Authenticity is a sham

Self-discovery: from Jesus to mindfulness and beyond. From religious ideal and existential touchstone to phoney poses, can an awareness of its history help the self-creation project? One of the lessons in Herminia Ibarra's “Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader” discusses authenticity and how it limits our willingness to take a playful approach to ourselves. With everyone from monks to existentialists and hipsters searching for a true self, Alexander Stern — a philosophy, language and culture writer — explores the origins of these dead-ends and paradoxes of self-creation.