Introduction: The World Wants You Real, As Long As It’s Marketable
I vote for the outcasts, the losers, and the creeps / Who can bring it back again, make me believe!
The Explosion, No Revolution
While Spirited Away was racking up awards (including the Golden Bear in Berlin and an Oscar for Best Animated Feature), the film’s director, Hayao Miyazaki, stayed in Japan. He sent a studio rep to give the acceptance speeches while he continued drawing from sunrise to sunset. Even when Roy Disney offered him a private Boeing 737 to attend the ceremony, Miyazaki refused emphatically. At the time, the U.S. had just bombed Iraq, and he wanted no part in a celebration. Art, the legendary filmmaker believed, wasn’t about trophies. So while the world applauded him, Miyazaki sat at his desk, quietly drawing, like he always had.
What draws me to stories like Miyazaki’s isn’t the drama, it’s the rare glimpse of something real. Whatever I’m doing (whether that’s watching, reading, or talking), I’m chasing authenticity. Not the influencer version, but the kind that makes you uncomfortable. The kind that costs something. We claim to value honesty, but the modern world operates on performance. Authenticity, when it shows up, doesn’t give a speech. It hits you like a ton of bricks. Maybe it can’t be defined, only felt. Like a glimmer of truth in a world that’s addicted to mirrors.
So what does it mean to be authentic in a world that constantly pressures us to perform? The costs of authenticity are often ignored, and being real in public comes with its consequences. We clap for vulnerability until it’s uncomfortable. We cheer for “being real” as long as it’s profitable, in 4K, and ends with a brand deal. Every influencer under the sun will tell you to be your weird self, only to then promote Grammarly and take gym selfies like everyone else.
Luckily, some people have never learned to fake it. Cobain mocked the industry by wearing a “Corporate magazines still suck” on the cover of Rolling Stone. Bourdain bled honesty into every meal, refusing to smile for the camera. Bukowski wrote weird stuff that some call him a genius. Others called him a drunk. They were both right. We tend to think of these people as uncompromising, but what we forget is that we were just like them at some point.
You Were Authentic Once, and Then You Grew Up
If you want authenticity, you should spend time with children. It’s easy to forget that before we’re trained to perform, we just are. As any parent or involved relative will tell you, children cry when they’re sad, laugh when something’s funny, and ask questions when they’re curious. Young children express themselves without self-censorship because they haven’t yet learned to perform. Their sense of self is instinctive, not shaped by peer approval. Ask a kid how your haircut looks, and they’ll say, “You look like a Playmobil man.” Answers like that don’t come out of malice, but out of brutal honesty. And it’s so refreshing you can’t even get mad.
As kids approach adolescence, though, they begin to realize that the world doesn’t reward full honesty. They start to sense that certain versions of themselves are more “acceptable” than others. That’s when the mask starts to form and authenticity becomes something they hide. By age 10-14, kids start showing signs of something psychologists call “masked development”. This is personal growth that appears authentic on the surface but is actually a form of performance or adaptation to external pressures. This means you “develop”, but in a way that pleases others, aligns with trends, or secures approval. You’re not you, but a version of yourself that wants to conform. This is why most early teenagers wear the same sneakers or mimic the same TikTok dance. Authenticity is scary, but being excluded is scarier.
The problem when you’re an adult is that you don’t automatically return to being authentic. If we’re not careful, the mask you developed as a teenager can stay with you forever. There will be moments of “This isn’t me” or “Why am I doing this?”, but we can easily suppress them. Returning to authenticity requires a conscious effort.
Authenticity: The Buzzword Nobody Understands
Authenticity is the alignment between inner values and outer expressions. Simply put, it means you behave according to what you consider important. Authenticity isn’t always about total honesty and rebellion, but congruence and intentionality. Some people are rebellious by nature, for instance, so behaving rebelliously will make them feel real. But buying a motorcycle and a leather jacket isn’t the solution for everyone.
To be authentic, you should know your values. I know it’s tempting to feel like you know this already, but the thing about values is that you express them through actions. I can tell I value health all I want, but if I then spend my time watching Netflix and eating Oreos to my heart’s content, then I’m lying to myself. So how do we remain authentic in a world that’s full of roles, masks, and expectations? In the same commercial break, we watch a Doritos commercial and someone with six-pack abs. The modern world is full of contradictions, and if we don’t have clear values, the world will tell us what we should value. That’s why authenticity isn’t just a feeling, it’s a practice. It’s not enough to believe in something if your actions constantly betray it.
There are three parts to authenticity: knowing yourself, accepting yourself, and expressing yourself honestly.
- Knowing yourself (or self-awareness) is the ability to know one’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior and how they impact oneself and others. For others to accept you, you first have to accept yourself. You’ll be more resilient, make better decisions, have stronger relationships, and enhance personal growth. The problem is that self-awareness requires time and effort, which is why most people never do it in the first place.
- Accepting yourself (or self-acceptance) is accepting your strengths and weaknesses without judgment. While self-awareness is about knowing yourself, self-acceptance is about liking yourself for who you are. One of the key ingredients of self-awareness is the lack of need for external validation, which means you don’t rely on the opinion of others to feel worthy. Self-awareness is the acceptance that imperfections are part of the human condition and that no matter how hard you work, you’ll never be perfect in all areas. There are several benefits to self-acceptance, including improved mental well-being, increased self-esteem, and better relationships.
- Finally, there’s expressing yourself honestly (or self-expression). Part of maturing involves saying things without some ulterior motive. This means you say something because you feel it, not because you want to deceive someone or get something in return. This also means that you have to deal with the consequences. Being truthful about one’s emotions, opinions, or intentions won’t always make you the most popular person in the room (believe me, I know). That said, when you can articulate your feelings truthfully, people won’t like you, but they will respect you. People will be able to tell that you’re being yourself and that you’re not conforming to external pressure.
We’ve all been around people who demand attention but have nothing to say. So they tell grand tales where information’s either missing or certain points contradict each other, and you find yourself stuck listening to things that probably never happened. Like your friend who swears he was a chess prodigy at six but also insists that “the horsey piece can only move horizontally.” Self-expression is important because it strengthens your identity, helps you build stronger relationships, and makes you creative and innovative.
Your Mask Looks Great, Too Bad It’s Killing You
The topic of authenticity has interested both philosophers and psychologists for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. The existentialists have written about this at length. I can see you rolling your eyes from over here, so don’t worry, I’ll get through the philosophy stuff fast. Søren Kierkegaard saw authenticity as becoming your true self through deep, passionate commitment. The idea wasn’t just knowing the truth, but living it. Jean-Paul Sartre believed authenticity meant owning your radical freedom and responsibility. To him, being inauthentic was lying to yourself to avoid making hard choices. Martin Heidegger added that true authenticity begins when you confront your mortality. Only then do you start living for real. And while not an existentialist, Nietzsche argued that authenticity requires self-overcoming, or in other words, rejecting herd morality and creating your own values.
And if philosophy isn’t your thing (in which case, I wonder what the hell you’re doing here), psychology has explored this topic too. In the realm of humanistic psychology, the central figure is Carl Rogers, who believed authenticity emerges when our “real self” aligns with our “ideal self.” He defined this harmony between inner experience and outward expression as congruence. Rogers also believed that conditions of worth (external expectations) distort authenticity. Similarly, we have the Self-Determination Theory (or SDT). Developed by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan. SDT says authenticity involves acting from intrinsic motivation rather than external pressure. And finally, let’s go full circle and talk about existentialism again, or in this case, existential psychology. Contributors Rollo May and Irvin Yalom describe authenticity as something that involves acknowledging freedom, making choices, and confronting mortality. To them, inauthenticity involves living by others’ scripts instead of facing the anxiety of freedom.
You Can’t Cry on Camera and Call It Real
I feel like influencers declare authenticity in the same way Michael Scott declares bankruptcy, decisively and at the top of their lungs. But paradoxically, the announcement of authenticity makes you inauthentic. On social media, it’s a performance. You can’t cry on camera for clicks and call it vulnerability. You can’t commodify your trauma and expect it to feel sincere. When “being yourself” becomes a strategy, it’s no longer self-expression; it’s branding.
Authenticity comes at a price, but the key is acting despite the potential consequences. You might lose friends who preferred the agreeable version of you. You might get passed over at work for refusing to play politics. Or you might post something meaningful and watch it get ignored while someone eating a cereal in good lighting gets 400 likes. Needless to say, “being yourself” sometimes means disappointing others, but I’d rather disappoint others than disappoint myself. Authenticity hurts in the short term. Inauthenticity hurts forever.
Having the courage to be disliked is one of the most important skills one can develop and something no one talks about. That’s the case because it’s messy, uncomfortable, and necessary. We also live in a world of cancel culture and fear. The stakes are so high that being authentic becomes risky, and we all default to mimicry. As a consequence, this is a time when we most need authenticity.
Conclusion: You’re Not a Brand. Stop Acting Like One.
Miyazaki stayed home and drew while the world handed him trophies. The real work of being yourself doesn’t happen on the stage. It happens quietly, when no one’s watching, and you choose to remain real anyway.
Authenticity isn’t a personality trait, an aesthetic, or something you announce in a teary Instagram Reel. It’s not quirky or marketable, and it doesn’t come with a discount code. Authenticity is doing the hard thing when no one’s clapping. It’s choosing truth over performance. Most people don’t reject authenticity because they don’t want it. They reject it because they know it will cost them something. Sometimes it costs relationships. Sometimes it costs a job. And sometimes it costs your self-image. But living a life that doesn’t feel like yours is a higher price to pay if you ask me.
The truth is, you were born authentic. Then you grew up. But growing up doesn’t mean selling out who you are. It means finding your way back. That mask you built as a teenager doesn’t dissolve as you get older. Getting rid of it needs work and a good deal of courage. Once you do this, you will stop performing and start participating in your own life.
So what would it cost you to stop pretending? And are you willing to pay the price?
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