One thought I had was to wonder how you made the transition from feeling good about yourself to just feeling lucky you didn't fail. Who was whispering in your ear that wore the accomplishment down to the bare metal?

The other thing, when your goal was mastery of something like a musical performance, would be to play it now for your own enjoyment, or possibly even for others'. Now that all the focus on it as a goal, the pressure, is gone, you still have a visible or at least audible accomplishment that you can take out and look at whenever you want. Or were you just going to discard it again and move on? Aren't we as humans at least partly aggregates of our set of accomplishments, in which case discarding them is a waste of ourselves?

I guess what I'm asking about is whether you value yourself the way you deserve, separately from your accomplishments. If you don't, how would you value the accomplishments the way they deserve?

Who was whispering in your ear that wore the accomplishment down to the bare metal?

I'm not aware of any cognitions or self talk that caused the shift. I think it was simply time.

Now that all the focus on it as a goal' date=' the pressure, is gone, you still have a visible or at least audible accomplishment that you can take out and look at whenever you want. Or were you just going to discard it again and move on?

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Not discard. I am learning other music now and still working on perfecting the song. It is good enough now but I would like to get it very close.

I guess what I'm asking about is whether you value yourself the way you deserve' date=' separately from your accomplishments. If you don't, how would you value the accomplishments the way they deserve?[/quote']

I do not value myself separately from achievement. Accomplishments or contributions to others are the only basis that I have for building any self worth. How I value my accomplishments is not really working out as this experiment showed. I haven't felt accomplished in a long time all though I've racked up some achievements that are impressive to others.