The 16‑minute video, produced by Evan Carmichael, presents a curated interview with Brazilian novelist Paulo Coelho, interspersed with Carmichael’s narration that frames Coelho’s thoughts as a "top 10 rules for success" list. Coelho repeatedly emphasizes that merely knowing what you want is insufficient; you must act on it to become who you want to be. He describes his personal legend as writing, explains that inspiration is a breath‑like exchange of external energy, and stresses the importance of risk‑taking, intuition, and disciplined daily practice. Coelho rejects the label of "spiritual master," positioning himself instead as a lifelong learner who shares experiences rather than teaches. He reflects on his unconventional path to global fame—selling over 200 million books, translated into 80 languages—highlighting that success has no formula and that authenticity, spontaneity, and enthusiasm are essential. The video concludes with Carmichael’s call‑to‑action for viewers to comment on the most impactful Coelho quote and to suggest future profiles.
Chapters
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 1 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 that 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 To do what you want, to be what you want.
So, a writer implies in writing books.
A gardener implies in gardens. 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 says, "Oh my son." 'Please go to the university.' Yeah. 'Get a diploma and you can do your gardening during the weekend, you know, 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 aura of frustration. Around there.
Your background is fairly well documented, that the things you went through which have shaped you, how much of that is really behind you, or how much do those ghosts still haunt you? The involvement in, you know, issues that got you imprisoned and tortured, and, you know, the drug use and so on.
I am myself and my circumstance.
I think that, like a Spanish philosopher used to say, So who am I? I am a sum of all the experiences that I lived in my life. That said, of course, I don't look back, because if I look back, I may become a statue of salt. So I try to live my life here, but it is the sum of difficult moments, good moments, well, 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 accumulate 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 something, but that may be rooted 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 know, you have—
you've become something of a spiritual icon. How do you regard yourself nowadays?
I would totally disagree with you. 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, that's it. I know you've said that you have nothing to teach, 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? Well, I don't know. I don't know. I think that when I write a book, I'm trying to understand myself, because it's not easy to understand yourself unless you share, as I said, with someone else. So when 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 breathing, getting things from outside to inside. So my books mostly, they try to share to myself, who am I? Because I'm in this constant process of discovering myself.
When you're a child, you think that only you exist.
Right.
Right? And one day I was by an orange tree and I had the sensation that I was alive. Do you remember the day that you realized that you were alive?
No, I don't remember the day. I remember. So, so, so— I wish I did, but okay.
But that day I said, my God, I'm 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 survived 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 result is that nobody voice out 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. 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 God, should I write the next book? Do I need to be judged again by the critics, etc.? And then you realize that your personal legend is about moving on.
Go.
If you had a dream of becoming a writer, write books. Don't be paralyzed by either success or failure. 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 is no tradition of a Brazilian writer to be translated. There is no tradition of being published. I'm published now, I think, in 56 languages, which is very impressive. So, for example, only in India I'm published in 8 different languages. In Spain I'm published in 4 different languages. So I could never ever dream, I could, 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 had to read my book. 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 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 a recipe, I think you are lost because you lose the most important thing in you, that 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 and seeing everything as a child and be amazed and surprised and enjoying discovering life every single day.
You are here to honor something called the miracle of life. You can't 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?
And you know when you are betraying your personal legend, when you are doing something without enthusiasm. And worse, you know that you have this good excuse, I'm not ready, which is just an excuse. No, 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. Your daughter, your husband, your wife, They don't want to see you there sitting in a work that you hate. Even if it gives you tons of money.
When my first book, The Alchemist, started being successful, I was already 42. So I was mature enough to learn that everything is a gift and you have to treasure and respect it as a gift and not to be crazy because you're successful. So I had before that huge success, time It was very difficult times, and I learned a lot about 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 had to be put in action. According to the ancient alchemists, And to the physicists of today, everything is one thing only. So they will call it atom. Everything is made of atoms. If everything is totally connected, whatever you do interferes 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 that you 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 Paolo's comments had the biggest impact on you and why. What change are you gonna 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 wanna give a quick shout out to Dena Harbour from womenobtainingwealth.com. Dena, 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 email 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 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 when 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're doing, you're going to be inspired to share with other people. However, inspiration— you cannot guide inspiration. Inspiration is a boat, and you are in this boat in a sea. So there's this gigantic sea, and your boat is taking you. Inspiration is guiding you. Inspiration is this wind that is guiding you towards your destiny. If you try to guide inspiration, you are lost. You can do it, of course, but then go and write a technical book. What you need to do, what at least I need to do when I sit down to write, is to have an overall idea, as I mentioned in my previous podcast, but then I allow myself to be guided by this overall idea. I go into this boat of inspiration and sit 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 said, oh, 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.
