Book Review: The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Published on by Eve Crabapple2 Comments

Saturday morning I decided to go to the library to find some books on languages. After looking around and not finding what I wanted to find I was about to head out when my eye was caught by this book:


I read a couple of pages, was intrigued by the simple but profound writing and checked it out. I started the book when I arrived home and finished it the next day. It is not a long book, less than 200 pages, but the lessons within could take up volumes and volumes. Without divulging the plot, the story follows the events of a young shepherd who leaves his homeland in Spain and to travel to Egypt to see the Pyramids and find buried treasure. I love stories about traveling through the Sahara, the Pyramids, and buried treasure  so the story-line naturally appealed to me. However, much more than that is the writing itself that made me keep reading. If any of you have read “The Little Prince”  by Antoine Saint Exupery, you’ll understand what I mean when I describe Coelho’s style as simple but profound. “The Alchemist” reminded me very much of the classic by Saint Exupery and it’s no wonder that it has been translated in over 50 languages. I’m just amazed that I’ve never heard about this book. Coelho first published this in his native Brazil in 1988 and then it was translated into English in 1993 and here I am reading it 23 years later. I feel like I’m really late to the party! But if you’re late like me — don’t delay, read it now!

I need to return my copy to the library now, but I will be purchasing a copy of my own. This is the type of book that reveals a little bit more each time you revisit it.

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“Never Lose Your Childish Enthusiasm…”

Published on by Eve Crabapple1 Comment

…It’s the most important thing.”

This is a quote from one of my absolute favorite movies, “Under the Tuscan Sun”. While there are so many lessons in that movie that I like to remember over and over again, the phrase above spoken by Katherine is the most memorable to me.

I find myself more often lately trying to think back to when I was a child about what I liked to do, how I used to spend my days, and how what I remember is so different from my life now. But I suppose that it’s a natural part of becoming an adult. We can’t spend whole days playing outside. The rent would never get paid, bills would pile up, and I’d probably starve to death. But less about the actual differences in what I spend my days doing, it’s the difference in how I feel about my life that the quote above reminds to reflect on. One of the differences I remember about my life as a child compared to my life now is the feeling about my day as I used to wake up. Before I felt happy and alive. I loved school. I loved living. Now, not so much. I wouldn’t say I’m completely depressed and hating life, but it’s a different feeling. A duller, sedated feeling.

I’ve got to get that feeling back. I’ve got to get back my childish enthusiasm.

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Climbing out of “Idea Debt”

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Do you know what idea debt is?

If you’ve started different blogs, spent several days to get them to look exactly how you want them and then after a post or two, inexplicably seen the initial enthusiasm for your grand new idea wane away — then you have experienced idea debt first hand.

If you’ve become so enthralled about a new subject and decided from then on to invest all of your energies to learning about it and becoming the leading expert in that area and perhaps publish a few books, only to see your devotion disappear the next weekend — then you know what I am talking about.

The examples above are personal to me but idea debt is summed up as the accumulation of ideas that have seen this progression from ignited enthusiasm to sputtering ember until you are surrounded by all of the cold lumps of ashes that lay around reminding you of your inability to see a project through.

I’ve been struggling with this for years now and I don’t think I’ve completely climbed my way out of my idea debt, but I have a much better awareness of why I fall into it and I know where to start.

The first thing to realize about any project is that not all of it is going to be enjoyable, all of the time. Even if the main work is something you have a passion for, you are going to need to develop new skills and challenge yourself in ways that you didn’t realize going into it. I don’t care if your goal is to become a professional cake taster and all you want to do is get invited to judge cake baking competitions and travel around the world eating the best cake there is — there are going to be days when you are sick of cake, days when you have to judge and taste a cake where the baker felt that the broccoli and asparagus based frosting really elevated the filet mignon infused cake to a whole new level, days when you are asked to be the keynote speaker at the International Convention of Cupcakes when you are terrified of public speaking. You see where I’m going with this? Even if you find the “perfect” passion that encapsulates all of your strengths and combines all of your interests (which is impossible) you will need to do things that you had not planned on. Now, if it gets to the point that all you are doing is tasting disgusting cake, you need to start being more selective about which competitions you agree to judge. However, don’t expect your life to be a daily parade of joyful and inspiring experiences — because that is not life, that is no one’s life.

It has helped me to understand that nothing I choose to do will be easy. It is normal to experience fear, boredom, hesitation, and stagnation, but as long as I choose to do something that I like and something I am good at, it is impossible to go wrong.

P.S. For more (and better) writing on idea debt, take a look at this post at jessicaabel.com (http://jessicaabel.com/2016/01/27/idea-debt/)

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Make A Choice!

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I am sitting here drinking my home-made hot chocolate and enjoying a slice of strawberry cheesecake. And I am thinking about the change that has overcome me at work. I had a great week at work. Not necessarily from a production standpoint, but from a process perspective. There were so many new roles that I needed to perform and I had some trouble getting down my process and mustering the confidence to stick to that process no matter how stupid I felt doing it.

 

Home-made hot chocolate is so much better than store bought!

But then I had this realization that…no one is a success overnight and everyone had to start somewhere. That even those who were the most successful in my role had to have failed before and that the only difference between them and the others is that they chose to believe that they wouldn’t let anything hinder them from doing as well as they believed they could. Everyone gets scared, feels stupid, gets rejected, gets told “no”, but stopping at those moments means you become like everyone else. Everyone else who makes excuses about the client, about the job, about the market, about the expectations, about everybody and everything else besides themselves. Pointing fingers and justifying their failures in a way that absolves them of the blame when the truth is that no one else but themselves are to blame. You know, it’s so easy to deflect. It feels good to not be the reason why you can’t do something. It means that you don’t need to change. That you have done everything that you need to do and it is out of your hands — it’s not your fault. But what goes unsaid, is that when you do this to yourself, it also means that you don’t get better. That you don’t get to see what you are actually capable of. That you don’t learn. That you don’t surprise yourself anymore.

So you need to make a choice. A choice to get back up, get out, get better, do better, keep going, explore your abilities, surprise others. Make a choice to be the stuff of wonder and possibility that sparks others to do the same.

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Book Haul: Ghosts, Finance, and the Art of War

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I stopped by my neighborhood secondhand book shop to see if I could find something interesting to read. All of the books I have right now have already been read or I was just not in the mood for. At first it took me a while to find anything of interest, but I kept browsing mainly as an excuse to stay warm from the wind and the rain outside. Unexpectedly, I came across a tattered, bright blue book in the clearance section of the collectibles. The title on the front had long been worn off, but I could still make out “Haunted Homes and Family Legends” in the top left hand corner. The spine gleamed with those same word in gold lettering. The publication date on the first page of the book read April 3, 1911. That pretty much sealed the deal for me. A beautiful book dating from the early 20th century full of scary stories and it’s only $10? I’ll take it.

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After that, I found a couple of finance books that I had been looking to read, “Why ‘A’ Students Work for ‘C’ Students” by Robert T. Kiyosaki and “The Millionaire Mind” by Thomas J. Stanley. In the same finance section I discovered an interesting take on Sun Tzu’s “Art of War” — “The Art of War for Women” by Chin-Ning Chu.

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I can’t wait to dive into these reads and share my thoughts with you.

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