All obstacles have one thing in common: you. The only thing standing between you and what you want is all that chatter in your head.

“But, Mel, I can’t stop that chatter; I can’t get rid of the doubt running around in my head,” you say.

Of course you can’t. I’m not asking you to. I’m asking you to move forward in the face of it. You might not be able to control your thoughts, but you do control the actions you take. It isn’t easy, but it’s the only answer. I learned the hard way.

I was 22 years old. And let me be honest—I talked a good game about being confident—but inside, I was full of self-doubt, just like you.

After working for a year as a paralegal in D.C., I decided that I wanted to be a lawyer, an environmental lawyer. I applied (sight unseen) and was accepted to Vermont Law School. I pulled my U-Haul into South Royalton, Vt. But something didn’t feel right.

As I registered for classes, the feeling grew. As I unpacked my things, I just felt more and more uneasy. Something wasn’t right. I didn’t sleep at all that night. I had made the wrong decision. I could feel it in my gut.

I waited for the registrar’s office to open the next morning. I walked in and told them I wanted to drop out. I walked back to my room, repacked all my things and drove off. As I pulled onto Interstate 91 south, I realized something: I didn’t have a Plan B.

A wave of self-doubt flooded over me. What did I just do? There was no recovering from this. My parents were going to kill me. I drove and I cried. I had to do something, so I thought: What schools are nearby? Boston College was only three hours away. Only one problem—they never accepted me. I was on the waiting list.

I called my only friend in Boston from a pay phone at the next gas station. I asked if I could stay with her and told her my plan. She said I could stay with her. She had nothing good to say about my plan.

The chatter in my head was louder than ever as I pulled into the law school and walked into the admissions office. The receptionist looked up. “Can I help you?”

“Hi, my name is Mel, and I want to go to school here so badly that I just dropped out of Vermont this morning, packed up all my belongings and drove here, hoping you could make an exception and let me start classes tomorrow morning.”

“Are you serious?” she asked.

I pointed to the U-Haul out the window. “Yes, very.”

Twenty minutes later, I was sitting across from the dean. The chatter still raging in my head as I argued my case, “Someone with enough guts to push aside doubt, show up with a U-Haul and talk their way off the waiting list will make a great lawyer.” The dean agreed. I started classes the next day.

The number and size of the problems I faced that day were too big and too numerous to even fathom. But listening to that truth would have just been me telling myself stories in my head. I beat the voices in my head to get more than I could have ever imagined.

The obstacles in your day-today life are just stories you’ve made up. They’re just chatter.

You’ll never quiet the chatter, so you might as well move forward anyway. What have you got to lose?

The rest of your life is sitting just on the other side of all that chatter.

Mel Robbins is a nationally syndicated radio talk show host, CNBC contributor, spokesperson for Microsoft and serial entrepreneur.