When I tried my go at doing my own startup with a colleague, I found it incredibly stressful. But a lot of that stress was due to me finding it difficult to prioritize the right things to do, difficulty motivating myself to do the parts I didn't enjoy, and just overall procrastination.

To be honest, I know everyone wants to have a "growth mindset", i.e. the belief that if you're not good at something that you can diligently "face your fears" and overcome it, but at least for me I've come to the conclusion that I'm just constitutionally not cut out to be an entrepreneur. I don't know if it's my genes or my early upbringing or what, but I've tried all the motivation/self-direction/anti-procrastination tricks in the book, and it just doesn't work for me. There was definitely a sense of loss when I came to that conclusion, but I've found that I'm able to thrive when I have an environment with more structure.

Interesting. Can you share more about your startup adventures? How long do you usually stay and what kinds of teams do you prefer? I had my own stint working at a startup, but having too little skill/experience + the startup chaos made it way too stressful, but looking back it was pretty interesting.

I do agree on your last point. Part willpower, part understanding what works best for each of us. Accepting that we might not be everything that we want to be is hard, but growth is discovering the paths that we can otherwise take.