Your work is something you did, not someone you are. That’s what makes it safe to take risks.

When a piece and a person are the same thing, every critique becomes a wound and every risk becomes a gamble with your worth. Keeping a gap between them is not modesty. It is what makes it possible to hear that something failed and go make another one, because the failure landed on the object and not on you.

Notice the language you use when something goes badly. There is a real difference between saying the piece did not work and saying you are not good at this, and only one of them leaves you able to work tomorrow.