Confident You - Raw Conversations

A spicy move makes you nervous, but you can still imagine yourself doing it. You may feel the urge to postpone it or suddenly decide that reorganizing your desk is urgent, but underneath those nerves, you can also feel a little excitement. In this third episode of the Mild, Spicy, or Extra Hot series, Julie explores the spicy zone. This is where you move beyond what feels familiar without pushing...

Mild gets a bad reputation. We hear the word and assume it means safe, boring, or afraid. But choosing a smaller move can be an intentional way to begin, especially when the bigger version of your goal has kept you frozen. In this follow-up to “Are You Mild, Spicy, or Extra Hot?” Julie explores why confidence grows through actions we can complete, process, and eventually repeat. A mild move should...

Have you ever ordered something extra spicy and immediately realized you made a terrible mistake? Your eyes are watering, you cannot feel your tongue, and instead of enjoying your meal, you are simply trying to survive it while pretending everything is fine. Sometimes we approach personal growth the same way. In this episode of Brave Moves , Julie introduces the idea of mild, spicy, and extra-hot...

Most of us are taught how to pursue success. We learn how to set goals, work harder, grow the business, earn the promotion, and reach the next milestone. What we are rarely taught is how to carry everything that comes after the achievement. Success can bring more decisions, expectations, responsibilities, and pressure. From the outside, it may look like everything is going beautifully. On the insi...

C. S. Lewis wrote, “There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable.” Loving another person always involves risk. We can be thoughtful, loyal, generous, and honest, and still experience disappointment, change, rejection, or loss. After we have been hurt, it can feel safer to protect ourselves by sharing less, trusting less, and keeping people at a comfortable distance. But there is...

As we move closer to the end of 2026, it can be tempting to focus on everything we have not accomplished yet. We start counting unchecked boxes, revisiting abandoned goals, and convincing ourselves that we need to do more. But what if finishing the year well is not about doing more? What if it is about returning to the basics and recognizing what is already working? In this episode, I’m sharing a...

Do you say yes because you genuinely want to help, or because you cannot tolerate the possibility of someone being disappointed? In this episode of Brave Moves: Daily-ish , Julie explores why another person’s disappointment does not automatically mean you have been selfish or unkind. Sometimes it simply means they wanted a different answer. Julie discusses the difference between caring about someo...

What do you say to yourself after you make a mistake, miss a goal, or have an unproductive day? In this episode of Brave Moves: Daily-ish , Julie explores why self-kindness is not the same as making excuses or avoiding responsibility. We can acknowledge what needs to change without turning one difficult moment into a judgment about who we are. Julie also challenges the belief that criticism is nec...

Have you ever changed your personality, minimized your success, or ignored your needs to make other people more comfortable? In this episode of Brave Moves: Daily-ish , Julie explores the difference between fitting in and genuinely belonging. Fitting in can leave us constantly monitoring and editing ourselves, while belonging gives us space to be honest, imperfect, and fully human. Julie shares wh...

Some of the simplest stories carry the messages we need most. In this episode of Brave Moves , Julie reflects on the wisdom found in Charlie Mackesy’s The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse . Through the journey of four unlikely friends, the story explores courage, kindness, vulnerability, friendship, and the importance of allowing others to walk beside us. Many of us pride ourselves on being ca...

Feeling sorry for yourself isn’t a character flaw — it’s a signal. In this episode of Brave Moves, Julie DeLucca-Collins breaks down why self-pity shows up (control, grief, exhaustion, and old patterns), five practical ways to interrupt the loop when you catch yourself in it, and the one brave move that actually gets you unstuck: getting radically honest about what you really want. If you’re a mid...

What does it really mean to go with the flow when life throws you a curveball? In this episode of Brave Moves, Julie DeLucca-Collins shares a personal story from a recent trip with friends, where a canceled flight became an unexpected lesson in grace, adaptability, and emotional control. Julie unpacks why the ability to roll with the punches isn’t passivity, it’s courage. She explores how much ene...

Sometimes life does not follow the script. People disappoint us, plans change, the lights literally go out, and suddenly we have a choice to make. I recorded this episode of Brave Moves Daily-ish outside Shrimp Boat Sound in Key West, with boats, friends, roosters, and all the wonderfully imperfect background noise that comes with recording an episode in the middle of an adventure. After a storm k...

Have you ever believed that if you could just understand why something happened, you would finally be able to move on? Why did they make that choice? Why didn’t they tell the truth? Why did the relationship end? Why wasn’t your effort valued? Searching for answers can help us learn and heal. But sometimes, the question “Why?” keeps us emotionally attached to an experience long after it has stopped...

Are you the person who remembers everything, anticipates everyone’s needs, solves problems before anyone asks, and says, “I’ve got it,” even when you don’t? From the outside, people may see you as dependable, generous, and incredibly capable. Inside, you may feel responsible for everyone’s happiness, stress, disappointment, and reactions. In this episode of Brave Moves , Julie DeLucca-Collins expl...

Have you ever let a frustrating 30-second interaction ruin the next three hours? The original moment may be brief, but we keep the anger alive by replaying what happened, imagining what we should have said, and retelling the story. Without realizing it, we may be practicing irritation until anger begins to feel like part of our personality. In this episode of Brave Moves , Julie DeLucca-Collins ex...

When was the last time you allowed yourself to be genuinely bored, without reaching for your phone, turning on a podcast, or filling the silence with another distraction? In this episode of Brave Moves , Julie explores our relationship with technology and asks an important question: Are we actually resting, or are we simply giving our brains something different to process? Constant stimulation can...

What Would Your 21-Year-Old Self Ask You? A recent lunch with the now-grown son of close friends left Julie wondering where the years had gone. She first met him as a remarkably talkative six-year-old when she began dating her now-husband, Dan. Since then, she has watched him grow up, play hockey, excel in school, graduate from college, and begin his career. Seeing him enter this new chapter promp...

Some musicians create songs. Others create the soundtrack to our lives. For Julie DeLucca-Collins, Jimmy Buffett’s music has been a constant companion since high school. It followed her through marriage, motherhood, divorce, reinvention, professional milestones, and the creation of a new home and life. In this deeply personal episode of Brave Moves , Julie shares why Jimmy’s death felt like losing...

In Part 2 of this two-part tribute on Brave Moves, Julie DeLucca-Collins unpacks the business side of Dolly Parton's legacy — starting with the night in 1974 she turned down Elvis Presley's request to record "I Will Always Love You" rather than give up half the publishing rights. That decision paid off nearly two decades later when Whitney Houston's cover became a global p...

Dolly Parton died on August 25, 2026, at age 80, and in this episode of Brave Moves, Julie DeLucca-Collins opens up about the grief of losing a public figure you've never met, and what research says about why that grief is real. Julie then unpacks the personal side of Dolly's legacy: marrying young, before fame, and staying married for nearly 60 years without ever losing her name, ambiti...

In Day 8 of this life-clarity series on Brave Moves, Julie DeLucca-Collins turns to the area most often sacrificed first when life gets full: fun and recreation. She makes the case that fun isn't the reward you get after everything else is handled — it's part of what makes you a person who can handle everything else in the first place. Julie names a sneaky trap: even our hobbies and rest...

In Day 7 of this life-clarity series on Brave Moves, Julie DeLucca-Collins turns the lens toward personal growth itself — and names the trap hiding inside it. She explores how self-improvement can quietly become another category to optimize, another book or podcast to check off, chasing a finish line that doesn't exist, and connects this back to the be-good vs. get-better framework from a pre...

In Day 6 of this life-clarity series on Brave Moves, Julie DeLucca-Collins steps into one of the most emotionally loaded areas of the whole map: money. She makes the case that money isn't just a number — it's a feeling, shaped early in life, and most of us are still quietly running financial decisions off beliefs we inherited rather than chose. Julie reframes money as a resource that buy...

In Day 5 of this life-clarity series on Brave Moves, Julie DeLucca-Collins explores the area that quietly shapes almost every other one: relationships. She challenges the idea that relationships just happen to us, and makes the case that most of our relational landscape is defaulted into rather than consciously chosen — through family, proximity, or convenience. Julie walks through a relationship-...