10 Life Teachings from Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist

#1. Everyone on earth has a treasure that awaits him.  We, people’s hearts, seldom say much about those treasures, because people no longer want to go in search of them.  We speak of them only to children.  Later, we simply let life proceed, in its own direction, toward its own fate.  But, unfortunately, very few follow the path laid out for them-the path to their destinies, and to happiness.  Most people see the world as a threatening place, and, because they do, the world turns out, indeed, to be a threatening place.

#2. Before a dream is realized, the Soul of the World tests everything that was learned along the way.  It does this not because its evil, but so that we can, in addition to realizing our dreams, master the lessons we’ve learned as we we’ve moved toward that dream.  That’s the point at which most people give up.  It’s the point at which, as we say in the language of the desert, one ‘dies of thirst just when the palm trees have appeared on the horizon.’

#3. Why it’s good to not go to fortune tellers:  If good things are coming, they will be a pleasant surprise.  If bad things are, and you know in advance, you will suffer greatly before they even occur.  …but, if you pay attention to the present, you can improve upon it.  And, if you improve on the present, what comes later will also be better.

#4. When someone sees the same people every day, they wind up becoming a part of that person’s life.  And then they want the person to change.  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.

#5. Making a decision is only the beginning of things.  When someone makes a decision, he is really diving into a strong current that will carry him to places he had never dreamed of when he first made the decision.

#6. Intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life, where the histories of all people are connected, and we are able to know everything, because it’s all written there.

#7. This natural world is only an image and a copy of paradise - the existence of this world is simply a guarantee that there exists a world that is perfect.

#8. No matter what he does, every person on earth plays a central role in the history of the world.  And normally, he doesn’t know it.

#9. Everything that happens once can never happen again.  But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.

#10. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.