Jill PART ONE

[00:00:00] PART 1 - About Jill

[00:00:00] Hi there and a very warm welcome to Season 5, Episode 30 of People Soup. It's Ross McIntosh And a big reason for that was when I applied to this very competitive program that I was quite certain I wasn't going to get into, I kept it from my parents because I didn't want them to pressure me to come back home.

[00:00:20] 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.

[00:00:38] 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 me. the program director and so that, really sparked my interest in this idea of imposter syndrome.

[00:00:54] Peasoopers, I'd like you to meet Dr. Jill Stoddart, psychologist, author, TEDx speaker, and podcaster. Jill's latest book is called Impostor No More. overcome self doubt and imposterism to cultivate a successful career.

[00:01:11] But before we talk about the book, let's get to know Jill a bit better. In this episode, you'll hear how Jill's career in psychology evolved, how her prowess in water sports has developed, how she discovered ACT, which is acceptance and commitment therapy, and its impact in her life. you'll also hear about the roots of the book, how she responded to a one star review, And Jill's Song Choice, Which also includes some special guest vocals.

[00:01:38] People Soup is an award winning podcast where we share evidence based behavioral science in a way that's practical, [00:02:00] accessible, and fun to help you glow to work a bit more often.

[00:02:04] And as ever, we are broadcasting from Ginés. A wonderful town about seven kilometres away from beautiful Seville in the south of Spain.

[00:02:13] Let's just scoot over to the news desk, and I'm not sure if you've heard by now, but I'll be running an Act in the Workplace Train the Trainer course in April and May next year.

[00:02:22] It's over four sessions and in partnership with Joe Oliver at Contextual Consulting.

[00:02:27] You'll find all the links in the show notes and early bird rates are still available. I'd love to see you there because I'm so excited to share the protocol I developed alongside Dr. Paul Flexman hashtag Flaxintosh at City University of London. And also my experience of delivering the protocol to hundreds of workplace participants across all sectors.

[00:02:49] And reviews are in for our last episode, which was part two of my chat with Andrew Sewell. Coach and author of The Overthinker's Guide to Life. On Facebook, dear friend of the show, Dr. Rose Horton Smith said, Fabulous part two of your chat with Andrew Sewell.

[00:03:04] Fascinating to hear how his practical book emerged from his experience and his wish to write something useful for all of us overthinkers out there. Thank you. Well, thanks to Rose and thanks to everyone who listened, shared, and rated my chat with Andrew. Your support is what makes the PeopleSoup community so special.

[00:03:23] So please do keep listening and subscribing, sharing, and letting me know what you think. If you make some noise about the podcast and our guests, we'll reach more people with stuff that could be useful. And, P Super, speaking of making some noise, Here's one more piece of exciting news.

[00:03:39] On ListenNotes. com, The best podcast search engine were ranked as one of the top 2. 5 percent most popular shows out of 3 million podcasts globally. So thank you so much for all your support. That ranking is down to you. So please keep making noise, which I predict will come naturally with this week's guest. so, for [00:04:00] now... Get a brew on and have a listen to part one of my chat with Dr. Jill Stoddard.

[00:04:11] Dr. Jill Stoddard, welcome to PeopleSoup.

[00:04:14] Thank you so much for having me, Ross. I'm excited to be here.

[00:04:17] Well, I am giddy to have you here. I was just saying, I feel like I know you. That's partly because of the book you've written, Imposter No More, Overcome Self Doubt and Imposterism to Cultivate a Successful Career.

[00:04:28] And we'll come on to that in a moment, but we want to get to know you a bit first, Jill.

[00:04:33] Sure.

[00:04:33] About Jill

[00:04:33] And you'll probably be familiar, PeopleSoup has a research department that delve into your background. And they sometimes get things right, they sometimes get things not so right. So I'm just going to read out to you what they've discovered and you can judge whether they've got it right.

[00:04:51] So it says here, Jill Stoddart is passionate about sharing science backed ideas from psychology to help people thrive. She is a psychologist, TEDx speaker, award winning teacher, peer reviewed ACT trainer, and co host of the popular Psychologists Off The Clock podcast. And just for the PCPers listening, if you haven't checked out Psychologists Off The Clock, you really need to.

[00:05:17] I don't know where you've been, but you really need to check that out. I mentioned the book we're going to focus on in the second part of this interview, but you've also written two other books.

[00:05:28] So far you've got that

[00:05:29] One called Be Mighty, A Woman's Guide to Liberation from Anxiety, Worry, and Stress Using Mindfulness and Acceptance, and The Big Book of Act Metaphors, A A Practitioner's Guide, Experiential Exercises and Metaphors in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.

[00:05:44] How's that? Are we on the ball so far?

[00:05:46] 100 percent accurate. Your research department did a very good

[00:05:51] Excellent, and I just finished Be Mighty on On Audiobook

[00:05:56] Uh huh. Ooh.

[00:05:57] Why they're ooh.

[00:05:58] um, I got to [00:06:00] read the imposter book myself, but the Be Mighty book is not me, and it's a very surreal experience to listen to someone read your words in a way that isn't consistent with the way you heard it in your head while you were writing it.

[00:06:13] Mmm.

[00:06:14] And I've had friends who have listened to it that are like, Oh, I feel like you should have read this book. Like, they knew the way I would say things, So I was, let's just say I was very, very excited that I got to read my new book on my own.

[00:06:26] Mmm. Me too. I'm super excited because it's written in such an authentic way

[00:06:32] Hmm.

[00:06:33] that it has to be you reading it. But, I really enjoyed Be Mighty.

[00:06:38] Thanks.

[00:06:39] So thank you for that. But we will focus on Impostor No More in this chat. Okay. So it says here, Jill, her writing has also appeared in Psychology Today, Scary Mummy, Thrive Global, The Good Men Project, and Mindful Return.

[00:06:52] She regularly appears on podcasts as an expert source for various media outlets. She lives in Newburyport, Massachusetts with her husband, two kids, and a silly French bulldog.

[00:07:03] That

[00:07:03] is all accurate.

[00:07:05] Great! Now here's something a little bit more sketchy, Jill. And what it says here is that, and you might not be able to comment on this, but it says you're in early talks with Barbara Broccoli to be a stunt double for the female lead in a water skiing scene in the next James Bond film. Now Jill, what can you say about that?

[00:07:23] Well, I think somebody got that just a little bit wrong and what they, what they may have actually discovered is that I have tried to water ski every single summer of Almost my whole life, probably since I was eight or nine years old and have never been able to actually get up on water skis, no matter how hard I tried, and I had the opportunity to try again this summer, and I happened to turn 50 this year, and I really had this debate.

[00:07:55] I have a bad shoulder, and I'm getting older, and I thought, do I really want to take a stab [00:08:00] at this? Because I could, I could like seriously injure myself But also I thought, what if this is the year? Right? Like, what if after over 40 years of trying, the year I turned 50?

[00:08:10] is the year I finally get up on water skis. and I've been doing Pilates for a couple years and I'm much stronger than I used to be. So I decided to go for it. And the first time I got up, I think it was six seconds. And I tried again and I, and I actually did it. I skied around the lake, made it two and a half whole minutes, didn't fall, actually decided I was done because I was just so tired after two and a half minutes.

[00:08:34] So, it was wobbly, there's video that anyone is welcome to see, and I think I am pretty far from James Bond stunt double level but I think I can say after four decades, I know how to waterski.

[00:08:47] Amen. And it was, it's such a beautiful thing, folks, because it was on social media. I

[00:08:52] Social media.

[00:08:52] Instagram. There was a day when you were super happy because you'd done

[00:08:57] five seconds or something. And then the next day it was like, oh my gosh. She's still up there.

[00:09:03] And the joy transmitted from you, but also just seeing that was, truly amazing and inspirational.

[00:09:09] I mean, I will tell you it was truly one of the top five highlights of my life, right? Like I, I could die without ever having to learn how to water ski and this would not be like a large regret I'd be having, you know, on my deathbed, but to be able to do something that I have failed at over and over.

[00:09:23] And, you know, I'm somebody, and I'm sure we'll talk about this, but, I live, In accordance with my values as best as I can, and it's important to me to persevere and to have courage and I wanted to model that to my kids too. And I think one of the best parts of that experience was my whole family was in the boat.

[00:09:41] And if you listen to it with the sound, you can hear my family going absolutely nuts and especially my son, And he, for days after, he would suddenly just look at me and go, Can you believe it? You did it! And, I mean, that, that was, you know, one of the most rewarding parts of it. He was, like, so proud of me.

[00:09:58] Oh, and it's, [00:10:00] and it's interesting that you shared that. I found it inspirational. I'm sure others find it inspirational, but that's the... impression I get from the whole book. quite a large part of it is you living your life out loud. And it's so authentic and so powerful, it blew me away.

[00:10:16] Oh, thank you. Yeah, I will, I will admit that. with each book I've written, I get more and more personal. And this one, I will say I had a little bit of a vulnerability hangover afterward. I mean, a, well, a delayed vulnerability hangover because it was really not until it launched on Tuesday. It was just September 19th.

[00:10:33] So it was very recent. And then I thought, Oh my God, now people might read it. You know, the whole process takes a couple years, and you do the writing and the editing, and then when it finally comes out, you're like, Oh now people are going to read it. And, you know, there's a lot of really personal stuff in there, so I've definitely been feeling pretty vulnerable this week.

[00:10:50] But, again, like, living life in line with values, authenticity is really one of the top, if not the top, in addition to that, you know, courage and perseverance. So it felt important to... To have that reflected in the book.

[00:11:02] Background

[00:11:02] Absolutely. Well, we'll come back to the book, but we want to find out a bit more about you, Jill. I wonder if you could... Just reflect a bit on your background. what's led up to you reaching this point where you're water skiing for minutes on end and you're right, you've written three books. tell us a bit about some of your background and some of the pivotal moments perhaps.

[00:11:22] Well, it's interesting. I feel like in many ways that I've sort of come full circle with this, the book we're going to talk about later. But, you know, I, um, I'll back up to high school, I had two favorite classes. One was, introduction to law, and one was introduction to psychology. And, I was deciding about what to major in in college and then I, interned at a law firm and the psychology deal was sealed at that point.

[00:11:45] I knew this was not going 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 [00:12:00] I sort of knew that early on and it ended up feeling like the right thing all along.

[00:12:04] I've just absolutely loved being in this field ever since that time. 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. Um, 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.

[00:12:23] I was living in San Diego at the time in California.

[00:12:26] Imposter

[00:12:26] 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.

[00:12:39] How did you know that? Are you reading my mind? And he didn't call it imposter syndrome or anything else. It just sort of blew me away. And I had never heard that term. And, one of the stories I also tell, I think it's the one that starts the book, is I felt, I mean, he was so right.

[00:12:53] The only reason I got in

[00:12:53] And a big reason for that was when I applied to this very competitive program that I was quite certain I wasn't going to get into, I kept it from my parents because I didn't want them to pressure me to come back home.

[00:13:06] 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.

[00:13:25] 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 me. the program director and so that, really sparked my interest in this idea of imposter syndrome. But I think at the time, I also thought, well.

[00:13:43] 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 [00:14:00] I talked to other, professionals who I saw as amazing, acommplished humans,

[00:14:05] I realized they still felt these same things too. So anyway, that's, I'm getting a little bit off track, but that's really what sparked this interest in investigating more about imposter syndrome and the imposter phenomenon. I just kind of followed a really linear path that we mental health professionals tend to follow and I did therapy and I did research and I did some teaching, you know, wore all the hats that psychologists wear.

[00:14:28] And then along the way, I started writing books. I started podcasting things that I. I don't think I ever really knew would be options for me as a psychologist that have really allowed me to not only be creative, which I also didn't realize was important to me until, maybe the last 15 years, and allowed me to share a message about psychological flexibility with people who maybe don't have the resources or the desire.

[00:14:56] to participate in psychotherapy. So that's become like a really important part of my professional identity these days is like I practice psychological flexibility in my own life and it is responsible for me having a life and career that I genuinely love and feel proud of And I want to share that with as many other people as I possibly can so, you know Doing a TED talk was the most anxious I've ever been.

[00:15:20] Deciding to write a book when I'm not a book author, I'm not a writer. again, felt like a total fraud deciding to do that. Being invited to co host a podca I'm not a podcaster. Who do I think I am to take these things on, right? Um, but to be able to kind of combat those thoughts and feelings using psychological flexibility skills, it just opens up so many opportunities.

[00:15:43] 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.

[00:15:57] Thank you and I'm super grateful you [00:16:00] are. 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 like I say by by role modeling this for us I think it's super important I think it's a really powerful way to to reach more people.

[00:16:21] Yeah. I agree. I think that is a big part of it. And I mean it's just so funny. You say you're extraordinary and guess what my brain instantly does. No, no, I'm not. What are you talking about? You know, my core belief that comes up the most, ironically, is I'm mediocre. I'm average. It's not like I'm worthless, but it's this like, I'm mediocre.

[00:16:40] I'm average. I'm nothing special. I'm not extraordinary. I'll never be extraordinary. And all that comparison of all the people who are. More extraordinary and you know, that's one of the reasons I feel passionate about sharing these kinds of tools is because most of the other stuff that you find out there is about battling those thoughts, trying to convince yourself that you're extraordinary, that you're successful, trying to, boost your confidence.

[00:17:06] And, if I could teach people how to do that, I would, but I feel like it hasn't, it doesn't really work and it often backfires. And so to be able to, 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.

[00:17:24] 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.

[00:17:49] it's just how brains work.

[00:17:50] I think you're, of course, I absolutely agree, but there are so many self help books and gurus who are so popular who are suggesting [00:18:00] you can battle those thoughts, you can, throw those passengers off the bus. And I get that quite a lot in workplaces when I'm doing training with leaders and I, maybe use that metaphor of the passengers on the bus.

[00:18:11] 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.

[00:18:31] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:18:32] 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.

[00:18:43] Yeah, well, and I agree with you too. I often say to people, if you're able to think more positively and that helps you do the things that you want to do, great. If you're able to build your confidence and that helps you do the things that you want to do, great. It's just that in my experience, most humans I know, they've all tried that and it hasn't Worked, like we're just not really built to be able to do that having, a negativity bias being worried about the bad things that might happen.

[00:19:12] 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.

[00:19:32] 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. And that makes me feel better. And that's fine. But it just seems that when we try to apply that same strategy to those really deep, I am, you know, I am inadequate.

[00:19:53] I am mediocre. whatever it may be, that it just, they just don't seem quite as amenable to change. And [00:20:00] so why keep, why keep fighting and losing that battle when there's another way? And you can just change your relationship to those thoughts and, let go of that struggle.

[00:20:08] Hmm.

[00:20:09] But I, I'll tell you, I did have, uh, so the book's only been out a handful of days and some people somehow get early copies and read them, so there aren't many reviews yet because everyone else just got the book a few days ago and hasn't read it yet.

[00:20:22] But of my first, what, four or five reviews, one of them was a one star review. from Kevin, and Kevin wanted a different book. Kevin basically said, you didn't deliver on your promise to build my self confidence and get rid of my anxiety. I'm like, oh yeah, sorry, you're right. That's not actually what this book was about.

[00:20:39] There's lots of other books that claim to do that. This book is like kind of the opposite of that. So he just, he wanted a different book. And he also didn't like that I talked about, The fact that marginalization may play a role in having these kinds of thoughts and feelings. I think he took that personally as someone who maybe has not had experiences of marginalization, but I've turned this into my own diffusion exercise.

[00:21:04] 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.

[00:21:25] 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.

[00:21:44] And I just laughed so hard. I was like, Oh my God, that's my new diffusion. I'm going to like, you know, she, I'm going to put Sheila's going to take a back seat. And from now on, when that voice pops up, I'm going to be like, not today, Kevin. I've got this. You can give me that one star review and I'm going to keep doing my thing.[00:22:00]

[00:22:00] Ah, love it. Love it. Because, I don't know about you, but when, when you hand out feedback sheets after a group event, what are the ones I remember?

[00:22:09] Yep.

[00:22:10] the ones that said... Ross was quite slow. We're not school children. Or, things along those lines like, he over labored the point, or, his pace was dreadful.

[00:22:21] And, that balanced with lots of lovely words. The only ones that stick in my head are those, but, not today Kevin. I also loved Sheila. And just, just with the P supers, it's, it's something you said beautifully earlier. It's, those thoughts we have, it's normal to have thoughts like that. But what we're trying to do, what diffusion means, is changing our relationship with those thoughts.

[00:22:43] 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.

[00:22:55] Right. And then in that space, you can make choices based on your values, Like who you want to be and how you want to be in the life you want. Not making choices that are dictated by those thoughts, right? We often just kind of like respond on autopilot. Oh, well, yeah I mean if Kevin thinks this book is terrible then I guess Kevin's right and the book is terrible and that we do the same thing with our minds, And to be able to get some of that space so that if I believed Kevin I might never pick up a pen and write again But Writing is something that's really really important to me and I think that how I mean you're so spot on You could have 500 great reviews of your workshop and that that one bad review is what sticks But that's meant to be protective right like Ross.

[00:23:36] This is important to you. So make sure you don't muck it up Don't be so slow. Don't be so whatever because then you might lose all of the people and all the ability to share your message. You know, it's just that like the brains keep us on our toes, but I think we just need to sort of recognize the function of that and not let that, you know, the fear and the negativity drive our choices.

[00:23:59] I mean, [00:24:00] easier said than done, of course, but

[00:24:01] Yeah, and it's practice and practice and practice. As you say, you've been practicing Act for a good few years now. And, I like to think, no, it has transformed my life. Because I come from a long line of catastrophizers

[00:24:15] Uh huh.

[00:24:16] and I've certainly inherited some of that way of being and I still notice it popping up every day.

[00:24:23] I notice my, I call my mind the head of drama

[00:24:27] I love

[00:24:29] can take an everyday occurrence and escalate it to catastrophe in nanoseconds

[00:24:35] So you have a good imagination, right? Yeah.

[00:24:38] And it's, and it's just catching that moment in flight where my mind's up to its usual things. But I'm quite liking Sheila and I'm liking, not today, Kevin too.

[00:24:49] I think I love to ask groups what they've come up with. I sometimes ask them, if you had to give your mind a name, and one that stands out for me, just recently a really senior leader said, she called her mind, poop in the pool. So she might have this great idea for, for an activity, an event, something to do, and then her mind poops in the pool

[00:25:13] Oh, my God.

[00:25:14] I love

[00:25:15] it. Oh, yeah. It is. It's a quite an event when you find poop in a pool,

[00:25:20] right? Oh, my God. That's so funny.

[00:25:22] And I just thought that was, that was so powerful.

[00:25:25] Do you like the movie, um, Inside Out? Have you

[00:25:28] seen Inside Out? Right? Because when you said you're a master catastrophizer, I thought of the character that they call fear, but really is probably more aptly anxiety. And I remember when that character Riley is starting at a new school, he's fretting that a meteor might hit the school.

[00:25:45] Right? It's like, it's such a great example of

[00:25:48] catastrophizing. So I thought, oh Ross, you must really relate to that character when you

[00:25:52] watch that movie.

[00:25:54] Absolutely. my level of catastrophization. It's major earth

[00:25:58] I mean, it could happen. [00:26:00] You never know.

[00:26:00] Discovering ACT

[00:26:00] Yeah. Yeah. Now, Jill, when, when did you discover ACT? When did, can you remember when you first came across it?

[00:26:07] Oh, 100 percent I can. so I was in my, I think it was either my first or second year of graduate school. And I was working in an anxiety clinic where we did predominantly like, uh, straightforward stuff. cognitive behavioral therapy, CBT, and exposure. And Liz Romer and Sue Ursillo were doing a research study looking at an acceptance based treatment for generalized anxiety disorder.

[00:26:32] And they were using clients at this anxiety clinic where I worked at BU. And they needed a therapist, student therapist to be, in the research study. And so I had the opportunity. To do it and I asked some older students and I actually had a number of couple people say, uh, I don't know if I would take this on if I were you were so busy where we work like 14 hours a day, seven days a week.

[00:26:54] Like this is you really don't want to take on too much extra, but I just had this. I don't know. Gut sort of feeling that this. that maybe this was important and something that I should do. And of course I did it. And thank goodness, because it just completely changed the entire trajectory of my career.

[00:27:11] And of course, it's possible I would have come upon ACT at some point, but I came upon it at a time where it was easy to learn. You know, when I've come across newer therapies, as I'm a little bit later in my career, it just feels harder to take that on.

[00:27:24] So I worked on that study and I was just immediately hooked. Steve Hayes was one of the founders of Actor, I guess the founder of Act really, he was a consultant on the project. So he came and spoke to us and did some supervision with us a few times. And so then when I went on internship, I worked with Nilo Afari, and with Julie Weatherall, and I was doing both clinical work and research, but like being in a clinician on research studies, I did that for a number of different ACT studies, and one of those we had Robin Walser as a consultant who did our supervision for us.

[00:27:57] So it luckily started while I was a [00:28:00] trainee, and so I got Exposure to a lot of ACT experts who provided supervision, and I just, that's another one of those things I look back and think. Thank goodness I did not take that advice and I, I worked on that study. Um, because I, started living it in my life right away.

[00:28:16] And like you said, it's just been completely transformative.

[00:28:19] Mmm. And you said that was gut instinct, Jill. Do you, do you listen to that in your life?

[00:28:25] think I do there are, there are probably many instances where I have not. I think when it's, whenever it's come to psychology and clinic work, I also have this, I call it my body barometer. So when I was getting my master's degree, I had the opportunity to do some things with the doctoral students.

[00:28:44] And one of those things was, doing intakes for the clinic at the, this was at San Diego State University. And there's a joint doctoral program between University of California, San Diego and San Diego State University. And I was a master student at SDSU and was able to work in this joint doctoral program clinic and do some intake evaluations for incoming clients.

[00:29:05] And the, so that was my very, very first exposure ever to clinical work. And when I left that day, I had goosebumps all over my whole body and was like tearful and a little bit overwhelmed with emotion and was like, yep. This is it. Like, this is what I, this is what I want to do with my life.

[00:29:23] And ever since then, I've paid attention to that body barometer. Like, if I get chills, that is a big sign for me. Like, you need to pay attention and not ignore whatever just caused that to happen. And I don't actually remember if that happened with the early on ACT journey. I wouldn't be surprised if it did, but I do tend to listen to when you have that sense of knowing or what Marshall Lanahan would call wise mind.

[00:29:44] Mmm. Lovely.

[00:29:46] Song Choice

[00:29:46] 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, whether it's a real room or a virtual room, not forever, but for the next few weeks, couple of [00:30:00] months.

[00:30:00] And what song would you choose?

[00:30:02] Well, I think I have a choice, and it's for two reasons, and it would be Alicia Keys. This girl is on fire, and I would say it's like aspirational, if I'm honest. If I think of myself as a girl who's on fire, I'm like, no, you're not really on fire, but I try to live like I'm on fire, even if I don't totally feel like I'm on fire.

[00:30:23] So that would be my kind of aspirational song. But the other reason I love it 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.

[00:30:49] 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.

[00:30:58] 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.

[00:31:08] I wish I'd had this conversation earlier in the day. I was speaking to a senior leader about this, similar theme earlier today and talking about Act like that, even though you might not be fully feeling it. And She wasn't buying it, but I think Alicia might have been the key.

[00:31:22] There you go. That should be her song.

[00:31:25] without that pun that was unintended.

[00:31:27] Oh, I just, it took me

[00:31:30] goodness me.

[00:31:32] Pee supers, that's it. Part one of my chat with Jill in the back. I love Jill's energy and something that sticks in my mind is when she shared her response to me calling her extraordinary. It's that kind of role modeling that is so powerful for me. If there's anything that sticks in your mind from this episode, we'd love it if you told us. Next week, we're diving into [00:32:00] Jill's book, so look out for that next Thursday. A big thanks to my producer, Emma, and to our special guest vocalist, Liam. Together, we'd like to reach more people, so... If you like this episode or the podcast, please could you do three things? Number one, share it with one other person. Number two, subscribe and give us a five star review, whatever platform you're on.

[00:32:22] Number three, share the heck out of it on the socials. This would all help us reach more people and make some noise with stuff that could be useful. We'd love to hear from you and you can get in touch at peoplesoup. pod at gmail. com. On X, formerly known as Twitter, we are at peoplesouppod. on the gram, known as insta, We are at People. Soup and on Facebook we are at PeopleSoupPod. You can also drop us a review or get in touch using a voice note on WhatsApp.

[00:32:50] Thanks to Andy Glenn for his spoon magic and Alex Engelberg for his vocals. Most of all, dear listener, thanks to you. Look after yourselves, peace supers, and bye for now.

[00:33:03] And pea soupers, by popular demand, here's Liam with an encore

[00:33:11]