But Are You Thriving? Episode 4 Recap: Making Peace with the Past with Melissa Urban

If you’ve ever tried the Whole30, you’ve benefited from the fruits of Melissa Urban’s labors. The co-founder of this mega-popular 30-day eating plan is regarded as a nutrition expert, but her health journey wasn’t always a straight and narrow one. 

In this episode of But Are You Thriving?, Thrive Market co-founder Nick Green speaks to Urban about growing the Whole30 community, becoming a bestselling author, and recovering from addiction—all while learning to set kind, healthy boundaries.

Full transcription below. Subscribe, download, and listen to this and every episode on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

But Are You Thriving? | Episode 4: Making Peace with the Past with Melissa Urban

Nick Green:

Hi everyone, I’m Nick Green, co-founder and CEO of Thrive Market and your co-host of the “But Are You Thriving?” podcast, where we explore what it means to thrive in our world today for our bodies, our minds, our families, our communities, and our planet.

My guest today is Melissa Urban, the founder and CEO of Whole30, who in her own words and in no particular order, is a best selling author, recovered addict, mother, podcast host, nature churchgoer, and boundary wizard. In other words—and I can attest to this—she is a very interesting person. Specific to the topic of thriving, the Whole30 has been completed by millions of people since 2009. I’m sure many of our listeners are among them. And I have to say from personal experience, its power is that it is a lot more than a typical diet. It actually transforms one’s relationship to food and really shifts people towards this habit formation, self-confidence, and self-efficacy. Or what Melissa, you’ve talked about as “food freedom” — and I hope you trademark that term, because it’s a really good one. 

It’s also catalyzed as sort of insanely active community among her followers. So I would say Melissa, in addition to being a very interesting person, is an expert on thriving with food and thriving together. And then lastly, over the last few years, Melissa has expanded her work well beyond food and Whole30 as she shared her personal journey through trauma, divorce, entrepreneurship. And even spirituality in a way that is both deeply vulnerable and has really struck a chord with millions and millions of followers. So Melissa, I am super honored to have you on the show. And also just at a personal level, very grateful to count you as a friend and as this incredible and long-standing partner of Thrive Market.

Melissa Urban:

Thank you so much, Nick. I was thrilled to receive your invitation. I’m really excited to chat with you tonight.

Nick Green:

Awesome. So let’s dive in. And as you know, when we were talking about before, our goal on this podcast is to talk to people who can teach us about thriving. And I’m really excited about this conversation, because that’s basically what you do for a living. And of course it started with Whole30 and Food Freedom. But it’s now expanded into your work around boundaries, and your own willingness to share the good, the bad, and even the ugly and your own personal journey. So I want to cover all that today, but I want to start with your journey. And that starts with where a lot of I think great success stories do, which is kind of not thriving. So tell us about your life circa early 2000s, how was it working out? And what was the sequence of events that led you from—I’ll give it away, but rock bottom with rehab to founding this incredible business platform community just a few short years later?

Melissa Urban:

Yeah. So my childhood was really very typical, I would say. I had two parents and my mom stayed home with us, and I was a good kid and I got straight A’s. And all of that kind of went off the rails at 16 when I was sexually assaulted by a family member. And I spent the next few years really looking for ways to distance myself from that experience and from the pain, I didn’t know how to handle it. I didn’t tell anyone for a long time. And I found drugs and I dove deep into a drug addiction for the next five years through my late teens and early 20s.

I went to rehab the first time. And I maintained a year in recovery, but I still was not thriving. The only thing I had done in this recovery journey my first year was just stopped using. I didn’t change anything else about my life. I didn’t set any boundaries, I didn’t make new friends. All I did was sort of tell myself I would try not to use it. And of course I relapsed as typically happens, or can often happen in these experiences.

And it wasn’t until I kind of self-arrested and went back to rehab for the second time that I knew that I would have to change everything about my life if I wanted to maintain my recovery. And that was the point where I started setting boundaries with friends around, “You can’t bring drugs into my house, and don’t offer them to me. And if you use it in front of me, we can’t be friends anymore.” That was when I got a new job and I started going to the gym, and I ate healthier and I took up running. And I made new like-minded friends. And I really changed everything about my life and adopted this growth mindset that I was now a healthy person with healthy habits, even though I didn’t feel like it. Even though I was fresh out of rehab, I told myself that I was this person now. And I looked for ways to support that philosophy.

So that’s really what led me into exercise. It started out with running and then CrossFit, and then paying attention to my diet. And the Whole30 came in 2009 as a two person self-experiment, really wanting to dial in my own personal diet. And wondering if eliminating foods that can be problematic in certain contexts would improve my recovery. And the effect that it had, and the radical transformation that my first Whole30 had on every area of my life, including my relationship with food, was so profound I decided to share about it. And that was really the start of the Whole30.

Nick Green:

I get kind of goosebumps every time I hear that whole story. Because the arc one, again, I sort of said this in the past on the podcast. But every success story seems to start from this place of actually not thriving. And it is almost the pain and the challenge, and the trauma that can create this opportunity for redemption. And yet it just kind of shocks me every time that someone can start from such a difficult place and say, “All right, I’m going to change this, this and this. And in spite of everything in my past, this is who I am going forward.” And it’s a testament to you. But also as I’ve heard that kind of journey, that kind of arc explained multiple times, it’s like the human spirit. And I don’t mean to be cheesy, but it really is possible from wherever to make these incredible changes.

And I like where you ended there. And I’ll use that to segue to the next question, which is you made these changes in your own life. You saw the profound impact of a lot of change, I’m sure. But then specifically with the Whole30. And said, “All right, I want to share this.” What was that journey like? And was it a new set of challenges? Was it just a natural continuation? And how hard was it, and how did you push through? And was it an overnight success? Was it something that you ground at for a long time and then it happened?

Melissa Urban:

It was a 12 year overnight success, yes. I had such a dramatic life transforming experience with these 30 days. My recovery improved, my energy improved, my mood improved, my sleep got so much better. My digestion finally was… I didn’t realize how bad my digestion was until it got better. But I also say that my Whole30 was the first time that I was able to get off the scale and out of the mirror. And it was so profoundly transformational for my relationship with food that I was like, “I want to tell people about it.”

And I had this little CrossFit training blog that a few hundred people followed. And I called a friend of mine and I was like, “I just did this really cool thing. I think I want to write about it and see. Do you think anyone would be interested?” And she was like, “Yeah, I think people might be interested in it.” So I wrote it up for my little training blog. And a couple hundred people in the comments were like, “I would try that.” And I said, “Okay.” So I led people through what was to become the first group Whole30 in the comments of my blog spot in July, 2009.

I had a full-time job. I had no intention of starting a business or creating a business. I just thought I had such a transformational experience, let’s see what happens with other people. And then when the results started pouring in a month later. And dozens of people had equally dramatic, equally transformative, remarkably similar experiences, that was the moment where I was like, “Oh, I think this is something. I think we have something here.” And from there, it just really grew through word of mouth.

I gave a ton of content away for free. I wrote blog posts every single day, all free. I helped people in the comments. We would travel to CrossFit gyms and perform Whole30 seminars for their members for free or for 20 bucks on the weekends while I worked my full-time job. And eventually it just reached a point where it was like, “Okay, if we put time and energy into this thing, it could actually become something.” And I was so passionate about watching people’s transformation through the program that in 2010 I quit my job, and gave Whole30 a go.

Nick Green:

I love hearing those stories too. Because again, I see this commonality so frequently with entrepreneurs where from the outside, I think the assumption is, “Wow, they’ve always been successful, and it must have been all a master plan that they had to get where they are.” And in fact, where it starts is a passion and an idea, and a spark. And really not that much else, right? That sort of gets the ball rolling. And to see how it develops organically and where one thing leads to the other, to your point, it becomes this 12 year overnight success. And I’m sure I feel this way for my entrepreneurial journey. I’m sure you do too. I never could have imagined being here when I started. But yet, here I am. And again, it’s one of those things where testament to the entrepreneur, but more so testament to just getting out there and taking the risk, and moving the ball forward. And when you do, spectacular things happen.

Melissa Urban:

Yeah. I mean, people ask me all the time about, “What was your marketing plan? What was your social media strategy?” And I was like, “Oh, we didn’t have any of that. We just had a program that worked really, really well.” And someone who was willing to give all of it away for free for a very long time to build community and proof of concept. That was really the key for us.

Nick Green:

Well, what’s ironic is that is actually the best marketing strategy is to have someone who can speak credibly and authentically, and powerfully. Because then what ends up happening is the users, the community becomes your marketer. And we’ll talk about that in a second. But I feel like that is, from my experience and from having seen so many people at Thrive Market and through the Thrive community of our members do it. That’s the power of the program in my mind.

Melissa Urban:

Yeah.

Nick Green:

But before we get to that, I want to really quickly, just for those listeners who may not be as familiar with Whole30, which there probably aren’t that many at this point. But if they’re out there, give us the 30 seconds what is Whole30? What are the principles? How does it work?

Melissa Urban:

Yeah. So I think the Whole30 first and foremost, is not a weight loss diet. It’s not a quick fix, it’s not a detox. The Whole30 is a 30 day self-experiment designed to teach you how the foods you’ve been eating work for you and your unique context. So at its heart, it’s an elimination program. Which many doctors consider the gold standard still for identifying food sensitivities. For 30 days, you’ll eliminate foods that are commonly problematic to varying degrees across a broad range of people, and see what happens. What happens to your energy, your sleep, your digestion, your cravings, your aches and pains, your allergies, asthma, all of those things can be impacted by the food that you’re eating even the stuff you might be considering healthy. At the end of those 30 days, you’ll reintroduce those food groups one at a time, very carefully and systematically and compare your experience. So you’ll be able to, after this 30-day elimination and then reintroduction, take what you’ve learned and create the perfect sustainable diet for you based on how you know these foods now impact you.

Nick Green:

Love it. And I’ll say, again, from experience, that sort of self-experimentation mindset and the rigor of it is so powerful. And you do learn things that you could just never learn when you’re having all these variables swirling in a normal day-to-day of diet and exercise and what’s causing what. And we’ve hit on this a little bit already that I experience and that I’ve seen again with Thrive Market employees and Thrive Market members doing the diet, is that the power is actually in something more than just the content. You don’t normally do an elimination diet and feel excited and want to talk about it and want to go in chat rooms and be reading blog posts about it and just get so obsessed. And it’s one of those things that really has become, for lack of a better word, a movement and that is so unique and so unusual, I would think, for a diet, especially one that involves eliminating most of the foods that people typically associate with pleasure of eating.

And so, I want to just understand from you, is that something that you expected? Is it something that you engineered, that community dynamic, that enthusiasm? It feels like people are really thriving on this diet and that you’ve tapped into something that’s really fundamental about what it takes for people to thrive. So just I’d love to hear your thoughts on that.

Melissa Urban:

During my first Whole30, I realized immediately that it was about food, but it was about so much more than food. How I was showing up in my relationship with food was how I was showing up in other relationships. If I came with a restrictive mindset, with a punishment mindset, a reward mindset, a numbing mindset, a distracting mindset, that was how I was showing up in other areas of my life. And for those 30 days, and the absence of the foods and drinks that I would normally use to comfort myself, to reward, to self-soothe, I had to find other ways to be in my feelings and to alleviate discomfort and to show myself love. And the ways that I developed during that Whole30 were about reconnecting to myself and reconnecting to the other people in my life. And for me, it was also reconnecting with the universe and God, if you have a higher power.

So when I start talking about the Whole30 with my community back in 2010 and the way we talk about it now, there’s a huge mindset component to the Whole30 in that you’re not coming in for weight loss. You are not coming in purposefully restricting calories or counting calories or weighing and measuring your food. You’re not coming in with that mindset of, “I will achieve success if I make myself smaller.” We’re asking you to focus on non-scale victories, all of the benefits that you can see when you change the food that you put on your plate that have nothing to do with what that number on the $20 hunk of plastic says. And when we talk about mindset and we talk about reconnecting to yourself, trusting the signals that your body is sending you, that you’re full, that you’re hungry, that you have a need that maybe you used to turn to food for, but it’s a deeper need for a different kind of connection.

When you learn to trust those signals again, it shows up in every area of your life, the self-confidence, the self-efficacy, that sense of connection, it shows up everywhere in all of your relationships and how you are at work and the way you show up in the world and how willing you are to claim space and use your voice. It is about so much more than the food that you put on your plate.

And so when I talk about the Whole30 and when we lead people through the Whole30, that’s what they’re getting through the program. They’re getting the community, they’re getting the support, they’re getting the mindset shift, they’re getting the unlearning of all of the toxic aspects of the diet mindset and weight loss mindset that we’re so desperate to rid ourselves from. So it’s just so much bigger than just about those 30 days. And you can try to tell people when they come into it that this is going to be a truly life changing experience. And most of the time they’re like, “Yeah, okay.” But I can’t tell you the number of times people have said, “Oh, I had no idea that Whole30 would change my life the way that it did.”

Nick Green:

Yeah, I was just going to say, I’m imagining some listeners who haven’t done it, hearing that it’s like a spiritual experience and communing with God and they’re like, “What is she talking about?”

Melissa Urban:

I know.

Nick Green:

But there really is, I mean, the two experiences that I’ve had like that are the Whole30, and then the first time I started doing some longer fast where you just totally question your relationship to food. The assumptions that you’ve just taken for granted all of a sudden are there just standing there historically for you to look at and puzzle over and ask yourself questions around. And you said something also that I think, again, it’s hard to understand if you haven’t done it, but there’s something about shifting your mindset in one area that suddenly shakes loose things in other parts of your life, that self-confidence, that sense of like, “Wow, I can actually overcome this, I can do it.” Brings a new lens, a new light on relationships and on work and on things that have absolutely nothing to do with food.

Melissa Urban:

Yes.

Nick Green:

Okay. Well, before I start sounding like an infomercial for the Whole30, I want to shift gears because that’s not the main focus today, but before we jump, just for those people that are interested in the Whole30, what’s the way to either get started or learn more and then for those that are saying, “I want to do something, but I don’t want to spend 30 days doing it,” is there any advice that you’d give them?

Melissa Urban:

So if you want to learn more about the Whole30, just go to whole30.com or our social media feeds. We’ve got a big group starting on January 1st, but people start literally every single day. If you’re not sure if you’re ready for the Whole30 yet, first of all, check us out because I think even though it sounds a little intimidating, I promise you’re going to get so much support and so many resources and the program is completely free to do. But if you’re not interested in doing a Whole30 at the one piece of advice I give to everyone, it’s just start cooking food, just cook food. If you just focused on cooking real food, whatever that looks like for you, I think that would be a tremendous advantage in terms of all of your health goals. And then if you do decide to do something that’s a bit more intensive like the Whole30, you’ll have the foundation already taken care of.

Nick Green:

Love it. And I’m reminded of the Michael Pollan quote, which I try to live by, just like, “Real food, mostly green, not too much.” It’s a pretty good starting point.

Melissa Urban:

Exactly.

Nick Green:

All right. So with that set, let’s move beyond food, which is really something you’ve done over the last few years in a really powerful, and I think really interesting and courageous way. And I want to zoom out to something you’ve said before like whole30 is not about food freedom or even food, more it’s about freedom. But you’ve started to really relate your work now, and not just the food work, but all of your work towards this freedom and empowerment and in many ways that have nothing to do with food. And whether it’s focusing on helping people to speak their truth, to speak up, to push back, you’ve introduced this term boundaries, which I have to say when I heard it first, I was like, “What? I don’t really know what you’re talking about.” It didn’t resonate with me. I’ll cover boundaries separately, so to keep that as its own topic, but generally, what are you getting at with this? I feel like there’s a philosophy around basically what humans need to thrive that you’ve discovered through Whole30 and now unpack in ways that go way beyond Whole30.

I know that’s very vague and factious, but can you articulate what is it that you’re seeing and trying to help people do that’s caused you to say, “All right, I’ve got this thriving platform in Whole30, but I’m actually going to spend a bunch of time doing stuff that has nothing to do with food and helping people elsewhere”?

Melissa Urban:

Well, the first thing I’ll say is that I’ve never had a good idea in my life of my own volition, every good idea I ever have comes from my community. And this branching off from talking just about the Whole30 in food into other areas, relationships, boundaries, self-empowerment, using your voice, claiming space, talking about faith, this idea that you can do it any way you want, that all comes from the conversations that my community began having with me. Once they felt the sense of empowerment from the Whole30, and once they felt like their relationship with food was so much healthier, then it prompted them to start saying, “Well, what else can I do? What else can I focus on?” And because I am very open about sharing my own lived experiences, and I’ve had a lot of them, we’ve talked about sexual assault, we’ve talked about addiction and recovery, I had a very public divorce and business split.

I talked about that one time, I got chlamydia when I was in my 30s, on Instagram because I like to share all of the different parts of my life that people don’t usually talk about as a way of de-stigmatizing them and as a way of normalizing these conversations. And my audience is largely women, and I think women and especially moms have just been conditioned our whole lives to be small, to not have needs, to be compliant, not to speak up and not to use our voice. And I think we’re starting to see movements like the MeToo movement where women are being encouraged to use our voice and encouraged to speak up and encouraged to say the things that everyone knows but no one is willing to talk about. And the tagline on my website when we created it a couple years ago is I’ll Go First.

I have a platform. I feel like I have a responsibility to my community to speak up for people who maybe don’t have as big a microphone as I do and who don’t have the vast amount of privilege that I do. And I think I have a pretty healthy level of self-awareness, I’ve done a ton of therapy. So yeah, I’ll Go First, and every time I share, it gives someone else permission to do the same thing. And that’s really how we improve entire family dynamics and friend dynamics and workplace cultures. It’s one person being willing to go first and giving other people permission to do the same.

Nick Green:

Yeah. I mean, I go back to that idea or that word that you use freedom, which I love the term food freedom and I feel like that’s a starting point. If you’re addicted to food, that’s like a foundation, it’s something that gives sustenance to life, but yet it’s kind of one of those necessary but not sufficient conditions. And I go back to the quote, surviving versus thriving, which we think about so much at Thrive Market. And I feel like there are all these different vectors of freedom that people, whether it’s moms and women specifically, or just different people in general, that they place limitations on themselves or they’ve had limitations placed on them by expectations and culture and authority figures in their life. And it is so powerful to see someone that just breaks them down without any regard and say, “Oh wow, that was easier than I thought.” Like I didn’t have everything I could talk about in STD in front of a bunch of people, and there it is. That wasn’t so bad.

But from the trivial to the really serious, like the ability to just feel free to engage, like the term you use speak your truth is just it’s so powerful, and I know people find it really inspiring. I want to double click, like I said, on the topic of boundaries, obviously one that you’re deeply passionate about. And you just recently published a new book, The Book of Boundaries aptly titled, which debuted at number three on the New York Times bestseller list. So huge congratulations on that.

Melissa Urban:

Thank you.

Nick Green:

I also told you before, I heard the term boundaries, I think basically, it’s familiar with the word boundaries, but heard it in that context the first time from you on Instagram. And I was like, “What? I don’t really get what she’s talking about exactly.” But it’s something that has resonated so deeply with so many people, especially women, a lot of moms, I know a lot of Thrive Market members. So can you talk about what are you getting at with that concept, and why is it so important for people if they want to thrive?

Melissa Urban:

Yeah. So boundaries is, again, just an extension of the work that I’ve been doing on Whole30. I found that on Whole30 you say no to break room donuts and the wine at happy hour and your mom’s pasta for those 30 days. And I discovered people really had a hard time saying no, they felt uncomfortable, especially in social situations, and especially when they had a bit of peer pressure. So I started helping them say no in that context, and that naturally led them to asking me how to say no to their pushy boss who continues to call them when they’re on vacation, and their mother-in-law who keeps dropping over without calling, and the friend who’s always emotionally dumping. Boundaries are something that are very much in the zeitgeist right now, but I do think a lot of people maybe don’t quite understand what they are or how they’re used.

I hear a lot of misconceptions that boundaries are about telling other people what to do or controlling other people, or that they’re somehow mean or selfish, and that couldn’t be farther from the truth. I just define boundaries as limits that you set around how you allow other people to engage with you. So it’s not about telling other people what to do, it’s about telling other people what you will do in order to keep yourself safe and healthy. And boundaries really are designed to improve the relationship. If I have a limit that you didn’t know I had, you continue to drop by my house without calling and I just don’t say anything

Because I’m trying to be nice about it or I don’t want to hurt your feelings. But then when you come in my house, I am cold, I’m short, I’m snippy, I’m resentful, it’s not a good time, I rush you out. That’s not a really great place for our relationship to be. It’s obviously hurting our relationship. If I just express that limit clearly and kindly, “Hey, would you please call before you come over and give us about an hour’s notice?” By expressing that limit, now you respect that limit, and when you come over, I can be welcoming and happy to see you, and I’m prepared, and the kids are ready for your visit. And everything goes so much more smoothly, and our relationship feels so much more open and trusting and respected because I shared that limit with you and invited you into our relationship in a way that works for both of us. So that’s the foundation of my boundary practice.

Nick Green:

Yeah. It’s just so interesting because on the one hand I think about freedom as breaking down limits. “All right, I want to get rid of limiting beliefs,” and that’s obviously part of it too, in speaking truth and being empowered. But then there’s also the limits that basically protect your freedom and give you the space to be free. And it’s kind of ironic.

One question, I don’t want to tread into politically volatile territory, but you mentioned that this is, particularly for women, particularly for mothers, and I’m married to a woman who is a mother. We have three kids. They’re wonderful. And I can absolutely hear what you’re saying of her giving and giving and giving. And maybe this is why the boundaries topic term didn’t initially resonate with me. We’ve had a number of conversations where she will sort of unload on, “I didn’t want to do this and I ended up having to.” Or, “I didn’t want to go on that trip.” And I’m like, “Well, why didn’t you just say so?”

I guess where I’m going with this is, is there something about is there a gender difference? There is a gender expectation there. Why is it that for me, if I don’t want to do something, I generally do just say it, and I find it very relieving to get it out there. And for her it has been really challenging.

Melissa Urban:

It’s because you’re a man. That’s why. That’s literally the reason. It’s because you’re a man. Because women have been conditioned by the patriarchy and stereotypically rigid gender roles, and often religious influences, and diet culture to not have needs. Moms are praised the most when we are selfless. When we have no needs, when we take everybody else’s feelings, and comfort, and we prioritize them above our own. In fact, very often we don’t even show up on our own list of people who should be comfortable, or people who should have feelings. And because of these societal influences, when we have spoken up and said, “I don’t want to do that,” or, “I don’t feel comfortable with that,” we are told by the people who benefit from us having no limits, that we’re selfish, that we’re controlling, that we have too many rules.

So we have all learned because of these systems that we are swimming in, that when a woman says something that is direct, it’s automatically rude. But if a guy said the same exact thing, they would think he was decisive. They would think he was clear in his communication. So it is a gender thing, and I think there’s a lot of unlearning for women to do. We have all been conditioned, as an example, that a woman never says what she means. She’s always coy, she’s always suggestive. And it’s your job as a man to guess what I mean. And when I try to turn that on my head and say to my husband, “No, I don’t want to go down for Thanksgiving this year. I’d like to stay at home for Thanksgiving.” Other people looking at that would go, “Holy crap. What makes you feel like you have the right to say that? That’s so cold.”

So there’s a lot of unlearning to do. There’s a lot of societal influence and pressure both on us, and on men. The patriarchy hurts both of us, because they’ve inflicted these communication patterns on us that aren’t serving either of us. You would rather your wife just speak up and say what she means. She feels like if she does she’s somehow not being a good wife or a good mother. There’s a lot of unlearning to do there.

Nick Green:

It’s interesting that you say that because when I was first expressing the situation with my wife, I was thinking about the things she doesn’t want to do that have nothing to do with me. But also, we have so often where she ends up being upset about something and I’m like, “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell me that you didn’t want me to do that? Why didn’t you tell me that I needed to do this?” She’s like, “Well, I wanted you to do it yourself.” And it’s your point. Both sides suffer each sides aren’t equally able to be clear about what their needs are and about what their limits are.

Melissa Urban:

Yeah, it’s really hard as a woman, I think, to break that pattern of communication. And if you try to break it with the wrong person too many times in a row, if you’re not lucky enough to have a caring partner who says, “No, I want you to tell me how you feel so that we can navigate this together,” and if the first five people you try to say your feelings to give you this guilt trip, or they tell you you’re cold, or they try to manipulate you into backing down, then yeah, you now have this extra lived experience that I’m not allowed to say how I feel.

Nick Green:

Yeah. So to get really tangible again, and I want to shift gears a bit into another really fascinating topic from your work, but to get tangible on boundaries, whether for men or women, just on either side of it, for someone that wants to help someone else set boundaries, or for someone that wants to set their own, what are some tangible pieces of advice? Is it a switch that you can just turn on, or how do you unlearn all this programming?

Melissa Urban:

Well, the first step is to remember that you are only responsible for your own boundaries. You can’t set boundaries for somebody else. You shouldn’t try to assume how they’re feeling, or guess what their boundaries are. But you can take responsibility for your own feelings and needs and set boundaries based on the actions you are willing to take to keep yourself safe and healthy.

I think the first step is really checking in and saying to yourself, “What are my needs and how do I feel?” Very often people don’t even recognize that they need a boundary until I prompt them with some ideas. Okay, think about a situation in which you feel dread, or anxiety, or just this idea, this icky idea of, “I don’t want to.” And it could be around a specific person, maybe it’s around a scenario or a place. Maybe it’s around a specific conversation topic or a time of day, but that sense of dread or anxiety is your first sign that a boundary is needed.

Once you recognize that there is a place where a boundary could be helpful, then you need to get really clear on, “What is the limit I want to set?” So if you just feel generally uneasy when your mother-in-law comes over, think about why, and what limit you could set that would make that visit feel so much better. Maybe it’s just that she comes by without calling. Maybe it’s that every time she comes over, she rearranges your cabinets and you haven’t asked her to, and it really stresses you out. Maybe it’s because she makes unsolicited comments on your appearance or your parenting, and if you could just set a limit around that, the entire visit would feel more free. The idea of a boundary is, how much freedom can you bring into your relationship if you set a very specific limit around an interaction that just doesn’t make you feel good. That’s the first place to start.

Nick Green:

And what about for people that want to support someone else setting limits? Like you said, you can’t impose them for them. What do you do to support them?

Melissa Urban:

It’s going to sound maybe counterintuitive, but the best way to respect other people’s boundaries gracefully and receive them gracefully, and even recognize that they are setting a boundary is by setting and holding them yourself. The more you invest in your own boundary practice, the more you remind yourself, “My needs are worthy. My feelings matter. When I share how I feel, I’m not being selfish.” The more you remember that in your own body, the better you’ll be able to recognize that when someone does with you. And then you’ll be able to show up for them in a very supportive and encouraging and respectful way.

Nick Green:

That’s really interesting. I want to pull one thread that you said in the last question, which was around, you have to really know how what actually produces anxiety for you, what creates upset and to your point, and you can’t really set a boundary unless you know what those things are. And so many of those are left unexamined. We feel anxiety about a situation. We don’t want to have a conversation, but you don’t really unpack why. And it’s interesting to think about that boundary setting exercise as almost a forcing function to do the work of untangling that morass of, I guess, tenseness and understanding what is it? What do I care about? How can I change this interaction so that it no longer produces that effect?

Melissa Urban:

Yeah, it requires you to create space throughout your day to check in with yourself and ask how you’re feeling. And that is something else that moms almost never do, because we don’t have time because we are beholden to everyone else and their demands and their expectations. It’s very rare for a mom to sit down and say, “I’m going to take a quiet moment and think about what I need and how I feel.” But building in those small moments throughout your day can be an incredibly effective way just to get back in touch with yourself, but then also to help you understand in the moment, “Okay, I’m feeling anxiety. Now I have a process by which I can tap in and figure out where that’s coming from.”

Nick Green:

Yeah. That’s honestly something I relate to though a lot too, as a CEO, and this is obviously different than motherhood, but you are very externally focused on what does everyone else need? How do we get these people moving in the right place? And I started wearing a Whoop, and then I actually got a Polar heart rate monitor, and at different points Warren looked at my HRV during the course of the day. And it’s like, “Oh my gosh, I’m having a stress response here,” and I wouldn’t have even realized it. I would never say I’m an anxious person, yet here I am spiking up on anxiety at different points during the course of the day.

Melissa Urban:

Yeah. We could have a whole conversation about boundaries for entrepreneurs, because I think we need them just as much as anybody. Absolutely.

Nick Green:

Okay, well this is very, very fertile territory, and obviously for those interested in the topic, The Book of Boundaries, is the seminal text. So I’m really excited to share that with our listeners.

I want to shift gears to a topic that we’ve already hit indirectly, but I think is worth double clicking on. And that is just this way that you have been so vulnerable and so publicly vulnerable with hardships and setbacks in your life, as you said, from the trivial or even maybe humorous, to stuff that’s really, really serious and intense, and most people would positively crumbled to even think about talking about publicly. And I want to just understand why you started doing that. Was there a deliberate decision that you made of, “I’m going to get out there and just force myself to.” Is it jumping into the cold pool, or did you dip your toe in the water and then build up that courage? How did you develop that muscle? And for you personally, I’m curious, is that a big part of your ability to thrive yourself now? Is that catharsis important? And then I’m also interested in your perspective on why people have responded to it with such intensity and been so inspired. Usually you think about inspiration as, “The good things that someone’s done inspire me,” but people seem to be really inspired by you sharing these tougher truths about your own journey.

Melissa Urban:

It started in 2010, and I wish I could say that I started sharing some of the hardest aspects of my life because I was so brave, or I was so committed to connection. But it was honestly because I had so much shame around my drug addiction. Here I was, the leader of this new Whole 30 program, talking to people about changing their relationship with food and creating new healthy habits, and people were looking at me as this paragon of health and fitness. And I was like, “Oh, nine years ago I was doing heroin.” And I had so much shame around my past, and I had done so much therapy that I know that shame lives in the dark. And I thought, “I really want to connect with people doing the Whole 30,” and they look at me and they say, “You have no idea what it’s like to feel out of control with food. You have no idea what it’s like to wrestle and to feel so isolated, and to feel so much guilt and so much shame over this behavior that other people seem to be able to have a healthy relationship with, and I just can’t.” And that’s why I wrote my first blog post about it.

I wrote my first blog post about the fact that I am a drug addict. I had been in recovery for nine or 10 years at that point. I was still, I wouldn’t say, smooth in my recovery. There were definitely still a lot of things I was processing, but I did it because I was so scared that someone would find out before I had shared my story. And I thought, “I just have to own this. I just have to own it. This is who I am, and if I have to do the Whole 30 hiding this piece of myself, I don’t want to do it at all.” So I began to share and it felt so good.

And the support I received from others was so just incredibly affirming. I did not need their affirmation. I knew that I was doing good work, and I was solid in my recovery, and I was doing work, but it felt so good for people to say, “Thank you. Thank you for sharing that, and to share their own stories in exchange and to start to open up about their lives. And it was such a powerful experience that shame lives in the dark, and I am allowed to tell my own story exactly how I want. And I can own my story, and I can be proud of every single iteration of Melissa. I am proud of that girl who did the best she could to save her life after a really traumatic incident. And that was really when I started to reframe the narrative around things I was ashamed of and who I was.

I’m always careful not to share things until I have effectively processed them for myself, and I’ve shared them effectively with the people in my life. I don’t use Instagram as therapy,

But it’s been an incredible experience to go first and tell all of these stories that I used to feel so ashamed about and hear other people open up and find connection in them. It’s the best part of my work, if you can call it work.

Nick Green:

It’s so powerful to hear you say that and so important because it is counterintuitive. Like you said, shame lives in the dark and for the things that any of us are ashamed of, for many of us it’s like the last thing we’d ever want to share publicly.

And yet, to your point, this is like the getting it off your chest or it’s the warmth that you receive in return that somehow these end up being these really transformative experiences for people when they actually can share that and still be lovable and loved and feel good about themselves and actually feel better about themselves as a result of having done it.

Melissa Urban:

Yeah.

Nick Green:

To just tie it back to boundaries, I feel like it’s, again, one of those… It’s counterintuitive where setting a boundary would actually give you more freedom, where having that tough conversation actually enhances the relationship. And you sometimes have to go there, and when you do it opens things up versus, I think, what people fear. Which is they’re going to be abandoned or rejected or not cared about or whatever.

Melissa Urban:

But I do have boundaries around what I share. I do. As much as I share, I do still have boundaries. So you know this, but I will not talk about my son. You will never see his face. We will never share his name. He does not show up publicly on social media or in any aspect of my work. I don’t talk about the intimate details of my relationship. There are things… My husband and I got married and we didn’t tell anyone for six or eight weeks. We kept that just to ourself and did not post a thing on social media until we felt ready. So even as much as I share, I do still have boundaries around that for my own sense of privacy and safety.

Nick Green:

And you’ve been thoughtful and deliberate about what are those areas I want to keep totally private?

Melissa Urban:

Yeah.

Nick Green:

And you also brought up a really great point too, which is sharing isn’t one monolithic thing. You share with the people closest to you, the people relevant to that situation first. And that makes a lot of sense too. What you don’t want to be doing is going out public with something that you haven’t processed already.

Melissa Urban:

Yeah. That feels way too raw. You can sense when someone’s doing that and it just does not… It’s hard. That’s a tough thing to witness. Yeah.

Nick Green:

So I want to finish up in this part about hardships and setbacks. Talking about something you’ve shared a lot about, and I think it’s been, I don’t know if your greatest challenge, but certainly your latest challenge, which is dealing with a traumatic brain injury and one that is chronic. And this is one of those topics that I don’t think it’s covered a lot. It’s the invisible injuries and also outside of the world of sports, contact sports like football, basically you don’t hear about at all. So for the listeners that aren’t familiar, tell them what happened. What was the acute injury? How has it changed your day to day life? And then what have you learned and what advice do you have maybe coming out of this for… Not so much the sharing part, but how do you live with a chronic injury and still thrive?

Melissa Urban:

Oh boy. I mean, you’re talking about four years at this point of life lessons, and I still feel like I’m processing it as I go. But four years ago I had an accident playing with my son. I got hit in the back of the head, right behind the left ear real hard. And I don’t know exactly what happened. I never lost consciousness, but I was… The phrase, “seeing stars” is a literal experience. I fell to the ground. I knew I was hit really hard. I didn’t know what happened. Of course, my first concern was for my son. He was okay. He was confused. And I just got up and went about my business. We were playing laser tag in this indoor facility with low lights and flashing lights and music and stuff. And it wasn’t until I got home the next day and was trying to type an email, and I said to my husband, “I can’t do this.”

I was irritable. I had a headache. I couldn’t see what was on the screen. And he was like, “I think you have a concussion.” And I was like, “That’s not true. That’s ridiculous.” Race car drivers and football players get concussions. I mean, I knew nothing. And most concussions resolve within six to eight weeks. But there is a small percentage of people for whom post-concussion syndrome is a thing. And I was one of those people for reasons I still don’t really know, but it tends to happen to women more than men. It can be related perhaps to a person’s menstrual cycle. And they just don’t do a lot of studies on long-term concussion symptoms. And all of the studies they have been done, have been done on men. So we don’t have a lot of info. But yeah, I spent about two years in physical therapy.

I developed a condition called POTS, which is a nervous system dysregulation. That meant that my blood pressure and nervous system would just go haywire when exposed to heat or exercise or altitude. I had serious vision issues. There was about a year where I couldn’t travel. I really had a hard time working and looking at screens. Right now, just looking at this ring light in my face is challenging on my eyesight. And I’ve had to figure out how to navigate life around it because I can’t stop being a mom. I can’t stop working. I can’t stop existing. And though it is much better today than it ever has been, when I get back from a book tour, yeah, I am down and out for several days with concussion symptoms. It’s really hard.

Nick Green:

It’s incredible like you said, not something that people think about either as long term or as something that everyday people who play laser tag with their son or trip and fall in the sidewalk end up dealing with. And really interesting and not surprising, I guess, that the studies that have been done around it are primarily on people that have been in contact sports and may bear little similarities to everyday people that are going through this.

Melissa Urban:

You did mention though that it is an invisible illness. And the thing I will say as a follow-up to your question is just, I have so much more empathy and understanding for anybody that lives with a chronic or invisible illness. I mean, we’re talking about long COVID. We’re talking about autoimmune conditions, any of these kind of long-term chronic, chronic fatigue. I now know exactly what it feels like to not have enough spoons for people to go, “You look fine.” To wonder whether people think I’m faking with my symptoms because I can show up in some areas so beautifully, and then in others, I am just incapacitated. It has been a real eye-opening experience. And while I don’t believe everyone needs to find the gift in their challenge, I’m going to let you define that for yourself. I will say I was able to find a silver lining in this, which is I do have a lot more empathy now for people with these conditions, and I feel like I’m better able to offer support as a result.

Nick Green:

And do you have any advice? Because I do feel like, clearly what you’re talking about is something very serious and some others do also have extremely debilitating injuries, but it does feel like on a lesser scale, a lot of people are dealing with chronic conditions. Whether it’s gastrointestinal, whether it’s mental health, whether it’s… We just talked about anxiety. What is your advice, if any, from this experience on whatever the level of chronic conditions someone might be dealing with, how do they still live their best life?

Melissa Urban:

I’ve had to learn how to show myself so much grace. I did a whole podcast episode on the therapy session that I had just talking about my concussion, where I broke down my own therapy session because I had always assigned my worth and value as a person to the fact that I was active. I’m active, I’m a CEO, I hike, I go to the gym, I play with my kid. I get eight hours of sleep and I’m up every morning at 6:00 AM without an alarm. I’m active and I couldn’t be active when I had my concussion. And it really did a number on my sense of self-worth, and I had to redefine what being active meant to me. I had to shift this idea of being active, not as defined by other people or what I can do in the world, but actively checking in with myself and being deeply committed to providing my body and my spirit and my emotional capacity with what I needed on that day.

And it took years. It was a huge shift and a really big lesson. But the biggest thing is that I had to show myself grace and I had to figure out how to be comfortable with asking for help, accepting help, saying, “I can’t do that right now.” Letting other people know that I didn’t have capacity. I set a lot of boundaries around my condition, and I couldn’t be afraid to talk about it with other people, even though, again, I did feel this sense of shame that I had this condition that no one could see and no one had really heard of or understood. Yeah, it’s been hard.

Nick Green:

Yeah, I mean, just on a much smaller scale, but still has been very impactful in my life. I tore my labrum in my shoulder about four months ago, didn’t realize it. I’ve been going to see different specialists, got MRIs. It’s very difficult to actually see in that area. And this is obviously, it’s not life threatening, it’s not my career, my day-to-day life, nothing depends on my shoulder. But I am now limited in certain ways and potentially for a while, potentially permanently in the kind of physical activity I can do. And it has been emotionally really distressing in a way that I didn’t expect. And part of it might be I’m feeling like I’m getting older, like this injury shouldn’t have happened and wouldn’t have happened if I was 10 years younger. But what I will say to your point about silver linings, and again, this is on a… A shoulder is not the brain, but it has made me much more grateful for health in general and not take my body for granted.

And there’s no glory in having any kind of injury, but that’s been an interesting silver lining for me of, “Wow, health is something that can be taken away in little ways or in big ways so quickly.”

Melissa Urban:

I know. I have a whole highlight on my Instagram around my concussion and the podcast episodes I’ve done and the resources I’ve shared. So if there’s anybody listening who want to feel, at the very least, feel heard, I can absolutely provide that to you through those channels. So yeah, I think it’s really important to recognize that we are all navigating, whether it’s mental health conditions or an illness or an injury or grief. There will always be people in seasons that are really, really challenging. And I do think that this concept of checking in with yourself, making your life a little bit smaller and going through some of the really emotional difficulty that comes along and allowing that, not telling yourself that you’re silly for feeling like that is a really important part of the healing process.

Nick Green:

Yeah. Well, I think your work there has been so important because unlike a shoulder, which is an obvious kind of injury, when someone’s dealing with something that others can’t see or others might question, I mean, that is just a whole other layer on top of it.

To, “All right, how do you now grapple with that? I’m experiencing something that’s real, and yet the world may not see it as real.” Whether that’s long COVID or it’s chronic fatigue syndrome or whatever.”

Melissa Urban:

Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Green:

All right. Well, I know we’ve gone long here. I kind of expected that because, Melissa, it’s just always so fascinating and inspiring and fun to hang with you. We’ve got two questions at the end, which can be rapid fire that we like to ask every guest. And the first is really just simple. What does thriving mean to you?

Melissa Urban:

To me, thriving feels like showing up as my fullest self in all spaces, in all ways. I show up exactly as I am unapologetically. That to me feels like thriving.

Nick Green:

Love that. And I feel like you manifest that and personify that on so many levels, which makes this next question interesting, which is, what’s one area that you want to change or do more of less of, whatever in order to thrive more?

Melissa Urban:

That is a good question. I mean, honestly, I’d like to work a little less right now. We’re in a period of hustle, which is okay. I just had a book launch, and obviously I recognize that there are periods of hustle, and I do feel like I have excellent boundaries around work time and personal time. But coming off of a really long book tour and a book launch, I am looking forward to heading into the next few weeks and working a little bit less and pursuing some of those opportunities to thrive more.

Nick Green:

Yeah. Well, I definitely know you’re headed for craziness come January every year, so I hope you get that time. And from one entrepreneur to the other, I can definitely relate to needing a little bit more downtime. Well, listen, thank you so much, Melissa. This was amazing, and I’m just so excited for the listeners to get to hear more about your story and just your courage and your sharing, I know inspires your followers and just excited now for it to share and inspire some of ours.

Melissa Urban:

Thanks so much, Nick. I’m such a huge Thrive Market fan and I can’t wait to meet the members of your community that I’ll meet through the podcast. Thanks for having me.