I'll just quote the relevant part from said fanfiction:

For those without context: Sauske seeks revenge on his older brother Itachi, an elite ninja who killed his entire clan, including Sauske's parents front of his eyes. Naruto is the main character, he primarily uses a shadow clone technique for everything, including studying faster. Anyway, here's the part that interested me:

“Look,” he said, “I know it’s really none of my business, but if I wanted to fight Uchiha Itachi, then I would be looking for every possible shortcut to power that I could find. Avoiding books for the sake of my pride would be a really low priority.”

“I don’t avoid books because of pride,” Sasuke replied. “What does that even mean?”

“Well, everyone would always call me stupid when I was reading about something I was supposed to know already, but when I read something more advanced then everyone would make fun of me for trying to show off. It can be useful though just to hear things you already know explained in a different way, sometimes, or even if you only understand a tiny bit of the harder stuff it can be really interesting, or it can show you what to expect once you start learning things properly. I wouldn’t mind sacrificing some of my prestige if it meant I could learn useful stuff faster.”

Sasuke snorted. “Yeah, some sacrifice. All that orphan prestige.”

“Hey, at least I’m trying,” Naruto replied. “You’re the one who wants to fight one of the strongest ninja alive. What are you willing to sacrifice?”

Sasuke looked him in the eye. “Everything.”

“Name one actual thing you actually chose to sacrifice,” Naruto said.

Sasuke paused, breaking eye contact. “…Happiness.”

I'll cut it off there, if you're interested you can read the rest here.

I like this because it's easy to talk big about ambition, but for a certain personality, happiness is not much of a sacrifice, risking humiliation & failure (i.e. sacrificing pride) is far harder. Even maintaining a beginner's mind requires some sacrifice of pride.

I'm prideful and have these problems. After reading this I find it useful to ask myself: What am I willing to sacrifice? How strongly do I care about my goals?

It helps put me in that healthy anime character mindset :)