The Life Of Bryony - The Life of YOU: Jules Von Hep answers YOUR confidence dilemmas!

Episode Date: July 11, 2025

Welcome to The Life of YOU. The bonus episode where we answer your questions and try to make sense of life’s messier moments.  This week, I’m joined by Jules Von Hep, author of The Confidence Ritual. A firm believer that beauty radiates from within, Jules shares the power of affirmations and why the way we speak to ourselves is key to affirming both the version of ourselves and the life we want.  Today's dilemma is all about the shame surrounding spray tanning- does this make us someone we’re not? Jules explains why it's so important to follow your own values and definitions of beauty, rather than for the eye of others.   WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU  🗣 Got a question or a story to share? Text or send a voice note on 07796657512—just start your message with LOB  💬 Use the WhatsApp shortcut: https://wa.me/447796657512?text=LOB 📧 Prefer email? Drop us a line at [e-mail]  If this episode resonated with you, please share it with someone who might need it—it really helps! Bryony xx  Host: Bryony Gordon  Guest: Jules Von Hepp  Producer: Laura Elwood-Craig  Assistant Producer: Ceyda Uzun  Editor: Luke Shelley  Exec Producer: Mike Wooller   A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode of The Life of Briny is sponsored by Asda, with thousands of prices rolling back across the store and online. That's good honest value. That's Asda Price. Welcome to The Life of You, the bonus episode where we tackle your dilemmas and share advice for life's trickier moments. I'm Brony Gordon and today I'm joined by the brilliant Jules von Hepp, self-tan beauty founder, body confidence champion and all-round high vibe human. In this episode, Jules and I dive into your questions, from the cringe factor of affirmations to the mysteries of fake tan confidence. Ultimately, your beauty routine is yours and yours only. If you're using a product to

make you feel better, then honey, keep doing it. Your questions answered right after this. Lexi, okay, she says, I've tried saying nice things to my reflection, but it makes me cringe. It feels fake. Is it possible to build confidence without doing affirmations? Loads of people talk about doing them. Why are they so important? Firstly, Lexi, I completely relate to how you're feeling. And there is a thing where saying affirmations out loud or putting them on your mirror, you're like, God, I feel like a right dick for doing this.

Imagine if someone saw this. But the thing is, this is your journey, your inner conversation, how you are when you look in the mirror. If you want to crank this confidence ship up a notch, then affirmations,ations unfortunately are really important because it reaffirms what you want to achieve and also it stops the negative dialogue.

If you don't wanna put them on the mirror, if you don't wanna say them when you're in front of the mirror, just put them on your phone wallpaper. Yeah, I have an app actually, and every half an hour it sends me an affirmation. That's quite heavy. It's actually quite a lot. This is why you vibe so high, Bryony. It's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me. You do vibe high. Because I tell you what, I tell you what, Jules, I went a couple of years ago to on a retreat called the body

camp, which I love. It's got a very high vibe there. It's like the happiest place on earth, you know. And I remember, and at that point I was very, I was in a real depression. And what they told us all about, what we say to ourselves, our language, it's, you know, it kind of, it reflects the rest of our lives. And I very much got sucked into this book by this woman called Louise Hay. She was a very famous self-help guru. She wrote a book called You Can Heal Your Life. You can heal your life, honey. And she says that what you say to yourself is the most important thing. So she said, she said, I don't care that you feel stupid saying, I love and approve myself exactly as I am. I love and approve of myself Lexi exactly as I am. She said, because you spend all day telling yourself

how a piece of shit you are. So we're just going to switch it around. And every time you say that. And I remember at the end of the week, we were, I was talking to another person who'd been on the retreat and they said, I've really enjoyed this week, but if I had one thing to say, it would be that. And they started going into like, I don't know, like the toiletries. Oh, piss off Brenda. No one needs that energy. And I just said, we're not going to do that. Yeah. We're not going to do that. And I then had to become, because it's very difficult

to keep up a high vibe in the modern era, because consumerism, capitalism, they don't want you to have a high vibe. They want you to have low vibe. I have low vibe. I must buy this thing to make my vibe higher. It doesn't work like that. So you have to really do nuts things like get an affirmation app

to send you an affirmation every 10 seconds, telling you how you're in the right place and, you know, everything's fine. But if, Lex, if that feels a bit too much to download an app that comes in every 10 seconds, don't worry. Remember that it is your journey. seconds. Don't worry. Remember that it is your journey. And also, and but also it Pinterest is a great place. It is a great place to fall down the affirmation rabbit hole. Because somebody somewhere has designed affirmations that look

gorgeous. They look absolutely aesthetically pleasing. Just screen grab them create a mood board, put it as your backdrop on your phone. If you don't want to say it out loud at first, I do second that you it is good to say out loud. Just set it as a wallpaper so only you see it and it keeps reminding you every time you check your phone to see if someone's texted you be like, Oh yeah, I am amazing. Great. Also, the other thing I'd say is you don't have to start with this, right? You don't have to stand in the mirror

and tell yourself, Lexi, how much you love yourself. Just try not standing in the mirror and telling yourself how much you hate yourself. Stop picking on the things that you hate and just focus on the things that you appreciate. Doesn't have to be love. And this is another, it doesn't have to be this place of body love.

It can be a place of body acceptance and neutrality. So just dull the negative voice. You don't have to go in with a klaxon for positivity all the time. If you're anything like me, you're juggling about 17 different tasks in your head all at once. So let me give you one less thing to think about, your weekly shop. Because Asda is rolling back prices on thousands of products this summer. From your daily bits to BBQ goodies and family favourites. It means less money spent and more headspace for everything else. So next time you're there, keep an eye out, you might end up saving more than you expected.

Thousands of prices rolling back across the store and online now. That's good honest value. That's as to price selected stores and lines subject to availability. This is from Jade. She says, I love fake town, but I always feel slightly ridiculous putting it on. I have this weird shame about it, like I'm trying to be someone else. Is there such a thing as a confident tanner?

Yes, absolutely. Well, tan to me is like the cloak of confidence. Yeah. That's actually the first time that I've ever heard someone have shame around using tan. I think let's unpack that. Why do we have that? Who said something to you?

What's been heard? What have you heard along the journey? Ultimately, your beauty routine is yours and yours only. If you're using a product to make you feel better, then honey, keep doing it. Yeah, also I would suggest, cause I do remember in the like 90s and naughties, like the fake tan was not good enough.

Oh no, that was wag era. That's when I started in tanning and I was like, what is all of this? And you'd get like webbed fingers. No, no, no, it's deeply upsetting, deeply, deeply upsetting. Hand should always, it should always look natural. The best fake tan looks real.

You should never have someone be like, Jade, great fake tan today, you look amazing. Okay Jade, let's mix it up. I wouldn't say that like, you look like a fake tan. Bryony, I am the colour of Feta, naturally. I'm not kidding. Fake tan every Sunday night, so I feel like the best version of me on Mondays

right through the week. And do you still have to do all that exfoliation stuff? The self-tan prep, Bryony, yes. Essentially for the golden rules of tanning, yeah, you will get a better tan if you exfoliate and stuff. I think I've tanned you twice, but both times whenever I was moisturising your hands, you were like, what is this? What's happening? I haven't done this. I haven't exfoliated. I was like, Brian, you don't worry about it. It'll be fine. I'm very low maintenance on the light. But I didn't. I think it's because I used to be very high maintenance in my 20s. Like from teenage years, I was like doing a full on

like sanctuary salt scrub in the bath twice a week. Because I remember reading that I needed to have soft skin if a boy was going to like me. Do you know what I mean? Sure. Doing it for someone else. This is all about beauty for other people, which is absolutely the wrong type of beauty. This is all about how you feel when you look in the mirror and how if you like soft skin, then keep doing it. Oh, I'm a scrubber. Absolute scrubber. Love and exfoliation. But don't do it for my husband, forget it. I could look like a bag of nails for him and he wouldn't care, that's love.

It's about doing it for how you feel when you leave the house and how you feel when you look in the mirror. Yeah, Jade, you love fake tan, that's it. End of. That's, that's. You've already written it down, don't unpack it any further.

Yeah, I just, you know, just go for it. No shame honey join my tribe I love fake tan, stick with me. That's all for this episode of The Life of You. Huge thanks to Jules for sharing his wisdom from ditching negative self-talk to owning your beauty rituals and embracing the power of a good fake tan. You'll find all of this and more in Jules' debut book, The Confidence Ritual, out now. We'll be back soon with more advice. Until next time, keep being kind to yourself. You're doing way better than you think. This episode of The Life of Briny is sponsored by Asda, with thousands of prices rolling

back across the store and online. That's good honest value. That's Asda Price.