Have you read The Alchemist – by Paulo Coelho? The first time I picked it up it didn’t grab me and I soon put it down. But  the second time I picked it up, the simplistic beauty of the allegorical novel suddenly clicked. I’m going to share some of my favourite quotes over the next few weeks.

Paulo describes four obstacles to finding treasure:

“First we are told from childhood onwards that everything we want to do is impossible.”

“The second obstacle: love. We know what we want to do, but are afraid of hurting those around us by abandoning everything in order to pursue our dream.”

“The third obstacle: fear of defeats we will meet on the path. We who fight for our dream suffer far more when it doesn’t work out, because we cannot fall back on the old excuse, ‘Oh, well, I didn’t really want it anyway.’”

“The fourth obstacle: the fear of realizing the dream for which we have been fighting all our lives.”

… BUT we do deserve to get what we want and there’s no reason not to realise your dreams.

“Everyone on earth has a treasure that awaits him,” his heart said. “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.”

Are you following a path to happiness?