“You’re a drummer.”

Taylor Hawkins, the legendary drummer for Foo Fighters, tells this story about the moment he knew he was a drummer.

He was at a friends house and his friend tells him to pick up the drum sticks and to follow along to his beat. Hawkins immediately picked it up and his friend stunned turned to Hawkins and said, “You’re a drummer.”

The story suggests that Hawkins had this innate gift to drumming. But that is unlikely. What is more likely is from there, Hawkins spent the next 20 years perfecting his craft through thousands of hours of practice.

Sometimes though, it helps when someone gives us a label and we embrace it.

We tell ourselves stories of inefficiency, that we are frauds, that we are not as good as the other drummers–until someone tells us we are who we set out to be.