feel like chosen family, but they're not family, it's not the same rules don't apply but somehow we've really gotten ourselves into a bind with this expectation that people's work, which it's a job, it's not your life. I don't know when the two became synonymous.
MELISSA:
I think it's been made worse, of course, by the advent of all of this technology. It used to be when I closed my computer for the day it was gone. I didn't have a laptop that I took home back in my earliest days of insurance. When I left the office, I was gone. And even if there was something that came up, there's nothing I could do about it at home. So I think that's definitely a piece of it. I obviously think there's a lot of pressure for working women, working parents, especially mothers to be the superstar at home and the superstar at work. And I know, I don't know a single mom who doesn't feel like they're not doing both jobs poorly, myself included, at least at some part of the day. So we feel like we have to compensate for our womanhood, our motherhood, by putting in extra hours at the job and doing even more to prove that the fact that we have kids doesn't make us less capable or less worthy. All of the motivational speakers, which I get it. I get why you would say live your passion and pursue your passion. I understand. But maybe that has taken us really far away from the idea that it's okay to just have a job. It's okay to just have a job and not want to climb the career ladder and not want to progress. And it's okay to just have a job, do it well, enjoy your coworkers maybe hopefully you at least most of what you do, and then clock out and go home. That's okay too.
ELISE:
Yeah, it's so true. I was just having this conversation with a friend who is parenting, and she's in the enviable position where she doesn't need to earn an income. One income is enough for their family. And she's highly educated and she was expressing all of her extreme ambivalence about this and anxiety and the judgment that she feels from culture. And I just was watching her try and talk her way through it to get to a place of comfort. But I think that there is a lot of pressure, particularly on women, that if you're not maximizing all of your potential and your privilege, then you're letting other people down or that this is somehow a disservice. But I think it leaves us all disempowered, honestly. And this idea that you need to be full throttle all the time. People ask me all the time, when are you starting something? I'm like, I don't really wanna start a business, guys. I'm not dying to do that. I'm really enjoying being home and writing and having conversations with people like you. But yet I also feel, even though I am working, I think more than full time, I feel that pressure.
MELISSA:
Yeah, yeah.
ELISE:
And when is enough enough? Sometimes people are doing enough. It's enough.
MELISSA:
I know for me, when I got my concussion four years ago, that put a lot of clarity around the idea of when is it enough? Because I had a physical constraint around where I spent and how much time and energy I spent on any piece of my life. And that provided tremendous clarity. And they often say that crisis is the only driver of change. That's the primary motivation for an intervention. And it really sucks that I had to experience that level of crisis before I had that clarity. But I think it did me a big service in that I now view this concept of enough and goals and how other people choose to perceive me. I view it very differently than I might have beforehand.
ELISE:
Yeah, no, in some ways, I know obviously this concussion chases you in a way that is not good. And yet it seems like it's brought some gifts.
MELISSA:
Yeah, I can say that now. I will never tell anyone, oh, you need to find the gifts and what happened to you. No, you can figure that out for yourself if you choose to go there, I think that's wonderful. And if not, I'm not gonna force that on you. But I did reach a point, and I mean, it's been four years, but I did reach a point where I was like, okay, I see the blessings that come through. I see the lessons, I do see the gifts. And for me, that's a really healthy place to land with it.
ELISE:
This summer, when I concuss myself, although I did not, I've not had the experience that you've had, fortunately, but I wasn immobilized with my broken neck and my friend was calling me a broken robot. I mean, that's really what it was like for me. I just kept getting up to try to unpack or do long. It was like, no, no, no, you can't. You have a broken neck. Sit down. But I need it. It was very firm and I'm very lucky, obviously, but it was the reminder of my own limits and mortality, certainly. And a big teacher even though I refuse the lessons, still.
MELISSA:
I say all the time, my God is not subtle. He is so pushy. And when he's being pushy, he's always he. But he is so pushy sometimes and snarky. He's very east coast, and when I refuse, he's like, Okay, I get it. I'm gonna just let you drag for a little while and then I'm going to come in even hotter. So I feel like I can have a very close, very deep connection, one on one with God. And we talk all the time, every single day. And I do think that, yes, he got real pushy with me in some of those situations. And then when I finally just gave it up, that's where the lesson started to come in. It's hard though.
ELISE:
Yeah. It's hard. But try easier. Right? Try easier.
MELISSA:
Yeah. I love that.
ELISE:
I’m pretty fascinated by Melissa, it’s one of the weekly newsletters that I always read and I watch most of her videos on TikTok and Instagram, and yes she is the founder of Whole 30, and so sometimes she talks about that, but more often than not she is talking about boundaries. And honestly, it’s fascinating, particularly because she really checks every word and every instinct that we have. Particularly those of us that are incline to over explain ourselves, or justify ourselves, or throw-down ad nauseam so that we feel like we can establish a need, she is really quick to call that out, and show that you don’t have to explain. I just opened to a page at random in her book, and it’s “Do’s and Don’s for Crafting the Perfect Away Message,” this is for people at work: “don’t say that you have unlimited access to email, don’t say I’ll reply when I am back in the office on Monday, do communicate clearly, do use your voice, do give people a way to achieve their task without you, do make it clear you’ll be replying to emails as you have capacity.” And I love it, because even with, “don’t say you’ll have limited access to emails,” she says, “first you’re lying, your phone will be within 5 feet of you at all times.” Don’t check your email when you're on vacation, just don’t do it, is her point and don’t suggest that there’s a chance that you will. Anyway, you know I love words and language and I really admire how Melissa urges us to be clean and precise with them in a way that is good practice, it’s hard. But as her life testifies, practice is what’s required. And I think a lot of us have habits to break, particularly when it comes to putting ourselves second, or even last. Thanks for listening, I’ll see you next week.
