Your ego can become an obstacle to your work. If you start believing in your greatness, it is the death of you... — Marina Abramovic

Your ego can become an obstacle to your work. If you start believing in your greatness, it is the death of your creativity.

Author: Marina Abramovic

Insight: There's a peculiar trap that catches people once they start getting good at something. You nail a project, earn some recognition, and suddenly you're defending that identity instead of exploring new territory. The moment you're more interested in protecting your reputation as "the creative one" or "the expert" than you are in making mistakes, you've locked yourself in. Your ego becomes a security guard keeping out the very uncertainty that feeds genuine innovation. What makes this especially sneaky is that confidence and arrogance feel almost identical from the inside. Both feel like you know what you're doing. But confidence is flexible—it lets you fail and learn. Arrogance is rigid. It needs every new work to prove you're still great, so you end up recycling what already worked instead of chasing what actually interests you. You're performing your own legend rather than writing new chapters. The antidote isn't self-deprecation. It's staying curious like someone starting out, even after decades of success. It means treating each project like you're still learning the basics, not as another chance to validate how talented you are. That's harder than it sounds, because staying humble requires actively choosing growth over comfort.