I Almost Gave Up - Then I Gave Myself One More Chance

Hey, if you are reading this blog, I'm pretty sure I shared this in your DM or just dropped it on X.

Whatever the case is, it's important that you take a pen and paper or any note-taking app so that it will be easy for you to note down things or just points you learned.

lets start with this quote always remember:

If it was easy, anyone could have done it. ~ Mayank (The quote is originally by John Hawkins but slighly modified by me)

So I'm not pretty sure where to begin, let's start with my birth. I was born in January 2005.

PHASE 1 - Love relationship with mathematics

When I was 2 or 3 years old, I started going to school because I didn't want to. My mom taught me basic Hindi and math when I was 2 years old, so I skipped KV, LKG, or play school - I was directly admitted in 1st class. Fast forward to 3rd class, I joined coaching/tuition, but the teacher also used to teach me 5th class math while I was in 3rd class. But I somehow managed to learn that, and they used to have this test series where whoever solved the test first, the teacher used to give a gift. So as a result, I also started taking part in it and after a month or so, I won my first prize. And from there, it was the start of my competition with all those students in the coaching, and I crushed it - quite literally! I loved that phase and my love for math as well. I spent quite a few years in the same institute/coaching till 8th class.

Won more than 50 prizes, filled tons of copies with 95% marks, and that sharpened my ability of math solving quite fast, even i learned to solve math problems in my head too.

In school, I was also pretty good - I used to score 95% or above with pretty much no effort, tbh. Homework I used to compete in school itself, and I used to be free at home. My family used to say

"beta kuch padh lo, marks hi sab nhi hota"

(English translation: son, study something, marks is not everything).

PHASE 2 - Ugly Reality Of Life

After 8th class, some people suggested that I should move out of my village and go to a nearby town for better studies.

Left my friends behind
Left my comfort
Also, I was from a Hindi medium school with decent English grammar (not spoken).

I said YES to the offer and instead of moving out, I started travelling to Dwarahat every day for my studies, spending around 1.5 hours commuting each way. Everyone said I'll fail and they don't want to admit someone from a Hindi medium school, especially during boards - that was a big no-no.

I was sitting on the last bench and trying to avoid eye contact from everyone. The first day was quite tough. I was not even understanding a word that they were saying, neither teacher nor students. It was pretty depressing. I thought I'll not make it there.

But then the Maths lecture came, and to my surprise, I was pretty normal with it. It seemed hard, but I already knew what was going on - I was UNDERSTANDING every single thing somehow.

And I was like, "Wow, maybe I can do it."

I spent months and weeks learning English. Then there was a test after 2 weeks. I performed so poorly in every subject besides:

-Maths and Hindi

I failed in English, Science and Social Science - like, too bad.

I got 3 marks out of 40 in Science. I was that bad.

So I bought Hindi and English versions of the same NCERT book and studied from them. It was hard, not that much.

Then came Half-Yearly exams. I gave it my all, and the day arrived for the parent-teacher meeting. I was so scared that I might have failed, but to my surprise, I was the third highest scoring guy in boys.

My maths teacher used to teach me a lot of things in my hometown, and this one too. He suggested me some books to read, and he used to follow Sadhguru a lot.

Early on, it was boards time and COVID hit, but our exams were done. So in May, when school announced the result...

Drum roll

I was 5rd place in school with 81%! Imagine a guy who was failing in English tests and somehow got beyond expectations of everyone - even my family was expecting that I would just pass in exams.

PHASE 3 - The Two Years I Lost

When 11th standard started, COVID had completely changed everything. School was happening online, there was no proper routine, and slowly my focus on studies just disappeared.

I went from being someone who actually enjoyed learning to someone who didn't even care about studying anymore. During those two years, my attention shifted almost completely toward PUBG. What started as "just a game" slowly became a huge part of my daily life. I could spend hours playing without even realizing how much time had passed.

I wasn't thinking about my future. I wasn't thinking about JEE. I wasn't even thinking seriously about my 12th boards. Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, and somehow two entire years disappeared. Looking back, that's probably one of the biggest regrets of my school life.

I had the time. I had access to the internet. I had the ability to learn.

But I had zero direction.

COVID gave me an environment where nobody was physically forcing me to study, and instead of using that freedom properly, I completely lost my discipline. The scary part was that I didn't even realize it was happening. I kept thinking:

"I'll start tomorrow."

Tomorrow became next week. Next week became next month. And eventually, 11th and 12th were almost over.

By the time I realized that I had wasted so much time, I had to face reality: I had barely built any foundation for what was coming next. Still, that phase wasn't completely useless. It taught me something that I would understand much later:

Having time is not the same as knowing how to use it.

And more importantly, I learned that motivation is unreliable. If you don't have a system, discipline, or something that genuinely interests you, it's incredibly easy to spend months doing things that feel good in the moment but take you nowhere. Those two years passed without me realizing it.

And then I had to figure out what I actually wanted to do with my life.

PHASE 4 — College Life

My first year of college was probably one of the worst phases of my life. I entered college without really knowing what I wanted to do, and things started going downhill pretty quickly.

Academically, I completely messed up. Out of 9 subjects, I ended up with 7 backs. It was a massive shock because I had never imagined myself struggling this badly in academics. I started questioning whether I was even capable of doing anything. And then things got worse personally. I wasn't just dealing with academic failure anymore—I was dealing with personal loss, confusion, and a complete lack of direction at the same time. There were days when I didn't feel like doing anything. I stopped caring about studies, my future, or even what would happen next.

I was going through a really dark phase mentally, and I honestly didn't know how to get myself out of it.

Looking at my situation on paper was terrifying:

7/9 backs
Lost my confidence
No clear career direction
Completely demotivated

For the first time, I felt like I had genuinely fallen behind everyone else.

My daily routine:

Waking up at 9 AM, going to college
Coming back from college at 3 PM
Play PUBG

My attendance was barely above the minimum. My college friends thought I'd lost my mind. Things became even harder because of the people around me. I was staying with relatives at that time, and I started hearing constant taunts from them and from other people around me.

I was repeatedly told things like:

"Tere se kuch nahi hoga."

"Teri wajah se sab kharab hua hai."

"Tu hi in sab problems ka reason hai."

Hearing those things again and again slowly started getting into my head. When you're already struggling with your studies and personal life, being constantly reminded that you're the problem makes you question yourself even more. Eventually, I started believing some of it myself. Maybe they were right. Maybe I really couldn't do anything. And that's when I reached the point where I thought about leaving everything behind.

I had already convinced myself that I couldn't do it. By the end of my first year, I had reached a point where I genuinely wanted to give up. I remember thinking that maybe I should just leave college, go back home, and never come back.

I told almost everyone around me the same thing:

"Mujhse nahi ho payega."

I had accepted failure before even giving myself another chance. Then, unexpectedly, one phone call changed everything.

My didi called me and talked to me at a time when I had almost completely given up on myself. She didn't magically solve my problems, but that conversation made me stop and think.

Maybe I wasn't incapable. Maybe I had just given up too early.

For the first time in months, I decided to give myself one more chance. I didn't suddenly become motivated or fix everything overnight. I simply made one decision:

"Haan, ek baar aur try karta hoon."

After that conversation, I decided to give myself another chance. I knew I couldn't fix everything at once, so I started with whatever was immediately in front of me — my backlogs. I had 7 backlogs, and clearing all of them at once wasn't realistic for me. So I focused on getting at least two papers cleared, because that was what I needed to move into my second year. I studied for those papers, gave the exams, and somehow managed to clear them.

Two papers.

For someone else, that might not sound like much. But for me, it was the first sign that maybe I wasn't as finished as I had convinced myself I was.

I had almost left college. I had told everyone I couldn't do it. And now, somehow, I was moving into second year.

That was the first small comeback. And this time, I wasn't trying to prove anything to anyone. I was trying to prove it to myself. In my 3rd semester, I managed to clear 3 more backlogs. Slowly, things were finally starting to move in the right direction. I had gone from 7 backlogs to actually clearing them one by one, and for the first time, I felt like maybe I could genuinely turn things around.

But then came 4th semester.

And honestly, that semester brought the biggest heartbreak of my life.

I felt completely alone.

I had already been struggling with college, my confidence, and everything else going on in my life. And now, the person I thought would be there for me was suddenly gone. It wasn't just the breakup that hurt. It was the betrayal. I kept asking myself how someone I trusted so much could do that to me. For a while, I completely lost my sense of direction again. The progress I had made academically suddenly didn't feel important anymore.

I had to start rebuilding myself all over again.

PHASE 5 - How I learned, developed & crushed it..

After everything that happened during my first and second year, I finally reached a point where I realized something important: nobody was going to fix my life for me. I had already experienced academic failures, backlogs, heartbreak, rejection, and moments where I genuinely wanted to give up. But instead of constantly asking "Why is this happening to me?", I started asking a different question:

"What can I do about it?"

That question changed the way I looked at everything. I decided to clear all my remaining backlogs.

It was probably the hardest 15 days of my college life.

I had to prepare for multiple papers, and the exam schedule made everything even worse. For three days continuously, I had exams in the morning, one after another. There was barely any time to properly recover, let alone study for the next paper. My routine became completely messed up.

Study → Exam → Come back → Study again → Barely sleep → Repeat.

There were nights when I stayed awake for hours trying to finish another chapter because I knew that if I didn't clear these papers, I would be stuck again. Sleepless nights. Endless revision. Constant stress.

Those 15 days felt incredibly long.

I wasn't studying because I suddenly loved academics. I was studying because I had already reached the point where I knew I couldn't afford to give up again. And eventually, I cleared my remaining papers.

All the backlogs were finally gone.

That feeling was different. It wasn't just about passing exams. It was about looking back at the version of myself who once had 7 backlogs and wanted to leave college, and realizing that I had somehow made it through. I finally gave myself proof that I could come back.

After finally clearing my backlogs, I realized that I had started my career journey very late compared to everyone around me. But instead of worrying about how far behind I was, I decided to start from wherever I was.

I started learning Full Stack Development seriously. I went from the basics to learning how the entire web works - HTML, CSS, JavaScript, React, Next.js, Node.js, Express, databases, APIs, authentication, Git, deployment, and a lot more.

At first, everything felt overwhelming. There were so many technologies, so many concepts, and so many things I didn't understand. But I kept building.

Learn → Build → Break → Debug → Learn again.

I built projects, made stupid mistakes, spent countless hours debugging errors, and slowly started becoming comfortable with development. By the time I reached my 4th year, I wasn't the same student who had once been sitting with 7 backlogs and thinking about leaving college.

I started learning full-stack development seriously. I learned by building projects, breaking things, fixing bugs, and repeating the process.

Frontend → Backend → Databases → APIs → Authentication → Deployment.

For the first time, I wasn't learning just to pass exams. I was learning because I wanted to build things. Slowly, I started getting better at coding, building real projects, and understanding how actual products work. I still felt behind sometimes, but I had finally stopped looking at my past and started focusing on what I could build next.

7 backlogs → cleared. Low CGPA → improving. No skills → full-stack development. No confidence → real projects.

I had started late. But I had finally started.

Then things started moving faster.

I completed 3 internships, where I got the opportunity to work on real projects, collaborate with teams, and understand how development works outside college. Each internship taught me something different from building products and solving real-world problems to working with deadlines and taking responsibility for my work.

For me, these internships were proof that the comeback was actually working.

From 7 backlogs to 3 internships.

And I was just getting started.

How to find things to learn

There is no straightforward method.

If you are a complete beginner, then go with roadmap.sh - it's a good website that will cover your most broader topics.

Then you can use AI to ask for more stuff in the learning progress.

Like if you are learning React, then you can ask AI about the must-learn concepts of React. It will give you a lot of stuff to read.

But if I were learning again, I would prefer to read some theory and do more code writing.

How I learn

If I'm going to learn something, I first make myself interested in it.

For example: React

I'll ask AI: "What are the cool things I can do with React.js?"

And for me that was:

Single page websites
Can do absolutely anything from 3D games to super-fast offline-like webapps

After that, I'll watch basic videos if available, otherwise read docs or ask AI.

Then I'll go around with a project and start coding.

Simple formula: Code → Error → Reason → New topic to learn → Repeat

How to find interest

Remember in the blog I said in Phase 3 I was trying out different things because for me, interest matters a lot more than anything (or passion - it's the same).

For you to find interest, it can differ person to person.

For me, interest/passion is:

Something that I can do daily, talk about it, and can do it for my lifetime (or at least fairly long time).

So to find interest:

Pick something
Do it for a week
See how you like it

How to fix distractions

You found your passion, you have your system, you have your tasks.

But you are not feeling like doing it because your brain is not ready yet - it wants to do easy things.

Let's dive a little bit into history:

Since the beginning, the human mind just wants to survive at any point.

And what is survival? → Feel safe, have food in stomach

But we have grown as humans, but our instincts haven't. That is why when you sit down and work, your brain feels uncomfortable. And uncomfortable → no survival. When the brain is following what it should be doing (which is survival), then it tries to avoid uncomfortable situations.

So what are you trying to say, Ram? We cannot work?

Technically yeah, until you know the special thing called dopamine.

It's a happy hormone/reward system for the brain when the brain takes risks to survive.

If you can control your dopamine, you can control everything in your life.

How to do dopamine detox

Let's understand this:

Dopamine is a chemical which is released when you do something meaningful such as:

Eating food
Doing sex or masturbation
Sleep
etc.

But nowadays, everything gives us dopamine - your social media, your very friendly app called Instagram and YouTube shorts.

Let's take an absurd example:

Suppose:

1 reel = 1 dopamine point
1 hour of work = 0.25 dopamine point

Now on average, you watch 150-500 reels in a day.

This habit of watching content makes you feel good, makes you feel like you are doing something productive, but you are not.

Now imagine you made a habit of hitting 200 dopamine points daily. Work obviously is not going to give that much reward, and that is the reason why you quit.

So for that, we need dopamine detox.

Simple yet hard to do things:

Deactivate social accounts (e.g., Instagram, Snapchat)
Make a new account on YouTube and subscribe to only development-related channels OR use an extension called Unhook to block YouTube
WhatsApp: Archive most of the people (quite literally everyone) except important ones (e.g., company or college)

I know it's hard. You will have FOMO.

Because if it was easy, anyone could have done it.

I've been there, I'm still there.

You need to detox yourself slowly for at least 6-8 months. After that, you can use social media for 10-15 days.

If everything goes well, you will delete them after a week because you will fall in love with working.

You will think about doing more work than you could ever imagine.

Even I'm writing this blog at 2:56 AM:

Because I have to - it's supposed to be published today before 10 AM, anyhow.

How to build in public (my way) & why you should do it

It's quite simple - just post what you are learning or what you are going to learn.

Do not care what anyone is saying - just work. Put your time into work.

And trust me, it will be worth it.

You will get offers from people if you:

Build cool shit
Just learn
Just be consistent

At the end, it will be worth it.

Conclusion - The Journey Through Five Phases

Looking back at this entire journey, I realize that every phase changed me in some way. Some phases gave me confidence, some completely broke me, and some forced me to rebuild myself from scratch. I don't think my journey was about becoming successful overnight. It was about failing, learning, starting again, and refusing to stay down.

Phase 1: The Foundation of Competitive Mindset

The mathematics phase taught me much more than mathematics. It taught me how to solve problems, compete, and believe in myself.

When I was solving 5th-grade mathematics in 3rd grade, I was unknowingly training myself to:

Break complicated problems into smaller ones
Find different ways to solve a problem
Stay patient when something doesn't make sense
Build confidence through small wins
Keep trying until I figure something out

The 50+ prizes weren't just prizes. They gave me the mindset that if something looks difficult, I can still figure it out.

This phase built the foundation of the person I would eventually become.

Phase 2: Learning to Adapt

After 8th class, I was told to move outside my village and study in a town. I started travelling almost 1.5 hours every day just to reach school.

Everything changed:

New environment
New people
Different school
Different teaching style
Long daily travel

Initially, studying became difficult and I struggled to understand things properly. But this phase taught me adaptability. Sometimes life doesn't give you the perfect environment. You have to learn how to keep moving even when everything around you feels uncomfortable. This phase taught me that comfort isn't necessary for growth.

Phase 3: Losing Focus

Then COVID happened.

And honestly, this was the phase where I completely lost direction. My entire 11th and 12th happened during COVID, and my focus shifted almost completely away from studies. I started spending most of my time playing PUBG, watching random content, and doing things that felt entertaining at that moment. I wasn't thinking about my career. I wasn't thinking about what I wanted to become. I wasn't even thinking about how quickly time was passing.

And somehow, two years disappeared.

When I finally looked back, I realized how much time I had wasted. This phase taught me one of the hardest lessons:

You don't realize how valuable time is until you've already lost it.

Phase 4: Hitting Rock Bottom

College was probably the hardest phase of my life. My first year was a complete mess.

7 backlogs.

I was mentally exhausted. The people around me constantly told me that I couldn't do anything and that I was the reason things were going wrong. Eventually, I started believing them. By the end of my first year, I had reached a point where I wanted to leave college, go home, and never come back.

I told almost everyone:

"I can't do this anymore."

Then one phone call from my sister changed something inside me. She made me believe that I could give myself one more chance. So I did. I started clearing my backlogs one by one. I cleared 3 backlogs in my 3rd semester, and eventually cleared everything. Those days were brutal — sleepless nights, back-to-back exams, and some of the hardest 15 days I had ever experienced. But I kept going. This phase taught me that sometimes your biggest comeback begins when you are completely broken.

Phase 5: The Comeback

After clearing my backlogs, I finally started taking my career seriously. I started learning full-stack development.

At first, everything felt difficult. Frontend, backend, databases, APIs, authentication, deployment — there was so much to learn. But instead of just watching tutorials, I started building things.

I learned by:

Writing code
Breaking things
Getting errors
Finding solutions
Reading documentation
Building projects
Deploying them
Repeating the process

By the time I reached my 4th year, I wasn't the same student who had once been sitting with 7 backlogs and thinking about leaving college. I had a proper technical skillset, real projects to show, and internship experience. I completed 3 internships, worked on real projects, and finally started understanding what I wanted to do. I had started late. But I had finally started.

The Biggest Lessons From All Five Phases

If I had to summarize everything these five phases taught me:

Failure doesn't define you.
Starting late is better than never starting.
You can adapt to almost any environment.
Time is something you can never get back.
Consistency matters more than motivation.
Sometimes you just need to give yourself one more chance.
Building teaches you more than consuming.
Your past doesn't decide your future.

The biggest lesson wasn't clearing my backlogs. It wasn't learning full-stack development. It wasn't completing 3 internships. It was realizing that I was capable of changing the direction of my life. I went from 7 backlogs and wanting to quit college to building projects, learning full-stack development, improving my academics, and completing internships. And I'm still learning. I'm still making mistakes. I'm still figuring things out. But now I know one thing for sure:

You don't have to be perfect. You just have to keep moving.

I started late. I messed up. I fell behind. I almost quit. But I kept coming back.

And I'm still not done.

Why This Journey Matters for You

If you're reading this thinking "This guy got lucky" or "I don't have the same opportunities" - you're missing the point. The specific opportunities don't matter. What matters is the approach:

Phase 1 mindset: Build confidence through small wins and keep challenging yourself
Phase 2 adaptability: Learn to adapt when your environment isn't comfortable or perfect
Phase 3 exploration: Don't waste years without realizing where your time is going
Phase 4 persistence: When life hits you hard, give yourself another chance instead of quitting
Phase 5 systematization: Learn, build, make mistakes, gain real experience, and keep improving

The Current State and What's Next

Today, I'm not the same person who was getting 3 marks in Social Science or getting rejected by 284 companies.

I'm still learning. The system works, but it's constantly evolving.

(ping me if you want to know more about me)

The curiosity that made me try IoT, AI, and web development is still there. The competitive spirit from the math competitions is still pushing me to do better. The only difference now is that I have a proven framework for turning curiosity into skill and skill into value.

Here are some songs & quotes that i liked -

Songs -

Quotes -

If it was easy, anyone could have done it. ~ Mayank

A man who is master of patience is master of everything else. ~ George Savile

If you don't build your own dream, someone will hire you to build theirs. ~ Jim Rohn

Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is. ~ Bhagavad Gita

Arise, awake, and stop not till the goal is reached. ~ Katha Upanishad

If the pain doesn't kill me, it will only make me stronger. ~ Sung Jin-Woo, Solo Leveling

Final Thoughts: Your Journey Starts Now

If you've read this far, you already have something most people lack: the patience to consume long-form, detailed content. That's actually a superpower in our world of 15-second attention spans.

But reading won't change your life. Building will.

Here's what I want you to do right now:

Pick one thing from Phase 5 that resonated with you
Implement it today - not tomorrow, not next week, TODAY
Build something small - a simple project, a system, anything
Share your progress - public accountability works

Remember:

If it was easy, anyone could have done it.

Your journey won't look like mine. Your phases will be different. Your challenges will be unique. But the principles - systematic learning, building in public, managing your dopamine, and staying uncomfortable - these will work for anyone willing to put in the effort.

The question isn't whether you can do it. The question is: Will you?

The next phase of your journey starts now. Make it count.