Play It Brave Podcast

Hosted by D'Arcy Benincosa

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284

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Sep 2026

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About the show

The podcast for brave creatives who live in a world that wants you to play it safe. It's time to face facts: You are an indestructible woman fused with super powers that defy convention. Am I right? If so, then this podcast is for you! In Play It Brave, D'Arcy Benincosa dives in deep to her wit and wisdom to teach you about creative a life full of mindset, money, and marketing miracles! Let's get started!

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September 1, 2026Episode 2901 hr 2 min

How to Tell a Story People Can't Stop Repeating — with Scottish Storyteller Eileen Budd

Eileen Budd comes from a long line of Scottish storytellers. Her grandfather came home from the war with shrapnel in his legs, took a job driving a tour bus, and out-earned every other driver in Scotland — because he told stories while he drove. Nobody discovered Eileen was legally blind until she was eight, so she learned the world by ear: story by story, told out loud, passed down. In this episode she tells three complete folk tales on air — including the three rules for surviving the Queen of the Fairies — opens her Travelling Folk Museum of donated, two-hundred-year-old objects, and makes the case that the stories of the village, not the castle or the church, are the ones that bring people together. Plus: why we've outsourced our imaginations to our phones, what a story did to a $30 compass on eBay, the folk tale that is secretly about postnatal depression, and how to find the story only you can tell. Your imagination: use it or lose it. How to Tell a Story People Can't Stop Repeating — with Scottish Storyteller Eileen Budd Some stories disappear almost as soon as they're told. Others survive for hundreds of years. They cross villages, families, kitchens, campfires, churches, pubs and generations without ever needing an algorithm to carry them. That is the kind of story Eileen Budd knows how to tell. Eileen comes from a long line of Scottish storytellers, and she learned the world by listening. Nobody discovered she was legally blind until she was eight, so while other children were reading the room visually, Eileen was absorbing voices, details, rhythms and stories. And in this conversation, she reminded me of something I think many of us are losing: storytelling is not the same thing as content. A story asks something of your imagination. It leaves space. It lets you see something that is not physically in front of you. And the best stories become portable. Someone hears them, carries them away, and tells them again. That is what this episode is really about. Eileen tells three complete folk tales on the podcast, including the story of a midwife summoned to the Queen of the Fairies, the rules she must follow to survive, and a changeling story that carries an unexpectedly compassionate understanding of postnatal depression. But we also talk about what happens to imagination when we fill every empty moment with scrolling, why an ordinary $30 compass became worth $1,000 when it had a story attached to it, and why the stories of ordinary people — the stories of the village — may be the ones that connect us most deeply. One of my favorite things Eileen says is that we have started to outsource our imaginations. And I haven't stopped thinking about that. Because imagination requires empty space. Daydreaming. Wondering. Following an image somewhere without immediately needing it to become useful. And if you are an artist, photographer, writer, entrepreneur or simply a person trying to live a more creative life, I think this conversation will make you want some of that space back. Inside the episode We talk about Eileen's grandfather, who returned from war with shrapnel in his legs and became a Scottish tour-bus driver — eventually earning more than the other drivers because he told stories while he drove. Eileen explains the difference between stories of the castle, stories of the church and stories of the village, and why the stories of ordinary people are often the ones that bring us together. She shares why she resisted writing oral stories down for years, what changed her mind, and what can be lost when a living story gets trapped on a page. We talk about daydreaming, imagination and the way constant scrolling can crowd out the inner world. You'll hear the story of a $30 compass whose value changed completely once a story was attached to it, a 200-year-old willow rattle filled with quartz, the full tale of the midwife and the Queen of the Fairies, and Eileen's beautifully simple way of teaching someone how to become a storyteller. And we end with a Scottish origin story about the giants of day and night. If you make anything for a living, I especially want you to listen to the distinction running underneath this whole conversation: People may consume information. But they carry stories. Connect with Eileen Podcast: Scottish Folk Instagram: @eileenbudd Books: Eileen's seasonal folklore collections from Wide Open Sea https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/scottish-folk/id1674005044 https://www.wideopensea.co.uk/product/seasonal-folklore-summer

August 21, 2026Episode 28917 min

Why You Can't Stop Being Productive

Why You Can't Stop Being Productive Why can it feel easier to keep working when you're exhausted than it does to simply stop? In this episode, D'Arcy looks underneath overworking to the unconscious patterns that can make rest surprisingly uncomfortable. Sometimes the issue isn't that we're "bad at resting." Rest isn't creating the anxiety. Rest is revealing the anxiety that activity was covering. Scarcity tells us there isn't enough time, money, momentum or opportunity, so stopping feels irresponsible. Being useful gets rewarded. Being capable becomes part of our identity. And eventually we can start living by rules we never consciously chose: I can rest when everything is handled. Everyone and everything gets taken care of before I do. I have to earn rest. Except everything is never handled — so we keep moving the finish line. D'Arcy shares how productivity became part of her own identity, what burnout forced her to confront, and what ten days in silence and two months away from Instagram taught her about who she is when she isn't producing. In this episode: Why rest can sometimes make you anxious How scarcity creates the urge to do more Why "I'll rest when…" becomes an impossible finish line When being capable turns into an identity How we condition ourselves to ignore our bodies and push through Why stillness can feel uncomfortable after years of productivity What silence taught D'Arcy about existing without being useful How to begin making an unconscious productivity pattern conscious Your Brain Rewire Finish this sentence: I can rest when __________. Then ask yourself: What do I believe rest says about me? What do I believe will happen if I stop? Whose approval did usefulness once earn me? The next time you feel the impulse to get up and make yourself useful, don't immediately obey it. Notice the rule first. Consciousness comes before choice.

August 18, 2026Episode 2881 hr 3 min

The Women Who Hold Us: Self-Trust, Receiving & the Power of Female Friendship with Kara Campbell

There is an awakening happening in women right now. It isn't simply about making more money, building a bigger business, or becoming more successful. It's the question underneath all of it: Is this actually how I want to live? This week, D'Arcy sits down with her friend Kara Campbell — coach, gatherer of women, and founder of the Momentum mastermind — for a conversation about what happens when women stop proving, controlling, and doing everything alone... and start trusting themselves enough to receive. Kara shares the 63-hour labor that shattered her illusion of control and gave her a mantra she still lives by: I allow. I do not force. She talks about the voice that told her to be kind to yourself after years of self-hatred, and the moment she realized that counting money as an adult was carrying the same fear as counting calories in her twenties. Together, Kara and D'Arcy explore self-trust, feminine leadership, loneliness, desire, receiving, and the kind of female friendships that don't tell you who to become — they remind you who you already are. They talk about why queens don't compete with other queens, why the right women help return you to your own knowing, and what it means to be truly witnessed in your grief, joy, ambition, and becoming. And D'Arcy shares one of the hardest seasons of her own life — when she discovered that independence could no longer save her, and she had to learn how to ask her circle to carry her. Near the end, Kara shares something extraordinary: When a female elephant is vulnerable or in danger, the other females gather around her and form a circle. They stay there until the danger passes. This episode is about building that kind of circle — and allowing yourself to stand in the middle of it when it's your turn to be held.

August 14, 2026Episode 28711 min

How I Went From $4,500 To $10,500 in 6 Weeks

Sometimes your work grows faster than your identity does. In 2012, I had spent years charging $4,500 for wedding photography when a dream client called me just 27 days before their Sundance wedding. When she asked what I would charge for the weekend, I heard myself say a number I'd never said before: $7,500. She said yes. Two weeks later, I booked my first $10,500 wedding. I didn't suddenly become twice as talented in six weeks. The work had been happening for years. My skill, eye, experience and judgment had already changed. My identity simply hadn't caught up. In this short episode of Play It Brave, we're looking at the version of you who names the price — and whether she's still pricing the work of a woman you've already outgrown. I'll also lead you through a simple rehearsal you can practice for the next 30 days so that when someone asks, "What do you charge?" you don't have to manufacture courage in real time. In this episode: why your identity can lag behind your actual level of mastery · the story behind my jump from $4,500 to $7,500 — and then $10,500 · how to recognize when you're pricing from an earlier version of yourself · what happens in your body when someone asks what you charge · why you don't need to justify your number before anyone has objected to it · a short exercise to rehearse saying your next price · why identity work isn't a substitute for mastery — but can help you finally own the mastery you've already earned. A question to take with you: has your price actually caught up to the person you've become? Your next number doesn't need to be a fantasy. It needs to be a number you have evidence underneath — and are ready to learn how to say. Ready to go deeper? If you know the strategy but something in you keeps pulling back when it's time to sell, be seen, raise your prices or step into the next version of your work — that's exactly the kind of pattern we can explore in a private Breakthrough. Book a free 30-minute clarity call .

August 11, 2026Episode 28645 min

How I Lead My Clients Through a Major Transformation

You can know exactly why you do something and still keep doing it. You can know where the pattern came from. You can have journaled about it, talked about it, analyzed it, named it—and then Tuesday comes around and there you are, doing the thing again. Because understanding a pattern and changing a pattern are two different skills. In this episode, I'm taking you inside the work I've fallen completely in love with: how I lead a client through a major Breakthrough. Not a quick mindset shift. Not another affirmation pasted over something you don't actually believe. The deeper work of finding the emotions, decisions, internal conflicts and old conclusions that may still be influencing the life you're living now. I'm also sharing what this work has changed in me—including the end of my own panic attacks, the difference between being watched and being seen, and the three words I'm choosing to organize my own life around now. And for the first time, I'm opening a small number of private Breakthrough spaces at founding pricing. If there's something in your life you understand—but still can't seem to change—this episode is for you.

August 7, 2026Episode 28613 min

You're Not Lazy: Why You Can't Jump from Stuck to Motivated

If you've ever tried to force yourself out of procrastination, you know how well that works. You can know exactly what to do. You can have the time. You can want the result so badly it aches — and still find yourself answering emails, returning something to Nordstrom, or deciding the junk drawer has to be dealt with right now. That isn't laziness. Laziness would be doing nothing, and you are doing a great deal. You're just not doing the one thing that matters. Which means the problem was never your character. It's the state you're in. In this first Rewire Friday, D'Arcy takes you inside a training room where a woman she calls Sarah volunteered her procrastination for a demonstration and landed on the honest word for it: not incapable, not lazy. Stagnant. And instead of asking how to make her motivated, the trainer asked the question almost nobody asks — what would get you out of the state you're in? Inside: what a state actually is and why naming one changes what you can do next, the cost of turning a behavior into an identity, the difference between the states that push you and the states that pull you — and why procrastination is neither, which is exactly why willpower slides off it. Ten minutes, one rewire, one question to ask before Monday. Timestamps: 2:27 — The word that changes everything: not incapable, not lazy — stagnant 3:00 — The trainer's question instead of "How do we get you motivated?" 3:32 — Why wanting the result isn't enough—and the difference between desire and the state that creates action 4:08 — Why motivation is rarely the next state, and finding the bridge that gets you there 6:11 — The cost of turning a behavior into an identity: "I procrastinated, so I'm lazy" 6:57 — States that push you, states that pull you, and why procrastination is neither 8:15 — Chaining anchors: what change work actually looks like, and why D'Arcy isn't teaching it here 10:42 — What Sarah said when it was over—and why the goal is freedom, not productivity 11:50 — The one question to ask this week instead of yelling at yourself

August 4, 2026Episode 28536 min

Starting Over at 48: I Fired My Team, Ended My Biggest Love, and Flew to India

For the first time, the whole story of the last two years — told from the other side. In this episode: The heroine's journey — the map: the hero comes home with the treasure; the heroine realizes she is the treasure, and she is the home The launch that cracked it open: 21 yeses where 90 used to say yes — and the sentence that took over December 2024: the call that was harder than the breakup — and why it turned out to be the first brave decision of the rebirth THE VALUES AUDIT — five signs your season is a values change, not a collapse: (1) the wins land flat, (2) you're still funding your old self, (3) you envy the "wrong" people, (4) you keep changing the strategy but never question the goal, (5) "it's not working" has become a sentence instead of a fact Tonight's ten-minute exercise: your calendar + your bank statement — still, or was What ten days of silence in India returned — and what the new values are building now (new episodes every Tuesday and Friday, starting this week) Timestamps : 00:00 — Cold open: the training and the December call 03:57 — The heroine's journey: the map 05:57 — The empire years 08:19 — Values have seasons 09:21 — The whisper: "It's not working" 10:42 — Trying to fix it 12:22 — December 2024: the call 14:35 — "The first brave decision of the rebirth" 15:36 — It wasn't a failure — it was a values change 18:32 — Old strategies, new values 19:47 — The Paris apartment and the cabin 22:08 — The Values Audit: #1, the wins land flat 22:48 — #2, funding your old self 23:51 — #3, envying the wrong people 24:31 — #4, new strategy, same goal 26:27 — #5, a sentence, not a fact 27:24 — Tonight: calendar and bank statement 27:48 — India, Bali, the silence 30:07 — The return 31:57 — Money and meaning 34:02 — If you're in this season 35:54 — "You are the treasure"

July 30, 2026Episode 28436 min

Content Is Dead: Why the Creator Economy Is Over — and the Artist Economy Is Next

Most photographers aren't studying photography anymore — they're studying Instagram. In this solo episode, D'Arcy confesses to a decade of studying the wrong things — algorithms, funnels, hooks — and makes the case for what comes after the creator economy: the artist economy. It starts with Gene Kelly, soaked to the skin and swinging off a lamppost, and the strange grief of watching real devotion. Inside: The sentence the whole episode is built on — you cannot consistently photograph what you refuse to cultivate within yourself. How apprenticeship became consumption The 4 S's (Story, Style, Structure, Sales) turned ninety degrees into an artistic framework Creative Studies: the practice D'Arcy wants to name for the industry Her own year of study — novels, old films, daily writing, ten rolls of film at a family session Why The English Edit retreat exists, and Claire's story One study to start this week. Join D'Arcy's Sunday letter at darcybenincosa.com — where the stories she doesn't post get told, and where every future creative study is announced first.

July 7, 2026Episode 2831 hr 0 min

The 3 Love Blocks Keeping High-Achieving Women Single with Sanaiyah Gurnamal

Success came easy. Love didn't. If you've built the business, the body of work, the beautiful life — and love is still the one thing that won't land — this conversation was recorded for you. D'Arcy sits down with self-love and relationship expert Sanaiyah Gurnamal — two-time TEDx speaker and host of Project Loving Myself (a Spotify Top 50 podcast with 1M+ downloads) — to name the three love blocks that keep high-achieving women single or stuck: the People Pleaser, the Commitment-Phobe, and the Runaway Bride. In this episode: why women who fight for everything never learn to receive [22:46] · the 3 love blocks [25:58] · the airplane story that redefines meeting your own needs [15:45] · grieving a relationship while keeping the growth [43:30] · the journal prompt that reveals your block [52:13] D'Arcy also tells the truth about turning 49, never marrying, and dropping the belief that being single means you love yourself wrong. Connect with Sanaiyah: Project Loving Myself podcast · @sanaiyahgurnamal on Instagram + YouTube · The Love Blocks quiz Full show notes: darcybenincosa.com/love-blocks-high-achieving-women Get the Sunday letter: darcybenincosa.com

June 4, 2026Episode 28239 min

Letting the Good In: How to Stop Pushing Away the Things You Actually Want

What if the biggest thing standing between you and the life you want isn't a lack of opportunity, talent, or strategy, but your ability to receive? In this episode, I'm exploring a question that has fascinated me for years, both in my own life and in my work with clients: Why do we struggle to receive the very things we say we want most? Love, support, visibility, money, rest, belonging. So often, when those things finally arrive, something inside us pushes them away. I share personal stories, powerful insights from my Receiving Map sessions, and lessons from neuroscience and consciousness work that have completely changed the way I think about healing. Instead of asking, "What's wrong with me?" I invite you to consider a gentler question: "What was this protecting me from?" If you've ever found yourself sabotaging opportunities, downplaying compliments, overworking to prove your worth, or waiting for the other shoe to drop, this episode is for you. In This Episode, You'll Learn: Why your nervous system prioritizes safety over happiness, and how that can keep you stuck in familiar patterns How old protective strategies can quietly block love, support, money, and opportunity from entering your life The surprising reason self-rejection often has nothing to do with self-worth and everything to do with self-protection Why trying to "fix" yourself can actually keep you trapped in shame and endless self-improvement loops How to identify the unconscious beliefs that make receiving feel uncomfortable or unsafe The connection between truth, expansion, and freedom, and how false stories create contraction and suffering Why so many high-achieving women struggle to receive help, praise, rest, and abundance A simple practice for noticing the stories that keep you feeling excluded, unworthy, or not enough How integrity, self-acceptance, and surrender create more lasting transformation than perfectionism ever could What it really means to let the good in and become available to your life exactly as it is A Few Questions to Reflect On: What is something you deeply want but struggle to receive? When support, love, money, or opportunity arrives, what is your first instinct? What belief might be standing between you and the thing you're asking for? Does that belief make you feel more expanded or more contracted? What would you do with your life if you trusted that you were already enough? For a long time, I thought healing meant fixing every flaw, understanding every wound, and untangling every pattern. But lately, I've come to believe something much simpler: maybe the goal isn't fixing yourself at all. Maybe the goal is becoming available to life again. Available to love. Available to joy. Available to support. Available to beauty. Available to the goodness that is already trying to reach you. The truth is that most of us don't struggle to get what we want. We struggle to let it land. We stay braced for disappointment because it feels more familiar than trust. But what if today was the day you stopped waiting for the other shoe to drop? What if you let yourself receive the compliment, the opportunity, the friendship, the abundance, the love? You don't need to become someone else first. You don't need to be thinner, wealthier, more successful, or more healed. You can let the good in right now. Book a Receiving Map session here. Click here for more ways to listen to this episode.