I used to be this way, grew up being told I was smart, scored extremely high on standardized tests with minimal effort... I viewed those who had to work extremely hard as lesser individuals, thinking that I could work as hard as them at any time if I wanted to truly showcase my ability.
The truth is that actually putting in the time and effort when the time came proved to be far more difficult than I had believed all along. It took something that I wanted desperately to be good at, but couldn't just pick up in a weekend to make me change my views. Programming was/is it for me. There's more to learn than I could ever hope to understand and it has been a humbling experience to say the least.
Everyone is an incomplete person in some way. I think my flaws are characteristics inherent in my being that would have been that way had people told me I was smart or not. I knew pretty early on that things came quickly to me; the validation may have inflated my ego, but I don't know that it outright caused me to run from challenges along the way. I did that on my own. Sigh.
I had a similar experience, as I'm sure most people with above-average intellect did. But you didn't do that on your own, that's blaming an immature mind for quite the sin it cannot yet comprehend.
The important thing is that you internalized the lesson at some point in your life. As have I. Many never do (just look at the entitled people who complain about worsening conditions on reddit).
