you're tuned in to the learn or be learn podcast, a show where wisdom meets curiosity in order to discover the human experience. I'm your host, Shiva D. And remember, you either learn from or you learn from. Now, let's get back to the show.
All right, welcome back, everybody to another great episode. I'm really excited about this book episode. It's called the alchemist. I'm sure many of you heard of it. It's actually a somewhat fiction book, written with the essence of personal growth in laymen terms, we could call it a fable. It's pretty much what it is. And the author is incredible. I love the message of this book. And at its core, the universal theme is that the alchemist deals with finding one's own path in life. And the journey of this protagonist, Santiago, serves as a metaphor for what the larger quest of for meaning is, in all individuals, right? So the path of life that we take, I made a few bullet points here, I would call this a very inspirational book. It's a simple fable, but carries philosophical depth. It's got a relatable journey. And it's just so Ellen elegantly written in its prose, right? Meaning it's got such natural speech to it. And makes it so straightforward that many, many can understand the story. So without further ado, let's jump right into this book, I'm really excited to share it with you all. So there's three main sections I want to get into here. One is the rich symbolism. So let's start there. Right. So Santiago is the protagonist, and he symbolizes how every individual is on their own personal quest for meaning. And his journey represented the universal human journey towards understanding our one's own dream or personal legend is what they call their personal destiny, personal legend. And I think this is very relatable, right? We see this in books such as Man's Search for Meaning. You'll see the buzzword life purpose, things like that. And I think a lot of us tend to think, what am I here to do? What is my journey? What is my, my dreams? What is my legend, my destiny that I want to leave, right. And that's what makes the protagonist very relatable is that he's so confused. He's just this young man, very confused. And he's this Shepherd, who decides, you know, what, I'm just going to go travel the world, and sells all his sheep barely has any money, he gets into trouble gets caught, caught up with life has to get another job as a clerk at a random shop in a different country, and, and he's just going through life trying to find this treasure, because he heard about this gold somewhere. And he goes through this whole journey trying to find the alchemist which rumors had it that the alchemist knew how to make anything into gold. So he was in search of this Alchemist to find a wealth and fortune, which is very relatable, right? Many of us want wealth, many of us are in search of wealth. But something I emphasize in the show is that there's more to life than just wealth, right? There's relationships, there's health. If you don't have health, then you don't have the proper toolkit to enjoy your wealth. And if you don't have relationships, and you don't have the proper people to enjoy your wealth with. So wealth without the other two pillars, still creates a crumbling infrastructure for you. So these foundational pillars are so important. And spoiler alert, this is exactly what you know, some essence of what the protagonist starts to understand. Another symbolism is the alchemist. And the Alchemist is a character in the book. But he's also very symbolic and symbolizes wisdom, enlightenment, and is often this guiding force that pushes the protagonist towards his self discovery and achieving his dreams. The desert is often discussed in the book and they often discuss the desert as having a soul the desert almost feels like a character in this book as well. And the desert basically represents the challenges and trials of life and the actual journey itself. Right. So this is where the protagonist will look into the distance and confront his desires, confront his fears, confront his failures, and look at the desert and say, you know, he'll look at the desert and look for signs of the universe. And that leads me to the next point, which is the omens that are often mentioned in this book and omens are were symbolic for this idea of have messages from the universe. They symbolized that the world is trying to communicate with us the omens in this book were to pebbles, a black and white pebble, one meant. They were basically it's basically as if you were carrying a dice or something and you rolled it to figure out what your next move should be right. So it was basically symbolic like that. And he had these omens that he believed were there to communicate with him. And the universe was trying to communicate with him. So this leads me to the second section, which is the philosophical depth of this book. And there's a few points that are really important here. One is understanding what the personal legend is. And in this book, it's a very core tenant of the book. And it basically talks about everybody has a dream, everybody has a purpose. And everybody has a personal legend that they're meant to achieve in their lifetime. And recognizing and pursuing this dream is what creates a fulfilled life. I actually have a quote here that says, they took from the book that says, when you really want something, it's because of the desire originated in the Soul of the Universe is your mission on earth, on page 21. And that is profound, because any inclination you have towards something, any desire or interest you have towards something is because deep down is obtainable within your realm of reality, right? If you can dream it, you can believe it, you can achieve it, in order to actually achieve something, you first need to dream of it and bring it into existence. So therefore, your ability to even dream of this idea means it's within your realm of possibility. And that should be very exciting for all of us. Because that means the only thing that hinders us from that dream is ourself. And there's actually another quote on page 73, it says, but this fear evaporates, when we understand that our life stories in the history of the world were written by the same hand, the difference between somebody that actually succeeded, and somebody that never tried was that person got over their fear and understood this quote, exactly, that the history of the world. And the story of our lives were written by the same hand, because they dare to dream. Going further, it says everything under the sun has been written by one hand only is the hand that evokes love, the creation of a twin soul for every person in this world. Without such love, one's dream would have no meaning. You know, going back to what we were talking about, there's also this idea of the languages of the world, right? So this idea of a universal language and how the world is trying to speak to you. And I'll give you a small example, in my own personal life, about how I believe the world actually tries to communicate with you, right, in a way in a symbolic way. For example, when I dropped the idea of going to medical school and becoming a doctor, which was a goal of mine my whole life, I couldn't quite put a definitive understanding to it. I just had an intuitive understanding to it, I had some intuition tell me my gut feeling told me that I need to do something else. I have a bigger purpose here. It almost felt like the shepherd leaving his comfort zone of being a shepherd. Right? He could just hurt his sheep, make a good living, live his life, slowly invest some money, live his life and then die. But he felt that he had some higher purpose calling him so he sold his sheep. And that's exactly how I felt and, you know, is actually very frustrating at that time, because so many people would ask me, Do you regret it? Why did you do it? Do you regret it? Do you regret it? And I remember my only answer was, that is something I can only answer in hindsight in the future. I personally don't really know. And I think people kind of considered me a bum for saying that because they're like, Wow, this guy literally gave up a high paying six figure job as a UN high status, right as a doctor with a white coat. And he doesn't even have a plan B. But you know, the plan B was to follow my dreams to follow my vision to follow my life. And that road was not easy, and it's still not easy. It's gotten far more exciting. I'm starting to accept the outcome of flowing with the wind, you could say, but, man, that was a tough time because I didn't even think of a plan B. And as soon as I graduated from undergrad I thought you know what, I'm just gonna go full fledge into this content stuff. But coming from immigrant Indian parents, they had this zero tolerance for that. You know, going back to what I was saying.
It was hard, you know, but I felt this gut feeling. And I'm actually currently reading this IRA, the book. It's called healing your gut, mind and emotions. And there's this strong understanding that your gut mind have a connection. And I actually read about this in anthropology too. There is there is this hypothesis called the gut brain hypothesis where there is a direct link between our gut in our brain and our brains evolved as our guts got smaller over time, which helped us become what we call today. homosapiens, the modern human right. So there is a strong connection between our mind and our gut. Think about food comas, when you eat a ton of food, what happens to your brain? Are you super focused? Right now you're not you're like, Yeah, I think it's about time I take a nap. Because the only thing you can think about is digesting this food. You're not literally you can barely think at all, you might just watch some TV and lay in bed. And I say this from personal experience. I mean, whenever I eat a ton of rice or something, ton of carb loading Italian food for sure. When I eat this massive bowl of pasta, it's game over. Right? So there is this connection between the mind and the gut. And intuition often comes from the gut, right guessing, but think about the core of what I'm saying here. If there is a connection between your mind and your gut, what didn't you say the gut, in a way has its own mind. It's a little weird, a little abstract. But you know, if you keep an open mind, here, it kind of starts to make sense. That's the the colloquial term gut feeling comes from, right. And if you get into a little bit of spirituality, right, it might come from a higher purpose of understanding things around you that are pushing you in a direction or not. But I believe in this what this book talks about is the universe, the world, the language of the world trying to talk to you. And I think the more you follow your life purpose, the more you become in tune with understanding that feeling, right? Because think about it, if you stay in a nine to five job for 40 years, you've basically suppressed and pushed down that intuitive understanding of yourself to the point where you probably no longer understand or feel it or can even sense it anymore. And I think the more you follow in line with who you are and who you are, who you are meant to be, the better in tune you are with your body, your understanding and your intuition. And I think that's another very strong point in this philosophical depth perception. Moving on to this last portion here, and spoiler alert, if you haven't read it, if you haven't read the book, and you want to read it. This is a huge spoiler, it is. It's the biggest spoiler, I'm talking about the ending of the book. But if you don't have plans to read it, or you don't really mind, and you want to get the information that I'm about to share, anyways, go ahead and stick around otherwise, you know, go check out the book, go read it, or go get some summaries or something and come back to this episode and where we left off. But anyways, in the conclusion of the alchemist, Santiago reaches this Pyramid in Egypt. And the location he had seen is this, the location he saw was a reoccurring dream he had, and he believed this to be the place where he was going to find that hidden treasure. And he started to digging and digging, and then this group of men ambushed him. And they eventually spare his life because they think he's just this delusional kid that's looking for treasure. And but but before they go, the man says, this one man, I'm the leader, I'm assuming, says he to once had a dream for treasure and a quest to find it. But then he just become cynical and says it was just merely been a dream, in this ruined church of Spain. And that's when he hadn't. That's when the protagonists had an aha moment. Because that's where he came from. That was his starting point. So he traveled all the way back home. And he, sure enough, find the treasure just laying there the gold, right. And I think one big point here is that this novel reinforced this idea of cyclical nature of life, and this journey of going from the starting location and going back to the starting location, which is basically saying that life is nothing but a journey. And you need to enjoy this process of journey and who you become for it. Right this way. Like to say life is like a dance, not a start to finish. And often, I often this is the way I rationalize things is I think, I'm more excited about the person I become from achieving the goal than the goal itself. Right? So if your goal is to become a millionaire, you should be more excited about the person you would become in order to become a millionaire than the actual million dollars themselves. Which is why I believe most people can't achieve that. goals because they have the wrong influencing factor of what they are driven by. It's often something he talked about in atomic habits is, if you have this goal oriented fixation, you're not either you're either not going to achieve the goal or once you achieve the goal, you have no motivation or drive to do anything else. Because you weren't focused on the system's, you were focused on the goal, Journey being the same synonymous understanding of what we're talking about here. Right. So another great point was the journey over the destination, which is basically what we've been talking about. That was point two. And I really do believe that the protagonists, right, he grew spiritually, he grew wisdom, personal growth, perseverance, dedication, courage, right, there was many moments, he almost died on this journey. And he grew so much from it. So when he found that wealth, he was ready, because he had become the person in order to obtain that, well, think about the times when people win the lottery. Right? Most lottery winners lose that money. Why? Because they didn't become the person in order to properly utilize that wealth. That's why they blew it. So if you really want to become somebody, whatever that identity that you're hoping for, one, you need to already believe that you can have it because like we talked about the beginning, if your mind has any inclination towards a desire, a true desire, then that means it was already in your realm of possibilities, and you need to go for it. But you need to understand that this comes from a personal journey. And you need to enjoy the journey. Right, you need to enjoy the idea that you are going to become somebody that this journey is the part that you were urging for, right? In essence, you might think Millionaire is the thing that you're shooting for. But it's actually the 100 steps that it took you to get to that millionaire status, the change in habits a change in mindset, that change of who you became, in order to handle a million dollars, or handle a million dollar net worth, or a billion dollar net worth, or whoever you want to become or an Olympic athlete. Right? I have a friend who was who was a former US Olympic athlete, and we talked about it and his mindset man, strong like Kobe, Kobe. The reason Kobe so attractive is because of his mindset. He was authentic, and he had a Mamba mentality. Right, job's not finished, he had this strong conviction that he had to do it. Right. He followed his journey, and he became somebody from it. There's this one judge from Shark Tank, her name is Barbara something and very smart woman, very successful woman and many others have said this, too, is if you become the best at something, money will naturally flow towards that direction. You shouldn't even have to make money as the goal. Of course, we have financial requirements and financial burdens, right? paying rent buying foods such as but once you've reached that level of what is at the lowest point of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which is security. So once you have enough money for a car, a place to live, slash sleep, and food to eat, to survive, you need to understand what do I need to do to fulfill my soul? And go on this journey? And it's not easy. I will say from personal experience, like I said, when I dropped medicine, it was a very, very hard decision. I mean, I think I spent six months thinking about whether I should drop it because it was a life altering decision. And before that, it was the only decision I ever thought about my life. I mean, it was almost certain anybody that knew me, knew that that's what I wanted. And I had no alternative I had, because something about me, my my dad has said this before, as well as once I set my mind to something, I'm going to do it because I have that level of conviction that I will do it. job's not finished. And, you know, this is a complete side tangent could be a complete nother episode actually, which I might do this idea between quitting and letting go. Sorry, quitting and pivoting I should say, right. Most people say oh, you're a quitter, or like you never succeed in anything, but sometimes it's best to just pivot. Like, who am I? Who am I fulfilling if I just stay on this and do this grind and get to medical school? Get into my 30s massive debt. Now I never now I have a large mortgage payment, ton of car payments, probably a wife, maybe even kids and when Right now I'm in later years in my life with a lot of financial issues of payments that need to be made and I can't follow my personal journey
all too what so nobody called me a quitter. Well, how about you take that same 10 years like we talked about another episode 10 years are gonna go by anyways? What if you took that same 10 years and did what you want it? No one's gonna call you a quitter then when you succeed, right, right. Anyways, I wanted to a couple tangents. But this idea of following your journey is really important. And I understand how difficult it can be. I think a few episodes back, I wrote an episode about how success can be a lonely journey. And it's for reasons like this. It was actually I had the alchemist book in mind when I made that episode. And they both kind of are linked, I could say right, linked episodes in. But in conclusion, guys, the importance of pursuing your own personal destiny, your own personal legend, or dreams is very important. And I can't stress this enough. You know, in life, we're often indoctrinated to this understanding that material treasures is what has value. And they're great in the hole. They give you a short term dopamine hit short term service fat satisfaction, but the true treasure lies in the wisdom and experience you gain in the pursuit of their dreams of your dreams. Right? You can go buy that luxury watch as a milestone statement piece. But personally for me, right, the idea behind having a luxury watch should be for a milestone statement piece because I think at that point, the symbolism behind the watch is all those hours, days years of blood sweat and tears that you put into getting to that moment and it's a reminder every time you see it right adding sentimental value to material items has a stronger value in your life than just buying the next watch and the next watch and the next Watch right but anyways guys, I hope you enjoyed this episode on the Alchemist and you got a couple things out of it. Hopefully, you know, please share this message that's really helped me if you're wondering how you guys can help me grow this community just word of mouth and sharing it and sharing this episode with somebody that you think would benefit from getting a short synopsis of this book and application of what they can do into their own lives would be great for not just them but for me as well. But anyways, everybody I really do appreciate your time and investing here with me. And remember, either learn from or learn from Thanks, bye