Did you know the longest-running happiness study in history (Harvard) found that the number one predictor of a long, healthy, joyful life wasn't money or success, it was the quality of your relationships?

So why does connection feel like the first thing we sacrifice when life gets full?

In this episode of the Joy First Audit series, I'm sharing my score for Category 3: Connection... and even though I came in at 14/15, there's a lot more going on beneath the surface.

We go into:

• The difference between not being alone and actually feeling seen

• What's happening in marriages and intimate relationships as we enter our forties (and why so many women are quietly renegotiating everything)

• Real vs superficial friendships: and how I've been looking locally to find something that feels nourishing

• The people-pleasing and guilt thread that runs through almost every connection question in the audit

• Why self-connection is the bank account that funds all the rest

This one gets honest about perimenopause, neurodivergence, the IDGAF era, and what it actually takes to feel genuinely connected when your nervous system is running on empty.

If you want to take the Joy First Audit for yourself, you can find it on our Substack @joyfirstworld.

Free members get the analog version. Paid members get access to a custom AI co-pilot that walks you through the audit and helps you take your next steps.

Next week: The Joy Audit

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Not just a feeling, actual cognitive impairment that changes how we make decisions, often making a hard situation significantly worse.

This week on the Joy First Podcast, I'm sharing my honest score from the money and security section of the Joy First Audit (nine out of twenty, if you want to know), and getting real about what's behind that number.

This isn't a tidy little success story, it's a pretty raw look at 20 years of entrepreneurial cycles: the lawsuit that ate my savings, the double-burnout before 30, the year, six and seven figure successes, the year everything seemed to break at once, the ten year cycles, and what I'm doing right now in this next 'rebuild' stage.

We explore:

• How Scarcity makes us dumber
• The tunneling effect and why financial stress pushes us toward decisions that feel urgent but make things worse long-term
• My full money origin story, the parts I don't usually talk about
• How the Joy First Audit surfaces the difference between actual financial reality and the fear running the show
• The practical choices I'm making right now to reduce costs without abandoning the self-care that's keeping me functional
• Why building recurring, non-time-dependent revenue is the priority I keep coming back to
• Three brilliant women whose work has genuinely changed my relationship with money, and where to start with each of them
• 
  

Resources mentioned:

• Denise Duffield-Thomas: Get Rich Lucky Bitch + Money Bootcamp — denisedt.com
• Ann Wilson: The Wealth Chef
• Catherine Morgan: It's Not About the Money (book + podcast)
• The Joy First Audit: joyfirstworld.com/substack (free + paid with custom GPT)
• Find this (and last week's episode on Vitality) on our new YouTube channel @joyfirstworld

The Joy First Podcast is hosted by J.Nichole Smith, colour psychology expert, brand strategist, and working mum of two: finding, choosing and sharing joy while navigating the messy middle. New episodes drop every other week.

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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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In this special New Years episode, Nic's mom is visiting from Seattle (complete with sourdough starter and yoga mat) and her wisdom bombs inspire this special end-of-the-year episode that may just close that loop that's been making you so uncomfortable all year.

You'll discover:

• What a 12-year-old with a handpan and 30 videos on instagram has to teach you about social media
• The ai-unfriendly paradox that took Nic 14 hours locked in a hotel room to solve
• The feels Necker Island's version of "luxury" has that most 'luxury hotels' do not
• The assumption Nic made about her book that almost killed the entire project
• Why most brands you admire refuse to pick a side
• What Richard Rohr says we must accept or we'll never love anything correctly
• The real reason your brand doesn't feel like it fits
• What one thing might be your competitive advantage as we enter the AI age
• PLUS 5 journaling questions to help you integrate the thinking and lessons in this episode

Fair warning: This episode will make you question every "either/or" decision you've ever made in your brand. And that's kind of the point.

New year, whole you. Not new you.

Ready to stop flattening yourself to fit one-dimensional definitions of success? Press play.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Citrus Program (AI copilots for the Colour Brand® method): https://go.joyfirstworld.com/citrus
• Brand in a Week: book a call with Nic: https://go.joyfirstworld.com/branding
• Strong Ground by Brené Brown
• Built to Last by Jim Collins
• 
  

Take action:

• Grab the 5 reflection questions on the website: https://joyfirstworld.com/blogs/joy-first-podcast/new-year-whole-you

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The lives we've been encouraged to build, rooted in consumption, achievement, and constant productivity, keep pushing us further from what actually creates lasting joy.

But decades of research tells us plenty, we know what makes humans thrive.

We've known for years.

Why haven't we been encouraged to prioritize what makes us happier? Well, because it's not really in any corporate best-interests for us to be joy-fuelled and loved-up. (Spoiler: joyful people are harder to control and sell things to.)

In this Christmas Eve episode, I'm sharing the 10 Joy Codes I've discovered and distilled for my upcoming book 'Joy First', These the research-backed sources of joy that are fundamental to human thriving. Think of them as the building blocks of a life that actually feels good to live (and that allows you that life in a healthy body and mind for longer!)

Plus, I reveal my simple joy goal for 2026 (complete with phone alarm and daily ritual that takes less than 2 minutes). Want to play along? I'm creating a space for us to share in the New Year...

Because choosing joy first isn't selfish: It's liberation work. And we're all in it together!

What you'll discover:

• The 10 Joy Codes backed by decades of research
• The Harvard Study that will change how you think about success
• The correlation between joy and longevity
• My ridiculously simple 2026 joy goal (and how to create your own)

This is your permission slip to move closer to what actually matters to both you and our collective well-being in 2026 and beyond.

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Have you seen how the internet just lost its mind when photos surfaced of what the house from 'Home Alone' looks like now? (spoiler: it's monochrome)

Turns out, the systematic draining of colour from our world is not an accident. It's not just "modern minimalism." And it's definitely not sophisticated.

It's colonialism. It's capitalism. It's white supremacy with a Pottery Barn catalog.

In this episode, I'm tracing 200+ years of history to show you exactly how we got here—from Protestant "godliness" to HGTV's greige obsession—and why choosing color is actually an act of resistance.

We'll Explore:

• Why grey has ZERO positive psychological benefits (and what it has to do with white)
• The shocking study that proved our world is losing colour
• How colourlessness became a tool of oppression
• 3 practical ways to bring colour, joy and back into your life

Spoiler: Your fear of painting that accent wall? Tune-in to hear what you may have internalized (that you never asked for).

Ready to join the rebellion?

Listen now. Share this episode. Then paint that wall.

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