I feel like Brené Brown has been yelling at me to read The Alchemist for the past couple of years. This is indirectly of course, considering how much she mentions it in her work.
I was gifted a copy of the 25th Edition Copy back in 2019 by an Army Sergeant while in Baghdad Iraq. This is someone that I interacted on almost a daily basis while coordinating missions, normally multiple ones. We had many conversations about life throughout the several months we were deployed together. Upon his departure, he thanked me for the conversations, handed me the reddish orange book and said “If you have not read this book, I feel like you need to.”
That book traveled with me several times over the past few years, and I never once even opened it.
For many people that truly know me, they know that this past year has been a year of rebirth for me, where I have taken control of my life and am very clear of my overall purpose and am working towards it. Many events over the past year have fallen into place and I am continuously growing and learning a lot.
In December 2022, I decided to reread of all Brené Brown’s book to check my perspective and see if I would take away anything different because of how much I have grown. Jan 2019 was when my journey of self-growth started officially with the reading of “Dare to Lead”. I feel like BB mentions The Alchemist in every book she has written, and it felt like this time she was telling me to “read the damn book!” I went up to my office, grabbed the book and took it downstairs to be my “couch book” (I have a book on my nightstand, in my office, and by the couch and try to read an hour of each one every day).
It took me about a week or so to devour the book……..and I tell you what, that damn book fed my soul entirely.
There are several quotes that stood out to me:
1. “To realize one’s destiny is a person’s obligation.”
2. “When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.”
3. “There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.”
4. “[P]eople are capable, at any time in their lives, of doing what they dream of.”
5. “Intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life.”
6. “And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”
I realized my destiny this past year and have leaned into it with authenticity and a growth mindset. I welcome failure, I starting understand my gift of intuition more, the universe is conspiring and has been (despite the setbacks) to help me at this moment, and I know that I am more than capable of fulfilling my destiny and I am on that pathway.
Thank you Paulo Coelho, Grayson (my friend/Army Sergeant), and Brené Brown for validating this journey I am meant for and this destiny I am obliged and wholeheartedly ready to crush!