Where you start explains some things without deciding everything.

Your starting point explains a great deal: what you find easy, what frightens you, what you never had to learn and what you had to learn alone. Explanation is genuinely useful, and it is a different thing from determination. Where the two get confused, a description of the past turns into a forecast of the future.

When you notice yourself citing your origins, ask whether you are explaining or predicting. Explaining helps. Predicting closes off options that are still open.