I was thinking about this the other day when I was learning the guitar (at the age of 49). For a long time I believed I was not creative, that I couldn't learn a language, that I couldn't learn to play an instrument. I don't know how much of that was what people told me (my mother, my teachers) and how much of it came from inside of me. It is interesting that some people react in defiance and set out to prove the people who put them down wrong and others (like me) accept it (at least for a few decades).