Ronaldo - A Biography of a Boy Who Rose Out of Poverty

Recently, I have read the biography of Cristiano Ronaldo. It was an amazing book which I really liked a lot and will keep it in my library as one of the most motivating books I've ever read. The book is named Football Book of the Year at the Cross Sports Book Awards 2016. 

Although it was a paperback format book, I took notes from the book to my Evernote while reading and then collected them all in one content below.

The book has also another special importance for me. I purchased it from a book store when I was in Romania. So I went out with it a lot as I was away from my family. Here are some of my memories (photos) with the book.

 

 I bought this book with some other books for my son

I enjoyed it in Business Class flight as well

When I went out for dinner, the book was my mate

Just after the office hour, a quick break with some cheesecake and Ronaldo

From the book "Ronaldo" 

Only part of the truth is told. Whatever we think will be of interest. Or whatever we think will sell best. 

There is no art without obsession. 

If you don't put much in, you don't get much back. 

Everybody takes photographs of the Eiffel Tower, but the key lies in taking the one that nobody has seen before. 

If we were born to be poor, we will be... But be close to your children at the very least. 

Nobody considered it a limitation - it never is when everyone is in the same situation. 

The owner of the ball sets the rules. 

In a poor village, you have no choice but to have character. If you don't, they eat you up. Either you step on them or they step on you.

We didn't achieve it but our son can dream it. 

It is the one who puts it the most hours, perseverance and hard work who ends up achieving his goals in the end. 

Money used as a barometer of status and personal value, perhaps typical comments by a boy who rose out of poverty. 

He isn't the present, he is the future. 

It was a period of transformation. Some were visible and physical, while others were deep and internal. 

When there is passion, there is no place for reason. 

Good players must run, too, it is non-negotiable. 

I drink Red Bull while I buy my friends champagne at 1000 pound plus a bottle. It is no problem - I like my friends to be happy. 

It was a type of fight between alpha males. It ended as they all do: with the coach leaving. No matter how good he is, he can't get you fifty goals a season.

Football is a tool for self-improvement. Why football? Because it is what closest to him.  If his father had worked at a swimming club, maybe he'd be a world champion swimmer. The desire to better yourself and fight is intrinsic, football is circumstantial.

Quotes from "Do It Today"

Here are some quotes from one of my favorite bloggers who generally writes on productivity: Darius Foroux. He has recently published a book called "Do It Today". The book is very motivating in terms of reminding some small steps which can be taken easily and bring great results by time. Of course, some of these quotes belong to important thinkers but it is nice to find them in one book together within a harmony:

One of my personal rules is this: Never complain. Another one is: Read and exercise every day. And: Close the day every evening by setting your next day’s priorities.

At the end of each day, you should play back the tapes of your performance. The results should either applaud you or prod you.

"Always connected,” isn’t a good thing for your focus and productivity.  It’s the same as going to the gym. Or having dinner. Or having a romantic evening with your partner. You don’t do those things for 24 hours a day.

Procrastination can be a sign that you’re doing something that’s not meaningful. Don’t let procrastination become a habit. After all, the worst procrastination is putting off your dreams and goals. If you’re waiting for the right time, Benjamin Franklin says: “You may delay, but time will not.” If you don’t listen to me, listen to him.

People who make phones and apps are smarter than us. Their only goal is to get you hooked. I think it’s good to realize that. That’s why I often try to remind myself not to depend on smartphones too much because my attention matters more than productivity. It’s time to reclaim your attention. And thereby, reclaim your life. It’s worth it.

“Fools learn from experience. I prefer to learn from the experience of others.”

The further I advance in age, the more I find work necessary. It becomes in the long run the greatest of pleasures, and takes the place of the illusions of life.”

Rest reduces stress. Improves creativity and productivity.

"So, to prevent fatigue and worry, the first rule is: Rest often. Rest before you get tired.”

“People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing — that’s why we recommend it daily.”

"A man who chases two rabbits catches neither.”

We say: “OMG! I don’t know what I want!” And then we have a full-on panic attack. Be honest — it happens to all of us. Especially, when you see that your old college friend just got married. Or that your co-worker, who started at the same time as you, just got promoted. It’s at those moments of weakness when we shine a spotlight on our own uncertainty about life. One of the biggest thinking errors that I’ve made was that I thought I needed to know what I exactly wanted to do with my life. The truth is that no one knows what they truly want.

So it’s not important to know exactly what you want to do with your life. People change. Economies change. So, it’s not even realistic to boldly claim “I know what I want!” The only thing every person needs is a sense of direction. A vision of where you’d like to go. Look, you don’t need to know your exact destination. You often read about people who say they always knew what they wanted. But that’s just a small portion of the population. I’ve personally never met someone like that. Most of us don’t have that conviction from day one. It grows over time.

Your first priority is to identify what you want and then make sure you take the path that’s going to give you that. There’s nothing sadder than to see someone get to be seventy-five or eighty years old and look back regrettably because they pursued the wrong target.

Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.

Stay close to yourself—there’s no point in pushing yourself so badly that your life becomes miserable. In the end, we all need comfort: It’s one of our basic needs as human beings. But we also need growth. So whatever you do, don’t stay in your comfort zone for too long. Try to keep moving forward every day: Even if it’s just a tiny step. No magic.

Belief will help create the fact.

You don’t get to the highest levels of the sport without having the basics in order.

It’s the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief. And once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen.” When you repeat the basics, you don’t only become great; you will stay great. It’s a challenge that all high performers face. I repeat the basics of many things in my life: Fitness, philosophy, kindness, business, writing.

In order to really find happiness, you need to continue looking for opportunities that you believe are meaningful, in which you will be able to learn new things, to succeed, and be given more and more responsibility to shoulder.

Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now take what’s left and live properly.

Where I’d had huge success, I had narrowed my concentration to one thing, and where my success varied, my focus had too.” Are you working on a lot of things? Is your attention not on one thing? There’s a big chance that you will not achieve the best possible results. Or worse: You might fail if you try to achieve many things at the same time The reason is simple: Most of us believe that success happens all at once. Real life is different. Keller and Papasan put it well: “Success is sequential, not simultaneous.”

These Quotes Might Inspire You

Be careful reading these quotes, they might just inspire you to do things you dreamed of doing, they might help you succeed and might even make you happier.

"All our dreams can come true - if we have the courage to pursue them"

Walt Disney

"Your time is limited, don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living the result of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinion drowned your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition, they somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

Steve Jobs

“Life is short, live it. Love is rare, grab it. Anger is bad, dump it. Fear is awful, face it. Memories are sweet, cherish it.”

Proverb

"Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresea, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein."

H. Jackson Brown Jr.

"Fear less, hope more, eat less, chew more, whine less, breathe more, talk less, say more, hate less, love more, and good things will be yours."

Swedish Proverb

“Accept responsibility for your life. Know that it is you who will get you where you want to go, no one else.”

Les Brown

"When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us."

Helen Keller

"Happiness is not something you postpone for the future; it is something you design for the present."

Jim Rohn

"Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude."

Thomas Jefferson

"The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack in will."

Vince Lombardi

"It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed."

Theodore Roosevelt

"Success does not consist in never making blunders, but in never making the same one a second time."

Josh Billings

“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

Michael Jordan

“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

Wayne Gretzky

“In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.”

Bill Cosby

"It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that things are difficult."

Seneca

"It is only the very wisest and the very stupidest who cannot change."

Confucius

"Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit."

Aristotle

"Vision without action is daydream. Action without vision is nightmare."

Japanese Proverb

"A goal is a dream with a deadline."

Napoleon Hill

"Arriving at one goal is the starting point to another."

John Dewey

“Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs.”

Farrah Gray

“There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them.”

Denis Waitley

“Good things come to those who wait… greater things come to those who get off their ass and do anything to make it happen.”

Proverb

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.”

Lao Tzu