That saying that the world's greatest lie is that we are controlled by fate, the king is implying that individuals control their own futures. The way I see it is that life is all controlled by the choices you make in your everyday life. The king is saying that we decide our fate and that is something that I agree with. Of course there is other powerful forces that are helping us along the way but we are ultimately in control. All the little everyday choices we make affect what happens in our future and how we deal with that and react to it is also a big part of how our lives will be affected later on. I think that when it comes to making decisions, we shouldn't over think them but we also shouldn't not think about them at all. If we spend too much time thinking about all the decisions we are faced with in our lives, we might end up making a bad one. And on the other hand, if we don't spend enough time on our decisions than we might it might end up affecting our futures in a negative way. I tend to overthink little things in my life and then I end up making a decision that i'm not happy with in the end. All in all, our lives are what we make them and we are the ones who make it what it is, we are not controlled by fate.

Luck is something that we should all take advantage of when it is on our side. In my opinion luck appears in all different forms and in many different situations. Luck can be something really little that brightens our day when we are having a bad one. I've played sports all my life and I have always had a lucky number, and without it I feel I wouldn't have been able to play. I think that luck and superstition go hand in hand, especially in sports and thing we do in our everyday life. When people have superstitions, they have little things they do that make them feel lucky and that they will do well or succeed in everything they are trying to succeed in. And when we find these little superstitions that make us feel lucky we continue to do them or wear them, or have them in order to continue feeling lucky. Luck does help us in different ways that we might not even realize it but when we do realize we should be appreciative and take advantage of it and help it as much as it helps us.

There are many people, occasionally including myself who are afraid of change and don't welcome it. A lot of people like certain routines and they like things to stay the same. change means something different and sometimes that can be scary, especially when we aren't used to it and don't know how to embrace it. This applies to my life because I have been working on welcoming change and dealing with it the best way possible, but that can be hard sometimes. Knowing how to deal with change is half the battle and if that can be figured out then change won't seem so scary. Its all about the way you look at it and how you decide to react, and this goes for pretty much everything in life. Change can be good, it can open our eyes to new opportunities and chances that we might not have taken otherwise. I believe that is a good thing and that the opportunities and adventures that come with change bring us positive things. Accepting change also takes courage and guts because there is always a possibility that things won't work out like you hoped they would, but that goes without saying. Overall even though change is normally seen as a scary thing to most people, it usually comes with once and a life time opportunities that we should learn to not pass up.

I think this quote is probably one of the most important thing to be talked about in this book. You can try to avoid studying and learning about the important things in life but in the end its going to come back and hurt you. If you are truly invested and interested In something and you are dedicated and take tim to study it deeply then you will achieve the master work. It comes down to the fact that if you put effort and all you have into what you are doing, then you will get what you want in return. I also like to think of this as karma, I am a firm believer in karma and I think that it plays a part in the idea that if you work hard for what you want, karma will be in your favor. I always try to do the best I can in everything I do because I know that how to achieve what you want in life. There has been a few times in my life where I have tried to take a shortcut and in the end it always came back to bite me. If you take shortcuts in life, it may seem easier then but at some point in time it will catch up with you and it will end up being more difficult in the end. In my opinion, the most important thing to learn is that hard work pays off.

This is spoken by the alchemist and it means that the only way to learn and experience new things is through your actions. It states that the best way to figure out the world and oneself is through what you do. Your actions help you experience the things that you are trying to learn about better than maybe just reading about it. In class we discussed there are a lot of times in everyone's life when we have to go through things and try them in person in order to understand them and learn more about whatever it is we want to know. I am firm believer in this because it applies to everything we do, want to ride a bike? you have to experience falling a few times, want to swim? you have to get in the water, want to learn to speak another language? you have to practice and listen to others speak it. These things, along with many others are good examples of the how the best way to learn new things are through you actions and you yourself actually experiencing the good and the bad things that come with learning new skills. Another good thing about learning things through experience is that it gives you a new perspective rather then just reading about it.

This quote is an example of how the heart really works, it states that hearts don't like to suffer and that many people don't go out on a limb and try new things in order for their heart not to suffer. The alchemist brings up a good point about how it's better to fear suffering than actually experience it. Fear is what holds so many people back and their hearts would rather be fearful of suffering than have to endure suffering. Many people live in fear of suffering so they waste opportunities because they are afraid of things ending up bad so they don't take the great chances they are given. Fear holds many of us back in life. The fear of failing, of rejection and of other’s opinions can impact us so heavily that we only fail ourselves. We’ve heard it many times before: The thought of something is often worse than the thing itself. It is no different than fearing failure if we go in search of our dreams. Don’t underestimate your own resilience. When we stop listening to our hearts because of fear, our heart will eventually become sad and stop talking to us because of all the chances we didn't take. Many people say that the biggest regret they have in life is the opportunities they didn't take because of the fear of things turning out bad. The biggest lesson to learn is that fear shouldn't hols back and that we should take all the opportunities we are presented with in order to be the happiest in our lives.