If you don’t succeed should you give up or start over.  Giving up smacks of failure and so from a motivational perspective many would say try again (in essence, start over).

From a conscious logical analysis both approaches could be best depending on the cost benefit situation.  There is a time when giving up is best and a time when starting over, perhaps with a different approach,will bring the best results.

Emotional Baggage

Many of our decisions are strongly influenced by our unconscious thought processes.  In fact a number of behaviour studies have shown were we to focus exclusively on our conscious thinking decisions would often just not get made.

Our emotional bias together with our innate integrity and self-absorption will often form overriding influences preventing us from giving up.

From a pure logic perspective this can cause us to persevere beyond what a reasonable analysis  would dictate as appropriate.  Continuing when success is unlikely has little value but often we will do it anyway.

Keep Your Perspective

The impacts of failure can be amplified when you continued to strive against insurmountable obstacles with little hope of overcoming them.

Lack of success is not necessarily bad.  Treating the need for a positive outcome as an absolute necessity can lead to  damage to your psyche.

Some failures are inevitable and treating them as such, even embracing them, moving on and starting over can be without reservation is sometimes the only good option.