This episode kicks off a 6-part series exploring each category of the Joy First Audit. Today (live from sunny Morocco ooh la la) we’re diving into Vitality: energy, hormones, time scarcity, and breaking up with optimization. I share my own (not great) score and what I’m changing right now as a result.

YouTube: https://youtu.be/bkehOyf-oxw

Join us on Substack and take the audit: https://substack.com/@joyfirstworld

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Some episodes arrive perfectly lit, well-rested, and uninterrupted.

This was not one of them.

This one arrived after bedtime, dinner, swimming lessons, forgotten groceries, a squeaky dog toy, and that low-level anxiety of juggling what work needs and what everybody else needs.

Which, actually is the perfect place to talk about baselines and audits.

I just audited my entire life using the same framework my clients and I have used for over a decade (with a few updates and upgrades) and I got my 'joy number' or Joy First Pulse (JFP): 75/100.

In this episode, I break down:

• The 6 categories I measured (and my scores in each)
• Why I created the Joy First Audit
• What I'm doing about my lowest scores (spoiler: I've already re-started HRT conversations, and am vlogging the process)
• How you can take the audit yourself (including a custom GPT to help you action it)
• Why I'm launching on Substack and what that means

This is the baseline. The messy starting point. The "where I actually am" before the experiments begin.

If you're brilliant at your work but struggling with adulting or self-care or 'balance'... this one's for us.

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After three years of podcasting about joy, colour, and business, I'm doing something different.

Something scarier.

I've spent two decades teaching entrepreneurs how to build brands that create desire, joy, and transformation. But as I've sat down to write this Joy First book, it feels like I've really been tested. It's been a really challenging 18 months and I've been asking myself, who the heck am I to share this work? But on reflection I feel like my experience with testing, and imperfectly embodying these joy first principles and practices is the way joy REALLY looks. Joy isn't just aspirational, sometimes it's actual survival.

So, in this season, in an aim to continue to define share the real face of what 'joy first' actually means, 'm becoming my own guinea pig. Over the next six months, I'm auditing six key areas of my life, vitality, relationships, work, creativity, all of it, and documenting what happens when a someone who has obsessively built shiny, perfect 'afters' (but who feels perpetually like a 'before') attempts to really explore what the 'joy of the journey' actually looks like.

This season isn't about teaching you how to be joyful. It's about what joy really looks like for a 44-year-old woman dealing with perimenopause, anxiety, weight loss, two kids, marriage and a couple businesses.

To explore this 'Joy First Experiment' we're going back to our bi-weekly schedule on the public feed, with deeper, more vulnerable conversations happening over on the new Joy Journal Substack (link below).

If you've been stuck in the messy middle, that gap between who you are and who you're becoming, pull up a chair.

Let's get honest about what the real work of becoming the person you need to be to live the life you actually want actually looks like.

Welcome to Season 4.

LINKS:

• Join the Joy Journal on Substack: https://joyfirstworld.substack.com/
• Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joyfirstworld
• Take the Joy First Pulse audit [coming next episode]

• The real story behind the Joy First podcast (and the four iterations that came before it)

• What I’m intentionally shifting this towards (and why)

• What it has felt like to leave a niche where I had authority, ease, and security

• Why joy is not shiny, aspirational, or performative (it’s gritty and lived)

• What I've watched become the most powerful joy tool, ever

• What my emotional intelligence profile revealed that helped fuel this journey

• What’s coming next...

This season is about pulling back the curtain.

Not because I have it figured out.

But because joy lives in the trenches, not in the shiny 'after' photo

.

If you’ve ever felt like you’re great at building a life that looks good from the outside but feels disconnected on the inside…

If you’re in a season of change, confusion, or quiet unraveling…

If you’re tired of optimizing for other people's opinions and ready to feel like you again (or the first time ever)

You’re in the right place.

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