- It's not enough to know what you want.
You have to do what you want to be what you want.
I write things that I feel, and then,
when the books are out, people
identify themselves with my books.
I don't imagine myself sitting in my apartment
in Rio De Janeiro, saying, oh, I want to be
such a successful writer and people have to read my book.
When you want something, the whole
universe will conspire for you to have it.
- He's a Brazilian lyricist and novelist.
His novel, The Alchemist, has been
translated into 80 languages.
He's sold over 200 million copies of his books
and is the all-time best-selling Portuguese author.
He's Paulo Coelho and here's my
take on his top 10 rules for success.
Rule number one is my personal favorite,
and make sure to stick around
all the way to the end for some special bonuses.
And as you watch the clips, if there's
something Paulo says that really resonates with you,
make sure to put it in the comments in quotes
so that other people can benefit and be inspired, as well.
- You know, it took me years.
I knew that I want to be a writer, since I was young
and have this megalomaniac things
about being the most famous writer in the world.
But it's not enough to know what you want.
You have to do what you want to be what you want.
You know, so a writer implies
you're writing books. - Yeah.
- A gardener implies he gardens.
You know?
But if you, I don't know about today, but
if you talk to your father, your mother,
if you are from a middle class,
I want to be a gardener, your father say, "Oh my, son.
"Please, go to university." - Yeah.
- "Get a diploma, and you can
"do your gardening during the weekend."
But you love plants.
You love the soil.
You love, you know...
But, at the end of the day, you are convinced
and this is not good for the person who is being convinced
and for the person who is trying to convince.
You are creating this order of
frustration around them.
- Your background is fairly well documented,
the things you went through which have shaped you.
How much of that is really behind you?
How much do those ghosts still haunt you?
The involvement in issues that
got you imprisoned and tortured.
You know, the drug use and so on.
- I am myself and my circumstances.
I think that...
Like the Spanish philosopher used to say,
"So who am I?
"I'm a sum of all the experiences
"that I've lived in my life."
That said, of course, I don't look back
because, if I look back, I may become a sort of salt.
So I try to live my life here.
But it is the sum of difficult moments,
good moments, experiences that I had in my life,
that brought me here in front
of this camera, talking to you.
You don't live your life in this capitalistic sense
that you accumulate knowledge as you're accumulating money.
No, no, no, no, no.
Life is about the present moment
and you're here, you're here now.
And then you have an idea or you have some thing
but that may be a root in your past
but you don't know.
So what I try to do is to live
my life as full, as intensely as I can.
- You're one of the world's most widely read authors
but you're more than just a writer.
You've become something of a spiritual icon.
How do you regard yourself nowadays?
- I would totally disagree with you here.
I'm not a spiritual master or anything.
I am someone who is,
well, walking through this life
and learning at the same time.
What I do is to share my experience
because I think life is about sharing.
So in this case, I write.
I write things that I feel.
And then when the books are out,
people identify themselves with my books.
But not with my answers, mostly with my questions.
- Well, lets say, I know you've said
you have nothing to teach but you have something to share
but it must put some pressure
on you when people are looking for answers.
Obviously you're touching something
that people are missing in their lives.
- Do you believe so?
(exhales) I don't know, I don't know.
I think that when I write a book,
I try to understand myself because
it's not easy to understand yourself.
Unless you share, as I said, with someone else.
So, when I...
I sit, I have no clear idea what I'm going to write about.
Sometimes it is a totally unknown part of me who does it.
So, we get inspiration.
Inspiration meaning getting busy.
Getting things from outside to inside.
So my books mostly, they try to share, to myself,
who am I?
Because this constant pressure of discovering myself.
When I was a child, they think that all you exist.
- Right. - Right?
And all day, I was by the orange tree
and I had this sensation that I was alive.
Do you remember the day that
you realized that you were alive?
- No, I don't remember that day.
- I remember so...
- I wish I did but okay.
- That day I said, "My God, I am alive.
"Not only I am alive
"but I'm not the center of the universe."
And then I realized that I was alive
and there was a lot of things going on outside
my childish world.
And so I said I'm going to pay
attention to what is going on.
And this is how I survive it.
I think that you have to take risks, all the time.
If you don't do that, you don't move forward.
We are trying to be too conservative
in the way that you think life.
And the results is that nobody's voice off to say
I don't agree with this, I agree with that.
So we have to push somehow our individuality
to make sure that our voice can be heard.
My personal legend was always to be a writer
and finding your personal legend does not
mean fulfilling your personal legend.
Because being a writer means writing books.
I cannot just sit and say, okay I'm a writer.
So you write your first book.
It may or not be successful.
Then there's the next one, there's a third one,
and, all of a sudden, you realize that you are.
Your books are doing very well.
And you fear success.
You have this moment that you think,
oh my gosh, should I write the next book?
Do I need to be judged again?
By the critics, et cetera.
And then you realize that your
personal legend is about moving on.
Go.
If you have a dream of becoming a writer, write books.
Don't be paralyzed by either success or fear.
So, I'm in the process, I'm on
the journey, of my personal legend.
Not to fulfill it but to live
it as full, as intensely as I can.
I fought against all odds.
There's no tradition of a Brazilian
writer to be translated,
there is no tradition of being published.
I am published now, I think, in 56 languages,
which is very impressive.
So, for example, only in India,
publishing in eight different languages.
In Spain, publishing in four different languages.
So I could never ever dream...
Well, I don't imagine myself sitting in my apartment
in Rio de Janeiro and say,
"Oh, I want to be such a successful writer
"and people have to read my book."
(interviewer laughs) Because at the end of the day,
who promotes the book is the reader.
Why did my book travel so well,
to such different places, like Iran and Israel.
My highest readership per capita is Iran and Israel.
They have a 4.5...
Every 4.5 house in these two countries,
they have at least one book of mine.
So there is no recipe.
From the moment that you try to
find the recipe, I think you are lost
because you lose the most important thing in you.
That it is your spontaneity.
I would also like to use the word innocence.
Not innocence in the sense of being naive,
but innocence in the sense of being
open, of seeing everything as a
child, and be amazed and surprised.
And enjoy discovering life every single day.
You are here to honor something called the miracle of life.
You can be here to, well, to fulfill your hours and days
with something that is meaningless
but you know that you have a reason to be here.
It is the only thing that gives you enthusiasm.
Right, you know? - Yeah.
- And you know when you are betraying your personal legend,
when you are doing some thing without enthusiasm.
And worse, you know that you have this good excuse,
I'm not ready, which is just an excuse.
No, they'll say, no, I'm not ready.
I have to wait for the right moment.
You know, now I have to feed my family.
Come on, your family wants to see you happy.
- Yes. - Your daughter.
Your husband.
Your wife.
They don't want to see you there,
sitting in a work that you hate.
- Right. - Even if it gives you
tonnes of money.
When my first book, The Alchemist,
started being successful, I was already 42
so I was mature enough to learn
that everything's a gift and you have to
treasure and respect it as a gift
and not to be crazy because you're successful.
Before that huge success,
very difficult times and I learned a lot.
Luck, coincidence, and faith.
In The Alchemist, I wrote, "When you want something,
"the whole universe will conspire for you to have it."
This means that when you put your vibration,
your energy, call it whatever you want to call,
into the air, somehow the soul of the world is affected.
I think that coincidence is the language of the stars.
For something to happen, so many
forces have to be put in action.
According to the ancient alchemists,
and to the physicists of today,
everything is one thing only.
They would call it atom.
Everything is made of atoms.
If everything is totally connected,
whatever you do interfere in the rest of the world.
So signs is when you look around, and you see
oh my God, the universe is talking to me.
I have to understand this language.
How can you understand any language is by
taking the risks.
Not being afraid of making mistakes.
So, you start to learn this language
using something you have denied so far, your intuition.
And you need to use your intuition
and you need to be brave enough
to dive deep into this unknown universe
and say, I'm going to learn this language.
- Thank you, guys, so much for watching.
I made this video because Andre F. asked me to
so if there's a famous entrepreneur
that you want me to profile next,
leave it in the comments below and I'll see what I can do.
I'd also love to know which of Paulo's comments
made the biggest impact on you and why.
What change are you going to make in your business or life
as a result of watching this video?
Leave it in the comments and I will join in the discussion.
I also want to give a quick shoutout to Dina Harbour
from womenobtainingwealth.com.
Dina, thank you so much for buying a copy of my book.
It really means a lot to me.
For those of you watching, if you want a chance
at a shout-out in a future video,
make sure to pick up a copy of the book
and e-mail in your receipt so we can keep track.
Thank you, guys, so much for watching.
Continue to believe, or whatever
your one word is, and I'll see you soon.
- What is inspiration?
Inspiration is (inhales) breathing.
Right?
So you put what is outside
inside of you.
And then you expire.
So, inspiration is something that everybody has,
not only writers,
everybody has what you
or she, or he, do things with love.
It is connected to this energy that we don't understand.
We can explain, explain, explain,
but it is connected with the energy of love.
If you enjoy what you are doing,
you are going to be inspired to share with other people.
However, inspiration, you cannot guide inspiration.
Inspiration is a boat,
and you ride this boat in a sea.
So there is this gigantic sea and your boat
is taking you, inspiration is guiding you.
Inspiration is wind.
That is guiding you towards your destiny.
If you try to guide inspiration, you are lost.
You can read, of course, but
then go and write a technical book.
What you needed to do, what at least I needed to do
when I sit down to write, is to have another idea,
as I mention in my previous podcast,
but then allow myself to be guided
by just overall idea.
I go into this boat of inspiration, I sit in here.
Every morning when I'm writing a new book,
when I was writing Aleph, normally I started at
11 o'clock in the morning and then, of course,
I had the ideas of the previous night
where I was upstairs in my bed,
thinking, tomorrow I need to write about this,
this, and this, and this, and I took a lot of notes.
Then I sit here, I read these notes, and I say,
(scoffs) let's try to do this.
But I know it's not going to work.
And then you start using your notes
to write the next page, the next chapter,
but the notes are not connected
with your inspiration, or my inspiration.
So after half an hour, trying to do this or that,
I finally get into this boat because
you need the discipline also to go into this boat,
and I allow myself to be guided.