Many of us, if not most of us, play tapes of the voices from moments in our past in our heads. These are not the “you can do it, you got this” messages, these are not the “wow, you are so good at this” voices. They are the voices that question and criticize and erode our confidence.

Some of them are, of course, well meaning. Our parents tell us that a career that offers stability and good prospects for our future is better than the potentially less secure one that we want to pursue. Others in our lives, from former partners to friends with mixed motives, may tell us to “stay in our lane” or that we should “focus on the expertise we have” and not try something new.

And all those voices help to confirm our own self doubts. Who am I to think I can do this? Who am I to think I can color outside the lines and try something new? What do I risk if I fail? How would I be able to handle that failure or live with the criticism that results?

Those voices cause us to hesitate and let our own misgivings grow arms and legs and wings, filling our minds with their noise and drowning out our thoughts and ideas and suppressing our willingness to try.

Yet we also know that if we are going to achieve all that we are capable of achieving, if we are to strive to meet our own potential, we have to both acknowledge those voices, make our peace with them and silence them. Whether their intentions were good or questionable, whether their message came from a place of caring or competition, none of that matters. What matters is that we confront it and get past it.

Approaches vary, you can write a letter that you never send. You can list all those old messages and face them down with words of your own. You can decide that no one can tell you who you are or what you are capable of doing and remind yourself that no one has the right to steal your peace.

For those of us who were socialized to be peacemakers and pleasers, taking this kind of frontal approach is uncomfortable. It makes me think of the scene in the old film “Network” when a character sticks his head out the window and shouts “I’m fed up and I’m not going to take it anymore.” That is not the way many of us could ever, would ever behave but the instinct is there—call a halt to that which holds us back, recognize that we own it, we allow it and we have the power, and perhaps the obligation, to banish it. In this way, truly, we can open and fill our full hearts.