Failure Tolerance As a Magnetic Practice
an artifact of conceptual doorknobs
☉ FAILURE TOLERANCE AS A MAGNETIC PRACTICE ☉
A mystical expedition into the art of failing gloriously, cultivating creative resilience, and manifesting through deliberate rejection.
✷ Experiment Map Overview
In this experiment, we'll dance with discomfort and flirt with failure until it becomes our most intimate creative ally. The pitch? The key to getting almost everything you want lies in increasing your failure tolerance.
Together over the next six weeks, we'll transmute the energy of rejection into a magnetic force so powerful it could attract unicorn-rare successes, like an actually decent publishing deal or affordable rent in a walkable city. We’ll investigate how avoidance of failure becomes the very obstacle blocking our quantum leaps.
What if the feelings we're running from are actually portals to our most expansive self?
What if creative failure is less about dying and more about the kind of rebirth that makes Robert Downey Jr’s renaissance look basic?
Who taught us that perfection was ever the goal, and how do we gleefully subvert that programming?
By the end of this series, you may come to recognize rejection as a compass pointing toward your most authentic expression. And when you find yourself getting a "no," you might just celebrate it as confirmation you're finally playing big enough to trigger the fragile egos who couldn't serve even if they were drafted.
✷ Experiment Map Objectives
By the end of this series, experimenters will be able to:
Reframe failure from a death sentence into a deliberate practice of magnetic expansion
Identify and reprogram their failure aversion triggers through embodied awareness
Cultivate the paradoxical behavior of seeking rejection as a pathway to accelerated success (very "himbo confidence, academia brain" energy)
Build a sustainable practice of intentional failure that collapses timelines, supports anti-fragility, etc.
Develop personal energetic minimums that act as protective floors beneath their work, finances, relationships, self-concept
Transform their relationship to sales, visibility, and creative risk-taking through failure tolerance (slay the capitalism game without becoming its victim… when capitalism senses fear it bucks the rider, but not you!)
✷ Weekly Portals
This experiment unfolds across six transformative weeks. Each module builds upon the previous, creating a spiral curriculum of deepening practice around failure tolerance. Here's what's ahead:
Week 1: ORIENTATION & INSPIRATION
Experiment Map Overview
TH+ Found Objects in The Psychic Field: Failure Tolerance Edition
CONCEPTUAL DOORKNOBS:
Simone Biles returning to gymnastics after the "twisties"
The Truman Show (1998) as a metaphor for breaking through prescribed limitations (Jim Carrey walked so Bo Burnham could run)
Philippe Petit's tightrope walking between buildings as deliberate risk-taking
Octavia Butler's journal affirmations and rejections
Yayoi Kusama's obsessive art practice after institutional rejection
The concept of transformation through failure in creative practice
Week 2: FOUNDATIONS OF FAILURE TOLERANCE
Failure tolerance vs. failure aversion, and what it has to do with contagious magnetic energy
Embodied Experiences of Failure: Conversations with the Nervous System
CONCEPTUAL DOORKNOBS:
Bayles, David & Orland, Ted. Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking
David, Susan. Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life
Feldenkrais, Moishe. Body & Mature Behavior: A Study of Anxiety, Sex, Gravitation, & Learning
"The Body Keeps the Score" with Bessel van der Kolk, On Being podcast
Arrien, Angeles. "The Four-Fold Way" (Excerpt on honoring what is true)
"Radical Honesty." The School of Life YouTube Channel
"How to Process Your Emotions." Therapy in a Nutshell, YouTube
"Embodied Creativity" guided movement practice by Anna Halprin
Week 3: SPOTLIGHT RESOURCE & PRACTICAL APPLICATION
Portals: The Tarot's Fool card as divine beginning through "falling"
Case Study: Failure Tolerance in Spiritual Creative Practice
CONCEPTUAL DOORKNOBS:
The Tarot's Fool card as divine beginning through "falling" (0 is the hero, actually)
Solnit, Rebecca. "A Field Guide to Getting Lost" on the creative value of uncertainty
"The Art Assignment" PBS Digital Series episodes
“Trapped in their own story” episode of Where Should We Begin? podcast with Esther Perel
Seth Godin's "The Dip" (on strategic quitting vs. perseverance)
"Truth-Telling as Spiritual Practice." Ram Dass Lecture (Audio) (the original trip advisor)
Week 4: RESOURCE ANALYSIS & RITUAL CRAFTING
A Rejection Collection Spell: Transmuting "No" into Alchemical Gold
if you're not putting yourself out there, are you really "open to receiving"?
CONCEPTUAL DOORKNOBS:
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. "Compensation" essay from Essays: First Series
de Botton, Alain. "On Self-Respect" chapter from Status Anxiety
"The Paradox of Failure." TED Talk by Astro Teller
Doctor Strange (2016) for visualization of quantum leaping through failure
"The Sacred Art of Receiving" from The Tao of Abundance
Oracle cards: The Wild Unknown Archetypes Deck and Guidebook by Kim Krans
Week 5: CASE STUDY & COMPREHENSIVE COURSE
Case Study: The Pratfall Effect, or why we love imperfect people
Audio Course: The Sacred Sale — Failing Upwards
CONCEPTUAL DOORKNOBS:
The Pratfall Effect - Psychological principle showing that occasional failures make highly competent people more likable and relatable
The psychology of rejection in sales conversations
Ruiz's The Four Agreements applied to sales conversations
The relationship between pricing and rejection tolerance
Interpreting "no" as valuable feedback rather than personal rejection
Energetic preparation for sales conversations
Script frameworks that honor both rejection and acceptance
Post-rejection integration practices
Building your rejection resilience muscle
Week 6: EXPERIMENTAL CHALLENGE & COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
5-Day Failure Tolerance Challenge
Q+A for Subscribers
✷ Conceptual Doorknobs and Supporting Resources
While our experiment provides a comprehensive pathway through failure tolerance, these additional materials can deepen your exploration. As they say in alchemy, One door opens the next.
(We 🤍 libraries. May we kindly suggest using the Libby app for all your resource needs? Its free, and you can get a virtual library card in about 30 seconds right through the app! You’ll also get access to Kanopy, which has tons of wonderful films that you can also watch for free 😇)
✧ Books:
Arrien, Angeles. The Four-Fold Way. HarperOne, 1993.
Bayles, David & Orland, Ted. Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking. Image Continuum Press, 2001.
Boldt, Laurence G. The Tao of Abundance. Penguin, 1999.
Camus, Albert. "The Myth of Sisyphus" essay. Vintage, 1942.
David, Susan. Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life. Avery, 2016.
de Botton, Alain. Status Anxiety. Vintage, 2005.
Diaz, Eva. The Experimenters: Chance and Design at Black Mountain College. The University of Chicago Press, 2014.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. "Compensation" essay from Essays: First Series, 1841. (The original manifestation guide, no crystals required)
Gilbert, Elizabeth. Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear. Riverhead Books, 2015. (Basic but in the best way, basic as a straight up compliment)
Jiang, Jia. Rejection Proof: How I Beat Fear and Became Invincible Through 100 Days of Rejection. Harmony, 2015. (Rejection as extreme sport)
Jung, Carl. The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Princeton University Press, 1981.
Pritchett, Price. You2: A High Velocity Formula for Multiplying Your Personal Effectiveness in Quantum Leaps. Pritchett LP, 2012.
Ruiz, Don Miguel. The Four Agreements. Amber-Allen Publishing, 1997.
Solnit, Rebecca. A Field Guide to Getting Lost. Penguin, 2006. (The original "soft girl aesthetic”)
✧ Films & Documentaries:
Julie & Julia. Directed by Nora Ephron, Columbia Pictures, 2009. (Before there were influencers, there was Julie Powell cooking her way through failure. RIP, queen.)
Center Stage. Directed by Nicholas Hytner, Columbia Pictures, 2000. (millennials’ first introduction to failure tolerance and rejection as protection!!!!)
Arrival. Directed by Denis Villeneuve, Paramount Pictures, 2016.
The Truman Show. Directed by Peter Weir, Paramount Pictures, 1998.
Doctor Strange. Directed by Scott Derrickson, Marvel Studios, 2016.
Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present. Directed by Matthew Akers, HBO Documentary, 2012.
The Creative Brain. Netflix documentary on neuroplasticity and creativity, 2019. (Science making creativity digestible for left-brain party people)
"Tightrope walking between buildings." Recorded performance by Philippe Petit.
✧ TV Shows:
Girls. Created by Lena Dunham, HBO, 2012-2017. (Problematic fave serving failure tolerance through privileged chaos)
✧ Podcasts & Audio:
"The Body Keeps the Score" with Bessel van der Kolk, On Being podcast with Krista Tippett
"Creative Failure" episode of On Being podcast with Lynda Barry
"Truth-Telling as Spiritual Practice." Ram Dass Lecture (Audio)
"Working with Paradox as a Spiritual Practice." Audio lecture by Richard Rohr
"Rejection Sensitivity" episode of Where Should We Begin? podcast with Esther Perel
"The Paradox of Failure." TED Talk by Astro Teller (Head of X, formerly Google X, v smart person)
✧ Videos & Online Resources:
"Radical Honesty." The School of Life YouTube Channel, 2018.
"How to Process Your Emotions." Therapy in a Nutshell, YouTube, 2020.
"Embodied Creativity" guided movement practice by Anna Halprin (Video)
"The Art Assignment" PBS Digital Series episodes on "Failure" and "Bad Art"
✧ Spiritual & Esoteric:
Oracle cards: The Wild Unknown Archetypes Deck and Guidebook by Kim Krans
The Tarot's Fool card (numbered 0) - symbolizing divine beginning through "falling"
The Tower card - representing necessary destruction before rebuilding
The I Ching's hexagram #24: Return (Fu) - on the return of light after darkness
Kintsugi - Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold, symbolizing beauty in imperfection
Thank you! Excited for this 🕊️