5 Things I learned from the book called The Alchemist

There is an old saying, we should never judge a book by its cover. Now, it is easier said than done. With so many books out there, sometimes you have to judge a book by its cover. But, the Alchemist is one of those books that if you judged it by its cover, you would never pick it up. And I have to be honest here, I would have never picked up this book if I did not hear other people talk about it. This is one of those books that take hold in popular culture because it is so different from all the other books out there that it becomes the “thing” people talk about.

Now, I am going to give you a warning – the alchemist is a book that is very subjective because your personal experiences are going to determine what you get out of this book. It is incredibly open for interpretation. So, read this post as my interpretation of this book.

The main story of the book is about a character named Santiago. Santiago is from a small town. In this small town, everyone wants to be happy, but they also want to travel. So, Santiago decided to become a Shepherd. He thinks that if he becomes a Shepherd, he can be happy and travel. As a Shepherd, he goes on a journal across continents.

Along his journey of being a shepherd, he is sold on this idea of a treasure, a treasure that is in the middle of the desert. During his journey, he meets new people and experiences new things. This is what this book is about. It is about the interpretation of those events and experiences.

1. You have limited energy, choose wisely

“If good things are coming, they will be a pleasant surprise,” said the seer. “If bad things are, and you know in advance, you will suffer greatly before they even occur.”

If we look at life, this is the majority of our lives. We spend so much time worrying about things and 99% of those things never happen. One of the quotes I remind myself of this quote from Mark Twain.

“I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.” ― Mark Twain

And that’s life in general, we spend so much of our energy thinking about stuff. Stuff that is never going to happen, that we spend so much time thinking about it and never living our lives to its full potential. Look at worrying as a thief that is stealing the most valuable asset we have – Our lives.

Action Step – Write down your worries. Create an if-then plan. Once that plan is on paper, create a habit of switching the internal conversation from worrying to thinking about the plan and solutions.

2. Fear is the real enemy

“That makes sense,” the alchemist answered. “Naturally, it’s afraid that, in pursuing of your dream, you might lose everything you’ve won.”

Often, we do not do things we want to do because we are afraid. I can tell you from my personal experience that going after your dreams is very scary. It is scary because we think that we are going to lose everything. But what is the alternative? Not do anything at all? Should we just dream and never take that leap of faith? Should we become old filled with regrets?

But why does this happen? This happens because the universe has a way of putting honeypots in our way. These honeypots make us comfortable or just satisfied with what we have. They make us forget what we really wanted to do. These honeypots are there as a barrier that we need to remove if we need to achieve our personal legend.

Action Step – make that jump. But if you are like me, start small. Pick something that makes you go just a tad bit outside your comfort zone. But once you do, you will be amazed at how much more you will achieve.

3. Pain and the hump is the answer

“Why don’t people’s hearts tell them to continue to follow their dreams?” the boy asked the alchemist. “Because that’s what makes a heart suffer most, and hearts don’t like to suffer.”

We all are familiar with pain at a certain level. From physical pain to emotional pain – at one point in our lives, we have experienced it. After a while, we spend a lot of time avoiding it. Don’t we? Heck, why would you want pain anyways? Isn’t our whole neurological and physiological system designed to avoid pain?

I personally think this is the issue. Over time, the brain gets in a habit of running away from pain – any kind of pain. So, whenever we face any difficulty, we run away from it. The more we run away, the harder it becomes to overcome our personal legend.

If we want to achieve your personal legend, we must get over the hump to see that beautiful sunrise. I think this is why Napoleon Hill in his book “Think and grow rich” talked about your goals but also what we are willing to give up to achieve those goals.

So, everything we want in your life comes after overcoming pain and failure.

The way I learned about this was to experiment on something I had direct control over. For example, I worked out for a long time and never saw results. I tried all kinds of different plans with no significant results. But then I decided to get a dedicated program and start counting when it starts to hurt. This small change made a huge difference in my personal health.

Once I figured this out, I started to focus on other things. And soon I realized that pushing through is a habit.

Action Step – Create a habit of pushing through things you do not like to do. The best way to start is with something that is totally in your control. Once this works on a personal level, then you will have the confidence to push this idea into things that are more complex.

4. Be selfish, Focus on you

“If someone isn’t what others want them to be, the others become angry. Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.”

We humans are amazing creatures, aren’t we? As I far as I know, we are the only animal that can create highly complex thoughts which have the ability to change our destiny. Think about the power we wield. This power takes a lot of energy to use. Now, if you spend the majority of your time thinking about others and trying to change their thoughts, how will you have the time to work on yourself?

It is my opinion that there are so many dimensions of being a human that if we spend the rest of our lives discovering those dimensions, we will not be able to fully explore them. So, be selfish. This is the only human experience we have, and we should cherish it.

Often, we try to control others because we give others the power to control how feel and behave. Because if we can control what they do, we will be able to control how we behave, correct? But why give other people the power? Why let other live rent-free in your brain?

Action Step – Every time you feel the need to control others, ask yourself, what is the root cause you feel this way? Are you letting others control you?

5. The treasure is within you

At the end of the story, when Santiago (the shepherd) comes back to his hometown, he finally finds the treasure. So, when everyone told him to look for the treasure thousands of miles away, the treasure was right in front of him the whole time.

Psychologists and philosophers have talked about this for centuries. We tend to look for treasures externally, but the real treasure is always internal. The real treasure is achieving our personal legend. That is what we should be focusing on. We should always strive to listen to the voice within because somehow it always knows what we should do.

The Mind Map for this post is below