This has been a mental barrier for me as well. I’m not sure if it’s in the realm of belief or rather fear of failure. Personally more inclined to say it’s the latter.
- What it actually means to fail
- That failure is inherently bad
- What will happen next after failure occurs
- What it says about me when fail
- What others will think about me when I fail
- That I can’t recover from failure
etc.
If you grow up hearing that failure is bad/wrong/implies something about you as a person, it might never occur to you that another framing is that life is a series of experiments, and failure can be one of the best ways to zero in on success (in some cases, this may be the only possible way).
As far as I can tell, it’s beliefs all the way down, and adjusting certain beliefs can fundamentally transform experience relative to all downstream implications of that belief.
It sucks, but creatively speaking, I think it's better to knock out a few failures early than to enjoy success for awhile and fail later.