Hello there, John here.

A lot of self-doubt comes because of what you think and what you hear.

When I was in grade school my best friend was Harry.

Harry was smart, but had a weight problem.  At least that's what Harry thought.

He would make remarks like...

"Oh, well, we're not five star people."

Huh.

It just sort of disappeared in our catch-up conversation and didn't start pinging around in my head for a day or two.

Then I thought about it.

"Not five star people?"

What did he mean? Was he saying that he wasn't as good as others?

No, I don't think that was what  Harry meant, at all.

In fact, I know that's not what he meant. And here's how I know.

So now go back to the early nineteen forties. If you don't remember, just imagine a show you might have seen on the History Channel.

I was a little kid living in track housing where returning military seemed to congregate.

The way it was set up, the Houses so close you could hear what was going on.

Harry and I lived in houses on Cleveland Ave. next to each other and went to the same school. After school we played in the dirt between the houses until we got called in for dinner.

Now, these houses were laid out side by side in long rows, about ten feet from one another. They were kinda like big boxes. So it was easy to hear what was going on in one house when you were in one next door.

And now, over sixty years since those days, when Harry told me that he and his family "weren't five star people" I remembered back to those nights when we were called in from our play to have dinner with our families.

I remembered hearing his dad yelling at him and his mom and sister through the thin metal walls of our neighboring huts.

Harry's dad was not a happy guy.

He would say to his wife, "Why did you make dessert tonight? Who do you think we are? We can't afford dessert every night!"

Or he would say, "Don't use so much soap on your clothes - you don't have to be out in the workplace. Use more when you're washing my work clothes. Make sure you get the spots and make sure you starch them."

As if how Harry and his mom looked in their clothes wasn't important.

I remember hearing a constant stream of limiting and discouraging things like that.

I also remember my mom telling me that people had all sorts of different ideas of what was right and wrong in their families, and that I shouldn't pay attention to what I heard through the walls.

Today Harry is retired from a successful career as a research scientist. He was a partner in one of the biggest firms in a large city.

He has undoubtedly worked with many wealthy and successful people, and I know for a fact that he's well connected and respected where he lives.

But still, those comments from our childhood days on Cleveland Avenue Housing are echoing in his ears.

"Who do you think we are?"

"We're not five star people."

I wonder how many other limits Harry has lived with all of his life?

How many other times has he said, "We're not __________ kind of people," as if those hurtful things said by his unhappy father fifty years ago were still true.

If they ever were.

And I thought of all the things we hear as kids, much of them not even said to us but spoken between our parents.

That's why I said, "What you think and what you hear."

So for the last few days I've been trying to listen to the little voice in my head that makes me hesitate to step out sometimes, to try something a little out of my reach that might feel a little risky.

And if I hear a voice telling me I'm in over my head, I listen closely to see whose voice it might be.

I want to make sure that's it's my own voice, my adult voice of reason - and not something I "heard from the house on Cleveland Avenue" during my childhood that doesn't even apply to me.

How about you?

Any limiting voices from your early childhood telling you what you can't do, or even what you should do?

What do they know about who you've become and what you can do now?

Maybe it's time to put those limiting voices back where they belong, in a dusty trunk of memories in the attic of your
mind, where they can't bother you anymore.

Why don't you try it and see how it works?

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