Conviction and playing to win

I shut down a startup within a year and closed a position on a stock within a day. In retrospect, I folded earlier than I should have. 

Many high-reward business and life opportunities start as bleak, lonely, and hard but pay off over the long run. 

You don't have to play these games. You can fare well with low/mid-risk-reward opportunities. But if you do decide to play these games, you might as well play to win. Don't half-ass them! 

The only way to win is if you commit for a long time. You can only commit if you have (a) deep belief, passion, and rationale in the thesis, outcomes, project, and yourself, (b) staying power to sustain losses and bad case scenarios, and (c) emotional resilience to weather failures and naysayers

In my recent, prematurely ended ventures, I was missing more than one of these factors. 

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