I think often of the time Michael Jordan was on SNL in a Stuart Smalley skit and had to keep choking back laughter at the notion of saying to himself “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough” etc.

@amandafrench @anildash I'd never seen that before, just went and watched it. What a great skit. Also it took me till the end to realize that Stuart is US Senator Al Franken.

Yes but also neither of them based their notoriety on that. Each had world class talent in their field and a work ethic to match.

maybe if you love yourself enough, something like that happens for you. I don't mean in like a The Secret kind of way, I mean that losing the continuous debilitating inhibition of self-hatred unlocks the motivation for continuous self-development

@glyph @ambv Well you are correct that losing self hatred unlocks awesome motivation. But that's also not the only thing required to be genuinely talented. There's a lot of people out there who have massive egos and really love themselves, but that doesn't make them great artists or forward-thinkers.

That has pretty much been my strategy as a trans woman and at least in person it really works well.

So true :)