When we are infants, our close social circle enthusiastically encourages us to walk, through every failed attempt, until we walk (and then run) without thinking. As adults I think we generally don't curate a social circle that will give us this enthusiastic encouragement through failure and the burden falls on our self-esteem to summon it from within ourselves.
So two things:
1) For what it's worth, you're not alone. As someone who walks a similar path, I want to give you sincere encouragement to keep going!
2) To the degree that you've already done this, try to build a social circle around you of people who will can relate and enthusiastically encourage you through failure. There may be an international club you could join, a group of CEO friends you can pull together, or maybe you start a Meetup.com group. I don't know what will work for your specific circumstances, but something will.
Best of luck!
I haven’t given up because I believe in what we’re doing (most days) and I want to see if I’m capable of turning this thing around.
I appreciate this comment a lot. Thank you.