‘The Alchemist’ Revisited: 7 Insights for Seeking the Beauty of Life’s Possibilities.
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I first read the life-changing story of The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho two years ago, and immediately after reading it, I decided to make life-changing decisions to live a designed life that I desired with intention and purpose.
Surprisingly to me, after revisiting this metamorphic journey two years later, more embedded knowledge and wisdom was revealed in Santiago’s process of becoming. The takeaway I discovered is that our manufactured fears and negative thoughts forestall our happiness and success we seek from materializing in life.
Like Santiago, we consciously or unconsciously engineer unnecessary fears and scathing thoughts in life. However, the paradox of these unwarranted fears and thoughts can turn into blessings of opportunities for expansion and success, but only if we seek courage within to acknowledge and vanquish it.
Here are a few of the many insights and perspectives I learned for anyone in pursuit or discovery of their life’s purpose or just seeking the beauty of life’s possibilities.
1. Adapt to Better Thinking
“If you improve on the present, what comes later will also be better.”
If we want a life defined by our purpose, it requires time, commitment, and an immense amount of action by mastering the mind. Only we determine the thoughts we choose to think, and in knowing this, we can reduce much unnecessary worry, suffering, and angst. It also means we create a reality of possibilities by choosing to re-frame stories with good intention.
Negative self-talk remains the root of unhappiness and emotional discontent we sometimes experience in life. When we change our thoughts and views about someone or something, the someone or something will change.
2. Become Internally Focused
“To realize one’s destiny is a person’s only obligation.”
To become internally focused on our life’s purpose, give attention to what matters most, edit out what doesn’t matter, and apply action towards it. This is how to create a life of joy and contentment that fulfills us.
However, just because you follow your life’s purpose doesn’t mean everyone will approve; therefore, it is a crucial necessity to be consciously true to yourself by being aware and responsible for your life’s purpose, or others will dictate and decide how your life will unfold.
3. Adversity is a Teacher
“Every search begins with beginner’s luck. And every search ends with the victors being severely tested.”
Hardship, a necessary currency in life, brings wisdom and understanding to live a life of abundance and brilliance, but only when meaningful lessons are learned from it. It is only when we accept and acknowledge the unwanted pain that life slings at us, we can condition our minds to discern the positive lessons gained from the experience, and enhance rather than reformat our life’s purpose.
In life, most people purposely assign themselves the responsibility of hardships and struggle by carving out a difficult path to prove their worthiness because this triumph over their struggle defines their success. The takeaway for me is to refuse to have your life defined, narrowed and proscribed by these situations of adversity and hardships.
Paradoxically, you can’t be upset about what’s wrong in life, and find what’s right.
4. Learn Deeper Layers of Complexity
“When something evolves, everything around that thing evolves as well.”
In pursuing your life’s purpose, you will encounter quite a list of overwhelming obstacles and moments that will produce extreme doubts in your abilities, and most of all, your faith. The more knowledge extracted, applied, and mastered into your life from pursuing your purpose, the more you will be tested on higher levels, even in nuanced ways.
Without a doubt, we will all have our share of life’s challenges, but if you rise above the challenges, amazing things will happen.
The truth of the matter is, it is our moment-to-moment thoughts and actions that will ultimately determine our ability to face obstacles and live a contented life, because it is only after enduring these struggles that we can live an unfolding life of integrity and gratitude — something worth achieving.
5. Stay in Your Lane
Expectations of others is an excessive emotional investment that will disappoint you and leave much resentment. Each of us will have different lessons to learn, knowledge to gain, and tasks to master, and not everyone will understand what you are experiencing on your journey. Accept yourself and accept others for who they are, even if it shatters your certainties about them.
Your path in life is not the only path. The right path is the one that is best for you. Nobody will ever arrive to the destination of their life’s purpose, and in knowing this, much can be learned.
6. Face Your Fears
“The secret of life though is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.”
In most situations, fears are masks of practicality. Of course, some fears are valid, but most are consuming toxic thoughts and approaches that do not serve us.
The most important way to conquer fear is to first identify situations, along with the negative self-talk, and in doing so, over time you will notice that your fear is merely a distorted inconsequential story made up by yourself. And in knowing this, letting go and changing your negative self-talk will lead to self-empowerment in the form of self-confidence that will supersede your fears.
However, giving in, holding on, and not letting go and accepting our fears will detach the connection to our life’s purpose.
7. Detachment from Outcomes
“Treason is a blow that comes unexpectedly. If you know your heart well, it will never be able to do that to you. Because you’ll know its dreams and wishes, and will know how to deal with them.”
Sometimes the gift of following our life’s purpose will arrive unexpectedly with uncertainty and doubt, like tangled-up and knotted Christmas tree lights, bringing an unexpected state of perplexity. And all you can do is roll with the punches and make the decision to stop expecting elaborate, complex outcomes.
Often, the set-in-stone expectations of our passionate pursuits and happily-ever-afters welcome myriad chaos, contempt and irreverence into our relationships when we become attached to expected, predictable realities to create fulfillment and joy for us.
The key is to place sincere intentions into the Universe, without attachment to outcome, and allow it to either fade into nothingness or bring something beautiful, something exciting, and something certain.
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Joan Peperone is a wife, mother, and a family nurse practitioner with a writing purpose of sharing epistemic perspectives and approaches to help others find their passion in life by focusing on the importing things in the right way. Never wanting to be part of the popular or in group, her writing simply veers away from mainstream thoughts, thinking, and ideas with a graceful take-it-or leave-it attitude.
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