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 the bristling British gentleman with the chalk be upset? Sure.

But is that worth sitting in the shade?

I think not.

In fact, seeing you enjoy the sunshine over here might be exactly what he needs to investigate life outside the lines too!

Enjoy, let me know what metric you decide to play with

Emma ✨🐆

🛠 Tools & exercises from this episode

1. The SovReina Compass check-in Four sliders to navigate back to yourself. Notice where you are on each one:

* Are the decisions you’re taking expansive or contractive?

* Is your focus creating the future or recreating the past?

* Are the words you’re using opening up possibility or shutting down options?

* Is your validation coming from inside or outside?

No fixing required — just notice. That’s the compass doing its job.

2. Set your own metric What is the internal measure you actually care about? Mine is: am I enjoying this? Not performing enjoyment — genuinely in it. Name yours. Write it down. Then use it.

3. Run two experiments this month Pick one thing that piques your curiosity and just do it — message, sign up, say yes, before the thought passes. Then pick one thing you’d normally dismiss as not for you — and try it anyway. Both experiments give you data. Both bring you closer to your own metrics.

4. Small injuries, small data — big injuries, big data When you ignore your internal signals and follow someone else’s protocol, you push past the small signs until they become big ones. The small injuries — the moments of friction, the things that feel slightly off — are data. Meet them with curiosity before they become the kind of data that lands you in a collapsing cottage in Normandy with no money and a dog, starting completely over. (Which, for the record, turned out to be the most transformative experience of my life. But still.)

You can find ✨ The Life Atelier, my 1:1 coaching programme, here (20% off in May). You can find me on Instagram here. You can find Joy Studio, my community for women in business, here.

In this episode we talk about:

00:00 — this week’s tool: creating your own metrics

00:30 — the SovReina Compass and its four sliders

01:30 — flow state: what it actually is and when you’ve already felt it

02:30 — the light on the wooden floor and why anchors matter

03:00 — painting the fence in Normandy and losing track of time

04:00 — setting up Claude as a French tutor (eco-entrepreneurship, wild swimming, mountains)

05:30 — the moment I cracked the past tense and why grammar bores me to tears

06:00 — am I enjoying this? — why that’s a serious metric

07:00 — the Welsh lake, the sauna, and the cold plunge I did at my own pace

09:00 — going in slowly, a bird of prey overhead, the parts of me under the water feeling warmer

10:30 — am I doing this for me? — the second metric

11:00 — joining Creative Mornings Running in Toulouse (I’m a runner now apparently)

12:30 — running in Australia with a fireman ex and the story I told about my weak ankles

14:00 — showing up to run club fully prepared to be purple and at the back

15:00 — running on tippy toes and being that annoying person chatting at the front

16:00 — “when are you joining a race?” — and why my answer was never

16:30 — a race is someone else’s metric — and why that matters

17:00 — Lina’s answer: internal validation, going slow, and injuries as data

18:00 — small signals ignored become big injuries — burnout, collapse, the corporate grind

19:00 — the cottage in Normandy at 34: big injury, big data, most transformative experience of my life

21:00 — 40 is coming and I have never felt more possibility, more strength, more alive

22:00 — the tool: two experiments to find your own metrics this month

23:00 — the life design session: what it is and why it’s worth doing either way

Resources

✦ Book a complimentary Life Design Session → emmalavelle.co

✦ The Life Atelier — 3, 5 & 10 month containers, prices increase in June

✦ Start later in the year and still keep current pricing — just message me

Reflection prompts from this episode

Where in your life are you currently running someone else’s race — measuring yourself against a metric that was never yours to begin with?

What are the small signals — the little friction points, the things that feel slightly off — that you might be pushing past right now?

And if you were to set just one internal metric for this month, something that’s truly yours: what would it be?

Joy Ambition is your weekly voice note with me, Emma Lavelle — life design and time expansion coach, and founder of The Life Atelier. New episodes every Friday.

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