[swframe]

Look for your "catch 22". Sometimes the approach you want to use can never win and you've been ignoring that flaw. For example, you were building solutions to problems that customers didn't accept, trust or want.

Reanalyze your failures looking for a common cause. Maybe you didn't get customers soon enough or spent too much time perfecting features that customers didn't value. Maybe you were too early or late to the market.

Try a new prespective. Maybe you shouldn't code as much as you have. Maybe you should focus on marketing or sales.

Redefine success. You shouldn't think that building a business is the only thing that will make you successful. Think in terms of layers of success. There are layers for friendship, marriage, children, health, career, etc. Not all layers will be the best but there is a gestalt.

You need to amortize your happiness over your work life time. You have to work in a way that makes you happy as you go so if your work isn't successful, at least you had fun. For example, you can work in interesting places anywhere in the world. Or you can work on an interesting vertical (e.g. special effects for movies). Or you can work with interesting people, etc.