Learnings from a great book "The Zahir" by Paulo Coelho

EXCERPT FROM THE ZAHIR (pp 177):

"Esther asks why people are sad.
'That's simple,' says the old man. 'They are the prisoners of their personal history. Everyone believes that the main aim in life is to follow a plan. They never ask if that plan is theirs or if it was created by another person. They accumulate experiences, memories, things, other people's ideas, and it is more than they can possibly cope with. And that is why they forget their dreams.'
(pp178) 'In order for the true energy of love to penetrate your soul, your soul must be as if you had just been born. Why are people unhappy? Because they want to imprison that energy, which is impossible. Forgetting your personal history means leaving that channel clear, allowing that energy to manifest itself each day in whatever way it chooses, allowing yourself to be guided by it.'

(pp179) 'How does one go about abandoning the story one was told?'
'By repeating it out loud in meticulous detail. And as we tell our story, we say goodbye to what we were and, as you'll see if you try, we create space for a new, unknown world. We repeat the old story over and over until it is no longer important to us.'
'Is that all?'
'There is just one other thing: as those spaces grow, it is important to fill them up quickly, even if only provisionally, so as not to be left with a feeling of emptiness.'
'How?'
'With different stories, with experiences we never dared to have or didn't want to have. That is how we change. That is how love grows. And when love grows, we grow with it.'
'Does that mean we might lose things that are important?'
'Never. The important things always stay; what we lose are the things we thought were important but which are, in fact, useless, like the false power we use to control the energy of love.'