Below are some prompts and exercises to help your fear of trying again when it didn’t work out the first time.
Review
What are you afraid will happen if you try again? Is it failing again, being disappointed, wasting more time, looking foolish, getting your hopes up, or something else?
What feels different about trying again now that you’ve already been hurt or disappointed? What are you carrying into this attempt that you weren't carrying before?
What would you need to know, believe, or feel differently about yourself to be willing to take another shot?
What did the first attempt teach you that could make a second attempt different? What do you know now that you didn't know then?
If you never tried again, how would you feel about that a year from now? What would you be relieved about? What might you regret?
Practice
Borrowed Courage: think of someone who has failed publicly and tried again anyway. What would they tell you about taking another shot? Have they now succeeded?
Fail Again Fast: choose something you’re not very good at and go fail at it as publicly as possible. You survived the first failure, prove to yourself that you’re capable of another getting through another one.
Re-Open the Door: go back to the thing you walked away from. Spend 10 minutes looking at it again - the old notes, idea, application, sketch, plan, whatever remains. Don't fix anything. Just see how it feels to be near it again. Try to rediscover what ignited your initial spark.