self love – Dr. Danielle Clark

Pause, reflect,and self-love

Self-love is deeply personal and often hard to define. It looks different for everyone, but here’s my take on what it means and a few key components that shape it.

Self-love feels like pride, acceptance, and compassion. It’s filling our own cup first. It’s showing ourselves grace and respect, even in the hardest of times. It’s being in tune with who we are and honoring our heart-centered needs.

Self-love is nurturing our mind, body, and soul—not just when we have time, but always. It’s woven into how we care for ourselves, how we think and act, and how we live.

Self-love is falling in love with ourselves again and again—embracing who we are with curiosity, appreciating all that we give and offer, and being able to smile, laugh, and give ourselves a big, energetic hug in the best of times and the worst.

Key Components of Self-Love

Care – Showing ourselves gentleness and thoughtful consideration in all that we do: our thoughts, in our eating, in how we move our body, in how we speak, in how we rest and renew.
Joy & Celebration – Acknowledging our wins—big or small—and celebrating ourselves along the way. A key point here is that your effort itself is a win—even if the end result wasn’t what you expected.
Authenticity – Embracing who we truly are without fear of judgment or the need for external validation.
Forgiveness – Letting go of self-judgment and past mistakes with kindness.
Creativity & Play – Allowing joy, imagination, and spontaneity into our lives.
Love & Connection – Creating more space for love and community in our lives.
Tough Love – Holding ourselves accountable—being honest with ourselves when we need to apologize, course-correct, or grow.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but I hope it encourages you to pause and reflect on how you’ve been showing yourself love and where you may need to lean in more—because we all deserve love, an abundance of love. After all, we are love.

Here are some ways I’ve been focusing on deepening my own self-love:

Creativity & Play: This is an area that has felt a bit lacking for me. Since launching Under the Oaks Wellness and Events six months ago, work has taken priority over play. While I’m happy to make that short-term sacrifice, I recently realized it’s time for me to carve out more time for fun. So, I’ve been intentionally making time for it—going to more plays (I love the theatre!) and signing up for a six-week pickleball class starting in February since I haven’t played much and feel a bit rusty.
Tough Love: I recently had to give myself a dose of tough love. I’d been struggling with headaches and brain fog—definitely not fun. Deep down, I knew my morning green tea was the culprit and that I needed to switch to an herbal alternative. But I resisted. I love the earthy taste, the gentle caffeine boost, and the ritual of my morning green tea. Still, I had to be honest with myself: “Danielle, at this point, you’re self-sabotaging. This won’t be easy, but you need to stop.” And so, I did. I made the switch, and for the past three weeks, I’ve been headache- and brain-fog-free. That is self-love—doing the hard work for ourselves, even when it’s uncomfortable.
Joy & Celebration: I took February 6th off with my husband—my big 4-0 birthday—and I’m viewing it as a way to celebrate all that I have journeyed through and all that I am. We have a beautiful day of pickleball, massages, food, and more in store.

Know that I’m here if you’d like to lean into the concept of self-love with me and Spirit. I’d be honored to hold space for you and explore, from a higher perspective, ways to invite more love into your life.

Also, I think a gift card with me would make a beautiful Valentine’s Day gift for someone who needs more love in their life. If you’d like to purchase one, here’s the link—you’ll receive a gift card you can immediately print or email.

Onwards!

Sincerely,
Dr. Danielle Clark | Psychic Medium
drdanielleclark.com

PS – Here’s an affirmation to remind yourself to practice self-love, ‘Inside and out, I am beautiful and divine. I am love and light, and I only welcome love and light into my life.’

PPS – Want to show yourself some extra self-love while embracing your creative, playful side? Gather some colored markers, stickers, construction paper, scrapbooking materials, scissors—anything that sparks joy—and make yourself a Valentine!

Include things that celebrate you:

A picture that brings back a happy memory.
Special things that make you YOU, like favorite quotes or photos of places you love.
Words of self-love—things you admire about yourself, like your kindness, your wit, or the amazing lasagna you make for your family during the holidays.

Place your Valentine somewhere you’ll see and appreciate it every day this month—on your mirror, nightstand, or anywhere that brings you joy.

Stop feeling bad about feeling good

From time to time, I touch myself for pleasure. I choose to do this for the joy and rejuvenation effects, for the “I love myself and deserve to feel good” vibes. The action isn’t against my religion or belief system, nor does my hubby care one way or another if I touch myself.

But right before I masturbate and right after I finish, I feel guilty. A gnawing “This is wrong” voice and feeling find me. My stomach gets a slight knot and shame washes over me.

So why does something that is meant to refresh and relax me, also give me a yucky feeling?

The other day at the gym, I got closer to uncovering the answer…

I’m a member of Orangetheory Fitness. I regularly attend high intensity workout classes that a trainer leads. On any given day there’s a combination of treadmill, rower and free weight work. The trainer will give me my pace and put together a series of base pace efforts, all out efforts and rests. It’s a tough workout which is exactly why I love it!

After running and climbing hills on the treadmill for half an hour I made my way to the weight floor. I was given three exercises to do until time was called. After each one, I was supposed to rest. But guess what? Even though I was winded, sore and could really use some water, I didn’t rest.

Why didn’t I rest? Because I felt guilty. The gnawing “This is wrong” voice I get when I masturbate found me again every time I paused from an exercise.

This gave me an ah-ha moment. I struggle with allowing myself to feel good. Whether it’s experiencing the full bliss of some special me time, or giving my body a break after lifting, something deep within me associates being good to myself with being bad.

I have important answers I need to search for, like how to create a better relationship with the things that make me feel good. I know where I’ll start, and that’s thanks to doing similar self-work in the past.

Here’s what I’ll focus on now:

Reminding myself through reflection, journaling and affirmations that I am a human being not a human doer. Every day I’ll tell myself I’m here to work hard and to relax, have fun and enjoy life.
Adding more just for me things into my week so that feeling of being good to myself comes more naturally.
Exploring my past to see if I can identify any past experiences or limiting beliefs shared with me that I need to understand, give love to, and let go.

I’m hoping that if you can relate to this blog, you’ll put together a list of things you can focus on too. Life is too short and beautiful for any of us to spend too much time feeling low, overworked and ashamed.

Join me in spreading my messages of breaking judgement habits and strengthening intuition even further: forward this blog to a few family members and friends. The greater the shares, the greater the impact – They can subscribe here.

Sincerely,
Dr. Danielle Clark | Psychic Medium

PS – ‘Here’s an affirmation to give you a boost of self-love when you’re feeling bad about feeling good, ‘I am worthy of all good things. I give myself unconditional love always.’

PPS – If you struggle with putting yourself first or giving yourself some much needed TLC, grab your journal and a pen. Oftentimes, these limiting beliefs stem from our childhood, be it directly or indirectly. Did a magazine or TV show make you feel like it wasn’t okay to do something you wanted to do? Or perhaps that it wasn’t okay to feel a certain way? Did a family member tell you something is bad for you, when it’s actually the opposite? (for example – you wanted a second serving of food because you were still hungry, but your grandma wouldn’t let you eat more because she said you’d gain weight). Write anything that comes to mind. Then light all of these limiting beliefs on fire (or rip them up slowly into small bits) repeating, ‘These limiting words, beliefs and actions are no longer mine to carry’.

Allow yourself to be human

The other morning, when dropping Charlie off at Puppy Palace (yup! He’s spoiled and yes, they have a salt water pool for my ‘boujee’ pup), I led him into the main waiting room with no leash and collar on. This is usually fine but there was another dog in there I didn’t see. The Puppy Palace rules are, if there’s more than one dog in the waiting room, your dog should be leashed to avoid any unnecessary biting, fighting or other aggressive behaviors. If you’re not a dog owner, please know these types of behaviors are rare. Some dogs just aren’t fans of other dogs or people, especially if they’ve lived a hard life.

Charlie wandered over to the other dog and before I could grab a hold of him, the pups started sniffing each other. While neither dog showed hostility or bad juju toward the other, one of the workers had to separate them just in case.

Even though unintentional, I felt bad that I broke the rule. I sensed the worker was frazzled and perhaps a bit angry with me (I say ‘sensed’ because she had a mask on, so I couldn’t rely on regular facial clues). I wouldn’t blame her for being a bit miffed; after all, I should know the drill. Charlie has been going there for years.

“I’m so sorry about this,” I muttered with regret and sincerity in my voice. The worker didn’t reply, so I kept going, trying to make things right, “That dog is small and I didn’t see him as I came in. Again, I’m so sorry.” The worker walked away, never once acknowledging my apology.

How rude! I thought as I walked up to the front desk to sign Charlie in.

With my emotions high, experiencing a mix of Ugh Danielle. You’re so careless, and I can’t believe she just walked away from me, I unloaded on the young man at the desk.

“I’ve never had something so rude happen to me here. I gave an apology and that worker just walked away from me…”

The man replied with a warm smile on his face, “Oh goodness. Don’t be upset. She probably didn’t hear you. She’s hard of hearing.”

Whoa! I had never considered that.

I let out a sigh, “Wow. That must be it. Thanks for telling me.”

Just then, the worker came out and I couldn’t miss my chance to say sorry to her. This time she heard me. She was light and forgiving.

The second I got home from dropping Charlie off, I wrote a draft of this blog so that the encounter was fresh in my mind and I could perfectly capture the ‘don’t make assumptions’ moral. But while writing, I identified a greater depth to that moral: I’m human. I make mistakes. I feel things deeply. And I’ll never get every interaction right.

A few years ago, I would have thought about this situation for hours, beating myself up for not knowing the worker was partially deaf, for being too emotional or too quick to assume she was rude. But this time, as I sat down to write, I felt pride. My brain wasn’t tangled with questions, but instead I had clarity on why I made my assumption: I’m a loud person. I’d talked to this worker many times before and we’d never had troubles communicating. I was proud of myself for realizing there was no need to be mad with myself, it was an honest mistake – and as a human, I’m allowed to make many of those.

Instead of letting this uncomfortable encounter bubble inside of me for hours or days, I spoke my truth and within seconds I was rewarded with someone else’s truth. By expressing my emotions about the situation to the young man behind the desk, I found a truth that released me from purposeless emotion.

So my true moral of this story is: when we let ourselves be human, we can bring out the best in a situation.

Sincerely,
Danielle

PS – Here’s an affirmation to use when you find yourself getting down on everything that makes you YOU, “I love myself as I am.”

PPS – Is there an awkward encounter you repeat in your head and you ask yourself: Why did I sound so lame? How did I make that blunder? If so, grab your pen and journal. Write the encounter down as a story. What did you do and say? What did the other person do and say? Once you’ve captured it, end the story with a lesson: What did you learn? Perhaps what did the other person learn? Read your now complete story and let all those negative vibes go, as this story is no longer negative: it has a lesson and that’s your positive spin.

That mistake I made wasn’t a mistake

A few weeks ago, in my Learn by doing newsletter, I talked about how I unintentionally interrupted Shawna, the host of The Quantum Shift when she had me on her podcast as a guest. The days that followed, I wasted time and lost positive energy as I hyper-focused on my blunder. Fortunately, I finally snapped out of my funk when I remembered that we all learn by doing and that my intention was pure.

I wrote that newsletter as a healing vehicle for myself (writing is such a good release), as a learning opportunity for you, and as an ‘I’m sorry’ to Shawna. I posted the newsletter to Instagram and tagged Shawna, feeling good that I owned my mistakes and that the air was cleared.

Shawna wrote me back and here’s what she said: “I don’t even recall you ‘interrupting’ me! You left me with the impression that you’re a very knowledgeable coach and lovely human with an absolutely huge heart from having overcome great challenges. I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation and hope to have you back again!”

I chuckled when I read her response, looked up to the sky and said, “Okay Universe. Message received.”

Can you believe it? I spent days beating myself up for a faux pas Shawna didn’t even notice, a mistake that didn’t even exist.

Shawna’s note gave me a powerful reminder: I can be my own worst enemy.
The next time I doubt myself (and worse, bully myself) about how I think someone perceives me, I’m going to:

Use the affirmation below as many times a day as I need to so that I quiet the negative noise in my head;
Fill myself with understanding and grace by remembering the positive purpose of my actions;
Directly ask the person how they felt about whatever it is I did or think I did.

Hopefully, you’ll be kinder to yourself too the next time you ‘make a mistake’.

Did you enjoy this story? Join me in spreading my messages of breaking judgement habits and strengthening intuition even further: forward this newsletter to a few family members and friends. The greater the shares, the greater the impact – They can subscribe here.

Sincerely,
Danielle

PS – Here’s an affirmation to help you (and to help me!) stop focusing on others’ opinions, “I live life without concern of what others think of me.”

PPS – To help you feel more comfortable with ‘mistakes’, think back to a time you made one and because of it, things turned out great. Get out your journal and write out the story. Did you miss your exit and ended up late to work but found an amazing coffee shop you wouldn’t have known about otherwise? Did you bomb a first date which led you to meeting your husband? Keep this story handy and the next time you are down-in-the-dumps because you made a perceived mistake, read this story to yourself.

Tag: self love

Pause, reflect,and self-love

Stop feeling bad about feeling good

Allow yourself to be human

That mistake I made wasn’t a mistake

A higher version of YOU

Check your inbox! If you can't find the email try checking your spam folder / promotions tab.