You kind of touched on it, but self-improvement is two-pronged as it stems from both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.

We tend to take up hobbies and interests because we simply enjoy doing it. There's value in just learning and improving for yourself or just doing something because you like it.

We also tend to want people to validate and tell us our work is good and valuable (I'm looking for it too, both as a musician and guitarist).