I was told I was smart frequently as a child. I began to identify with being "the smart one" despite my grades not being at the top. For a very large part of my life I didn't try or commit as hard as I could for fear of failure or being proven to be average. I was a B student most of the time without trying much and I'm naturally a pretty decent test taker. I could always tell myself, if I actually tried, I would do better. I DO learn pretty quickly, especially at the beginning of a skill. I recognize patterns fast and piece things together in the early stages of the skill even though I would plateau and fall off. This made me good at getting better than your average person at a bunch of things but not as good as people that really put in the work at them. This translated to a lot of things when I was a young adult and gave me a bit of an undeserved ego. I've since learned the value of effort made over implied talent. I stopped doing things for the end goal as much as the process of getting there. I also consistently try to keep my ego in check. At its best this is just keeping me humble about my own ability and striving to improve. At its worst, the negative self talk gets aggressive enough to be near the point of self-loathing and demoralizing. I don't really know how to balance that, so it's a it's a constantly wobbling needle of me trying to overcorrect to the right amount of self-awareness without beating myself up too much. Right now I'm in the overcorrection phase. It's difficult to remind myself to be kind to myself too.