James Dyson took over 5000 tries to “perfect” his Dyson vacuums before he saw traction. We can all be grateful he put that level of determination into his work or we’d still be emptying vacuum bags to this day.
We may be discouraged because of failures of the past but we also have to have a perspective that the future is unwritten. We don’t know what will happen. We have to be willing to give the door one more knock and see if it opens.
Give your project an attempt. Go ask them out. Sign-up for that race.
The hard part isn’t what happens on the other side of the door, it’s having the courage to turn the handle and live with the result that it may not open at all.
What we find out through failing is that we rarely remember the failure. We are proud that we tried.
Sadly, what we remember most often is not making the attempt at all.
That should be a much greater fear than failing; having to live with the feeling of not having enough courage to try in the first place.