Jean-Paul Sartre was a 20th-century French philosopher who defined authenticity as the

terrifying realization that you are completely free and responsible for your own choices.

In 1964, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature - the highest honors a writer can

possibly receive, but he refused to accept it. Over the years, Sartre had watched how society

loves to put people in boxes. He saw that once people achieved a certain status or accepted a

prestigious label, they stopped acting like free individuals and started acting like the character

society expected them to be. He knew that if he accepted the award, he would permanently become

"Nobel Prize winner Jean-Paul Sartre." He would be turned into a static public institution,

rather than a living person whose ideas could continue to grow and change.

He never owned a house, nor did he care about hoarding wealth. He lived out of

rented hotel rooms and cafes, spending his life exploring the concept of radical human freedom

and then pouring these ideas into his plays, novels, and philosophical writings, which became

the foundation of Existentialism. Existentialism is a philosophy that says that since we arrive

in this world without any purpose, it is up to us to build one through the way we live.

Now, most of us can’t afford to live in hotels or turn down a million-dollar prize.

We have to deal with the reality of money and work.

Sartre’s message wasn't about being broke or rejecting society—it was that you shouldn't

let your job title, social status, or other people's expectations decide who you are.

The moment you allow someone else to define what success or happiness should look like,

you stop making your own choices and live a life written by someone else. So in this video, we are

going to take a look at how to live an authentic life using the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre.

1. Existence Precedes Essence When we talk about authenticity, the usual advice

is to go and "find yourself." We assume that, deep down, there is a true, fixed version of us

waiting to be discovered and we desperately want to believe we were put here for a specific reason.

Sartre saw it differently. He used a very famous example of a paper knife. Before the

knife was made, the artisan had a clear concept of its purpose, its design, and its function:

to slice open sealed envelopes. The object was defined by its utility before it was ever created.

For thousands of years, we humans assumed we were made just like that paper knife. We believed we

were born with some pre-assigned purpose—handed down by someone or something, whether that was

God, destiny, biology, or society, and our only job was to figure out what that was and do it.

Sartre shattered this idea with a three-word phrase that became the absolute foundation of

his philosophy. He declared: "Existence precedes essence." He argued that we humans are not tools.

There is no grand blueprint for you nor are you born with a pre-written script dictating that your

life must be certain metrics like the size of your house, or hitting specific societal milestones.

You just exist. First, you show up in the world—a blank slate, a pure,

empty consciousness—and only later do you have the freedom to decide what you want to do.

So what this boils down to is that you are completely free to do whatever you want with

your life. There are no rules you have to follow. But having that much freedom can be terrifying.

If there is no instruction manual for how to live, and if you mess up and end up unhappy,

then it is entirely your fault and you have no one else to blame.

Because that pressure is too hard to handle, most of us copy everyone else.

We look at what our neighbors, friends, and coworkers are doing,

and we adopt society's default script. We go to school, get a safe job, buy a house,

buy the stuff we see on social media, and just try to blend in. We let society hand

us a ready-made purpose so we don't have to do the hard work of making our own choices.

Worse, we start to say, "This is just how life works," or "This is just what you're supposed to

do." And when we do this, we are treating ourselves exactly like that paper knife.

We turn ourselves into tools designed to fulfill society's expectations.

Sartre’s existentialism says that you don't have to follow it. Being authentic means accepting that

you are free to stop copying the crowd, throw away the script and to choose for yourself,

taking full responsibility for your actions. 2. Stop Playing a Character

Sartre spent a lot of time sitting in Parisian cafes. One day, he watched a waiter who was stiff,

moving like a robot, balancing his tray with intense precision, and talking in an overly

formal, mechanical voice. Sartre realized the man wasn't just doing for his job.

He was playing the character of a waiter and was treating this "waiter" character as his

entire identity instead of just one part of his life. Sartre called this living in "Bad Faith."

You live in bad faith when you convince yourself that you are defined by a fixed identity rather

than someone who is constantly making choices. You can see this everywhere today. We identify

so strongly with our job titles that we begin to treat it as our entire identity. So instead

of seeing ourselves as individuals who happen to have a job, we start believing we are the job.

The easiest way to spot this mindset is by paying attention to the phrase, "I have to."

I have to work this weekend.' 'I have to go to medical school because my parents expect it.'

'I have to host the holidays.' 'I have to bite my tongue to keep the peace.'

When you say those things, you are treating yourself like an object that has no free will.

By telling yourself you have no choice, you play the victim.

You get to pretend that the corporate world—or your family dynamic—is a biological reality,

rather than a completely made-up construct. To actually live authentically,

you have to call your own bluff and live in what he called Good Faith. Good Faith is the brutal,

unfiltered acceptance that you are completely free which means taking ownership of your

actions without hiding behind your job description or what society expects of you.

Living in Good Faith doesn't mean you need to quit your job tomorrow. You can still be a manager,

a founder, or a creator. But you have to do it with a simple psychological flip:

you have to swap "I have to" for "I choose to." Force yourself to say "I am choosing to

work right now because I want this promotion more than I want a day off,"

or "I am choosing to reply to this email because I don't want to lose a client if I don't."

If you are staying in a stressful career just to afford a nice lifestyle, own it.

Admit that you are actively trading your daily peace of mind for a bigger house. When you drop

excuses like "this is how the industry works," you realize you are negotiating your own life. The

stress might still be there, but the suffocating feeling of being trapped completely goes away.

Remember that your career, your status, and your public image might be a comfortable

costume that pays the bills, but you are still just an actor wearing it. You are a volunteer.

And because you volunteered, you can take the costume off and walk off the stage the exact

second the deal isn't worth it anymore. 3. Accept Your Reality

Question, If we are completely free, why can’t you just decide to be a billionaire tomorrow?

Why can't you decide to ignore gravity? Obviously not. Sartre knew we live in a

physical world with very real limits, and he called these limits our "Facticity."

Facticity refers to the hard, unchangeable facts of your life right at this exact moment.

So it is the city you live in, the family members relying on you, your physical health,

and the exact dollar amount sitting in your bank account today. It includes every single

choice you have ever made until watching this very video. You cannot undo any of it.

It is the hand of cards you are currently holding. Most people look at their facticity and use it as

a permanent excuse to stay stuck. We say things like, "I can't change my career path because I

have a mortgage," or "I have to stay in this stressful job because I have kids to feed."

Now Sartre said that while you cannot change the facts of your current situation,

you are entirely in control of what you do next. The mortgage is a fact. The kids are a fact.

But staying miserable in a specific job to pay for a lifestyle that burns you out? That is a choice.

Your facts just set the physical boundaries of the board you are playing on.

They do not force you to make a specific move. For example, imagine you calculate your expenses

and realize you need $4,000 a month just to keep a roof over your head. You also realize that with

your current resume, your stressful corporate job is the only one in town that pays that much. Those

are the hard facts. But you still have options. First, you can change the maths. Is that $4,000

actually a requirement for survival, or is it just the cost of your current lifestyle?

You have the freedom to downsize. You can move to a cheaper apartment, sell your car,

or cut back your budget. You are trading your physical comfort to get back your peace of mind.

Another option is to improve your future opportunities. You keep your current job for now,

but spend your free time learning new skills, building experience, or preparing for a

different role. You can't change your situation overnight, but you can work toward changing it.

And third, you can choose to stay. Let's say you refuse to downsize, and you don't want

to spend your weekends studying. Sartre says staying at the miserable job is totally fine,

as long as you look in the mirror and admit, "I am choosing to deal with the stress of this job

because the paycheck is more important to me right now than downsizing or studying."

Sartre's argument isn't that life is easy or that everyone has unlimited options.

It's that even within the limits you face, you still have the freedom and

responsibility for the direction of your life. 4. Stop Trying to Control How People See You

Imagine you're alone in your room, dancing badly or talking to yourself. At that moment, you feel

free because no one is watching. Then you suddenly notice someone standing right in the doorway

and instantly, you freeze and feel so embarrassed. Why does that happen? Sartre believed it happens

because the moment another person looks at you, you become an object in their eyes. Instead of

experiencing yourself as a complex human being with thoughts, feelings, and contradictions,

they see only a small part of you and form an opinion based on that limited view.

This is what Sartre called "The Look." We buy the right clothes, chase respectable

job titles, and shape our personalities to force everyone to look at us and think, "Wow that person

is successful," or "That person has their life together." When you obsess over external

validation, you agree to live as a character in their version of reality instead of your own.

To live authentically, you have to actively reject “The Look”.

You have to realize that when someone judges you, they are interpreting a

small part of you through the lens of their own experiences, assumptions, and biases.

Being authentic means giving people permission to misunderstand you. When you make choices

that are true to you—like quitting a job to do what you actually care about, or spending your

money differently than your friends do—people are going to judge you and your first instinct will be

to defend yourself. You will want to explain your choices so they don't look down on you.

Stop. Let them think you are making a mistake. Let them put you in the wrong box. Being authentic

means accepting that you can't control the version of you that lives in someone else's head.

5. Embrace the Vertigo of Total Freedom Imagine you are walking along a narrow path on the

edge of a high cliff. At first, you feel regular fear—the fear that the rocks might give way or

a strong gust of wind might push you over. Fear is about what the outside world might do to you.

But then, a second, heavier feeling hits you. You look down and realize that there

is absolutely nothing physically stopping you from simply throwing yourself off.

You are terrified not of the cliff, but of your own absolute power to choose. Sartre

called this profound, dizzying feeling "Anguish." In the modern world, we call this feeling anxiety.

But Sartre was talking about a specific type of existential anxiety. It isn’t the biological

panic of a stressful workday. It is the vertigo that hits the exact moment you realize the true

scale of your own freedom. Once you stop playing a character and drop your excuses,

the safety net disappears. You realize you are completely alone with your choices,

there is no hidden rulebook, and nobody is coming to save you.

Let's say you drop out of college to start a business or write a book.

You finally make the leap. But the moment you sit down at your desk with no boss telling you

what to do and no syllabus to follow, you start to panic. Your mind floods with worst-case scenarios.

Because being that free is exhausting, our first instinct is to distract ourselves.

We grab our phones, text five friends asking them what we should do,

or think about begging for our old job back or even going back to college just to feel safe.

We assume that because we feel terrified, we must have made the wrong choice.

We think we need to "cure" the anxiety. But Sartre said the exact opposite.

That anxiety doesn’t mean you’re broken or that you made a mistake. It means you’re finally awake.

It’s just the natural result of taking full responsibility for your life.

If you want to be authentic, you have to sit with that uncomfortable feeling instead of

running away from it. When you feel like giving up and going back to that same normal, safe path,

remind yourself that you are just feeling the weight of your own freedom.

That anxiety is proof that you aren't a puppet anymore, and it is the necessary price you pay

to build a life that is entirely yours. 6. Act

As is often the case, that people will read about a new philosophy, agree with it,

and think that just understanding it means they are living it. But Sartre believed

your inner thoughts, your intentions, and your "potential" mean nothing. He wrote that a person

is nothing more than the sum of their actions. Today, we like to separate who we are "on the

inside" from how we act. We tell ourselves things like, "Deep down, I'm a writer,

I just haven't had time to write," or "I have strong boundaries, I just keep saying yes to

things I hate so I don't let people down." Sartre would look at those excuses and say

there is no "deep down." If you constantly agree to do things you hate just to avoid conflict,

you aren't a person with strong boundaries who is temporarily stuck. You are a people-pleaser.

If you never write, you aren't a writer. You are exactly what your actions show you are.

If you want to be authentic, you have to prove it in the real world through your actions.

This brings us to the final, heaviest realization of Sartre’s philosophy.

When you hear "total freedom," it’s easy to assume authenticity is a selfish act—that

it means doing whatever you want, regardless of the world. But Sartre argued the exact opposite.

He believed that because there is no pre-written blueprint for human beings,

every choice you make is an act of creation. He famously said, "In choosing myself, I choose man."

What he meant was that your life is an argument for how life should be lived.

This is the real weight of your freedom. When you choose to stay in a job that makes you miserable,

and you make excuses, and play the victim, you are telling the world,

"This is how people should live." You are setting an example of giving up for the rest of the world.

But when you make brave choices, stop playing a character, and take ownership of your life, you

set an example of courage for the people around you. Authenticity is a public responsibility.

You are not just building a life for yourself—you are carving out a path that others can follow.

And that’s our video! What did you think? Do you feel you need to ‘Find Your Purpose’

or do you agree with Sartre that there’s no such thing except the purpose you choose?

And until next time, as always, I’ve been Dan, you’ve been awesome and if you enjoyed what you

saw or found it helpful at all, why not check out our full philosophies for life playlist?

And of course for more videos to help you find success and happiness using beautiful

philosophical wisdom, don’t forget to subscribe. Thanks so much for watching.