http://www.thesmilingcoach.net/

The Smiling Coach, Ventnor (2026)

04/09/2026

Not all running looks like escape.

Sometimes it looks like success.

A full life.
A good career.
People who rely on you.
A diary that proves you are needed.
A future that looks perfectly sensible from the outside.

There is no pleasure in running away from something.
A little pleasure in running towards something.
But the best feeling of all is being able to stop running.

It's not about giving up on purpose, or intention or changing the world in whatever way matters to you.

But because you no longer need fear, expectation, obligation or proving to decide where you go next.

That is the difference between running and flying.

Running puts a fire up your bum and asks:

What would go wrong if I didn't?
What makes sense as my next move from here?
What does everyone need from me?

Flying asks:

What do I want?
What matters now? What's real?
What kind of life am I choosing?

And for highly accomplished women, the distinction between the two matters.

Because present-day demands can shape the future direction. It becomes the default. You become the default.

Another year in the role.
Another dream pushed back.
Another decision made because it is practical, expected or easier to explain.

Until one day you realise you have been moving forward without ever really deciding where you wanted to go.

This is the work we do inside The Wild Rise.

My six-month 1:1 coaching experience helps highly accomplished women restore the perspective, discernment and self-trust to see what is possible, choose what they want next and make it real without putting life on pause.

You were not born to spend your whole life getting better at running.

You were born to fly.

01/09/2026

What if you're not exhausted because you've made bad choices?

What if you're exhausted because you've made thousands of very reasonable ones?

You took the meeting because it mattered.

You helped because you could.

You stayed a little later because the deadline was real.

You rearranged your day because somebody genuinely needed you.

You said yes because the opportunity was exciting.

You kept going because the work meant something.

There may not be a villain anywhere in the story.

And I think that matters.

Because women are often told that if life has become too much, they simply need better boundaries.

Say no more.

Delegate.

Care less.

Slow down.

But sometimes that advice misses the woman entirely.

Because she doesn't want to care less.

She loves the work.

She loves the people.

She wants the opportunity.

She likes being someone others can depend upon.

The difficulty is that a life can be made up almost entirely of things you willingly chose…

and still leave very little room for you.

That is a much more interesting problem than “you're doing too much.”

It's:

How do I keep the parts of this life I love without disappearing inside them?

How do I remain ambitious without pressure becoming my permanent fuel?

How do I make space for myself without treating everybody I care about like an inconvenience?

How do I build the next chapter without automatically recreating the last one?

Those are the conversations I love having with women.

Because I don't see a woman who needs to become less.

I usually see a woman with an enormous amount of herself still waiting to become available.

And perhaps that's the shift.

From endlessly proving how well you can run…

to remembering you were made to FLY.

If you're ready to find out what that could look like in the life you actually have, send me a message.

28/08/2026

We inherited more than expectations.

We inherited methods.

Ways of planning.
Ways of working.
Ways of measuring progress.
Ways of deciding what counts as discipline, ambition and success.

And most of them were not built with women’s lives in mind.

They were built for an employed worker with a wife at home.

Someone whose meals appeared.
Whose home was managed.
Whose children were cared for.
Whose emotional world stayed neatly outside the working day.

Someone who could organise life from the outside in.

Set goal.
Break into tasks.
Put in calendar.
Push through.

Women entered those systems knowing we had to not only do it, but do it better, without a fuss and without dropping anything at home:

"You can do anything" drifting into "You should do everything."

The methods never really fitted the reality of our lives, without extreme cost to ourselves, so we assumed the bit to change would have to be us.

Better discipline.
More resilience.
A tighter routine.
Sacrifice

But what if the method was never built with women in mind?
What if the tools themselves were built around a life that does not resemble yours?

This is why, inside The Wild Rise, we approach planning, performance and growth from the inside out.

Not because women need softer goals.
Not because we need smaller ambitions.
And certainly not because we should retreat into some outdated idea of being a “little woman” doing “little womany things.”

We do not need to become smaller.
The method needs to become intelligent enough to include the woman using it.

So we begin somewhere different.

With who you are.
What you've experienced
With how your mind works.
With what your body is communicating.
With the rhythms, responsibilities and realities already shaping your life.
With the values and ambitions that are genuinely yours.

Then we build the plan.
Not the other way around.
Because when you begin with a method and force yourself into it, you may produce results.
But the results can feel hollow. Because it's not working with full person of who you really are.

When you begin with the woman and build the method around her,
she stops feeling overwhelmed playing calendar tetris on timings she already knows she cannot live.

She knows which meeting needs her most persuasive communication
and which never needed to exist.

She makes decisions wholeheartedly without running it past five people,
rewriting the email twelve times
or waking at 3am to reconsider it.

She reaches the end of the working day
with enough of herself left
to taste her dinner, hear the story
and laugh at the thing she would usually have missed.

The plan stops being something she must force herself through.
It becomes a life she no longer feels owned by
but one she feels alive in.

This is not lowering the bar.
It is refusing to use a bar designed without you in mind.

The Wild Rise is where we take the tools women have been handed and rebuild them from the inside out.

So your success does not feel in competion with your life.
So you can create more without having to become less of yourself to do it.

Women do not need watered-down versions of the old systems.
We need approaches built around the full intelligence of women.

That is what we do in The Wild Rise.

Thanks to Haywood for this, my favourite cartoon.

25/08/2026

Do you ever wonder what your competence is costing you?

Not your ambition.

Not your success.

Your competence.

The fact that you can make almost anything work.

You can absorb the extra responsibility.

Smooth over the awkward conversation.

Find another hour.

Remember the thing nobody else remembered.

Step in when somebody drops the ball.

Make the complicated situation look surprisingly uncomplicated.

It is an extraordinary ability.

And it may have taken you a very long way.

But there comes a point where being exceptionally good at accommodating life can make it difficult to notice when life is asking too much of you.

Because nothing breaks.

You just adjust.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Until one day you realise that almost every part of your life works beautifully…

except perhaps for the person living it.

I don't think the answer is to become less capable.

Or less generous.

Or suddenly stop caring about everybody around you.

I think the more interesting question is:

Can all of those brilliant qualities remain…

without you always being the thing that stretches?

Can your work matter deeply without consuming you?

Can you love people without automatically carrying what belongs to them?

Can you be enormously useful in the world and still have parts of your life that exist for no reason other than because they make you feel alive?

That is where I think women begin to FLY.

Not when they finally become capable enough to manage everything.

They already know how to do that.

But when all that strength is no longer being used simply to keep life running…

and becomes available for something more.

If you've become very good at making your life work and you're beginning to wonder whether it actually works for you, I'd love to talk.

21/08/2026

Being the woman who can handle everything may be the least interesting thing about you.

You are capable.
Dependable.
Impressive under pressure.

Everyone already knows that.

The more exciting question is who you become when your life stops requiring quite so much of your brilliance just to keep it running.

There are ideas you want room to explore.

Desires you have barely allowed yourself to take seriously.

Parts of your personality that appear want to bubble up when you are not managing six things at once.

A more creative, expansive and delicious way of being in the life you have worked so hard to build.

That is ambition too.

There is more to success than being impressive from the outside.
You have achieved a great deal. You are allowed to enjoy being here.

And perhaps you are wondering whether coaching could genuinely help you do that.

Whether it would be deep enough.

Personal enough.

Practical enough to change the life you are actually living.

This is what Victoria said nine weeks into The Wild Rise:

“Working with Joy has given me the space to properly understand myself, untangle some quite messy thoughts and feelings, and make sense of things I’d probably been carrying around for a while.

She has this brilliant way of helping me spot patterns I had never recognised before and gently challenge me to think differently, which has genuinely helped me start to step into who I want to be and can become.”

The Wild Rise is my flagship six-month 1:1 coaching experience for highly capable women who want to relax into the goodness of the life they have built and feel fully alive inside it, instead of being flat out holding it all together.

More spacious.
More energising.
More yours.

This work is deeply personal because your life is deeply personal.

We pay attention to the woman you are now.

The patterns shaping your choices.

The thoughts taking up more room than they deserve.

The parts of you ready to return, emerge and become.

You can arrive wanting to make a clear decision.

You can arrive with a tangle of thoughts you cannot quite explain.

You can arrive with the feeling that there is more to you than the version everyone relies upon.

I have space for a small number of new clients beginning in September, and I am having the final conversations for those places now.

The call gives us room to explore what is calling you forward, what you want the next season of your life to hold and whether The Wild Rise is where you want to create it.

You have built a life to be proud of.

There is still more of you waiting to be lived inside it.

Message me SEPTEMBER and we’ll arrange a conversation.

18/08/2026

Have you noticed how quickly empty space gets filled when you're a capable woman?

You leave the demanding job and suddenly the business needs you.

You reduce your hours and somehow become more available to everybody else.

You move somewhere quieter and your mind brings the old pace with it.

You finally get a free afternoon and within twenty minutes you're thinking:

“I might as well just…”

And there goes the afternoon.

This is something I wish more women understood before they start rearranging their entire lives in search of freedom.

Changing the circumstances can be incredibly important.

Sometimes leaving is exactly right.

Sometimes the move is right.

Sometimes the business, the sabbatical, the four-day week or the new chapter changes everything.

But space around you doesn't automatically create space within you.

Because you came too.

Your care came.

Your ambition came.

Your extraordinary ability to see what needs doing came.

So did the part of you that feels safer once everything is handled.

The part that notices what everyone else needs before it notices what you need.

None of that makes the changes you made pointless.

It simply means the next piece of freedom may not come from changing your diary again.

It may come from learning that space does not have to be justified by productivity.

That a need does not automatically become your responsibility because you noticed it.

That something can matter without consuming you.

That you can leave a little life unoptimised and still be a very good person.

And perhaps most importantly:

That the woman you were trying to make room for when you changed everything is still there.

She hasn't missed her chance.

She may simply need you to stop filling every clearing before she gets the opportunity to step into it.

That is the woman I am interested in.

Not the exhausted version of you as though exhaustion is your identity.

You.

Underneath all the managing.

Still ambitious.

Still caring.

Still powerful.

But lighter.

More present.

And with enough room around her to FLY.

If you've created more freedom on paper but aren't quite feeling it yet, come and talk to me.

14/08/2026

There comes a point in August when September stops being a charming idea involving new notebooks and starts looking rather real.

The diary begins filling up.

The school emails return from hibernation.

Someone needs new shoes.

And the autumn term starts assembling itself with you as it's centre of gravity.

Between you and me, this may also be the moment you decide you have no desire to arrive at Christmas having performed another four-month masterclass in keeping absolutely everything going for everyone whilst ignoring yourself.

You can do it.

Of course you can.

You are exceptionally good at handling full diaries, ambitious work, family life, other people’s needs and the sudden announcement that a costume is required for tomorrow morning.

People call you a superwoman for a reason.

But being brilliant at holding everything together does not automatically mean you also feel like you have space to enjoy the life you are holding.

One of my clients recently said:

“I think I might be happier.”

Such a small sentence.
And such an enormous one.

She was getting heaps done.
She was making clearer decisions.
She was finishing work and switching off.

She had started painting again.
She described the change as:

“It feels like you’re running on a different operating system.”

That is the kind of change we create inside The Wild Rise.

The Wild Rise is my flagship six-month 1:1 coaching experience for highly capable women who want to relax into the goodness of the life they have built and feel fully alive inside it, instead of being flat out holding it all together.

More spacious.
More energising.
More yours.

A life where you can rest without guilt.
A weekend you are actually present for.
Decisions that no longer require overthinking.

Ideas, pleasure, creativity and laughter returning to your days.

I will have space for a small number of new Wild Rise clients beginning in September, and I am having those conversations now.

The call gives us room to talk about what you would love to feel different by the end of the autumn term, what has been making that difficult and whether this work feels right for you.

You can arrive curious.

You can arrive with a hunch.

You can arrive knowing only that another season of giving everything you have to hold everything together no longer sounds particularly delicious.

You have built a life to be proud of.
Perhaps this next season is the where you get to enjoy feeling more alive in it.

Message me SEPTEMBER and we’ll arrange a conversation.

12/08/2026

You know that thing where you finally sit down to think about your own future...

and remember the whatsapp you forgot to send, the transport that needs booking, the washing, and something someone else might need?

Those open loops are buggers.

What have you got better at NOT immediately acting on?

07/08/2026

New notebooks.
Fresh routines.
Slightly ambitious plans.

The belief that this may finally be the year everyone remembers their PE kit.

September tends to have a particular energy, doesn’t it?

You do not need to reinvent yourself when the schools go back.

You are already rather magnificent.
A force of nature.
The woman people call a Superwoman.

The one who manages the career, the family, the plans, the details, the emotional weather and, apparently, the whereabouts of everyone’s water bottle.

People look at your life and wonder how you do it.

And between you and me, you may be wondering how much longer you want to be giving it all you've got just to hold it all together.

Summer is often lovely, full and faintly chaotic.
Work carries on.
Children appear to require food every day.
Holidays involve approximately four times more administration than anyone mentions in the photographs.

It may not be the moment you want to begin deep coaching.

That does not mean the desire for things to feel different has disappeared.

Perhaps you already know you do not want another autumn, and the run-up to Christmas, to feel like the last one.

The Wild Rise is my flagship six-month 1:1 coaching experience for highly capable women who want to relax into the goodness of the life they have built and feel fully alive inside it, instead of being flat out holding it all together.

As one client told me six weeks into her Wild Rise:
“I got heaps done last week.
I had such a great weekend with my family. I SWITCHED OFF.
Joy?! You’ve got to understand, I never do that. I never switch off!
I finished work at midday, all done, switched off, and had a genuinely brilliant weekend.”

This work changes the way you experience your life while you are living it.

More spacious.
More energising.
More yours.

Feeling present enough to enjoy the people you love.

Making decisions without the familiar internal debate running laps around your head.

Having space for ideas, creativity, pleasure and the parts of you that have been waiting patiently behind the calendar.

I am fully booked at the moment, and I will have space for a small number of new clients beginning in September.

I am having those conversations now, before the final week of August arrives waving a school-shoe list in everyone’s face.

The call gives us space to explore what you would love to feel different, what has been getting in the way and whether The Wild Rise feels like the right place to create that change.

You do not need a perfectly articulated goal.

You can arrive with a hunch.

You can be thinking you might like to begin.

That is enough for a conversation.

You have built a life to be proud of.
Perhaps your next step is to get to enjoy more of it.

Message me SEPTEMBER and tell me what you would love to feel different by the end of the autumn term.

31/07/2026

You have spent years becoming the woman who knows what everyone needs.

The one who notices.

Remembers.

Anticipates.

Sorts it.

Finds the thing.

Books the thing.

And somehow knows exactly what to say to soothe a fractious situation.

It is an impressive skill set.

It has probably built a great deal of what is your life.

And there is more to you than being brilliantly responsive to everyone and everything around you.

There are things you want.

Parts of you that you put on the shelf- for just a little while- that you miss.

Desires that become easier to hear when the internal switchboard is no longer taking calls from absolutely everyone.

One of my clients described our work as a sense of both returning and becoming.

Returning to the essence and joy of her uniqueness.

Becoming more confident in choosing who she wanted to be and what she wanted to do.

Then she wrote this:

“I noticed that after nearly every session with Joy, when I next saw my husband, I would feel an inner leap of ‘I love you’.

Not because I had talked about him particularly during the session, but because somehow it felt like there was space inside me again to feel this feeling.”

How lush is that?

Space inside her again.

Space for love.

Space for warmth and appreciation.

Space to enjoy the goodness of the life she was already living.

Because when your inner world is full of managing, anticipating, carrying and working out what everybody else needs next, even the loveliest parts of life can struggle to get a word in.

This work creates room in you and for you.

The Wild Rise is my flagship six-month 1:1 coaching experience for highly capable women who want to relax into the goodness of the life they have built and feel fully alive inside it, instead of being flat out holding it all together.

More spacious.
More energising.
More yours.

I will have space for a small number of new clients beginning in September, and I am beginning those conversations now.

You may know exactly what you want.

You may have a hunch.

You may simply have the feeling that there is more of you waiting to come back for your next phase.

All of those are excellent places to begin.

You have built a life to be proud of.

Perhaps this is the season you get to feel more of it.

Message me SEPTEMBER and tell me what you would love the next chapter to hold.

The Smiling Coach

04/09/2026

01/09/2026

28/08/2026

25/08/2026

21/08/2026

18/08/2026

14/08/2026

12/08/2026

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31/07/2026

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