How many hustle or business ideas have you abandoned or mothballed?

Do you sometimes feel that no matter how many times you are inspired by a new idea, concept, project or opportunity, it never seems to work out the way you imagined? Most often, do you even know if it would have worked out, or did you give up before you got to the point where you find out? These grand designs of earning extra income inspire at the outset but do you end up disappointed?
There’s this glorious honeymoon phase during which you’re passionate about a project. You invest a lot of effort and a great deal of hope. Then, after some time, you start to run out of steam. Reality never seems to live up to your expectations (or hopes), there are unanticipated hurdles, unexpected complexity, unrealistic demands and unhelpful market conditions. You lose steam, begin to procrastinate. Eventually, you give up.
Soon, this project, like so many before it, is consigned to the graveyard of once-good ideas. A crowded place in your mind you prefer not to examine too closely because of all the wasted time and energy those failed ideas represent.
There are many reasons why these otherwise good projects so often fail. One of the most common is that while you’re dreaming it up, you fall into the imagination trap. A disconnect occurs between what you’re likely to achieve and how you picture it in your mind. The project gets better and better in your imagination, and reality can’t keep up. Once this happens, you become unconsciously reluctant to launch the project, because it’s psychologically painful to close that gap and let reality intrude on the dream. That could cause some serious cognitive dissonance. Better to keep the idea that it would be successful alive.
