Personal Legends and Our Individual Quests

Sweet Bites for May 30, 2025

Mind Candy is a newsletter on practical philosophy and human flourishment—aka how to live “the good life.” Each month we tackle a new theme.

This month we’re exploring the theme of Potential.

Welcome to another edition of Sweet Bites, Mind Candy’s bite-sized newsletter with thought-provoking finds to send you into the weekend with.

---

🍰 Mini Bite

“We have to be prepared for change,” Santiago says to himself early on in The Alchemist, Paulo Coehlo’s most famous work.

The story follows the sheppard Santiago as he sets out on a quest for treasure after having seen it in a dream.

Early in his career, like many writers, Coehlo struggled with whether or not he would make it as a writer. He didn’t know if that was the dream he could pursue as his parents did not want it for him.

But after he wrote his first book, The Pilgrimage, and had taken a pilgrimage himself from France to Spain, he had a realization: the world needs individuals with a dream, and those individuals need the encouragement to fulfill their personal legend, as he calls it in The Alchemist.

“I can’t live with a dream that I did not even try to fulfill,” he would say.

So Coehlo wrote The Alchemist as a metaphor for his own writing journey. “I had a dream, a Personal Legend to fulfill. To be a writer is to write. To write means new books. New books mean new challenges.”

He finished The Alchemist within two weeks as it was “already written in my soul,” as he’s said.

As he writes in the book, “When you want something, all the universe conspires to help you achieve it.”

At the heart of The Alchemist are lessons as old as time: perseverance, courage, obstacles, a willingness to go on a quest, and the pursuit of one’s potential. Each of these is inherent within all of our personal legends.

"If a person is living out his Personal Legend, he knows everything he needs to know. There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure."

The world is a cruel place, it tests everyone it encounters. It will try to force each of us to submit to its will, to bend a knee, to give up and conform to the rest of society. It will tell you you’re not good enough, you don’t have what it takes, you won’t amount to what you desire. And it will tell you all these things and more in different forms: feedback, failures, friends, obstacles, society, jobs.

"Don't give in to your fears" the Alchemist advises Santiago late in the book, “If you do, you won't be able to talk to your heart."

Life will constantly try to entice you to give up and go a different route, the way that gets you to conform to what it wants, to the will of the world. But if you listen to yourself, if you can feel deep down your potential—like a well waiting to be discovered—if you can hold onto that feeling and push ahead, then you hold within your hands the power to fulfill your life, to actualize your dreams, to ensure you make them a reality.

"There is only one way to learn," the Alchemist advises. "It's through action. Everything you need to know you have learned through your journey.“

Whatever you’d like to call it—a personal legend, quest, journey, story, goal—along the way, you will encounter experiences that ask you to question what you’re doing. You’ll run upon self-doubt, setbacks, and fear.

But while each seems like a time to turn around, to throw in the towel and give up, they are in fact moments to practice what we’ve already learned in life.

And if we have not yet learned the lesson of how to proceed, we can go and learn. Through teachers, through books, through experience. The resources are there, the answers we seek, we just have to be willing to look and work for them.

Since its original publication, The Alchemist has sold more than 115 million copies worldwide and made Coehlo a household name.

“Listen to your heart,” he advises in The Alchemist, “It knows all things, because it came from the Soul of the World, and it will one day return there.”

🧘🏻This Week’s Monday Meditation

🦉 This Week’s Wednesday Wisdom

🧪 The Alchemist

If you enjoyed the above Mini Bite about Paulo Coehlo and his writing of The Alchemist, you may enjoy this short video interview of him and Oprah discussing the book.

📚 Wisdom

“It is the anticipation of a reward--not the fulfillment of it--that gets us to take action.”

James Clear

Source: Atomic Habits

💭 Reflection

In the beginning, only we can feel our potential. It starts with us, and it ends with us. We are the only ones who can feel it.

Your job then is to show the world what you know in your heart, and feel in your belly.

You are here for a reason, and you will show everyone what that is.

“To realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation,” Paulo Coehlo writes in The Alchemist.

What is your destiny?

🎙 Podcast to Listen To

In this week’s podcast of The Knowledge Project by Farnam Street’s Shane Parrish, he interviews legendary New England Patriots coach Bill Belichik in a wide-ranch gong interview.

“The big thing about preparation and success is the price has to be paid in advance. You have to put in the work before you get any results.”

Think someone you know would enjoy these? Hit below to forward and spread the love.

Until next time,

D.A. DiGerolamo

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.