| This is a great comment. I have been in the OP's position. In fact, I technically kind of am in the OP's position (again) right now. Personally (and forgive my language), when I look into what lead to the situation and what could have been done differently, my perspective on what happened changes as time goes on. For me, stage one is "I'm a fucking failure whose head is so completely full of shit that I could make a fortune selling manure". Stage one is great fun because it is when I look at every single choice that I made and find the negative in it. This stage is completely irrational and is likely a symptom of mental illness. My brain usually just lies to me during stage one, so I usually prefer to get the most mindless job imaginable (delivering pizza is amazing) and spend my days listening to vinyl, reading books and lifting weights. I am in my late 30s, so this is a little too close to the plot of American Beauty for even my comfort, but so it goes. Stage two is where the real growth starts. It is the "I'm a fucking failure because" stage. My startup post-mortems tend to come out of this stage - they are a point where I begin to focus on the particular choices that killed off my startup. All of the noise and ambiguity of stage one is gone, the emotional pain is still there, but it has been dulled by the knowledge that nobody can screw up 100% of the time. Stage three is the "I learned..." stage and is the place where I feel ready to (as you eloquently say) rise 'above the median'. This is the stage where I realize that I actually did something...it didn't work out, but most crazy ventures fail. I did something, I earned my skin, and nobody can ever take that away from me. Strangely, in stage three, I usually laugh at how naive my startup post-mortem was. The OP likely can't stop analyzing what went wrong, but at this point, it is just as likely that his/her brain isn't telling him/her the truth. This sounds like his/her first business and, I know that this is hard to believe, but it will get better. This feeling of failure will turn into a profound learning experience that will propel him/her above the median. Once again though, excellent comment and huge respect for focusing on the positive!! |