What if confidence isn’t required before you take action?

In this episode of People Soup, Ross McIntosh sits down with Dr Jill Stoddard — psychologist, author of Impostor No More, and co-host of Psychologists Off the Clock.

Together, they explore the reality of imposter thoughts and why trying to eliminate them often makes things worse.

You’ll hear:

1. Why high achievers still feel like frauds
2. The limits of “positive thinking”
3. How to respond differently to your inner critic
4. Jill’s powerful TEDx story — and what her mind was saying
5. The role of values in taking meaningful action
6. A simple but transformative skill: getting comfortable being uncomfortable

This episode is grounded in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), offering practical tools you can apply immediately.

Over the coming days, look out for Quick Spoon episodes — short, practical extracts from this conversation.

This episode was produced and edited from a previous People Soup interview recording with Dr Jill Stoddard.

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Dr Jill Stoddard

Jill's Website.

Jill's Books.

Jill's TEDx Talk - How to Succeed in Every Moment Even When You're Failing

Connect with Jill on LinkedIn.

And we explore what it really means to feel like an imposter and why trying to get rid of those thoughts might be the very thing that keeps us stuck. You'll hear how Jill's own experience of self-doubt shaped her work. Why confidence isn't a prerequisite for action and what it really looks like to do it scared.

So get a brew on and let's get into it.

And then the guilt got to me and I confessed and my dad said, you're going to work with Dave Barlow, the psychologist. And I was like, what? How did you, what? My dad's a businessman. He knows nothing about mental health. And it turned out that he had played golf a number of times with him. They belong to the same club to play golf.

And so fast forward, I got into the program and that was over 20 years ago. And I still struggle with worrying that the only reason I got in is because my dad played golf with the program director and so that, really sparked my interest in this idea of imposter syndrome.

Transition 1 into background

Speaker: So let's rewind a little and get to know Jill and how her journey into psychology began.

I knew this was not to be the path I wanted to take. And so I've been on that. I mean, I feel very blessed that since I was like 15 years old, I was pretty sure this was the path I wanted to be on. And I don't think that's true for a lot of people. So I do, I have so much gratitude that I sort of knew that early on and it ended up feeling like the right thing all along.

I've just absolutely loved being in this field ever since that time.

Jill: And so when I, applied to graduate school, I had a mentor in my master's program. I did a master's before a doctor. I didn't know it's different in different countries. And he said to me, now listen, you're going to go off to Boston, which is where I was going to go get my PhD.

I was living in San Diego at the time in California.

Imposter

Jill: You're going to go off and get your PhD and you're going to think, everyone here is smarter than me. They all know much more than I do. and any minute they're all going to discover that I don't really belong here. And I mean, my chin just dropped to the ground and I was like, wait.

I'm new, right? Like probably lots of people who are students or early career professionals, they probably feel this way too. But I'm sure once I start really achieving a lot and like doing all the things, eventually I'm gonna feel confident. And that didn't happen. And the more I talked to other, professionals who I saw as amazing, acommplished humans,

I realized they still felt these same things too. But that's really what sparked this interest in investigating more about imposter syndrome and the imposter phenomenon.

Transition 4 - ACT and PRACTICAL

Speaker: Now I mentioned Jill was an author. Her most recent book is called Imposter. No More Overcome Self-Doubt and Imposter to Cultivate a successful Career. And her previous books were The Big Book of Act metaphors. A Practitioner's Guide and Be Mighty, A Woman's Guide to Liberation from Anxiety, worry, and Stress,

and what really stands out here is how early those self-doubts showed up and how persistent they can be, even as our experience grows.

Let's dig into that.

That go beyond that voice of you don't have any business venturing into these areas. And anyway, so like that's been so powerful and helpful to me that it's my mission to share that with other people as much as I can. Like by talking to your p supers.

Ross: It's fascinating to... To hear you talk and it almost seems quite blasé the way you talk about the normal things a psychologist do and I'm like no Jill you are you're a bit different you're extraordinary

And, if I could teach people how to do that, I would, but I feel like it doesn't really work and it often backfires. And I did a podcast interview recently and she said, would it be fair to say like, do it scared? And I was like, yes, that is a brilliant, simple model.

It's do it scared. It's like not waiting around until you feel convinced that you're. good enough, or smart enough, or skillful enough, and, to do it anyway, because if I have to convince myself I'm extraordinary before I'm willing to do hard things, it's never gonna happen. And you could try to convince me, and we could look at my CV, and my brain's just gonna go, yeah, but, yeah, but, yeah, but, and give you all the data that, shows the opposite of that.

it's just how brains work.

And then someone pipes up going, Oh, what I like to do is just chuck all my passengers off the bus. And I don't want to negate that. That could be workable for some people, but what I find for lots of people is those passengers put on a disguise, run down the road and get on the bus two stops down the road and perhaps are even louder than they were before.

Jill: Yeah, absolutely.

Ross: there's lots of stuff out there with really toxic messages that aren't. Based in evidence and aren't, aren't in my opinion ethical and sometimes it's it makes me feel quite despondent.

It's all adaptive, right? It's like our brains trying to protect us from failure and humiliation, rejection and there's an evolutionary, component to that. So I just, it's just not really how we're wired. And I do absolutely think there are certain kinds of thoughts. I don't know if I'm like sitting in traffic and have all sorts of Really negative thoughts about the traffic.

I can, I can pull that back. You know, I can say to myself. Okay, Jill, it's just traffic. You'll get there when you get there. It's not the end of the world. Getting upset about it isn't going to make the cars go any faster.

Speaker: And this really came to life for Jill when her latest book was first published.

New transition - book was recently published at time of convo

Jill: So the book's only been out a handful of days

There's lots of other books that claim to do that. This book is like kind of the opposite that. So he just, he wanted a different book. But I've turned this into my own diffusion exercise.

So I change, you know, so when my inner critic shows up. Typically I call her Sheila, right? So that's like kind of in the past, you know, if she's telling me that I'm a fraud and I'm not good enough and I have nothing worthy to share, I kind of have this like, okay, Sheila, I hear you. I get that you're trying to protect me from failure and humiliation and shame.

But I got this. Right? And it's sort of this way to, like, detach from that thinking and put it, put it over here. Not suppress it, not try to push it away, but just sort of, like, observe it and detach from it. And when I was telling one of my, my friend Emily about this, Kevin review in our back and forth. At one point she said, not today, Kevin.

Ross: Ah, love it.

Getting a bit of space between us and those thoughts. And doing things like calling that pesky mind, calling that Sheila, it's a beautiful way of just. giving yourself a little space to breathe.

This is important to you. So make sure you don't muck it up

Speaker: and this idea of doing things, even when it feels uncomfortable, shows up in a powerful way in Jill's TEDx experience.

Jill: Yeah. So it was, this last minute opportunity that I was given you know, I, I was, already preparing to want to do this at some point, but I wasn't ready. But this sort of fell in my lap. And so it was like deer in headlights kind of panic, like, Oh my God, I'm not, I'm not ready.

And, you know, so basically these thoughts were just present throughout the entire experience. And I just really did not think that I could do this.

I was feeling like particularly self conscious about memorializing myself on video for forever. I was just overwhelmed with self doubt and fear. And I really didn't know if I could do it.

And so, I once had a client who came to sessions saying, you know, she had engaged in all these committed actions. She made lots of values based choices in between our, our weekly sessions.

WWJD

Jill: And when I asked her what she thought she had done that made her so successful, she said, well, every time I was at, you know, a point of possibility, I just thought WWJD.

And, she talked about how she kind of carried me on her shoulder. And just when she was at these points where she had a decision to make, she would ask, what would Jill suggest I do in this moment? And I just loved that. And so I kind of turned it into an exercise that I started doing with clients. Where they pick their J. It can be someone you know that's important to you. It can be a celebrity you feel like you know, it could even be a fictional character. But someone who embodies the qualities that are consistent with the values you want to be working toward.

Jill's J is Oprah

Jill: And so for me, my J is Oprah Winfrey. Because she is someone who has overcome every obstacle in the book and never lets these things stop her. She moves forward with courage and perseverance. and uses her power for good, at least as far as I know. You know, unfortunately I'm not pals with Oprah as much as I would love to be.

What would Oprah say - got in touch with my values.

Jill: And then I sort of took it a step further and I thought, well, what would she say to me? Like, if Oprah were here and she knew that I was really struggling in this way, what would she say to me? And, you know, because part of my insecurity had to do with my physical appearance, she would say, Jill, you're so much more than your body.

I didn't wait until they were gone. I didn't wait until I felt confident. I did it in the presence of that pain. And I will admit to you that watching that video to this day is very difficult for me to do and, you know, Sheila and Kevin, they're right there with me when I watch it but I am so dang glad I did it and I'm so proud of myself because it was hard, you know, it was hard to feel that many Tough, tough emotions.

Oh, I'm getting choked up just talking about it. And I am so glad I did it. And I think, you know, what people get when they live their values is like, yeah, you have to feel scared because you're doing something that you care about and the stakes feel high. But you also get to feel this incredible sense of vitality and meaining and pride and all sorts of other things that you don't get if you avoid it.

Speaker: And there's one more part of Jill's story that really stayed with me.

Jill: Well, this, like, instantly makes me start crying. The minute you said dedication, like, all of the emotions came right up to the surface. So, the book is dedicated to Leanne Harris, who is a colleague of ours from ACBS and she was an absolutely incredible human who did So many different things.

And one of the things that she was learning to do was to become a book coach.

And so she and I had had a number of interactions and just really clicked. And she asked if she could. coach me as one of her practicum students and I thought oh my gosh I am the luckiest person in the world and she was the person that I learned you don't have to have a relationship in real life to have A true closeness, you know, all, all of our interactions were virtual

And she was just on the verge of doing so many incredible, great things. And I stopped writing. I couldn't do it. Oh, I'm getting really choked up. Every time I sat down to try to work on this. I just had so much grief. I couldn't do it. And so I had to put it aside for a while. And then eventually it kind of became like a WWLD situation, right? Like, what would Leanne do? And I just knew she would be so angry at me if she knew that I put this project on the back burner and that I wasn't, you know, persevering and living the messages in that. Book it would be the opposite of what she wanted for me. And so I got back to it. And, Yeah, I dedicated the book to her

New transition for takeaway

Speaker: so I asked Jill, if there's one thing we take away from all of this, what would it be?

Jill: Oh gosh, there are so many things I would love to leave people with as a takeaway. You know, I was asked to give a, like a little talk, like a workshop to high school seniors.

Ross: Sure.

Jill: that I genuinely think would, could dramatically change their lives for the better. It is starting to practice. Getting comfortable being uncomfortable, or an act what we call willingness or acceptance. Because so much of what we do, what we miss out on, or what we overdo it's all about trying to avoid feelings we don't want to have. And I think when we're willing to be uncomfortable, there's nothing that you can't Try.

And if you're willing to feel feelings, there's like almost nothing that you can't move forward with that matters to you. And I like to teach people, silly ways to start practicing this because If I said to you like, Oh, just like, accept your panic attacks. That's not going to happen.

And so you can sort of use that expansion to make space for discomfort. But especially notice the urge to switch it back or the urge to let go. Because that's the feeling we so often respond to. On autopilot. I don't like this feeling. I'm just going to stop doing it. And so can you make space for both the funny feeling of the fingers and make space for the urge to like, get rid of the funny feeling, to go back to the right quote unquote, right way and just be with that.

And so that's sort of like a real starting point. And then I have all sorts of exercises, many of which are in the book for how you can kind of strengthen these. Muscles and like work your way up to harder things like, you know,

So they're not in charge. They're not making you just dive for your comfort zone. If that means making choices that aren't consistent with the life you want or the person you want to be.

Ross: Beautiful, takeaway, Jill.

Song Choice

Ross: Now, Jill, I'd like to ask my guests a question about their life and what song they would like to announce their arrival in a room,

and what song would you choose?

So that would be my kind of aspirational song. But the other reason I love is my nine year old son. often plays this song on repeat when he's in the shower, and he sings it at the top of his lungs. And so it's also something that just, for the rest of my life, will remind me of him singing that song at the top of his lungs, and I just adore it.

Ross: Beautiful. Yeah, I think it's a, I classic and I love the way you describe it. You might not be entirely feeling it, but you'll act like you are.

Jill: And like, isn't that really what a girl on fire is? Right? It's sort of like that definition of courage is like, it's not an absence of fear, it's doing things even when you feel fear.

You can find all the links in the show notes. Until next time, look after yourselves. Pay supers and bye for now.