The process of learning a math concept is often a step-like function. Unlike in other subjects, it can be hard to learn math concepts in small useful steps, and when it comes time to solve a problem, it's hard to fool oneself into believing that one understands a concept when one doesn't.
People often hate ego-damaging objective evaluations of their performance, and math is full of them. Learning math is, almost by necessity, a humbling experience (it's always possible to come up with more difficult math questions).
So a first step to the successful teaching of math is to teach patience, persistence, humility, a sense of what it "feels like" to learn a difficult concept, and a certain comfort with not-yet-understanding.
Exactly, this is why math draws in people who thrive in the face of intellectual challenge. People who's first reaction to a difficult problem is to spend hours dissecting it to understand how it works and find a solution are the ones that tend to like math. People who react by getting frustrated, dread going to math class and spend their lives trying to avoid it.
Per others' comments: adopting a "game" frame of mind can be a useful way of adopting the patience (etc.) required for learning math (and, indeed, accomplishing any number of difficult tasks).
People often hate ego-damaging objective evaluations of their performance, and math is full of them. Learning math is, almost by necessity, a humbling experience (it's always possible to come up with more difficult math questions).
So a first step to the successful teaching of math is to teach patience, persistence, humility, a sense of what it "feels like" to learn a difficult concept, and a certain comfort with not-yet-understanding.