Joy Ambition with Emma Lavelle

You know that moment when you can’t decide between two things and your brain says just get both ? My brain picked option three. Five minutes from closing time in my favourite stationery shop in Toulouse, holding two notebooks, feeling the very French version of being politely swept out the door — and I nearly did it. Nearly got both. Until I heard my own voice saying ‘simplify is the default’ - on...

A birthday gift from me to you. Think of it as the secret knock to the private time expansion members club. The private club where the door opens and the noise from outside just falls away. Where time passes with the carefree ease of a mid August day when you’re nine and have sweets in your pocket. The lazy generous luxury of time wealth. The cheerful easy shrug of ‘both, either’ reply to life cho...

This week I’ve seen my clients horse riding on their lunch break, cheerfully swinging from a hoop attached to the ceiling in .. I don’t know what but it’s where I did an aerial silk class so somewhere between circus and yoga 😆, another had their second week of getting breakfast in their favourite cafe before starting work and I can see they’re sleeping better from the glowy skin that has reappear...

Hello from Maison EmRita, One of my great pleasures right now is taking the AI written intro’s to these voice notes - (I use Claude to pull timestamps from podcasts because it feels helpful) - and cheerfully saying NOPE. Highlighting the copy. Deleting it. Then writing in my own grammatically distressing but gloriously human voice to you. Like a kid presenting their great artwork, drawn in Chanel...

Hello from Maison EmRita, today’s voice note is an invitation to notice where you’re sitting uncomfortably in the shade instead of feeling the sunshine on your face and stretching because someone else put the perfectly moveable chair inside a chalk circle and wrote ‘Do not move.’ My loves, you can move. You can pick that chair up if you do indeed want a chair and put it wherever you want. Might th...

Hello from Maison EmRita, this might be one of those voice notes where you don’t love me immediately, but you sit with it and a few days later you reach out and say, ok, yes, I get it. I’m in. A little like the banana bread I was offered on Friday post run club that was either burnt tasting or deliciously caramel chewy. It took a beat and an espresso to come down on the side of delicious caramel c...

Hello from Maison EmRita! Today’s voice note, tumbling gracefully ‘oh a day late, who me?’ this Saturday, because sometimes life happens, we adapt and everyone is ok, let me be your example to take a breath and put down a few of the things you’re holding - or even take yourself for a walk without your phone. You’ll see what happens 💛 Enjoy the voice note, notes & tools below and let me know how y...

I’m recording this one from Maison Emrita — my new home in Toulouse, the ‘impossible’ (hah!) forest witch cottage with a garden bang in the city. And I admit, I’ve been procrastinating a little, I didn’t realise how much emotion I was holding about sharing the story behind it, what it took to go for it then be in it with the pattern of the light through the leaves on my desk like sunlight dancing...

What actually changes when you trust yourself? I want you to rest in that question for a moment. Not rush to answer it. Just imagine it. In this episode: * The wolf and the domesticated dog — and what Rita sleeping next to me right now has to do with your potential * The cheetah who doesn’t know how fast she can run — Glennon Doyle’s Untamed and what it means to have been living in an invisible ca...

Rita sighed at the beginning of this one. She gets it. You’ve been told to trust your gut. To listen to your instinct. But here’s the thing — anxiety and intuition can feel almost identical. And this episode is about learning to tell them apart. In this episode: * Why anxiety and intuition feel so similar — and why that’s not a personal failing * The lights on the dashboard — the specific words an...

Sit down for this one. If no one else had an opinion — not your partner, your parents, your business coach, your friends, the guy in the coffee shop, no one on Instagram — what would you do? In this episode: * Why your opinion is the only consistent thing — even when your brain argues otherwise * Where the outsourcing habit comes from — and why it made complete sense when it started * Daisy the do...

Hello amazing humans, It’s Friday, and I nearly turned this into a Substack letter. But there’s an immediacy to a voice note that writing doesn’t have. No spell check for your own voice. No slowness. Just a thought, and then send (with full Emma struggling to say immediacy in the middle). So I recorded it instead. Here’s what happened this morning before I even sat down to work: * Coffee with a fr...

This month is about self-trust. And I want to start here — not with a tool or a framework, but with the thing I keep coming back to: the difference between knowing and trusting. Because most of us already know. We’ve always known. The gap isn’t clarity. It’s the safety to act on what we know. In this episode: * The domestic dog in the forest vs the wolf — and what that tells us about what self-tru...

Hello Gang! I’m sharing the same letter today on Joy Ambition and at Joy Studio because it felt relevant for everyone. An invitation to pause and consider spring cleaning your life today, and to make it EASY, (there’s also the recipe for delicious four ingredient cookies I made last night at the end, you’re welcome!) It’s something I started myself a few months ago, and only realised what I’d been...

Episode Notes: What actually happens when you ask for what you want? Not the rehearsed version, not the carefully managed version — the real ask, from a place of genuine okayness with whatever comes back. In this episode: * The Bumble message that started everything — and why being okay with the no changed everything * Why asking for what you want has nothing to do with certainty and everything to...

Taking up space doesn’t mean walking into every room like Brian Blessed. It means putting down what you never consciously chose to carry — one belief, one decision, one fox fur at a time. In this episode: * Why we carry beliefs long past the season they belong to — and why we stop noticing the weight * The quiet conviction that cost Emma the most — and what happened when she finally put it down *...

How many times have you said “I’m not ready” — and meant it completely? This week we’re exploring what’s actually going on underneath that sentence. Spoiler: it’s almost never about readiness. In this episode: * Why “when things are calmer” is your brain keeping you exactly where you are * The sophisticated self-protection behind never quite starting * What it costs you to keep waiting for externa...

Have you ever started to say what you want and pulled yourself back before the sentence was even finished? “I want to be rich — but not wealthy. That doesn’t seem fair.” “I want to take up space — but I’m not ready yet.” “I want to go for that job — but I’ll do another certificate first.” This is the art of wanting less than you’re allowed. And most of us have perfected it without even realising....

Posted from a sun-drenched bedroom in Foix, in the Pyrenees — this one might make you say “oh, f**k off, Emma.” That’s okay. Stay with me. You are your scariest bully. And here’s why that’s actually the best news you’ve received all week. When we fear criticism from others, what we’re really afraid of is that we’ll believe it — and then turn it on ourselves. Our brain doesn’t know the attacking vo...

A video showed up in my Instagram feed this week — sent to me by my friend and colleague Anna — and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. It’s called Creating a Song With the Audience , and it features a young musician named Jacob, standing in front of an orchestra. He starts simply: strings play something small. Another section joins. Then another. And then — he turns to the audience. Th...

Welcome to today’s voice note - a tool to skip the struggle of searching for power outside of yourself and instead get to just put down the exhausting illusion that you’re not powerful. Episode notes below, let me know how this lands in the comments! Next Steps: * If you’re interested in deep support and accelerated results, learn about working with me 1:1 here * Find out about The Joy Studio comm...

This episode covers: * How to tell the difference between wanting something and expecting it — and why that distinction quietly shapes our relationships. * Why creating safety for yourself is the starting point for any honest conversation about what you actually want (not just what you think should be enough). * The practice of learning to want — without collapsing into entitlement, resentment, or...

Hello gang, lazy Sunday voice note for you here and it’s a deep dive into the external vs internal validation and how to recalibrate when your inner compass has gone off. My invitation to you is to focus on the four steps this week (recognise, interrupt, compassion, practice), and tell me how it goes, post your reflections and questions in the comments! If you want to go deeper in this work, you c...

Welcome to today’s voice note — it’s the first where I’ve sourced a question from you, my community, and I’ve loved hearing from you. So if you have topics you’d like me to dive into, hit reply or comment on the podcast topic page right here: Pick your podcast topics this month I’ll dive into the question and then, at the end, share my own experience with this exact issue and the three steps I too...

Today’s final voice note in the Slow & Spacious Start to 2026 covers bringing the 5 steps of Joy Ambition together so that you can apply them to any situation. But first we lay the foundation to how to use Joy in relation to fear & resilience, then where your relationship to Ambition comes into play. I hope you enjoy it, let me know what you discover in the comments! If this has resonated with you...