There's good, there's great, there's exceptional — and then there's Lionel Messi.
Thanks to his speed, control, and mesmerizing ability to shoot the ball into the net, Messi has become a legend.
This is his story 👇👇👇
Messi has been playing soccer since he was in kindergarten. When his mother would send him off to run errands, he took a ball with him. If he didn't have one, he would make one out of plastic bags.
Nothing stood in his way.
In 1997, people began noticing that Messi appeared tiny on the field.
At 10 years old, he looked nearly two years younger than his teammates.
The following year, doctors diagnosed him with a growth hormone deficiency and prescribed him nightly hormone injections.
Messi was the smallest boy on the field, but he learned how to be faster, smoother, and more agile than his larger competitors.
"His reflexes haven't changed," Messi's dad says. "He was always so short, but so fast. It was very difficult for another boy to take the ball away."
At 5-foot-7, Messi continues to sprint past his competitors and score laser-precise goals time and time again.
To the world, Messi's health troubles were career-ending.
To him, it was just another obstacle he had to overcome on his road to greatness.
"It took me 17 years and 114 days to be an overnight success.”
Although Messi was only 17 when he became a professional footballer, his road to success was neither easy nor straightforward.
Here are the top 10 actionable lessons I've learned from the world's most successful people by working on the @ProfileRead every week:
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1. Learn, don't idolize
"It's never really been my style to idolize players, to try to copy them. I just try to learn and get the best from the great masters, contemporary and from the past."
If you're struggling to get your ideas out there, Martha Stewart offers the following recipe: 1) a good idea, 2) passion for the idea, and 3) interesting content that backs your idea.
Chess is psychological warfare, and Magnus Carlsen thrives in the chaos. He doesn't beat his opponents outright, but his style feels more like a "strangling pressure."
Carlsen, 30, became the second youngest world chess champion in 2013.
This is his story 👇👇👇
As a kid, Carlsen showed an aptitude for intellectually stimulating games.
Before he was 2, he was able to complete a 50-piece jigsaw puzzle by himself.
By age 4, he had memorized the names and the population size of most of Norway's 430 municipalities.
At age eight, Carlsen's father re-introduced him to the game of chess.
After playing for a year, Magnus beat his dad for the first time in a game of blitz chess, and he started to play in local junior competitions shortly thereafter.
Christopher Nolan never studied film in a formal way yet he's arguably one of the world's best living directors.
Nolan is behind some of the most thought-provoking movies, including Inception, Memento, Interstellar, and The Dark Knight Trilogy.
This is his story 👇
His love for film came early. Nolan began making movies at 7 years old using his father's Super 8 camera and his toy action figures.
"I just carried on making films as I grew up," he says. "Over the years, they got bigger, better, and more elaborate."
It's that simple and that complicated.
It's his commitment and consistency that Nolan believes allowed him to master his craft. He refused to quit even though he had a shoestring budget and no connections in the film industry.
In fact, he funded his first feature film himself.
✨ I spoke at @teachable's summit about how to build an engaged online community.
Here are the 3 practical tactics many successful people have used to build loyal communities👇
First, let's make a distinction between audience & community.
Audience is the overall group of people who may be interested in the content you produce, but your community is the group that devours your content while also interacting with you on a regular basis
Author Chris Brogan once said: “The difference between an audience and a community is which way the chairs are facing.”
Ask yourself: Am I communicating in one direction where people are listening to me or are the conversations often dynamic and happening in a circle?
But despite everything he's been through, he teaches us that tragedy can be used to create a beautiful life filled with joy and kindness.
This is his story 👇👇👇
Born in Beirut, Reeves's early life was marked with turbulence and instability.
He was 3 when his father left the family, and the last time they spoke was when Reeves was 13 years old.
In 1994, his dad was arrested with heroin and cocaine, and sentenced to 10 years in jail.
Reeves refuses to discuss his relationship with his father, only saying, “The story with me and my dad’s pretty heavy. It’s full of pain and woe and f*cking loss and all that sh*t."