Deepak Chopra
Photo: Jeremiah Sullivan
How is it that two people in the same room can wind up with completely different energies, one depressed and the other upbeat? What kind of energy do you give off? Deepak Chopra tells you how to control your energy and create positivity in all areas of your life.
For most people, the greatest good they could do for themselves is to change their energy. Your emotions give off energy that can be positive or negative. It's a common experience to walk into a room and feel tension in the air, as opposed to a room where the atmosphere is cheerful and relaxed. We tend to assume that energy is physical, but two people can eat the same lunch and wind up with totally different energy. One person may be depressed, unhappy and stuck in her ways, while the other is alert, vibrant and creative.

Clearly it's not the food they ate that made the difference but a subtler level of energy—the level where mood, emotions, motivation, aspirations and beliefs exist. It takes energy to keep this level of life going, so when we say that someone is giving off negative energy, what we really mean is that at the subtle level of mind and body, negative beliefs are consuming energy and turning it into negative actions, words and thoughts.

The first thing to realize is that you are in control of your own energy. I know it doesn't feel that way sometimes. Depression can take hold like an invading germ; anxiety can cause fear to leap out of nowhere; anger can simmer like a pot on the stove. Yet these conditions do not define you, and in fact you can begin to use basic energy—the kind that comes from food, air, loving relationships, nature's beauty and the flow of creativity—for your own good. All these sources of energy are available to you all the time. They are part of your birthright; they connect you to the flow of life, which is constantly renewing itself.

How efficiently are you leading your life?
You can never be entirely disconnected from life-supporting energy. If you were, your cells would languish and starve in a matter of minutes. If your cells are vibrantly alive, you can feel vibrantly alive, too. If your cells draw on nourishment without stint, if they are free of anger, fear, guilt, shame and other kinds of psychological resistance, you can also be free.

This is such an important topic that I want to devote a series of articles to it. The main theme of my thinking in recent years has been about how to reinvent the body, which means untying the hold of false beliefs, restrictive habits and old conditioning. One of the major causes of being "stuck" in your body is that energy isn't flowing properly. At a subtle level we know that negative beliefs, at their most extreme, make people prone to disease and shortened lifespans. But how does a negative belief manage to talk your body into getting sick? It takes energy to turn an invisible belief into the language of a cell, which is chemical. So energy, even though it may sound like a vague or unusual term, plays a key role in giving you a state of wholeness or a state of conflict and confusion at the cellular level.

Let's start with the most basic question: How efficiently are you leading your life? In other words, where is your energy really going: to negative or positive uses? Take the following quiz to get a sense of where you are now. When I return next week, I will address the major causes of blocked and negative energy, and then move on to the most exciting topic: How to change your energy so that it is entirely life-supporting and nourishing.


Take the quiz: How efficient is your life?

Deepak Chopra is the author of more than 50 books on health, success, relationships and spirituality, including his current best-seller, Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul, available now. You can listen to his show on Saturdays every week on SiriusXM, Channels 102 and 155.

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