If you're looking for a self love podcast, you've come to the right place. Even though self love sometimes feels like a solo exercise, it is actually a journey that we take together - by talking, sharing, exploring and learning. That's why our founder Self Love Philosopher Melody Godfred loves sharing her self love philosophies and experiences on podcasts. Here are some of Melody's favorite self love podcast conversations to date.
Velvet's Edge Podcast with Kelly Henderson and Guest Melody Godfred
Excerpt on how to have healthy boundaries:
Kelly: How do you have boundaries because I know as a small business owner myself, it's really hard because you don't always have the resources of other people helping so you're doing a lot of it. Then you also have three kids and a husband so how are you drawing the line somewhere to take care of yourself in the midst of all that?
Melody: I think a lot of it has to do with having a very flexible relationship with the future. I've stopped requiring specific outcomes to happen in order to be happy. As a business owner, you may set key performance indicators like, "Okay, we have to do this much in sales" or we have to grow our email list by this much or Instagram post have to get this many likes or comments in order for us "successful". I've done away with all of that because what I have found is when I'm too specific about where I need to be in order to feel successful, I end up feeling like I'm drowning because I simply have too much on my plate.
In order to do that, I still set goals but they're more fluid and they also have a lot more to do with how I'm feeling. If I'm feeling good and productive and happy and I feel like I'm making progress then that's successful for me. I don't ever require perfection. It's all about the journey. It's all about the progress. Then with regard to balancing my kids and work and my relationship and myself, the more I can schedule things the better. I know, for example, that Mondays and Wednesdays, I have full workdays. I know that Tuesdays and Thursdays I pick up my kids from school so I could spend half a day with them.
I know that on the weekends, I'm not going to work no matter what. Fridays are my day where I have to get in a class, I need to take a long walk, whatever it is that I can get in I do that on Fridays. I'm lucky because I work for myself and I'm able to craft a flexible schedule. I know that a lot of women don't have that flexibility. That's a privilege I'm very aware of but I think everyone does have- they always say like, you have the same number of hours in a day as Beyonce. We all have 24 hours. Instead of scrolling on Instagram for an hour, watching Netflix for an hour, what could you do for yourself that's actually going to make you feel good instead of not? Because we all spend a lot of time on our electronics. What I have found is when I do things that don't involve electronics, that's when I'm recharging my battery. Last night I made cookie dough for my kids.
There's something about putting my hands in the dough and touching something that's so tactile and so real. That was energizing for me. I had forgotten what that felt like because it's been a while. I spend most of my time on the computer, on my cell phone. I think having those tactile, in real life experiences are a really powerful way to reconnect with yourself and reset your nervous system.
Engage with the full podcast here.
Self Care Sunday Podcast With Kayley Reed and Guest Melody Godfred
Excerpt on how to navigate the hard lessons of self love and self discovery:
Kayley: You are at the forefront and a leader in this movement which I think is just so awesome, all the things that you've done. We've talked about a lot of really good things, milestones, and highlights, but I also want to talk about some of the harder lessons both in self love, and entrepreneurship. Maybe let's start with self love and self discovery, what have some of those hardest lessons been for you on this journey?
Melody: I think for me one thing is that self love isn't just about finding your best parts and embracing them, it's also about witnessing maybe the darkness that's in each person and learning to love that as well. I think growing up, a lot of what I felt was guilt or shame about parts of myself that I didn't quite understand or that weren't as easy to share with the world. Part of my self love experience has been seeing all parts of myself and being comfortable with them, and that takes a lot of work.
Being in a relationship–that also comes to a head. I think until you truly love yourself, when somebody triggers you, your reaction is going to be really self-defensive, or to shut down. For me, I can be super numb if I need to be, just to get through. Learning instead, when someone triggers me, to sit with that feeling and actually feel it, and then have an adult conversation about what's going on instead of hiding from myself and another person has been really challenging sometimes, but I'm doing it.
I think with regard to self-discovery, I'm learning that as much as I may want to connect with the Melody that existed at seven, or ten, or twenty, there are parts of me that still exists, and there are other parts of me that have evolved. Having this fluid relationship with myself, who I am, embracing myself in all moments, and being okay even if I don't meet my own extremely high standards.
Just this past week something happened where someone had sent me a check in the mail, and I'm really bad at opening my mail on time, like very, very bad at it. It's to an alarming degree. I didn't open up a piece of email, somehow it either got filed away or it got thrown in the trash, and I had to call the person and say, "I'm really sorry, I lost the check. Can you please put a stop payment on it?
The amount of shame I felt because I had made a mistake, I wasn't responsible, and I had done something wrong, it was a lot. Even just telling you about it now, I'm a little emotional over something that's so small and unimportant. It was so easy for them to reissue that check, but I felt ashamed because I wasn't perfect. I carry that energy around all day long, and then I have to learn to be okay with it, we all make mistakes. Last week I thought about this for myself and I had to share it with you.
It's that we all crave perfection maybe because it's easier–it's easy to crave something that is other or outside of us. What we really should crave is authenticity, which is ourselves. I should be okay with the fact that I don't open my mail, it's not a defining characteristic. Maybe I'll establish some habits to overcome that, maybe I won't, and either way, I'm still whole, I'm still worthy, and I'm still okay. Just going through life through a lens of self-compassion and self-awareness has been really transformative for me.
Engage with the full podcast here.
Project Love Podcast with Guest Melody Godfred
Excerpt on practical steps to live out of your comfort zone:
Vicki: It's like going a little bit out of your comfort zone. For some people, putting on an out of office at six o'clock, or deciding that you're not going to reply to emails after six o'clock, could feel very very scary. It's like, "Okay. Well, how much out of your comfort zone is that? If that's, say, 50% out of your comfort zone, then, what could you do that's maybe 10-15%?" Just start small and then incrementally build up from there until you really start to practice this.
Melody: So much of it has to do with forming habits. If you say like, "I want to run a marathon," you're not going to walk, buy some shoes, walk out the door and run a marathon. You're going to train. You're going to do it little by little. You're going to make incremental improvement. You're going to see if it feels good for your body to run a certain way, you're going to adjust yourself.
When you're thinking about self love and self care, it's the same kind of long-game commitment you're making. Every day, you make little incremental shifts, little incremental gains, on your road, because self love, as you've noted, is a journey. It's not a destination. As long as you wake up in the morning, and you start your day with the right mindfulness about the place and space you deserve in your own existence, that's really going to inform everything that follows.
That's why the ring was such a big deal when we first came up with it, is because it created mindfulness. Every time you look at your hand, you had no choice but to think about this issue. Creating cues for ourselves, whether it's wearing the ring on your pinky, or setting an alert in your phone, you can create habits that help you achieve a really healthy mind-body-soul balance that's infused with self love and worth.
Engage with the full podcast here.
Single Serving Podcast with Shani Silver and Guest Melody Godfred
Excerpt on how to choose your thoughts/internal dialogue:
Shani: I feel like intuitive eating could translate to intuitive self love very easily. Whatever you happen to need in that moment or whatever your body is telling you you need in that moment, you should probably listen to it and give it what it's asking for.
Melody: Yes. It's so much has to do with how your inner monologue is talking to you, like the way you choose to think. For the longest time, I thought that thoughts were something that were absolute and that they defined who I was. Then one day, my therapist who I found very late in life, said to me, "You know you can choose your thoughts, right?" I was like, "Stop it, that is such therapy speak." She's like, "No, let's practice. Something happens, what is your instinctive thought?"
My instinctive thought is like, "This person is trying to hurt me. Everything is shit." She'll be like, "Now, choose a different interpretation." Then the new interpretation was, "This person loves me, even if they're saying something that hurts me right now, they love me. They don't mean to deeply wound me. I'm going to let this pass. I'm not going to secretly hold it against them and start building a barrier between us so I can protect myself." I started doing that. I started resisting my intuitive fearful I started resisting my intuitive, fearful, self-protective thought. I started embracing like a more forgiving, loving, open thought and my experience of life changed. Same with self love and self care. If you think of it as something that's absolute, if you think about it as something that's insurmountable, if you think about it as something that's work and difficult and heavy, who's going to want to do that?
Engage with the full podcast here.
The Passionistas Project Podcast with Guest Melody Godfred
Through her own journey of self discovery, Melody Godfred of Fred + Far found a way to remind all women to make a pinky promise to choose themselves each and every day by wearing a Self Love Pinky Ring. Don't miss this inspiring episode.
Engage with the full podcast here.
Conversations With Moon Body Soul and Melody Godfred
In this episode Kaitee sits down with Melody Godfred, founder of Fred and Far: A self love movement, and author of The ABC's of Self Love. They talk about all things true self care, running a business, being a mom of three, how to self-publish a book, and so much more.
Engage with the full podcast here.
1 Girl Revolution with Guest Melody Godfred
Melody Godfred is the founder of Fred and Far, she’s an author and a poet, she’s a wife and mama, and she’s the creator of the Self Love Pinky Ring, and a global self love movement.
Melody has an incredible life story. She was born in Iran during the Iranian Revolution, and at a few months old her parents fled to Israel and then ended up in Los Angeles. Melody was raised in Los Angeles and became the first person in her family to go to college and then onto law school. Melody got a great job out of law school, but after only a few months, she felt a tug at her heart to leave and decided to leave it all behind to chase her dreams.
Melody published a book and then in 2016, she created the Self Love Pinky Ring, which instantly went viral and turned into a global self love movement.
Melody joins the 1 Girl Revolution podcast to share her incredible life story, she talks about how she got the idea for the Self Love Pinky Ring, what self love truly means, how to love yourself, how to love your sisters, the power of sisterhood, and so much more. You don’t want to miss this powerful episode!
Engage with the full podcast here.