Don't Take It Personally

In The Struggle, everything that goes wrong feels like a verdict on you. Horowitz's counter is precise: the predicament is probably your fault, since you hired the people and made the decisions, and everybody makes mistakes. But every company makes lots of mistakes. The mistake isn't the thing that finishes you.

The trap has two doors. Take the failures too personally and you carry them so heavily you freeze, afraid to make the next decision. Take them too lightly and you don't learn, and you repeat them. Neither founder survives long.

The move is to hold both: own the mistake completely, extract the lesson, and refuse to convert it into a judgment of your worth. Evaluate the lessons, not yourself. You need your confidence intact for the next decision, and the next one is always coming.