The Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast Episode #226 - Dr. Matthew Lederman

TRANSCRIPT

Melanie Avalon: Hi, friends. Welcome back to the show. I am so incredibly excited about the conversation that I'm about to have. The backstory leading up to today's conversation, it was one of those situations where I got basically the pitch email about it, and I was an immediate yes. I was so, so excited to be reached out by the team for these fabulous authors. So I am here with Dr. Matthew Lederman. He is the coauthor of a new book called Wellness to Wonderful: 9 Pillars for Living Healthier, Longer, and with Greater Joy. And he coauthored it with Dr. Alona Pulde. And so like I said, I was super familiar with their work. They have coauthored so many books, including the New York Times bestseller Forks Over Knives Plan, Forks over knives family. Keep It Simple, Keep It Whole. I distinctly remember when their book the Whole-Foods Diet came out and reading that and loved it. So you guys are probably pretty familiar because the whole Forks Over Knives thing is-- it’s like a legend in the [giggles] health sphere. 

Their new book though, it goes into so many aspects of health and wellness beyond food. Reading it was so thrilling because it goes into so many topics that I really hadn't experienced being covered in that way before in all of the books that I've read on this show. So I have so many questions. It is just such an honor to be here today with Dr. Lederman. So thank you for being here.

Matthew Lederman: Oh, thank you for having me. I appreciate it. 

Melanie Avalon: To start things off with Wellness to Wonderful, and you talk about this in the beginning of the book, but you talk about how you guys were working a lot with diet to address a lot of health conditions, and you were finding that it wasn't always the be all, end all that there was more beyond that to people's health and wellness. So two-part question here. What led to, I don't know if it's a divergent, but that shift in your path with health and wellness also just health and wellness in the first place like, why are you doing what you're doing today?

Matthew Lederman: Yeah. So why we're doing what we're doing today is simply we got into medicine to help people to heal, to have an impact, to support people putting pieces together that are going to make life better for them, and taking all this information that's sometimes very hard to understand and trying to distill it down into understandable, doable pieces. So that's something that really spoke to us. And since from early on, even just with the nutrition part where we discovered that diet can impact health significantly, it's not just it can have a little effect but it can reverse disease. And trying to help people, one, value it in that way, and then two, once they value it, how do they make the changes in their own life? So that was early on. That's been a thing for us. 

And it's just continued to grow as we learn more and more and experience more and more and deal with patients that are still having issues that might not just be addressed with diet alone. And that's what we coined this term, connection medicine, but around the impact connection or disconnection can have on your physical health, and that was something that was really important to bring into our model because it added something that diet alone didn't. And that's what we spent a lot of time now doing is there's a lot of people talking about plant-based diets, and eating whole foods, exercising, and sleep is important. So we wanted to put that all together.

But then there's this other piece that I think that people, for example, who are struggling with chronic pain, and chronic inflammatory conditions, different mental health challenges, all of that is not addressed alone with diet and even some lifestyle. But it's important and it all is connected, and that's what we tried to do. We tried to add in the pieces that we felt were still missing and then connect them all. But at times, it can be a lot. But I tell people, “You don't have to do everything overnight.” And the reason it's a lot, it took a lot to get us into this mess, so it's going to take a lot. We have to address a lot to get us out of this mess. Yeah, and then we work together with people. So it's doable. There is a lot to address, and that's what we tried to distill down in our book. 

Melanie Avalon: To that point, I'm just going to majorly encourage listeners to get the book because there's no way we can even remotely touch on everything. Okay. So I do have a question about the connection. Before that, the nine pillars, because you just talked about how it was quite a journey to come up with this comprehensive wellness plan, in a way. So coming up with those nine pillars, was it pretty intuitive what those were, or was there like a running list? Was there like 20 and you narrowed it down to 9? [giggles] I'm just wondering how you actually came up with those. 

Matthew Lederman: Right. We came up with those as we saw what helped people. You have to work backwards. We'd have people that we would address different things, different issues. And as life got more and more wonderful for those people, we started to try and identify the key areas of focus. And that's where the nine pillars came. And then we wanted to make sure it was something that people could track. Because the nine pillars, not that you have to get every single pillar in perfect order for you to experience more joy and satisfaction with your life. You just have to, one, be aware of them, and two, tender them over time. You're never going to get to this place where you don't have to think about your nine pillars again. It's an ongoing, lifelong journey.

So we think of it more as like nine beautiful children. And then you have to tend to your nine children. You're never going to get to a point where you don't worry about your children. No child. One child is more important than the other, but sometimes one child needs more attention than another. And that's how we think of the nine pillars. And then once you're aware of them and you stay connected to them and you regularly tend to them, that's when life is and will continue to be wonderful.

Melanie Avalon: So you're saying so many things that are making me think of so many questions. I'm glad you addressed the doing all of them, because I was wondering about doing all of them if you needed to do them in a certain order. It sounds like just bringing all of it in and doing all of them in your own pace and on time is the way to go. I will say for listeners, the book is very supportive and it's not overwhelming. It's wonderful. The word wonderful can be a bit esoteric, I think, as far as a barometer for happiness, which is also hard to define. So how do we define wonderful? How did you come up with that that way of gauging things?

Matthew Lederman: Right. So we want to be careful not to mistake wonderful for happy. Because wonderful from the way we use it is more self-- If we think of it as self-connected, a state of inner peace, satisfaction in your life where you have a sense that your needs are being met and cared for. It's that state. So you can be very sad and life can still be wonderful because you're connecting to the pain of the sadness. You're mourning, you're grieving, you're allowing that to flow through, and then you can take action to meet any unmet needs that the sadness is basically raising your awareness to. And that process makes life wonderful. It's when we resist our sadness, when we grasp onto happiness at the expense of other needs, for example. When we distract ourselves from our pain through addiction, for example. All of that is when life is not wonderful. 

So it's not the presence of sadness. It's, for example, I'm using sadness as just one of many unpleasant feelings we feel. It's not the presence of that's the problem. And also, when we deal with our unpleasant feelings and emotions alone, for example, life is not wonderful. But when we have togetherness, support, and companionship, we can experience the flow of sadness, and it can be quite cathartic, rejuvenating, and invigorating actually, as you process through it. So does that make sense? 

Melanie Avalon: Yes, completely. Because I think I do genuinely feel a lot like life is wonderful. When I have something, if I'm going through something, I'm pretty acutely aware of how if I mention that I'm going through something hard or I'm sad or a “negative emotion.” The response to that is often people saying that they're sorry. I'm always aware of that because how I'll often respond is that there's no need to be sorry that I'm sad. I am not concerned about having negative emotions like they just are, is the way I see them. So it's nothing to lament, really. 

Matthew Lederman: Right. Exactly. We actually will shift from the term negative emotion to unpleasant emotion versus negative positive, just to imply there's no such thing as a negative or positive emotion. There's some that feel pleasant, some that feel unpleasant, and they're really-- When we talk about emotion, which is a sense in your body that you can then cognitively map into feeling words if you want. And as you become more aware of the different sensations in your body, you can do that more effectively. There's actually data that talks about how that's healing and helps certain issues, for example, around chronic pain, the ability to do that, or when people don't do that, sometimes we can mistake those sensations in our body that are from unpleasant emotion, we can actually interpret that as pain not done.

This is what's really interesting about the data that starts talking about the impact of emotion and self-connection and connection to other people, and how that can manifest into diseases that we're trying to treat these days with pills and procedures. It just will never work. So it's very exciting as we jumped into this. Your openness is really helpful, so that people can start to understand the power of all of these processes. And that the data is just beginning to catch up, similar to the impact of diet 20 years ago. Now it's much more mainstream. But when you're early in the curve, a lot of people are going to miss out on these opportunities to make life more wonderful. So I'm excited that you're talking about it.

Melanie Avalon: No, I'm excited. Actually, that ties into a question I had. So just now you're talking about, our body reading certain sensations and feelings and how it connects to our overall health. I often talk a lot. I've read a lot of books, I have interviewed a lot of guests, and we'll talk about the parasympathetic versus the sympathetic nervous system, and this fight or flight response versus this rest and digest more safety mode. It's often presented as binary and also that stress encourages it. That's accepted. I read some things in your book that I had never read before and I'm really curious because you're mentioning the data catching up to things. I'm really curious if there's data behind some of these concepts. It was you connected those two states to aspects of our life, actually, some of the pillars that you go through and how they instigate it and the reasoning behind it. I'm dying to know if this is a theory or if there's data behind this. 

So the examples I have are with physical activity, you talk about being sedentary, and you talk about how the natural state of the body is actually mobilization. And so if you're sedentary, the body assumes it's in a threatened state. Then with sleep, you're saying that the body assumes that-- Basically, if you're not sleeping, then something must be happening. So it's like that that stress from it. Or, like with play. Same thing where if you're not able to play, the body's assuming there's something wrong. That idea that these physical things that we do, if we're not existing in that state-- Is the body actually assuming it's in a threatened state, or is it more just like hormones and chemicals? 

Matthew Lederman: Yeah, I think when we talk about the body assuming, the language can be a little bit confusing. The body is trying-- There's something called the polyvagal theory, which is really interesting to read about. Lots of articles on that. There's a whole field actually called social genomics, which is how our nervous system and our immune system essentially are impacted by the environment around us. There's something called the cell danger response. You can research-- That guy's out of I think UC, San Diego. The previous guy, social genomics guy, is out of UCLA. Polyvagal Theory is Stephen Porger. So there's these people that are writing and publishing data and articles on how our body responds to the environment. And instead of thinking of our genes as this rigid blueprint for the protein, it's going to code for-- Talk about it more of like a menu that life gets to choose from. So if you are perceiving life and the environment around you is dangerous, the cells are going to respond-- The cells, the DNA, what they transcribe, and eventually, with the proteins that are translated, all that's going to be different based on your environment, particularly around whether it's saying, “Hey, we're safe, or there's a threat.” 

That to me is the big differentiator here. Threat just the lion coming at you, although that's how we evolve, but it also can be, “Hey, are we going to have enough food to eat for dinner tonight? Are we going to have enough food for our kids tomorrow?” There's this predictability piece. “Is life some level of certainty, or do we feel really uncertain about our life right now?” That's going to shift whether we go into more threat physiology or safety physiology. Do we have meaning and purpose in our lives? One of the big impacts was, do I feel like why am I getting up in the morning? Do I have a reason to be getting up? Am I contributing in some way that's meaningful to me? Do I feel like I have a purpose? When we don't have that, it shifts our physiology. When I talk about physiology, I mean, your immune system cells, your immune system and what they code for, how the mitochondria within each cell start acting and what they do inside the cell. 

So I don't have to get into this nitty-gritty. But the bottom line is, when we are in states where we don't have meaning and purpose, when we don't have a level of predictability, when we really feel like, “Hey, we're under threat.” All of a sudden, things like inflammation go up, risk, heart disease, cancer, neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer's, viral infection, we are at increased risk for those things and that to me is what's super fascinating. Does that make sense?

Melanie Avalon: It does. I'm so fascinated by it as well. You do talk about how we are “our bodies are programmed to search for threats or look for threats.”.Does that start from birth or does that happen shortly thereafter? Is a baby searching for threats straight out of the womb?

Matthew Lederman: When we say search, you might think of like they're running around the room looking for problems more. The nervous system is constantly taking in millions of bits of information and it's assessing that information. One of the big things it's trying to assess is, how safe are we? Because we are naturally preparing for something bad to happen. That's how our bodies are designed. And then we have to turn on what Stephen Porges in The Polyvagal Theory talks about the safety break. And that's something we learn how to do. Our parents help us when they co regulate with us and how they teach us to respond to the environment, every time you drop something on the floor. If your parents screamed and shouted and yelled, dropping something on the floor, like, spilling. 

There are some parents who reacted harshly when you would spill your milk, and other parents say, “Oh, no big deal. We'll just clean it up.” So that's an example of also learning from your environment is milk spilling dangerous or safe. 

So there are some things that were taught like that. But also, we come in trying to say, “Hey, as a little infant, am I cold? Am I hungry? Am I wet? Am I alone? Is somebody responding to me?” There was an interesting video where you could watch if you did not respond to the infant and just looked at them straight without any type of emotional response, how they got really upset and anxious. But then if the mom started responding to the infant, it was no longer they would calm back down. And the little baby, maybe it was an infant, but it was very, very young, and how they would try to get a response from the parent. They got more and more agitated and upset as they weren't getting a response. They couldn't even talk. So they were very young, but they were leading the environment and they were using the parent’s cues of safety, this coregulation, to say, “Hey, we're okay.” When that wasn't coming, their nervous system got more and more mobilized. 

So to me, that's what I mean when we say searching. It's trying to assess in the moment, are we safe? And it's looking for cues of safety. And when we don't have those cues of safety, we're going to have a harder time sleeping, we're going to have a harder time relaxing into play, we're going to choose less healthy, more calorie dense foods. All this is an attempt, for example, to regulate and calm the nervous system. Do you see how it's all interconnected though?

Melanie Avalon: Yeah. No, completely. When you're describing that baby experience, I was thinking that baby really needs something, which is something that you talk about in the book, this idea of needs. So is everything that we do needs need driven?

Matthew Lederman: Yes. So I'm a certified trainer of nonviolent communication. Nonviolent communication to me is a wonderful, wonderful tool to understand connection and to bring more connection into your lives. One of the fundamental principles of nonviolent communication, also known as compassionate communication, is that everything we knew is in an effort or an attempt to meet needs. Every thought we have, every action we take, everything we say is an attempt. Sometimes tragic, but nevertheless, it's still an attempt to meet needs. When I say needs, I mean things like, a need for rest, a need for safety, a need for autonomy, a need for trust, a need for love and care, a need for respect. So those are the needs. They’re universal. Abstract traits, let's say, or resources life needs to sustain itself. 

And in any moment, we can have a need come up or not. So in this moment, you might have a need for food, and then you feel hungry, and then you meet your need for food and you no longer feel hungry. That's the other piece that's really helpful is that feelings are basically messengers to let you know when you have needs. If they're unpleasant feelings, that means you have needs that are not being met. If you have pleasant feelings, that means you have needs that are being met. So this is a framework to simplify how we relate to our feelings and how we relate to or understand what drives us. 

Melanie Avalon: Are wants also needs, just we perceive them differently? 

Matthew Lederman: It depends. So we use words interchangeably. I'm really needing more respect or I'm really wanting more respect. But sometimes, and maybe this is what you mean when you say wants, we mistake strategies for needs. So if I say, I want you to do what I just said to my child, that's a strategy that may or may not meet your need for respect, it may or may not meet your need for help and support. But the needs are what connect us, because we all have and share the same needs. But the strategies can be disconnecting. There's a time and a place to share strategies. I think that's what you mean when you say wants. So I would say, if you're using wants as a strategy, it's not a need. But if you're using wants in relation to a need, then it is. 

Melanie Avalon: I'm thinking, like, say I see a piece of cake and I'm like, “I really want that cake,” but I don't need that cake. But maybe that want is a need actually.

Matthew Lederman: Well, I would say you have to dig deeper. So this is where the self, which is the first pillar is really important. So there's two pieces to the self-pillar. One is regulating a nervous system, getting out of fight or flight mode, so that you can feel safe, and then you can connect to what you're feeling and needing. So the two pieces are regulating the nervous system and then connecting to what you're feeling and needing. So when you want or notice a desire for that cake, there's going to be feelings and needs around that. So the first thing to observe is, “Oh, I see the cake and I want to put it in my mouth.” Then I say, “Okay. Well, how are you feeling?” And you might on the surface, you might be feeling a little fidgety or agitated, or you might be feeling some level of intensity or tension. 

“Okay. Well, what are the needs there?” So what I would do is I would first try and regulate and I'd say, “Okay, well, you can have that cake if you want it, but are you willing to take a minute or two before you eat it, so we can just take this opportunity to self-connect.” So I'm trying to disarm, because right now, most people jump in, should I have it or should I not? I want to be good. They have these judgments. I want to be good. I don't want to mess up my diet, but I really want it, and they go back and forth in this little internal power struggle. So what I want to do is make space so that they can self-connect and decide if eating that cake is going to meet all of their needs, not some at the expense of others. So we put that and see how I'm starting to try and separate it and say, “Okay, do you have space?” And they might say, “I don't have space.” And I'll say, “Okay, well, then eat the cake. 

But then can we talk afterwards, so we can at least do a self-connection after you eat the cake.” If you feel that you need the cake so badly right now that it's too uncomfortable to wait a couple of minutes. And if they trust that, there's no judgment there. Then eat the cake, and then let's self-connect afterwards. But either way, you're not connected to your needs when you say, I want the cake. And if your goal is to make life more wonderful, then the key is connecting to your needs, not eating the cake or avoiding the cake. That's really insignificant to making life more wonderful.

Melanie Avalon: Okay. Awesome. 

Matthew Lederman: Does make sense because it's a little bit of--? There’s some-- 

Melanie Avalon: I get really granular in my head about it. So I think, well, at this moment, with this cake, it's probably lighting up some chemical pathway in my brain that “wants or needs it.” It's hard for me to discern how that is not a need prioritized with other things my brain is doing with neurotransmitters making me seemingly want or need other things. 

Matthew Lederman: Right. So it's helpful to say, “Hey, there's all these neurotransmitters firing off.” But if you wanting that cake, are you feeling hungry? That's probably a need for food. Well, if you need food, you also have a need for health and well-being. So if you know that the cake is not going to meet your needs for health and you notice you have a need for food, well, why not eat fruit and you say, “Well, I don't want fruit.” Okay. Well, that means there's other needs there. So what are the other needs? “Oh, well, I get this sense of relief because I've been--" “Oh, so you get a sense you have a need for relief. Because you've been restricting cake for so long that you've created this dynamic where it builds up and it's so intense and you just have to get some relief.” Okay. Well, then we have to look at why are we building up this dynamic with cake and how can we meet those needs for delicious dessert in a way that's health promoting and doesn't create this dynamic of, I'm good, I'm bad, I can have. It's a good food, it's a bad food. 

Do you see how I'm starting to dig in? So there's a possibly a need for relief there. There's a need for health and well-being there. There's possibly a need for food. My guess is there's also a need for regulation. One of the ways we can stimulate safety in our body is the nerves from far, some of the cranial nerves that innervate around the larynx, the throat, and the mouth. We can stimulate safety just by chewing and swallowing. Imagine and think of babies. They suck and they swallow, and that's a way that they help calm themselves. Well, we still have that. There's a lot of times where eating is calming. So if you tell somebody, “Well, don't eat when you're stressed,” that's not okay, because you're basically ignoring their need for regulation. What you have to do is say, “Okay, is there another way to regulate your nervous system that doesn't involve food?” Because if there is, then we can meet your need for regulation and only eat food when we have a need for food.

And then on top of that, if you find all these other ways of regulating your nervous system, you're not going to need the high-power dopamine hit that you get from some of these highly processed foods, because you've built up this arsenal and you have this high level of resourcing in your body at baseline. So do you see how we start to dig in, and then the cake loses a lot of its power. And then on top of that, we teach you how to make healthier versions of that cake. Do you see how we keep beefing up all of the different things we can do that this ultra-processed cake is a last resort that some people need once a year or never again? 

Melanie Avalon: That makes sense. The analogy I'm thinking of in my head, it sounds like-- Well, first of all, it feels like now the whole, like, everything in life is just this mosaic of different needs, and there's all these different needs and different ways of meeting them, and lots of potential there. But the analogy I was thinking though was, when I was little, we used to go panning for jewels and gold in Dahlonega in Georgia. So the goal was to find gold. However, the jewels were more exciting looking, even though they were worthless monetarily. And then there was a lot of fool’s gold, which looked great, but was not actually gold. When you actually would find gold, which I don't know if we ever did, apparently it didn't really even look like what you thought it would look like. [giggles] 

So this is like a long way of me saying. It feels like how you as a child expect that that fool's gold or that jewels. You think that's what you want and that that's what you need. But if the end goal is to be sustained from that monetarily speaking, you would walk away without that. So I feel like I'm being all over the place right now. Basically, we might think that some things are meeting our needs and they seem perfect in the moment, but really, they're not the sustainable thing, and there's probably a better version.

Matthew Lederman: Right. I like the way you're looking. So maybe what we think it's doing for us and what it's actually doing for us are different. And if you really dive into this needs-based consciousness, it can help you make so much more sense of your actions. And also, it helps you experience a lot more self-compassion and compassion for other people. Because no matter what that person's doing, they're trying to meet needs. So when you see someone that, let's say-- Just pick something that you don't like and they're doing it. If you can connect to their needs they're trying to meet or you think they're trying to meet, rather than label them or judge them, all of a sudden, your physiology shifts. Because if you're like, “Oh, they're just trying to meet their need to get they're in a rush, and they're really anxious and worried, and they're trying to get some relief, and they're trying to get to where they need to get to next, and they're not really connected to the impact on other the people, or they didn't learn to care about the impact on other people.”

So it's really a lack of education or practice. Okay. So I understand it. I don't like what they did, but I understand why they are the way they are versus “That person is such a jerk, and I hate that person. I can't believe they're so inconsiderate.” You start throwing out the labels and the name. Separate from the fact that that it doesn’t-- maybe it doesn't meet your need for kindness and care to say that about people. It also shifts your physiology, because now you're angry. When you're angry and judging this other person with hatred, your physiology shifts. So forget about what's nice or not for the other person. Do you want to be living in this, which is basically a pro-inflammatory state? So when you get super angry and hateful and judgmental, you are increasing inflammation in your body, hitting similar pathways as if you ate really unhealthy food. So now it's great. 

It doesn't mean you suppress those feelings and pretend everything's great, but by using NVC, non-violent communication, you can translate your anger. You can say, “I'm feeling really angry right now. So angry I'm having all these judgments in my head.” And then you can say, “Okay.” What I think is underneath that anger is I'm really wanting more respect and consideration.” I just want people to be nice and care about the impact they have on other people. I'm so longing for that. But you see how just by starting to translate, I go from angry and resentful and judgmental, which is a super high, pro inflammatory state to a self-connected, more peaceful way of expressing my needs. And that hate and that anger is just a tragic way of expressing your needs.

Melanie Avalon: Okay. So major question that that taps into that I think about all the time. Evolutionarily, is it an innate sense to actually be kind and caring, or is it also actually just an evolutionary drive?

Matthew Lederman: We all have a need for kindness, care, compassion, and love. That is our natural state. Now, many people are educated in a way that disconnects them from some of their needs, or people have experienced developmental trauma and they block off their connection to some of these needs. Some people have been educated to be insensitive to other people's needs or to meet their needs, regardless of the impact on other people. All of that is an education. When I say education, it's not necessarily didactics in school, although we do learn a lot of this in school, but how our parents interacted with us, how our teachers interacted with us, how our supervisors interacted with us, what we watch on TV, all of that, I put that under education. And if we are taught that there's such a thing as this is good, that's bad, this is right, that's wrong, that is playing the game of living in the world of who's right and who's wrong versus the game of how can we make life more wonderful. In a nonviolent communication, the focus is living in this world of, how can we make life more wonderful. 

So when somebody is disconnected from their care for other people, in fact, one of the key parts of repairing connection is to help them reconnect to their care for the other people. So I don't think it's helpful to label anybody as narcissistic or sociopathic or whatever other term labels them, if my goal is connection. It's not even a matter of whether that's right or wrong. 

If my goal is to connect, if my goal is to feel inner peace as much as possible, if my goal is to get needs met as effectively as I can, then it's going to be this framework that I'm sharing with you. So I think that everybody has the capacity. Some people have been educated in a way that brings them far away from that natural state. You have to have a lot of support and patience and willingness and capacity to try and go back there. That's the challenge. 

Melanie Avalon: Even when I was saying the words narcissist and psychopath, I was like, “We probably should have a discussion about the role of labels here.” So I'm glad you mentioned that. Okay. So here's something that I absolutely loved, loved, loved from your book, because I am all about the value of implementing boundaries in your life and also self-care. And the question of, is self-care selfish? But something that you talk about is warm boundaries. And you mentioned how people tend to have a negative association with the word boundaries, because often when they consciously, seemingly come across people's “boundaries,” it's usually when people are tired and worn out. So it's like an “unpleasant situation.” So people associate boundaries with not good things. You have a reframe about the importance of warm boundaries. So I was wondering if you could tell listeners a little bit about that concept. 

Matthew Lederman: Yes. So warm boundaries is not waiting until you're so stretched to where you snap back, and that snapping can hurt and be painful. Now, sometimes you're doing the best you can and it's very important to have your boundaries, but the goal is to get towards warm boundaries. That is only possible if you're really connected to what you're feeling and needing in the moment. Because so many people do things at obligation or to be nice, because again, we are educated to be nice people that listen to authority versus being people that connect to their inner values and needs and trusting that when they're connected to their inner values and needs, they will care about kindness and care and compassion. So that's the assumption I have is that, if instead of telling you what's right or wrong and this gets us into the parenting piece, I say, “Hey, can you connect to what resonates with your values?” That's my goal with children is to hopefully raise them to be really, really tightly connected to their values and not focused on what someone else tells them is the right thing to do, the wrong thing to do, the good thing, the bad thing. 

So similarly with boundaries, if we're doing things out of obligation, which most people do, you're going to already be building up resentment and losing your goodwill. So you need to learn a language, which is where nonviolent communication comes in, so that you can start sharing with people what really works for you. When something doesn't really meet your needs, how can you share that in a way that's still caring and connected? That's how warm boundaries are implemented. So we could do an example here if you wanted, but to me, can you think of something that you do that you do out of obligation? Can you think of something Melanie, or to be nice? 

Melanie Avalon: Yeah. It's just funny because I was thinking about this yesterday how I'm so grateful that with my job and everything, the majority of what I do daily I really want to do. Okay. Wait. Something that I do to be nice, probably staying longer than I want to be at a gathering for my presence to be there. 

Matthew Lederman: Right. So there we go. That's the longer you stay at that event when your body is saying, “Hey, I'm feeling really tired.” It's trying to signal to you, Melanie. “Hey, we need some rest,” or “Hey, we just need a little time for selfcare. I'm really not excited to connect with more people right now. I'm feeling worn out a little.” The minute you become connected to that sense any longer in that place is now suppressing your needs because you want to maintain harmony with the people around you. But I call that, at that point, that's artificial harmony, because you're suppressing your needs. It's not authentic. But the question is, if you are taught, “No, no, you got to stay until it's over. You got to stay. Don't be rude. You got to be a good guest.” Now, you're wrestling with that education that you got, either implicitly or explicitly. But there's some level of that going on. Once you become aware of your needs, how do you share that and still care for the people around you? 

There is a way to do that. Because up until now or for many people up until we talk, they think, either they suppress their needs and keep harmony in the group, or they leave and the group is feeling resentful, but they met their needs. We like to talk about the third option because I don't like either of those first two options. 

Melanie Avalon: Awesome. Okay. I love that. 

Matthew Lederman: That's where NVC comes in to give you the language to not only connect with yourself, but how to care for the other person and how to meet your needs in a way that's also caring for theirs. Again, we could role play, and I give you examples, but that's the general idea.

Melanie Avalon: I guess where this really became clear to me was as I progressed with these shows and I'm constantly getting people pitching me to come on the show and wanting to be nice and not wanting to say no and things like that, and realizing that-- I have to say no in order to honor everybody's time, in order to have the most beneficial experience for me and other people. I'm wondering right now if my go to rejection email is in line with a nonviolent communication, [giggles] if it would be written that way. I want to check it out. 

Matthew Lederman: Well, even calling it, even your go to rejection email, the energy around that is like, “Hey, I'm rejecting them.” Go to almost is going to imply like just do it versus-- To me, it's not so much the words. It's the intention and the connection. So it can be a single sentence or two. But if you're like, “Hey, I only have this much space and I'm picking people that either I really resonate with, or stories that I'm really intrigued by, or I'm trying to assess what my audience would enjoy and I only have this many spots.” So it's preventing me from saying yes to this other person is that what you've pitched so far doesn't fit into that. 

And I imagine maybe that feels disappointing, and I care about that, and at the same time, I'm holding this, and I'm just curious how that is to hear. It's not about being nice. It's just about being authentic and caring;

Melanie Avalon: And kind. Maybe there's a difference between nice and kind. 

Matthew Lederman: Right. Because nice is like, “Oh, I just want to be--" But nice often includes not being authentic. So that's when I differentiate it, “Hey, nice is like that. I want to get harmony no matter what happens, versus “I don't want to rock the boat versus I'm okay rocking the boat as long as I've been authentic and I've done my best to meet my need for care of other people. So if you feel like you're integrity with how you've cared for the people, you're telling them you don't have capacity to have them on your show and you've been authentic, then you can be integrity with your values and then you can hold space for their sadness and disappointment.

Melanie Avalon: I'm glad you mentioned the parenting. I've been dying to talk to you about this. I've actually mentioned this multiple times in other shows because I just found it so fascinating. Can you tell listeners about the duck’s meter with your kids, and also this concept of when you need kids to do something like clean the sink or do chores, how do you handle that? This is mind blowing to me. I don't have kids. I'm like, “How does that pan out?” 

Matthew Lederman: [chuckles] Well, it's around our method of parenting we call collaborative, non-permissive parenting. The idea is the duck meter is something that another certified trainer came up with where you don’t want-- The question you ask yourself before you tell a child what to do is not only what do I want them to do, but what do I want their reason to behind what they're doing. I care about both of those answers. And a lot of parenting just focuses on the first question, what do I want them to do? How do I get them to do what I want? So our thought is, “Hey, how can we care about everybody's needs in the house?” which is our family community. And we don't want people doing things out of obligation. Because if they do, they're either being forced to submit or rebel. When they're younger, they're going to submit. And as they grow in their awareness of their power, they will eventually rebel. I don't think either of those are healthy places to live. 

So the duck meter is basically saying, “Hey, if it's less than 7 out of 10 ducks--” We think about the duck meter as far as the energy with which you would feed a hungry duck, that's the energy we want people to do things. And if it's less than 7 out of 10 ducks, then you're probably doing that obligation. If it's 7 or 8, you're willing, 9 or 10, maybe you're really excited about it. But we want them to at least be truly willing versus submitting and doing it out of obligation, and that's what the duck meter allows us. So before we do something, or if I see them roll their eyes-- Because the kids like, remember, everything they do is to meet needs. 

So when they roll their eyes, which a lot of parents have seen, I'm like, “Ah, I observed eye rolling and I'm guessing that you're telling yourself you have to do something that you're not excited to do.” So I jump on the eye rolling not to tell them that it's disrespectful to say, “Hey, I think you're communicating to me that you're not sure how to share your needs in a way that's going to keep us connected. So you're letting me know that you don't really want to do this, but you're doing it anyway.” So I jump on that because I care about the connection. And then I say, “Okay, how many ducks is it to do what I just asked?” And I tell them, “If you say it's less than seven, I don't want you to do it because I'm going to pay for that later and that whole—" I told you about the rebellion paradigm. So I may not pay for it tomorrow, but at some point, in our lives this is going to add up. So then they'll say, “Dad, it's only five ducks.” And I'll say, “Well, don't touch anything. Don't move. Because we don't want you to do it unless it's at least seven.” And I say, “Okay. Well, what's preventing it from being seven? Would you be willing to share that?” And they might say, “Dad, well, I'm really enjoying this game that I'm playing.”

And to be honest, I thought I had to do it and I don't like being bossed around. So if I have choice, that's really helpful too. So they just shared two needs. They want to have choice and they want to finish playing. And I'll say, “Okay, well, if you had choice and you had your time to play, would you be interested in supporting me with what I asked you to do?” “Yeah, dad, I'd be happy to.” Just the idea of dialoguing like this is building trust with them and it's building autonomy for them. And then I'll say, “Okay, if I really need this done quickly--” Sometimes I have so much trust with them, I can say, “Normally I'd be willing to wait, but this is what's causing me to feel urgency. Would you be willing to do it now and just to help me out, or if not, I'll do it myself.” They might find room to stretch once their needs for autonomy and being heard and trust are met. Or, they might say, “No, dad, I really want to play.” And I'll say, “I'm glad you spoke up. I'm going to get some help somewhere else.” Or, I'll say, “You know what? I can wait 30 minutes. Is that enough time to finish playing your game?” And they'll say, “Yeah, dad, 30 minutes would be great. Then I'm happy to help.” “Okay, should we set an alarm?” Because then the other thing is they sometimes have a hard time remembering. So I help them meet their need to be reliable. Actually, reliability is another need, that dependability. So, I'll say, “Can I set an alarm in 30? When that goes off, can you jump up and do what I asked?” And they'll say, “No problem, dad.” 

More often than not, it works out. It takes a little time up front. And as we build trust and this language with them, they are able to do it and it takes less and less time. But do you see what I'm getting at when I have that type of dialogue with them? I don't know. How does that sound? 

Melanie Avalon: Did you do this since they were born essentially? 

Matthew Lederman: No, no, I wish, I wish. But I've been doing it for quite some time now. But to be honest, the biggest thing up front is to build trust. And then there's a few needs that are commonly miss or not nurtured as much as they would like. They want to trust that their needs matter as much as their parents. They want to be heard and they want to have choice. So the three needs to hear them, to make sure they have choice, and for them to trust that their needs matter are the ones that I tell new parents that I'm working with to really, really do your best to find as many moments where you can nurture that. And then, yes, I've been doing this with-- We have children that are now almost 10 years and almost 12 years, and I would say five years, even doing a good five, almost six years of really, really jumping in on it. You can start anytime and very quickly they’ll-- Kids absorb this stuff much quicker than adults do. 

Melanie Avalon: Maybe one last question to end on. There's so many other things. So again, listeners, you've got to get Wellness to Wonderful. There is so much in there that we haven't even remotely tapped on. Okay. S specific question that maybe it can tie into a broader question to wrap this all up. One of the pillars is nature and the role of bringing the outdoors, indoors, and our lack of connection to nature. So [giggles] I'm haunted by this because I adore looking at nature, but I actually don't like being outside, typically. I'm not very resilient in the elements. I'm very allergic to grass. I don't like the heat. [giggles] I like being indoors is my point. But I bring it at the outdoors-indoors. Like, I have lots of plants and cucumbers and things like that. So when we come up against a seeming resistance in any of these pillars, like, not wanting to do it for whatever reason or feeling intuitively like it doesn't resonate. Like, I literally just feel allergic to grass. How should we handle that? What do triggers and resistances show us on this journey? 

Matthew Lederman: Yeah, I go back to the needs again. So anytime you don't want to do something, there's a need that's preventing you from doing it. So when you say no to something, there's a need preventing the yes. So like you just named them, right? So when you don't want to be outside in grass, you feel really uncomfortable and sick from the immune response to the grass. So it makes sense that you don't want to do that. You stay inside to help protect yourself from that experience. So it actually makes a lot of sense. So to force yourself to be in grass because somebody told you in a book that it's important to be in nature and that's what you defined as being in nature, that's what I would then jump on. I would say, “Okay. Well, you're defining being in nature as you have to be in grass.” And maybe we're not saying you're actually doing that. 

I would say, “Well, nature and meeting your need to be in nature, there's so many ways to meet that need. So can you do that in a way that supports and complements your immune system response, not triggers it?” So like you did, you're getting plants in the house and you can have-- People could paint. In fact, data was showing the impact of pictures of nature in hospitals and the impact on healing. It doesn't have to be grass. You ever been to Sedona, which is the middle of the desert, but it's this beautiful experience of being in nature and the awe which connects to the spirituality as well. And they're right next to each other on the pillars. As far as something greater than yourself, something bigger than you, there's other life on this planet that you can connect to around you. 

So to me, it's how can you bring in elements of the world around us into your day versus just being exposed to technology and the walls and the floors. How can you bring elements of nature and the natural world into your daily experience? 

Melanie Avalon: Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Lederman. This has been absolutely amazing. Again, I cannot recommend enough that listeners get your book. And you guys have written so many books. Are you writing another book right now? 

Matthew Lederman: [laughs] We're taking a break. But I'd love to write one for businesses on the topic of artificial harmony and one specifically on-- Yeah, so I think that would be cool. And then one on parenting. We have some exciting stuff actually that we're going to be launching in a month or two around parenting. That would be fun too. I think you would find that interesting. So anyway, there's lots of stuff that we want to write, some children's books, but we're just taking a little break right now. 

Melanie Avalon: We didn't talk about it a ton in this episode, but I loved the chapter on the work and the artificial harmony. Do you think there's one type of career? I was wondering if entrepreneurs have less of that issue because they're presumably doing what they maybe want to be doing. I was really curious if there's in the workplace if they've done studies on different careers and people's levels of satisfaction.

Matthew Lederman: Well, I think it depends on people show up. And if you can connect to how you're contributing to society, to the community, to other people, the job is just the strategy of doing that. I've connected to people that work in housekeeping at the hospital, and they are some of the happiest people. How they're going through and greeting. I was walking the elevator, hello and smiling and connecting and talking to different people. So they're connected to how they're contributing. And that's the key. And then I have people, there's entrepreneurs, for example, or people that have a lot of choice and they're stressed, unhappy, disconnected, and angry. 

Melanie Avalon: True. True, true. 

Matthew Lederman: Again, it's disconnecting to the needs, and making sure you're meeting your needs with the strategies that you're choosing, and you're always connected to your choice. When you're in that state, life really becomes more wonderful. 

Melanie Avalon: Awesome. Well, thank you so much. This is super, super quick, I promise. The last question that I ask every guest on the show, and it's just because I realize more and more each day how important mindset is. So what is something that you're grateful for? 

Matthew Lederman: I am grateful for the people around me to support and encourage and show up with so much compassion and love, even in my worst moments. My willingness to always try and grow and do the best I can in the moment coupled with that love just makes life really wonderful for me. So I'm super grateful for that. 

Melanie Avalon: Awesome. Well, thank you so much. I am so, so grateful for the work that you're doing. This was absolutely amazing. I can't wait for listeners to read the book and your future books, and hopefully, we can talk again in the future. I'd love to have you back for your future books, if you'd like. 

Matthew Lederman: Thank you so much, Melanie. I really appreciate it. 

Melanie Avalon: Thank you. Bye. 

Matthew Lederman: Bye.

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