I just read a book that I want to share with the readers of the blog. It has nothing directly to do with dog training, but rather with the idea that life is a Journey and that our destiny is to follow a dream, which Coelho calls your Personal Legend. The story is about a shepherd boy from Andalusia, Spain who follows his dream to visit the Pyramids in Gisa, Egypt, in search of some treasure a Gypsy woman told him is waiting for him there, and all the things that happen to him along the way. Things that seem to do nothing but at first thwart that dream, but in the end, these obstacles set him up for the next step of the journey, placing him in a position to see the next signpost on the journey, or make the self-improvements necessary for him to succeed on the next step.

 The idea is that when you follow your personal legend, the powers of the universe conspire to help you achieve your dream. When we give up on those dreams, and settle for just what life has dished out to us, these powers that want us to succeed slowly stop working in our favor, until they are silent. Life becomes mundane, and patterned.

I think it is such a positive mindset, for us to believe not only that anything is possible, but we are able to move through life successfully, and that the spirit of the universe is working in your favor to bring you that success and personal fulfillment.  Our part is to be looking for those opportunities, and make decisions to take the action to pursue those things that affirm our life and success. Looking for those signs that say, "Risk it, do it, take a chance on your happiness by changing your life." All it takes is saying yes to opportunities. But remember, if at first you don’t see immediate success, it may be part of the lesson to fail, or be set back, because there are lessons to be learned from struggle and difficulty. It is easy to follow an easy path. it is hard to keep your focus on your personal legend, fulfilling your personal destiny, when things get tough. But if you can see inside yourself to take a lesson from that difficulty, you will often see the next step of the journey to fulfill your own personal legend.

The book also talks of the interconnectedness of all things, and the lessons learned from people and places you meet along the way. I was just saying to a friend the other day, that no matter where I travel in the world, despite the differences that we see on the surface whether they be cultural differences or social differences in how different groups of people live, most people live very similarly, and have the same hopes and dreams, and what seems strange at first isn’t so much strange as it is just a bit different. Some people are actively following the omens that are presented to them on the path of their personal legend, and some have just stopped trying to get there.