My favourite book, ‘The Alchemist‘ by Paulo Coelho is an inspiring story about how to live your personal legend and find your treasure. It’s inspirational, and provides plenty of teachings to help you live out your dreams.
Here’s some of my key takeaways from the story.
We All Have Our Own Personal Legend
A personal legend is what you’ve always wanted to accomplish. Everyone when they are young, knows what their personal legend is. At that point in their lives, everything is clear and everything is possible.
They are not afraid to dream. They yearn for everything they would like to see happen to them in their lives. Life seems full of possibility.
But, as time passes, they start to doubt this voice. People or events can convince them that it will be impossible for them to achieve their personal legend.
But our only true task in life, it to realise our own personal legend, and then to go live it out.
Know What You Want and the Universe Will Help
When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it. You just have to first know what it is that you want.
It’s often the possibility of having a dream come true that makes our life interesting; the journey of self discovery of making it come true; the excitement that comes with following your dream and achieving it.
Don’t Be Put Off By Others
People will often tell us that we can’t do something. It may come from a place of love or a place of malice. But this often comes from their own experience. It is not set in stone.
As Paulo Cohello writes; everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.
Don’t be discouraged by others, as they have never been in your shoes, experienced what you have, had the opportunities available to you.
Sometimes people are afraid to live out their own personal legend so don’t want to see others do it. Therefore they discourage others from living out their dreams.
We’re All On a Journey
Listen to your heart. What is it saying? What do you want to really do? Wherever your heart is, that is where you’ll find your treasure.
Courage is needed to listen to your heart, to act on what it is saying, and to live out your personal legend. People are afraid to pursue their most important dreams, because they feel that they don’t deserve them, or that they’ll be unable to achieve them.
When you follow your heart and go in search of making your dream come true, every day becomes exciting. It becomes exhilarating because every hour will take you closer to fulfilling your dream.
When you venture on this path you discover things along the way, that you never would have seen had you not had the courage to try things that seemed impossible at the start.
Wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure. You’ve got to find your treasure, so that everything you have learned along the way can make sense.
Everyone Has Their Own Treasure
Everyone on Earth has their own treasure. And it can be different for everyone. When you are a child, your heart speaks to you about where your treasure lies. As a child you have dreams to be a musician, a poet, a professional athlete.
But as you grow older, outside voices try to guide you and their voices end up drowning out your own internal voice.
We need to reconnect with the voice of our heart as a child. Listen to it, and understand what it is telling us to do.
You Must Be Tested
In order to receive your treasure you must be tested. It is not going to just come easy to you. You must be worthy of it. So don’t expect to not have difficulties along the way.
You will have challenges, and you must overcome them. That is all part of your journey. You can’t expect to receive your treasure without actually living out your personal legend.
The greater the obstacle; the greater the treasure. It’s like the old saying goes: “the darkest hour of the night comes just before dawn.”
So What’s Your Personal Legend?
An alchemist is someone who transforms basic metals into gold, amongst other things. It’s someone who can make something from nothing.
We too, have the abilities to create the life of our dreams by becoming alchemists, and turning nothing into something, a basic existence into a golden life.
Have a think about what your own personal legend is. What is your heart telling you to do? What did it used to tell you when you were younger?
Listen to your heart, go live out your personal legend, and you will eventually find your treasure – whatever that is.
If you enjoyed this blog, make you subscribe to get an email when a new blog is released…
Ben Caufield 