Nobody becomes capable alone; even self-taught people learn from somebody’s work.

Even the most self-directed learning runs on inherited material. Somebody wrote the book, recorded the explanation, built the tool, or made the mistake publicly so you would not have to. Teaching yourself means choosing your own path through other people’s work rather than being handed one, which is a real difference but not the same as doing it alone.

Try naming the specific people whose work you built on. It is a useful corrective to the story of the self-made person, including when you are telling it about yourself. It also suggests a debt worth paying forward by making your own hard-won knowledge easy for the next person to find.