The Twelfth House

a theory from the 1970s on how to turn a bad idea into a good idea (and a good idea into a great one)

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thetwelfthhouse.substack.comThere’s a 1971 academic article that I’ve been thinking about a LOT lately. It’s called “That’s Interesting!” It’s by a sociologist named Murray Davis, and it is technically about how to develop academic theories that people actually give a s**t about — ideas that are not just important, but are also interesting. I read it as part of my PhD research, but while I was I kept thinking: this is copywriting. This is pitching. This is why some content makes you stop scrolling and some doesn’t. This is MARKETING, B***H. This is how to stress-test any idea for sticky-ness. This is how to come up with ideas that make you a thought leader.Davis’s central argument is that a theory becomes important not because it’s true, but because it’s interesting. Truth has almost nothing to do with influence. (See: the entire internet.) What makes an idea sticky is that it disturbs something the audience already assumed. It catches them mid-expectation and redirects them somewhere they didn’t see coming.Quick aside for holographic repatterning healer rec:

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building an altar to almost anything will expand your surface area for experiencing synchronicities

Jan 3100:52:47Tap to summarize

📚 Resources and Links:* Sign up for the North Node waitlist here* Inquire about 1:1 work with Michelle here* Holisticism Resources 4 u:* Ruthless Clarity — an 8-week email course designed to help you achieve crystal-clear certainty about your goals, desires, and energy allocation* How to Begin: A Project Planning Class — a 90-m on-demand class that teaches you exactly how to sketch a effervescent project plan that’ll fill you with glee and inspiration and instantly banish procrastination and overwhelm, so your brilliant ideas can finally come to life.* The Subconscious Audit — an 11-day diagnostic framework that helps you identify what’s holding you back and making you *feel* blocked. Because you’re never actually blocked* The New Age Playbook for Spellbinding, Can’t-Stop-Reading Copy — a 35-page downloadable workbook to take your writing from blah to bingeableTo be blunt and unpoetic about it, a way to increase your surface area for synchronicities is to just start noticing things.In the Feldenkrais Method we talk a lot about habituation and differentiation. The whole point of a Feldenkrais class can be boiled down to this: I’m trying to bring your attention to your habitual way of being, moving, and thinking by introducing some type of novelty into your experience; the novelty helps you notice the things you’ve grown accustomed to which have been “invisibilized” in your life.By bringing your new awareness online, you give yourself options for responding to the world differently. You illuminate choices. You create doorways where there were once walls.And that’s the whole crux of synchronicity practice — we’re trying to create more opportunities for synchronicity to show itself.Archetype practice can do this, sure. But today I want to talk about an even more obvious option for inviting a different reality into being — altar work.What’s an altar? An altar is a place made sacred.The word sacred comes from the late Middle English sacre, which means to ‘consecrate.’ An object or place that’s been consecrated has been set apart from the average and the ordinary to accomplish something specific. We might also describe these objects or places as holy.A sacred space is a place where wonder can be glimpsed. - Joseph CampbellWhen we focus our attention on building and tending to altars we transform a space from regular-degular — mundane, if you want to get fancy about it — to holy and magical. An IKEA BILLY bookshelf becomes a hallowed shrine. The top of your ancient apartment refrigerator turns into a reminder of the omnipresence of our ancestors. The dashboard of your somehow-still-kicking Honda Civic becomes “a sacred place,” as my obsessed toddler has taken to saying. (Shoutout to the Moana writers for introducing that banger to our home, it’s familial canon now)The spaces we might take for granted because we’ve become habituated to thinking of them in a certain way are called into new light. We can see things differently … And if we begin to see one thing differently, maaaaaybe JUUUUUUSST MAYBE we can open up to the possibility of seeing many things differently.How you use your altar depends entirely on your cultural and spiritual beliefs and practices. But altar practice itself? Universelle. We find evidence of altars and shrines going waaaaaaay back to the Paleolithic era. Permanent sacred spaces tucked into narrow caves and carved into stone underhangs. ‘Mobile’ altars that could be taken on-the-go by migratory peoples. People have been doing this s**t forever.I think that altar creation is hardwired into our DNA, even if that’s not how we necessarily clock it these days. Is a thoughtfully designed tablescape for a dinner party not an altar to kinkeeping? Is an organized, dedicated crafting corner not a shrine to creativity? Is a well-tended back garden not a cathedral of nature?All I’m saying, really, is that making an altar doesn’t have to be this buttoned up ceremonial, Wicca-adjacent act full of vermillion red candles and money bowls and scrying mirrors and the menstrual blood collected during the Full Moon (Although… I do love the drama, as a Scorpio Moon tosses hair) You already know how to make an altar, but maybe do it with a little more oomph and awareness, you know?There are many ways to make an altar, and usually we make them in devotion to something — a deity, a loved one, an intention. Practices vary dramatically. If you have the privilege of knowing your ancestral origins, studying those traditions is always where I’d point you first for more specific guidance.But for our purposes, I suggest starting with a small altar (or refreshing your usual altar) organized for Winter.A Winter’s Altar May I go goth for a sec? When I pull the Death card, my mind goes straight to Winter. (People with 13s in their Matrix of Destiny chart — eyes on me! Eyes on me! This applies to you!) The Death card isn’t a harbinger of doom, more a reminder of the cyclical nature of all things in the universe.Eventually, everything ends! (positive)Eventually, everything ends. (foreboding)The Spectre of Death tills a fallow field — there is no life here, yet. Because it’s winter! The field needs time to rest in order to bloom in the spring. All things in their proper timing.It’s not incredibly groundbreaking to be like, “Oh, winter, rest, yeah?” And to me, that’s actually not what this card or season tells us. Death still works the field in the winter, he ain’t vacaying. This is the time for working in the dark — at inky pre-dawn and late afternoons blanketed in shadow — deliberately and devotionally. Winter air is crisp and clear — Death’s line of vision to the horizon is unobscured. You can see in the dark, eventually, because your eyes adjust if you sit still in it for long enough. The opportunity to bloom in spring is created in the winter.How to assemble (resist the urge to overconsume, I beg!)Circling back to the point of all this — the purpose of altar building is to bring the sacred into the mundane. To get started, we’ll need a few elements:A place to put your altarDoesn’t have to be big or impressive, a window sill or a corner of a bookshelf or a side table in your entry will do just fine (you can also build a traveling shrine to take on-the-go, in which case you’ll need an implement for transport, like an altar cloth or a cigar box)An intention Yes, we’re hoping to increase our surface area for synchronicity… but why? What are you hoping the outcome will be for you, when the field around you gives you little nudges of acknowledgement? Health, happiness, healing, spiritual growth, gratitude, love, self-knowing, peace, strength, clarity, intuition, wealth, work opportunities, community, friendship, confidence, direction? I get a sense that most of us here are looking for confirmation of being on the path to something purposeful and living a life that is personally meaningful while contributing to the collective. But pick your thing! A theme, even a capaciously broad one, is important.Cleansing materialsLiteral cleaning supplies (I am currently obsessed with this stuff?), but also ceremonial cleansing tools like salt, incense, smoke, selenite, a bell… all can work, depends on your preference and your practice. I’m partial to copal resin and this incense.Symbolic and sympathetic totems Dealers choice, here. There’s really no need to buy anything new, if you don’t want to. Use what you can find in your house, on a walk, etc. Drawing on your intention, meditate on what symbols could represent your focus. Flowers, stones and minerals, saints, dieties, tarot cards, colors, herbs, essential oils — all have culturally associated meanings that you can draw upon to echo your intention. In my opinion, using items that you have personal associations with — a golf tee that reminds you of your grandfather’s love, or gardenias that feel like home because they remind you of your mom — as opposed to meanings that you look up in a book but don’t necessarily feel called to are always going to make a more sagrado space, IYKWIM.Other items you might want to add to your altar:* photos of loved ones or beloved/sacred places* a candle* coins or cash* coffee, wine, rum — common in certain cultural practices* elemental additions for water, earth, fire, wind* a letter with your intentions written on it* sigils you’ve designed* spells you’re working* protective materialsThe main thing for us is to practice seeing things differently. So if you were asking for my advice (not saying you are, but… you’ve read like 600 words on this so we’re kind of at that point in the story, right? Not too presumptuous of me to go there?), I would encourage you to set up your alta...

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how to see signs, increase the frequency of synchronistic experiences, and use tarot as a sign-cipher

Jan 900:54:03Tap to summarize

📚 Resources and Links:* Sign up for the North Node waitlist here* Inquire about 1:1 work with Michelle here* Holisticism Resources 4 u:* Ruthless Clarity — an 8-week email course designed to help you achieve crystal-clear certainty about your goals, desires, and energy allocation* How to Begin: A Project Planning Class — a 90-m on-demand class that teaches you exactly how to sketch a effervescent project plan that’ll fill you with glee and inspiration and instantly banish procrastination and overwhelm, so your brilliant ideas can finally come to life.* The Subconscious Audit — an 11-day diagnostic framework that helps you identify what’s holding you back and making you *feel* blocked. Because you’re never actually blocked* The New Age Playbook for Spellbinding, Can’t-Stop-Reading Copy — a 35-page downloadable workbook to take your writing from blah to bingeableThe first rule for creating the conditions for a most magical year is that you gotta look alive.Expanding your surface area for luck and magic is not a passive inheritance; it’s co-creative. You gotta but your big boy pants on and be accountable for your part in all this, while also keeping your ego in check and surrendering to the group project vibes of this whole endeavor. Operate in the faith that if you do your part with as much integrity as possible, your creative partner (god, source, universe, benevolent aliens, ancestors, unicorn spirit guides, whatever your belief is) will act that way, too. As above, so below, right?When I say look alive I’m being ridiculously literal. Use your eyeballs. Look and see.What are you looking for? Well, signs, of course.Are you looking or are you seeing (obnoxious but important!) As I was thinking about this episode, my list for why looking for signs is a high-leverage practice kept expanding. Sign-finding is one of those low-effort, high-return activities because its a non-boring way to practice paying attention.Like, you could meditate in silence for 20 minutes. Or, you could pretend you’re living in a life-sized version of an I Spy book … either way, you’re going to slow waaaaay down (clues are hard to spot when you’re sprinting through life). Slowing down forces you to clock what’s coming up, like:* sensations in your body,* thoughts, ideas, patterns in your mind* information in your physical environment that you might usually take for grantedNow, noticing “the signs” is sort of a daunting task. I’m getting overwhelm-schwitzy just thinking about it. Everything is a sign if you’re looking for signs, which seems like the worst version of confirmation bias and perhaps something that can send you into light levels of spiritual psychosis.We don’t want that. Which is why we’re turning to tarot and archetypes today to be our guides.Why this works no matter if you’re too “advanced” for tarot or if you’re a newborn baby when it comes to tarocchi You might be reading this like, Really, tarot? Doesn’t that feel a bit… remedial? Give us something COOL and ADVANCED! Something tricky!OK, yeah, I hear you. You might be o-v-e-r tarot, which is your right! (Maybe check out Zener cards, if you feel you’ve ascended beyond the humble tarot deck)But if you’ve graduated onto more esoteric methods like, say, black mirror scrying, I actually think this is the perfect time to blow the dust of ye olde tarot deck and look at the cards and their symbols with fresh eyes.And if you’ve yet to crack the spine on the Tarot for Dummies book that’s been camped on bedside table for the last seven months, great! You’re in the right place, too.Tarot is an incredible tool for accessing the unconscious mind because it is non-linguistic. Language is a somewhat modern technology. Cormac McCarthy explains it better than I can, but humans had thoughts and ideas for thousands of years before language developed. We can assume, then, that language developed as a cognitive extension — a way to translate our thoughts outside of our selves. We should assume that this translation, like most translations, will never be a perfect representation of our internal ideas. And while we might have an internal dialogue that involves language, this is a learned way of thinking. Basically, ur brain thinks in images first, then translates those images to words so you can talk about them with your pals.The unconscious mind is the most ancient part of you. It operates in visuals, patterns, symbols, and comes alive when surrounded by the imaginal.Tarot as a sign-cipher Tarot is mostly non-linguistic. It’s all symbols and colors and images, baby! So it’s a perfect tool for waking up your ancient inner awareness.I love tarot as a sign-cipher for a few more reasons:* At this point, it’s pretty accessible! You can get a tarot deck at CVS (lol), you can download a tarot app, you can probably borrow a deck from the barista at your local coffee shop. Barrier to entry is low.* Tarot is easy for habit building. Pull one card a day… that’s it. No need to do a 39-card spread. Start simple and work up to complexity later, if you want.* You already understand the symbols in the tarot. You don’t need a guidebook. Trust me! If you’ve seen a movie, read a book, admired a painting at any point in your life, you know enough to be able to reasonable interpret the card in front of you.* Whether you believe an invisible hand of fate is guiding you to your cards or the cards are simply a psychoanalytical tool doesn’t really matter. This practice of finding symbols and signs is pretty agnostic.For our purposes, tarot gives us a place to start. You’re looking for winks from the Universe that you’re on the right path — the tarot can help us identify the beginning of the breadcrumb trail so we’re not frantically chasing down every semblance of a path that we see. It helps us figure out what we’re looking for by presenting us with a smaller “database” (I guess that’s the right word?) of signs and symbols to consider.From there, we can laser in on what’s significant.“The true symbol should be understood as an intuitive idea that cannot yet be formulated in any other or better way.” — C. G. JungThe Rider-Waite-Smith deck is probably the most well-known tarot deck, but all decks — even the most austere — have some symbology to them. We use the symbols in the cards in front of us as a jumping off point to determining signs, symbols, and archetypes that are personally meaningful… and that’s what you look for out in the big, bold world.I’m going to encourage you to shake off the idea that there is a “right” definition or association with a card or symbol you see. Trust yourself. Suspend “logic” for a second. Don’t worry about getting it right.My recommendation is that you pull a card every day. You might not resonate with anything on the card in front of you — that’s fine! Just the practice of paying attention will do you so much good.That said, you might not vibe with the card imagery but keep an eye out for where the card is mirrored in your world as you go about your day. Did you pull a Page of Swords in the morning, only to hand over your keys to a teenage valet driver later that night? Did you pull the Moon, then see a scorpion tattoo on your guitar teacher’s wrist? Those are winks, homie.HOW TO PRACTICE SEEING THE SIGNSPull a cardDon’t try to understand the “message.” Treat this like a work of art — notice what speaks to you. Is there a color you’re drawn to? An image? A symbol? A shape? What are you drawn to? What are you repelled by?How does it make you feel?As you go through each element you’re drawn to, consider how it makes you feel. Scared, excited, calm, nostalgic, anxious, silly…?What associations do you have with what you see?Themes? Patterns? A memory of your aunt crying when your cousin got a butterfly tattoo on her 16-year-old hip in 1996?Now, you have the option for more research…“Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.” —Zora Neale HurstonIf you’d like, continue to saunter towards a research rabbit hole with the symbols that feel most resonant to you. I’d encourage you here not to look up what the sign is “supposed” to mean, but instead research almost anything else about it — its origins, where it shows up in literature or paintings, its significance in different cultures, yada yada.And that’s pretty much it — simple, right? We’re not trying to read the cards. We’re just using them as a tool to practice symbology. I recommend trying to pull a card every day and going through this investigative process with yourself. If you do, I can practically guarantee that your life will ...

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so you've accidentally cursed yourself

Dec 500:50:19Tap to summarize

📚 Resources and Links:* Sign up for the North Node waitlist here* Inquire about 1:1 work with Michelle here* Holisticism Resources 4 u:* Ruthless Clarity — an 8-week email course designed to help you achieve crystal-clear certainty about your goals, desires, and energy allocation* How to Begin: A Project Planning Class — a 90-m on-demand class that teaches you exactly how to sketch a effervescent project plan that’ll fill you with glee and inspiration and instantly banish procrastination and overwhelm, so your brilliant ideas can finally come to life.* The Subconscious Audit — an 11-day diagnostic framework that helps you identify what’s holding you back and making you *feel* blocked. Because you’re never actually blocked* The New Age Playbook for Spellbinding, Can’t-Stop-Reading Copy — a 35-page downloadable workbook to take your writing from blah to bingeableI know, I knooooooow. You didn’t mean to! Yet here we are, and somehow every time you put a quarter into the metaphorical vending machine of life expecting a gumball, you get served up a turd instead. Two quarters? Two turds. When it comes to a *certain* area of your life, it seems like it doesn’t matter if you try harder, sink more money into it, or spend more time on it — things just get more fucked worse. You read the title of this post and thought, “cursed myself? Yeah, that kind of checks out.” Today I want to (cheekily) help you reverse your self-curse. How to know if you’ve cursed yourselfClose your eyes. Be honest. What part of your life feels like it’s been cursed by a bridge troll? Where are you running up that hill only to slide back down even faster? Where are you investing $50 and somehow losing $60?That’s your curse zone, baby.(Important caveat: When I say “curse,” I’m talking about areas where you have agency and control.) Four Ways You Might Have Accidentally Played Yourself1. You’re performing vulnerability or authenticity with ulterior motives Are you sharing something deeply personal because you genuinely want to, or because you think it’ll perform well? Are you trauma-dumping for engagement? Are you trying to sanitize your shadow by talking about it before you’ve actually worked through it?Listen, I’m not saying you can’t be vulnerable. But if you’re using your emotional experiences as content strategy, that energy gets muddy. And muddy energy = gunky outcomes.2. You’re sharing from an open woundThere’s sharing from a scar (good), sharing from a scab (risky), and sharing from an open wound (you’re gonna bleed on people, and they don’t like that).When you share something that just happened — before you’ve had time to sit with it, make sense of it, or get any perspective — you get a pretty flat, superficial take. Premature sharing can actually keep you stuck in that painful place instead of moving through it. And yeah, that can definitely make you feel liked you’re been cursed. 3. You’re building in public with the wrong materials at the wrong time Building in public is great advice… sometimes! But if you’re sharing your nascent idea — the one that’s still so delicate a light breeze could knock it over — you’re building with materials that can’t withstand pressure yet. One strong exhale from the internet and your whole thing collapses.Wait until you have cement bricks. Or at least plywood. Your baby ideas need protection and nurturing, not a tomato-throwing audience.4. You’re being weird about change Two sides of the same cursed coin:* Option A: You changed dramatically overnight (from the audience’s perspective) because you were hiding your evolution the whole time. Now everyone’s confused and feels bamboozled.* Option B: You’re resisting change even though every fiber of your being wants to evolve, and that resistance is making you miserable.Both lead to the same outcome: things feeling cursed because you’re not being honest about your becoming.How to Reverse the CurseStep 1: CleanseSalt bath. Cleanse your space. Cleanse the specific area of your life that feels cursed. Step 2: Get Ruthlessly ClearWhat do you actually want? What do you not want? You need both to create a clear picture. “I want a delicious cheeseburger with no soggy lettuce and no tomatoes” is way more specific than “I don’t want soggy food.”Be honest about your motivations. Are you sharing because it feels right, or because you’re performing? Only you know.Step 3: Protect YourselfSpiritually, mentally, emotionally. Not all attention is good attention. Get strategic about who you want to see you and who you hope ignores you. Step 4: Strategic Silence ProtocolThe ultimate question: If you couldn’t share this with anyone, would you still want to do it?If yes → hell yeah, that’s intrinsic motivation, go for it.If no → good to know! Maybe the exciting part is the party at the end, not the actual thing.There’s an art to shutting the f**k up sometimes. Not everything is for everyone. Some ideas are too delicate to expose to other people’s opinions before you’ve spent real time with them.Write Your New SpellA spell is just: clear intention + gathered energy + actions that align with what you want.You can jump over a dictionary on the first day of school. You can whisper intentions into your morning coffee. You can make it up! It’s just like when you were a kid and decided that picking three flowers while spinning in a circle would make your crush like you back.That’s magic. You can still do that. You’re just old now.So: have you accidentally cursed yourself? And more importantly, what spell are you gonna cast to fix it?Drop it in the comments. I wanna know. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thetwelfthhouse.substack.com/subscribe

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self-surveillance is reducing your surface area for luck and magic

Nov 2600:38:59Tap to summarize

📚 Resources and Links:* Sign up for the North Node waitlist here* Inquire about 1:1 work with Michelle here* Holisticism Resources 4 u:* Ruthless Clarity — an 8-week email course designed to help you achieve crystal-clear certainty about your goals, desires, and energy allocation* How to Begin: A Project Planning Class — a 90-m on-demand class that teaches you exactly how to sketch a effervescent project plan that’ll fill you with glee and inspiration and instantly banish procrastination and overwhelm, so your brilliant ideas can finally come to life.* The Subconscious Audit — an 11-day diagnostic framework that helps you identify what’s holding you back and making you *feel* blocked. Because you’re never actually blocked* The New Age Playbook for Spellbinding, Can’t-Stop-Reading Copy — a 35-page downloadable workbook to take your writing from blah to bingeable Has the whimsy, magic, and sparkly intuition has been seemingly Dyson-vacuumed out of your existence? Do you feel trapped by your own identity or paralyzed by indecision? Have you noticed that it seems like the universe hasn’t winked at you in a while? (Rude!) Congrats — you played yourself. This one’s for you. Let’s talk about self-surveillance Self-surveillance is becoming the cop in your head. It’s that voice judging everything you do as you’re doing it. It’s the part of you watching yourself from outside your body, constantly monitoring how your actions look to other people. It’s censoring yourself before you speak, curating your identity online, and performing actions because they’d look good on Instagram rather than because you actually want to do them.And here’s the problem: you can’t create and judge simultaneously. When you’re self-surveilling, you’re stuck regurgitating old ideas instead of channeling something new. You’re closing yourself off from sensing, feeling, and intuiting. You’re reducing your surface area for luck and magic.Self-surveillance keeps you trapped in the realm of the known, using old materials to try and build something new. But magic lives in the unknowable! Synchronicity happens beyond the border of the comfortable! When you’re performing a human life instead of living one, you miss the glimmers of opportunity that are right there in your peripheral vision! So, basically, we need to cool it on the self-surveillance to invite intuition, magic, flow, synchronicity back into our lives. Listen to the full episode for practices on dropping the surveillance loop and letting your freak flag fly. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thetwelfthhouse.substack.com/subscribe

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12H+: how to do a lightest-lift-heaviest-reward launch before the end of the year

Nov 1400:08:15Tap to summarize

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thetwelfthhouse.substack.comHi! Welcome back to The Twelfth House+, our bi-monthly behind-the-paywall podcast episodes. Every month, I record two episodes — one BTS, “inside voice” convo, and one audio course to help you navigate living a creative, intuitive life with more ease, abundance, and wonder.In this episode, I dive into Colin Bedell’s recent video about the state of astrology and the problematic ways fear-mongering and rigid control dynamics have infiltrated spiritual spaces. Colin’s call for a “big reset” — one that centers sovereignty, nuance, and grace over black-and-white thinking — had me kicking my feet under my chair in abject GLEE. (I also love when his New Jersey affect popped out… it was truly perfect, absolutely no notes.)And and AND I extend his critique beyond astrology to the world that Holisticism inhabits — a smorgasborg of intuitive business advice, wellness/well-being frameworks, and creative work. If you haven’t watched Colin’s video yet, I highly recommend it. For my full thoughts (messy and unedited, for better or worse)… just press play on the episode.Now, let’s talk about something I do love: planning! If you’re thinking about launching an offer before the year ends (yes, there’s still time but we’re reaaaaally pushing it!), here’s your roadmap.

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writing a book in a week, self-publishing strategies, and feeling less bad about social media (!) with Amelia Hruby

Nov 900:55:51Tap to summarize

📚 Resources and Links:* Sign up for the North Node waitlist here* Inquire about 1:1 work with Michelle here* Holisticism Resources 4 u:* Ruthless Clarity — an 8-week email course designed to help you achieve crystal-clear certainty about your goals, desires, and energy allocation* How to Begin: A Project Planning Class — a 90-m on-demand class that teaches you exactly how to sketch a effervescent project plan that’ll fill you with glee and inspiration and instantly banish procrastination and overwhelm, so your brilliant ideas can finally come to life.* The Subconscious Audit — an 11-day diagnostic framework that helps you identify what’s holding you back and making you *feel* blocked. Because you’re never actually blocked* The New Age Playbook for Spellbinding, Can’t-Stop-Reading Copy — a 35-page downloadable workbook to take your writing from blah to bingeable I sat down with amelia hruby, phd of off the grid clubhouse / Softer Sounds / Thought of You talk about her new book Your Attention is Sacred Except on Social Media — and what resulted was one of those rare conversations where you literally feel #blessed for the opportunity to have even floated through it. (Amelia tends to have that effect.) Your Attention is Sacred Except on Social Media is a philosophical manifesto that refuses to accept the attention economy as inevitable. It’s not about 30-day internet detoxes or generic just-put-a-timer-on-your-social-media-time advice. It’s about reclaiming agency, understanding what algorithms actually are, and asking whether the tools we use can actually deliver on their promises.In today’s episode, we talk about how this book has been in the works for three years (but only took a week to write), why we should rethink the term “attention economy,” why business books are boring (sorrryyyyyyy they are! they are!!!! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ) and Amelia gives us the inside baseball on the process of moving from a traditional publishing contract to self-publishing this book to profitability. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thetwelfthhouse.substack.com/subscribe

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how to define the geography of your ideas (and spend way less time making things that perform waaaay better) with a Content World

Oct 2601:12:50Tap to summarize

📚 Resources and Links:* Sign up for the North Node waitlist here* Inquire about 1:1 work with Michelle here* Holisticism Resources 4 u:* Ruthless Clarity — an 8-week email course designed to help you achieve crystal-clear certainty about your goals, desires, and energy allocation* How to Begin: A Project Planning Class — a 90-m on-demand class that teaches you exactly how to sketch a effervescent project plan that’ll fill you with glee and inspiration and instantly banish procrastination and overwhelm, so your brilliant ideas can finally come to life.* The Subconscious Audit — an 11-day diagnostic framework that helps you identify what’s holding you back and making you *feel* blocked. Because you’re never actually blocked* The New Age Playbook for Spellbinding, Can’t-Stop-Reading Copy — a 35-page downloadable workbook to take your writing from blah to bingeableKP Pilley is baaaaaaaack! And we’re bringing you a mega-episode to talk about a concept that will free you from the tyranny of “content creation strategy”: content worlds. Not content strategies or content calendars or content audits — we’re talking about building a whole paradigm for how you show up online that doesn’t require you to be terminally logged in to seven different platforms while spiraling about whether your Instagram grid “makes sense.”KP — copywriter, strategist, professional pattern-recognizer, born digital child of the internet — breaks down why most of us are creating content for platforms instead of creating ideas and letting them live where they need to live. This episode is for anyone who’s ever felt exhausted trying to feed the insatiable algorithms on ever single platform that you supposedly “need” to be on to run a successful business / make a name for yourself / develop a personal brand. We get into why you don’t actually have to make content if it’s destroying your will to live, and how to figure out what that one strategy for YOU (because it’s different for everyone!) that gets you 80% of the results you’re looking for. Pareto Principle babes, this one’s for you. We also talk about why more is definitely not better, how your coffee shop flyer might be outperforming your entire social media presence, and what it means to stop performing strategy for an imaginary audience of LinkedIn judges and start doing the one thing that actually gets you clients. If you’ve been waiting for permission to quit the platforms that make you miserable, or if you’re trying to figure out where to focus when everyone’s telling you to be everywhere — this one’s for you.In this episode we talk about...Content worlds, not content platforms. Why you should build a geography of ideas that’s agnostic to where it lives, how to stop creating for Instagram and start creating with Instagram as one destination among many, and the surprisingly freeing realization that you don’t owe the internet anything.The 80/20 rule applied to marketing. How to identify your Desert Island strategy — the one thing you’d do if you could only do one thing.Permission to quit platforms that drain you. Why you don’t actually have to make content if it’s the bane of your existence (you just have to figure out another way to get clients), how to tell if you’re being strategic or just performing productivity, and why your coffee shop flyer might actually be your highest-converting marketing channel.The content constellation and nine-grid strategy. How to do a factory reset on your feed when you’re overwhelmed, why KP launched a “done for you” version after people struggled with execution, and what it means to build an editorial calendar based on your actual capacity—not what the gurus say you “should” be doing. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thetwelfthhouse.substack.com/subscribe

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how to write an about me page that's so good people will sign up for a 7 year waitlist just to work with you

Oct 1900:06:26Tap to summarize

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit thetwelfthhouse.substack.com📚 Resources and Links:* Sign up for the North Node waitlist here* Inquire about 1:1 work with Michelle here* Holisticism Resources 4 u:* Ruthless Clarity — an 8-week email course designed to help you achieve crystal-clear certainty about your goals, desires, and energy allocation* How to Begin: A Project Planning Class — a 90-m on-demand class that teaches you exactly how to sketch a effervescent project plan that’ll fill you with glee and inspiration and instantly banish procrastination and overwhelm, so your brilliant ideas can finally come to life.* The Subconscious Audit — an 11-day diagnostic framework that helps you identify what’s holding you back and making you *feel* blocked. Because you’re never actually blocked* The New Age Playbook for Spellbinding, Can’t-Stop-Reading Copy — a 35-page downloadable workbook to take your writing from blah to bingeableI’ve been on a “talking about writing” kick lately (see here and here).Since 2020 I’ve stood ten toes down on the claim that copywriting is one of those recession-proof skills that anyone should try to hone. Maybe now I should start saying copywriting is an AI “revolution”-proof skill — because even though you can definitely get an AI tool to do your copywriting for you, it will never ever ever be as good as what you could have made yourself if you understand the core tenets of copywriting.Good copywriting (and I’d argue great writing of any kind) requires deeply understanding and empathizing with the person you’re trying to talk to. And, yes, using a catchy turn of phrase or $5 words can make your writing sound better, but those fixes are just superficial if you’re not thinking through the underlying motives of your reader.I guess what I’m saying is AI can certainly tzuzh a piece of writing for you, but if you rely on AI alone to spit out your copy it will always take longer and it will almost always be worse that anything you could’ve written yourself.Which is why I’m back on my b******t talking about writing and emails and today, About Pages.I knowwwww. You’ve been meaning to update it. Or write it. Or maybe it exists somewhere in the digital ether as a 404 error, haunting your website like a specter.Here’s why this matters enough for me to dedicate an hour and a half — yes, you read that right, an hour and a half — to talking about it: Your about page is the second most visited page on your website. Right after your homepage, it’s where people go to figure out if they actually want to work with you, buy from you, or even keep paying attention to you.And most of us? We’re absolutely shitting the bed on it.We’re either serving up nothing at all, a painfully short paragraph that says essentially nothing, or — and this is the one that really gets me — a weird CV-LinkedIn hybrid that makes visitors feel like they’re reviewing resumes instead of connecting with a human being who might actually be able to help them.Your about page is primo real estate. It’s where you can differentiate yourself, build trust, create that “know, like, and trust” factor, and actually sell your work. But we’re treating it like an afterthought. Like the headline you write in thirty seconds after spending hours on an article. And that’s a problem.Today I’m going over part one — exactly what’s inside of an About page. Keep your eyes peeled for part two, where I’ll give you a template for creating your About page.Before we dive in, I want to mention that if you’re new to thinking about copywriting or you want to go deeper on a lot of the concepts I’m going to touch on here—like specificity, the rule of one, and the stages of awareness—you should absolutely check out our book, The New Age Playbook for Spellbinding, Can’t-Stop-Reading-Copy. It’s our digital book on copywriting and just generally writing better, and a lot of what I talk about in this episode is covered in much more detail there. Alright, let’s get into it.

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on flakiness, experimenting, and why your next project doesn't have to be the biggest bone in your skeleton with Taylor Morrison

Oct 1400:53:25Tap to summarize

📚 Resources and Links:* Sign up for the North Node waitlist here* Inquire about 1:1 work with Michelle here* Holisticism Resources 4 u:* Ruthless Clarity — an 8-week email course designed to help you achieve crystal-clear certainty about your goals, desires, and energy allocation* How to Begin: A Project Planning Class — a 90-m on-demand class that teaches you exactly how to sketch a effervescent project plan that'll fill you with glee and inspiration and instantly banish procrastination and overwhelm, so your brilliant ideas can finally come to life.* The Subconscious Audit — an 11-day diagnostic framework that helps you identify what's holding you back and making you *feel* blocked. Because you're never actually blocked* The New Age Playbook for Spellbinding, Can’t-Stop-Reading Copy — a 35-page downloadable workbook to take your writing from blah to bingeableLook, I’m not saying Taylor Elyse Morrison has figured it all out, but she did launch an entire coaching business in one week while actively avoiding her PhD coursework, which is either BIG galaxy brain energy or the most relatable form of procrastination I’ve ever witnessed. She’s out here juggling multiple businesses, consulting for Google, getting her doctorate, and casually dropping wisdom about portfolio careers while also seeming to have a lot of fun and make a lot of cool stuff. Which makes her the perfect person to talk to about embracing your multiplicity and experimenting in public. In this conversation, we talk about why so many of us are climbing career ladders only to realize we hate the view from the top, how to know if you’re being strategic or just performing for LinkedIn, and whether that thing you’re working on needs to be your magnum opus or if it can just be, like, a regular bone in the skeleton of your life’s work. We also get into the very real shame around being an experimenter, why consistency has been weaponized against creative people, and how to tell if you actually want the thing or just want to post about having the thing. If you’ve ever felt like you should want what you have but secretly dream about burning it all down and starting something new — or if you’ve been waiting to feel “expert enough” to do literally anything — this one’s for you.In this episode we talk about...Action as expertise-building. Why “building expertise through just action” actually works better than waiting until you feel qualified enough, and how Taylor Morrison went from procrastinating on a PhD project to launching an entire coaching offer in one week (spoiler: it involved a lot of specificity and zero permission-seeking).The shame of experimenting. What it really means when high achievers are terrified of looking “flaky,” why consistency has been weaponized against creative people with active minds, and how to tell the difference between running away from a challenge versus running toward something that actually lights you up.Portfolio careers and the “so what?” moment. Why climbing the hill only to hate the view is the defining career crisis of our generation, what happens when external validation stops working, and how to figure out if you actually want the thing or just want to post about having the thing.The minimum lovable product approach. How to launch something in a week instead of spending months perfecting it, why AI can help but specificity is what makes your work actually good, and the surprisingly liberating truth that not everything you create has to be “your big thing” — sometimes it’s just your femur in the skeleton of your body of work. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thetwelfthhouse.substack.com/subscribe

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on flakiness, experimenting, and why your next project doesn't have to be the biggest bone in your skeleton with Taylor Morrison