Age 22 – Overcoming years of relapses

In the summer before senior year of college, my grandpa who was someone I was very close to passed away. He was a role model and he gave me soo much motivation through his life and character. He came to this country as an immigrant to give us the opportunity to do something amazing.

I was at this point disgusted at myself. I was fapping everyday when I have the opportunity to do something REAL with my life. I was tired of losing against the urges, I wanted to defeat PMO and stop hiding from life. I started by exercising in the summer.

In the Fall semester, I for the first time went to career fairs and talked with many big tech companies and was trying my best to think positive. That same semester I was taking my hardest courses at uiuc, algorithms and quantum physics. I was having a lot of difficulties in my courses and interviews, especially due to not much previous internship experience.

My thoughts started becoming more and more negative. I kept getting rejections from companies and even got some onsite interviews but didn’t get them. My urges were extremely strong during this period too. I was literally crying some days, I felt I was a failure at life and wouldn’t be able to do it.

And with the urges and no way to escape the pain as I usually would, the pain felt a lot worse. The pain felt REAL. I wanted to give up at many points, but I knew I had to undergo the pain. I kept going and instead told myself I HAVE TO learn from my mistakes. The semester ended, I had gotten the lowest gpa of my college career and didn’t get a job, and I also applied to grad school which I didn’t feel I would get.

At this point, I would normally give up. But, I realized I had winter break. That meant I could study for interviews for a month! I could become better at interviews and the technical questions. This past, last spring semester of college, I applied to about 200 companies online or through career fair. I did mock interviews. I studied for them. I failed many initially. But, I started getting interviews from places like Google and Facebook. And I even got to almost last round for them. I got an Apple interview and got to onsite interview in Cupertino, although I still got rejected from that.

I finally got an internship for a tech company and chose the Palo Alto office. I knew a big reason of not getting other places is lack of software internship experience. So, I took it. I was hoping to get grad school , but that didn’t happen.

But, the failures no longer affected me as much. It still hurt, but I knew they can happen and just have to move forward.

This past semester was also my best semester for grades even with all CS courses. Being anti-social most of my life, I gained 9 new good friends in a year and was able to use their help to gain motivation to improve my life.

I learned a lot from failing, failing interviews, doing bad at courses previous semester, failing in nofap all the previous years.

Im now at my internship and trying my best. Im at the same time doing more interviews in the bay area. The failures are going to be there, but it’s necessary to change. The PAIN AND WORK is necessary to succeed.

I haven’t even come close to doing anything REAL in life, but this one year of nofap has given me the confidence and motivation to work for my goals and succeed.

You can do it!

Finally, the last thing that helped me get through this year is that I wrote the first half of this post [see link below] one year ago after I relapsed, I wanted to get through this and I really made myself believe that it will happen. If I can do it, you can!

Don’t give up, no matter how many relapses may happen. I’ve had hundreds of relapses in the last 6 years. It’s learning from those relapses and experiencing many different things in life that I’ve been able to gain stronger in this fight against PMO.

How can you win a war without the proper weapons? AS you continue in your no fap journey, you will gain these weapons and it is guaranteed you will win as long as you don’t give up. So, give your best and make the rest of your life the best of your life!

LINK (and more back-story) – 365 days of NF — Learning to embrace the failures

By joshiyoshi1