my first match

when I was 8 years old, my dream was to become a soccer player.
i closely followed the rise of Cristiano Ronaldo and was a huge fan of him.

back then, i thought i was really good at soccer until i faced my first real match. my first official game happened around 2008. it was a 5v5 match on an indoor court.
as the game started, i was extremely nervous. i had never experienced something like that before, and it felt like all my skills had suddenly disappeared.

Final score: 9–0 for the opponents.

They barely had to try.

from that moment on, i made a promise to myself: one day i would reach the top.
I never wanted to lose by such a large margin again. It was the first time defeat stood right in front of me, and I had no idea how to deal with it.

even today, this is how i process some of the "no's" that happen in life. and that's part of the journey.

you decide what to do with defeat: either you get up and move forward, or you step backward and the latter should never be an option.

in 2010, i became the best player in my city.
I managed to turn things around.

that's what happens when you absorb a negative result and choose to learn from it.

a professor told me recently that the students he likes the most are the ones with the greatest room for improvement, the ones who fail often during projects, as long as they are willing to evolve.

in the end, it has always been a matter of choice.

a "no" in an interview for a dream software engineering job will only motivate me even more to chase my goals.

and i hope it motivates you too.

:)