I was wondering when writing/executing proposals/funded projects, how much confidence do you usually have that the proposed directions will work out?

A lot of grants require high risk high reward. That usually means if the proposed projects are something no one had done before, might not have preliminary data to support, and no guarantee it will work out smoothly.

There were times when I writing proposals, I felt tons of uncertainties and almost cannot comfortably sell those ideas out (while colleagues and mentors liked the idea). Or when I was really given the opportunity to execute the proposed experiment, I was like “Wait, are you sure? Even I don’t know if this one is going to work out!”

Of course experiments by nature means that if you don’t do it no one knows if it works or not. However the mental block of “did I miss something really fundamental when planning” feels so real. Anyone experienced this before? What might be some healthier mindsets to deal with this?