A Bold Experiment in Failure Tolerance

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So here's what happened.

I decided to bleach my eyebrows because I love a bold look and figured it would be a perfect way to flex my failure tolerance muscle. For context: I am AGGRESSIVELY Italian. My 23andMe results came back with just, like, a picture of spaghetti as my genetic makeup. While my deepest dream is to be one of those effortless California blondes who look like they were born in a yoga studio, raised on kombucha, and have never experienced a single day of humidity-induced frizz, my Mediterranean follicles would literally dissolve into dust before they'd submit to the industrial-strength peroxide required to achieve my Scandinavian fantasy.

But failure tolerance, right? So I went for it.

First attempt at going full Julia Fox: Orange eyebrows. My sister FaceTimed me and couldn't speak for two minutes because she was laughing so hard.

Second attempt, because apparently I'm a glutton for punishment and also definitely have some unresolved issues around perfectionism: I now look like if Austin Butler's creepy uncle from Dune had a midlife crisis, joined a failed electronica band, and decided to reinvent himself as a SoundCloud rapper. When I showed my very supportive husband, his response was simply: "Oh no, honey. No, Michelle."

And you know what? It was PERFECT failure tolerance practice because everything really is low stakes. Worst case scenario? I dye them back. It takes five minutes. No big deal. At least I TRIED it. Now I know I have the no-eyebrow look in my arsenal if I ever need to be truly intimidating.

The Sacred Law of Compensation

If you read this week’s ritual you know I’m bullish on Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay "Compensation" and the sacred law of reciprocity. Emerson wrote about the duality of life — how for everything you've missed, you've gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something.

He was basically saying: We don't have to wait until heaven to experience goodness. We have gifts right here — a child's laugh, a good drink with friends, reading poetry. But we also know that when good things happen, challenging things happen too. And when bad things happen, we inevitably receive something good in return. Emerson reminds us there’s “no such thing as a free lunch!” except way more poetically and infinitely less depressing than late-stage capitalism usually makes everything sound.

The scales are always balancing. It might not be immediate or one-for-one (one failure doesn't guarantee one immediate success), but sometimes you're collecting failures like Pokémon cards, building up this apparently useless collection of embarrassments and disappointments, and then BAM — suddenly you get hit with a massive wave of wins that makes you feel like you accidentally stumbled into someone else's much more successful life and forgot to give it back.

This makes going through failures SO much more manageable because you know: Nothing lasts forever. The good stuff doesn't last forever, and the bad stuff doesn't last forever.

Are You Really Open to Receiving?

If we accept RWE’s perspective, it opens up an uncomfy line of questioning: If we're not putting ourselves in the position to fail, we're probably not actually open to truly receiving. We’re likely just open to receiving exactly what we want, when we want it, in the precise packaging our anxiety-riddled, control-obsessed, disaster-anticipating brains have predetermined is "safe" and won't require us to grow or change or do anything that makes us uncomfortable.

Think about it like this: You litcherally cannot expect to meet your soulmate while you're sitting on your couch in the same ratty sweatpants you've been wearing since the beginning of the pandemic, binge-watching reality TV shows about people with significantly more dramatic problems than yours, and hoping your person will just materialize at your front door like some kind of romantic Amazon Prime delivery.

You have to actually put yourself in the position to meet them, which means leaving your apartment, possibly interacting with other humans.

Same thing with opportunities, money, success — whatever you're saying you're "open to receiving."

If you're truly open to receiving more money, are you:

* Changing how you run your business?

* Updating your offers? (or are they still the same ones you created three years ago when you thought "authentic" meant "charging $22 for everything because 😇angel numbers😇")

* Genuinely shifting your relationship with money, or are you still having a full-body panic attack every time you check your bank account and immediately closing the app like that will make the numbers change?

* Preparing for the natural consequences that come with receiving more?

If you're open to receiving a TV opportunity, are you:

* Willing to rearrange your life for filming?

* Prepared for the attention you'll get?

* Ready with systems for an influx of applications?

* Clear on your messaging so the right people reach out?

Being open to receiving means being open to ALL the natural consequences — the good, the challenging, the unexpected.

Taking notes from the alchemists

Ancient alchemists believed you couldn't transmute lead into gold unless you were pure of heart.

You could have the correct formula, all the right equipment, the perfect laboratory setup, but if you were just trying to create gold because you wanted to be rich and buy a bigger house and flex on your enemies, it wouldn't work. The universe would basically be like "nice try, but your motivations are showing and they're not cute."

You had to do your inner work — your shadow work, your journaling, your questioning about purpose and humanity. You needed reverence for the mystery.

Only then could you create gold.

This is why we can't just practice failure tolerance as some kind of spiritual shortcut to get more stuff. If we're grasping and controlling and trying to manipulate outcomes from our small, anxious, definitely-overthinking-everything human minds, it doesn't work as well as when we surrender to the mystery and trust that our future selves — the ones who've done more therapy and read more books and had more awkward conversations — know better than our current selves who are probably just trying to avoid discomfort.

Time for some check-in questions

Some questions to sit with:

Where have you been trying to control outcomes in your life, and for what reason?

Are you truly putting yourself out there to receive, or are you only open to receiving certain things in a specific order?

What would happen if you put yourself in the position to receive—including receiving some "nos"? (Remember: receiving isn't all positive. If we're going to receive amazing gifts, we're also going to receive some losses, some disappointments, some plot twists that require us to completely recalibrate our expectations. That's the law of compensation, baby.)

Signs You're Ready to Test Your Failure Tolerance:

* You feel healthy and stable (like you have room to play)

* Things feel stagnant or stuck

* You want to have more fun

* You're lacking challenge in your life

* You're wanting bigger opportunities to come through

* What you've been asking for hasn't materialized yet

Your Challenge This Week

Test your failure tolerance! It doesn't have to be as cosmetically dramatic as bleaching your eyebrows (though honestly, I think you could pull it off better than I did, and that's not even a particularly high bar). Maybe it's:

* Asking for something you've been avoiding asking for because you're convinced they'll say no

* Trying a new look or approach that feels slightly outside your comfort zone

* Putting yourself in a position where you might get rejected in a low-stakes way

* Sharing something you've been keeping private because you're worried about what people will think

* Applying for something you're not sure you're qualified for

* Having a conversation you've been putting off

Remember: When you're consistently flexing your failure tolerance muscle, you stop thinking of these experiences as "failures." They become experiments that give you information. You become more elastic to the experience — it doesn't ruin your day or stop you in your tracks.

The goal isn't to avoid failure; it's to become so comfortable with the discomfort of potential failure that you can move through the world with more freedom and magnetism.

Want the ritual practice for transmuting failure into alchemical gold? It's available for Twelfth House Plus subscribers (you can get a 7-day free trial to check it out). The ritual is inspired by Emerson's essay on compensation and is honestly magical.

Also: The North Node, our private members community, opens at the end of June! We only open doors twice a year because we're not trying to be everything to everyone, and it's five years of this incredible jewel box of education, resources, and community for intuitive entrepreneurs and creative people who are tired of business advice that makes them feel like they need to become someone else to be successful.

Liked this?You’ll love Holisticism and our podcast The Twelfth House.Want to learn more about intuitive business and creator-ship?Sign up for the North Node waitlist here.Into my persnickety personality and strategic perspective?Inquire about 1:1 advising with me here. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠

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