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ISBN 9780525538646
Ebook ISBN 9780525538714
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Version_1
To Vivi, Benny and Jack
Thank you for your love, for being the light of my life, for being the most
incredible teachers, and allowing me to travel on new roads, discovering
deeper meanings and purpose. You are my inspiration every day to do all I
can to make the world a better place. Amo vocês.
CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT
DEDICATION
INTRODUCTION
1 It All Starts with Discipline
2 Challenges Are Opportunities in Disguise
3 The Quality of Your Life Depends on the Quality of Your
Relationships
4 Our Thoughts and Words Are Powerful—Use Them Wisely
5 Where Your Attention Goes Is What Grows
6 Nature: Our Greatest Teacher
7 Take Care of Your Body So It Can Take Care of You
8 Know Thyself
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
INTRODUCTION
This photo was taken for my first modeling book when I was fourteen years old.
I
f my intention was to write a straightforward chronicle of my life
so far, the fast-cut version might go like this:
My name is Gisele Caroline Bündchen. I’ve worked as a
fashion model for the past twenty-three years. I was born in 1980
and grew up in Horizontina, a small town in southern Brazil, an hour
from where you cross the river to enter Argentina. I’m fifth-
generation Brazilian of German descent on both sides. My parents
spoke German with each other and Portuguese to my five sisters and
me. I am a middle child, and as kids, my twin sister, Pati, and I used
to argue about which one of us was the third or the fourth in age.
When I was growing up, I wanted to be either a professional
volleyball player or a veterinarian.
When I was thirteen years old,
my mom, who worried about my
bad posture—I was already 5
feet, 9 inches tall—enrolled two
of my sisters and me in a local
modeling course. At the end of
the course we got to go on a
special trip to Curitiba, São
Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro. The
bus ride there felt endless,
twenty-seven hours long. Some
of the mothers came with us,
including mine. At a São Paulo
mall, a man came up to me with
a classic creepy-guy line: Do you
want to be a model? “Mom!” I
Me during the finals for the Elite Model Look yelled, and over she ran. But he—
contest in São Paulo, 1994. I was fourteen.
Zeca was his name—was for real,
a scout for the Elite Model
Management. When we went to his offices, he told my mom she
should enroll me in a national contest, Elite Look of the Year, and so
she did. I couldn’t believe it when I won second place, which came
with a round-trip plane ticket to Ibiza, Spain, so I could model in the
Elite Model Look world contest. It was my first time on a plane, my
first trip outside Brazil. Somehow I ended up as one of the ten
finalists. Everything was happening fast, fast.
An early behind-the-scenes shot from when I was sixteen and shooting in Rio de Janeiro.
A year later, in 1995, I moved to São Paulo to launch my modeling
career. I was fourteen. As you can imagine, moving from a small
town of only 17,000 people to the largest city in Brazil was a big
change. After I spent a few months working in São Paulo, the agency
sent me to Tokyo, Japan, where I lived for three months doing
catalog work. My first big break came a few years later in London,
when the designer Alexander McQueen selected me to model in his
ready-to-wear show. I went down the runway without a shirt,
petrified, a white top painted on at the last minute by a makeup
artist, as artificial rain poured down from the ceiling. After the
Alexander McQueen show, the industry gave me a nickname—“The
Body”—which stuck.
In 1999, I modeled for Versace, Ralph Lauren, Chloé, Missoni,
Valentino, Armani, and Dolce & Gabbana. Vogue magazine chose me
to represent the end of the “heroin chic” era of modeling. That year I
was on the cover of French Vogue and three times on the cover of
