It has been two years since I wrote a personal blog. A lot has happened since then. I taught myself web-development and data-science, tried and failed to get an ed-tech startup off the ground, spent a year in India doing data-journalism and data-science consulting, and headed product for a data science startup that currently serves some of the biggest media companies around the world.

It has been a crazy ride. I have been hit, repeatedly, by failure over the past two years. Some of the major ones have been:

• Getting 25+ rejections while hunting for a job as an NUS undergraduate
• Failing to make my ed-tech startup profitable after working on it for 7 months (and subsequently closing it down)
• Failing to get clients to pay for some consulting projects completed in India (tip: always sign a formal contract before you start working with clients)
• Getting rejected by some top Indian business schools

I was close to breaking down after some of these. It was very tempting to join a 'normal' job at large companies, and not have to worry about the myriad problems that running a startup/consulting company entails.

I'm glad I didn't.

Here are some of the things I did instead:

• Spent 14 hours a day over a 3 month period teaching myself data-science, through free online courses
• Published data-driven analysis of social issues and sports, which received more than 2.5 million views, and was covered by major publications in India, United States and England
• Competed on Kaggle, and ending up in the top 2% of data-scientists worldwide
• Helped one of the largest media sites in India use data to automate decisions
• Co-founded a data-science startup in Singapore that does content-recommendation-as-a-service, among other things. We currently serve some large media sites in South-East Asia, as well as the largest media site in Dubai

I'm sure that some very significant failures are yet to come, but the past two years have made me realize that this is a good thing. Failing sporadically is a sign that you are reaching for things that are not easily reachable. Failure also acts as as a sharp wake-up call, and tells you that you will lose badly if you don't up your game.

It is easier said than done though. Failure is extremely taxing. It makes you question your worth as a person. It makes you hate well-meaning people who innocuously ask "Where do you work?", or "How is your company doing?". It makes you less receptive to folks who want to help, mistaking their efforts for pity.

If you let it, a single large failure can irrevocably limit your career and personal growth. It is easy to develop a defense mechanism than tells you to stop trying anything in which you might fall flat on your face. Why do something that might hurt you terribly, when you can stick to the status quo and coast along?

And that is why you must bully yourself.

It's comforting to blame circumstances and other people for your failure. Don't. Bully yourself to improve instead.

It's easy to fear that the time and effort put into a new project/startup/self-development-activity might end up in nothing. Bully yourself and do it anyway.

It's very tempting to let the adversities in your personal life affect your work. Bully yourself, and stop feeling sorry for yourself.

Good things do not come to those who wait patiently. Good things come to those who shake the world until it gives them what they want.