[paulz_]

One thing that helped was acknowledging in my own mind that the worst could happen. I could fail completely. I could burn through all my money. I could let everyone down. I could embarrass myself. Whatever the worst was, I considered that could happen. Frankly it's likely to happen. Startups are hard as hell.

Then I considered I could just go back to working a normal job. Pays well, I get all my social status back. All these icky feelings go away. And I genuinely considered this. There is nothing wrong with that life. I loved those jobs!

What I found though, was that even in the face of all that risk it seemed a lot more interesting to try to do my own project.

But with those considerations I approached it a lot different. The daily risks feel like the activity more than whatever this may or may not look like in 10 years. I think this is better for the company too because it's possible to constrain yourself if you're convinced you already know what the end is like. Better to follow your own curiosity.

That's the theory anyway. Again, this is advice coming from someone who feels extremely unqualified to give it haha.

There is also a book by Carrol Dweck called 'Mindset' that speaks pretty directly to what you're asking about. You can get a pretty good idea of the concepts by googling fixed mindset vs growth mindset. The book itself has a couple slow parts but is pretty good overall.

[tasteful_rogue]

Awesome, kind of like the "negative visualization" practices the Stoics recommended, haha.

I feel like this would be a good approach for me to work on my aversion to failure.