There's a little more to this than just being willing to fail. With Go, I don't even know that I'm failing as I play.
Writing is a good example. Go feels like trying to learn to write with the instruction to place letters on the board one at a time, but I don't know any words or why there are these funny squiggly marks and dots next to some of the words, or why some of the letters are bigger than others, or why there are blank spaces between some of the groups of groups of letters.
And that isn't the point either, because I'm not afraid of learning to write by myself. The fear is a social fear.
The biggest problem I've found is that the feedback loop is too long if you play a whole game and then go back to discuss it (especially when playing in person without a record). It often works better to stop the game and talk about why a sequence of moves was particularly good or bad, and play out a few variations immediately. Depending on how well the student is doing, either continue the game from the original position or the best alternative.
That social fear is what keeps plenty of people from just jumping in and failing at plenty of other things. Of course there's more to success at a thing than willingness to fail. But out of fear, people sabotage the endeavor before it's begun. Fear that people won't like what I've made. Fear that what I've written isn't good enough. Fear that I won't be good enough compared to my perception of their expectations. Fear of making a mistake. Fear of rejection.
That's the thing. Of course some people won't like what you've done. Of course you'll make a mistake. Of course you'll get rejected. Being able to accept that will at least put you past the self-defeating stage. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.
Writing is a good example. Go feels like trying to learn to write with the instruction to place letters on the board one at a time, but I don't know any words or why there are these funny squiggly marks and dots next to some of the words, or why some of the letters are bigger than others, or why there are blank spaces between some of the groups of groups of letters.
And that isn't the point either, because I'm not afraid of learning to write by myself. The fear is a social fear.