“The purpose of your life isn’t to love yourself but to love BEING yourself,” Abraham-Hicks.  This quote is life changing.  All this time I’ve been working on teaching people to love themselves and I will always stand by what I’ve shared, learned, said, and believe.  But I’ve also learned that there is another level to this: it isn’t enough to merely accept—we need to love ourselves enough to believe that we are capable of what we want, that we are worthy to receive it, and that we are meant to take action toward that goal.  We are meant to love what we do and how we do it.  I still believe that in order to love being ourselves we need to love ourselves first, but it is when we love being ourselves that we find the deepest depths of who we are and allow it to bloom.  We have a tendency to show this false bravado in our facades so people view us a certain way and it’s never the whole picture of who we are.  If we can say we love how we do things and our process in life then we have mastered a new level beyond self-love—we love existence. 

Though the idea of loving oneself and loving being oneself are closely related, there is a fine but important distinction.  Loving ourselves is fine and opens the doors to accepting our power, honoring who we are, and setting boundaries whereas loving being oneself happens after we step through the door.  That’s when we put the method to the test and we have a sense of completeness and peace.  There is no asking for permission in that state, there is no guilt, there is simply doing.  Simply being who we are.  And, not to be redundant, life itself becomes simpler.  There are fewer things we need to define ourselves or make ourselves feel accepted.  There isn’t as much stuff we need to hold close to the chest or carry around.  We also stop worrying about carrying other people’s stuff—that is a clear boundary.  So while it may take a while to get the concept of loving oneself, once we are there we learn that isn’t enough: we have to love being ourselves as well.  We can all love ourselves in different ways and to different degrees, that is a teachable thing.  We can’t hand anyone the guidebook on how or who to be.  Trust that you are exactly as you are meant to be and work on being the best at that.  If you’re not happy with where you’re at, then try again.