I don't need some sort of personal identification with my curiosity. It's wholly uninteresting to me to have that sort of ego in the situation. It's just a plain fact that I'm curious and that's part of my motivations in learning. I don't need some reinforcement. In fact, I find emphasizing the idea of feeling good about having curiosity in a personal sense ("my curiosity) to be an awkward ego-boost.

I don't do better by thinking I'm good at stuff, it's a distraction.

I happen to be a musician and music teacher. I know from personal experience, knowledge of psychology research, and experience talking with many others that the whole idea of being talented and good at music is a source for the worst of depressive performance anxiety. The most skilled musicians beat themselves up over little mistakes even when the audience loved the concert. On the flip side, narcissistic self-absorbed musicians can be technically skilled but obnoxious.

Get the ego out of all of this. The point is to do something meaningful in the world. I got over my performance anxieties when I learned to stop caring about whether I was judged as good or bad or talented or whatever and just focused instead on using whatever skills I have to provide maximum value for audiences and students. I still think about all the ways I could do better and I can tell you where I succeed. I mean, I can plainly describe my failures and successes. But I'm only interested in doing better so that I provide more value and meaning to others. Every time anything is about me and my ego, it's misguided.

The goal is to be expressive rather than impressive. Pride should go away entirely.

I actually became a musician because I found it fascinating and challenging whereas I resented people assuming I'd be a mathematician because I was naturally good at math. I have a knack for math, I'm good at it. So what? That didn't make me motivated.

I think all the stuff you're getting at lives within the smaller context where people who are self-conscious and in the normal range of egocentricity do indeed take motivation from ego-boosts. Unfortunately, ego-boosts amplify the deeper disease, since the real goal is ego elimination as far as we can.

There's evidence from psychological research (sorry this is memory from reading, don't have citation) that feedback like "you had a good sense of rhythm there" and "you got all the notes right but need to work on keeping the dynamics even" are correlated with experienced successful teaching and successful students whereas "good job!" and "you're so talented" are throwaway crap that inexperienced teachers say.

In a recent chat, someone shared the anecdote that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar at UCLA early in his basketball career broke major records in like his first game, and his coach just said "good job, keep it up" (along with continued coaching on improvements etc) instead of giving him praise about how great he was. As I heard it, Kareem said it was the best thing for him. The last thing he needed was more praise and ego-boosting.