Become the Artist of Your Own Life

🖼️ Become the Artist of Your Own Life 🖼️

For 19th-century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, our ‘true selves’ aren’t hidden inside of us — they are something above us, something we actively work towards. Here’s his sage advice on how we can authentically ‘become’ ourselves.

🌱 Embody Your Philosophy, Don’t Just Explain It 🌱

The great Roman Stoic philosopher Epictetus once said, “Don’t explain your philosophy. Embody it.”

It’s inspiring, but we often ask ourselves:

• What is my philosophy?

• How do I know what I truly value?

• How do I figure out if my desires are genuinely mine, or just influenced by others?

If you’ve ever felt restless, searching for your true self, Nietzsche has an answer. In his 1874 essay Schopenhauer as Educator, he offers this insight:

“Look back on your life and ask, ‘What have you up to now truly loved? What has drawn your soul upward, mastered it, and blessed it too?’”

By reflecting on what we’ve loved and cherished most deeply, we can reveal the fundamental law of our own selves. Nietzsche encourages us to look at these things as a ladder — a path we’ve climbed toward becoming who we are today.

🎨 Create, Don’t Discover, Your True Self 🎨

Nietzsche reminds us: authenticity isn’t found, it’s created. Our true being doesn’t lie buried deep within us, but rather, it hovers above us, waiting to be shaped.

Think of your life as an artistic project. We begin as a canvas, painted by the cultural norms we inherit. Our task is to turn this half-formed image into something beautiful, even if it means going beyond the familiar colors of culture.

Every choice, every brushstroke, shapes who we are.

“What have you truly loved? What has mastered and blessed your soul?”

Focus on these passions. Use them to create a masterpiece — a version of yourself that you’d proudly sign your name to.

🛠️ Giving Style to Your Character 🛠️

In The Gay Science (1882), Nietzsche talks about how we can style our characters according to our own tastes:

“To ‘give style’ to one’s character — a great and rare art! It is practiced by those who survey all their strengths and weaknesses and fit them into an artistic plan until even weaknesses delight the eye.”

Through daily effort, we can shape ourselves into something beautiful. Even the traits we dislike — those we see as ugly or unchangeable — can be turned into strengths, adding depth and mystique to the whole picture.

“In the end, when the work is complete, it becomes clear how it was the force of a single taste that ruled and shaped everything great and small.”

This is Nietzsche’s key idea: we fulfill our potential by living up to our own independent aesthetic, not an external set of rules or values.

🌟 Why Style Matters More Than Ethics 🌟

Nietzsche boldly claims that “It is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified.” He believes that living authentically — as a work of art — is the key to a fulfilled life.

As he says in Untimely Meditations:

“At bottom, every human being knows well enough that they are a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity ever be put together a second time.”

In other words:

There’s no one else who can be what you might become.

You owe it to yourself to become the fullest, most empowered version of yourself you can.

“Nobody can build you the bridge over which you must cross the river of life, nobody but you alone.”

💭 What Do You Think? 💭

• Do you agree with Nietzsche’s idea of ‘creating’ ourselves rather than ‘finding’ ourselves?

• Is life an artistic project where we style and restyle ourselves?

• Should we prioritize others over this kind of personal, restless creation?

• Can we balance the two?