Hey friends! I’m honored to share that today’s guest is Deepak Chopra, who is a world-renowned spiritual leader, speaker and best-selling author. He’s a total pioneer when it comes to personal transformation and holistic wellbeing, and today he’s coming on to talk about The Law of Attraction and how our thoughts affect our reality (which is SO something I’ve been incorporating into my life more and more).
During the interview, Deepak talks about a few different concepts, and since this stuff fires me up so much, I decided to record a longer-than-usual intro with my own thoughts on the Law of Attraction. I also provide some actionable tools that have helped me become more grounded and less anxious in pursuit of my goals.
Deepak is also going to be sharing about his latest book, Home: Where Everyone Is Welcome, which is a collection of songs and poems inspired by American immigrants. It feels SO relevant right now with the recent discussions about DACA in the US, and I’m honored to talk about something with Deepak that feels so needed right now.
Check out the episode below:
In this episode, you’ll hear about things like…
- How the Law of Attraction affects our lives and the things we’re able to do, feel, and achieve.
- What Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is and how it can rewire your brain for successful thoughts and actions.
- The connection between the sensations we feel in our body and how we feel in our mind (and a simple way to ground your body in order to ground your mind when you’re feeling anxious).
- What to do if you’re anxious – and how you can start reframing your challenges.
- Why Deepak decided now was the right time to create and release his new work about immigrants into the world.
Links from the interview:
- Deepak Chopra’s Website
- Deepak on Facebook
- Deepak on Twitter
- Deepak on YouTube
- Deepak’s Book, Home: Where Everyone Is Welcome
What do you think?
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this episode. Do you follow the Law of Attraction? Do you feel like your thoughts affect the outcomes you can achieve in life? Leave a comment below and let’s chat. 🙂
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Thank you for listening!
Transcript
Read the Interview Transcription HereHey everyone. I am honored to share that today’s guest is Deepak Chopra, who’s a world renowned spiritual leader, speaker, and bestselling author. He’s a pioneer in personal transformation and holistic well-being. Today, he’s coming to us to talk about the law of attraction and how our thoughts affect our reality. He’s also going to be sharing his latest book called, “Home: Where Everyone Is Welcome”, which is a collection of songs and poems inspired by American immigrants.
Now before we dive into the interview, I wanted to unpack some of the things that Deepak will be sharing, because even though this interview is short, there’s a lot to take away from this conversation. I want to make sure that you get the most out of this. So as I mentioned, we’re going to be talking about the law of attraction and how important your thoughts are to creating the life that you want to have. Now you might have heard of the law of attraction before, and depending on where you fall on the spectrum of holistic healing and all that kind of good stuff, you might be turned off by this word or this phrase. Perhaps it seems like some kind of spiritual mumbo jumbo, but I want to make the case before we get started about why the law of attraction is real and why it’s something that is affecting your life every single day.
So think of it this way. When I used to be really into film photography, I would take a lot of photos. I would bring my camera everywhere. Eventually, I would start to see the world in photos. Even if I didn’t have my camera with me, I would see a pretty landscape or something cool in my city, and I would see it as a photo. I would literally look at something and think wow that would make a great photo, or here’s how I would take it. It would be this automatic thing that would happen. I wouldn’t be necessarily thinking of how to create my shot when I didn’t have a camera with me, but it would be this automatic thing where I would look at something and it became a photo in my mind. And then I kind of got over film photography. I stopped doing it for a while, still enjoyed it, but it wasn’t my main focus. I got really into blogging and writing. I would start having experiences in my life, where I would think that would make a great blog post. I would literally be having a conversation with someone or be doing something or learning something, and would keep having these thoughts that this needed to be a blog post or this is something I want to write about.
So I started to learn that the more I put an emphasis on something in my life, the more it expands my reality to consume that thing on a constant basis. Your life is the same way. It might be different. It might not be a creative project, and most of the time it’s not. It’s often things that we put our energy into believing that control our life. So if you’re putting energy into thinking that you’re not worthy, or that you’re not valued, or that you don’t do a good job at work, or that your partner doesn’t care about you, or that your friends never invite you out to do things anymore, if you’re putting your energy into these types of negative experiences, then that eventually becomes your reality too. Because the more that we put that emphasis on something, the more it shows up in our lives. The more we start to notice it, the more that we attract it based on the energy that we’re emitting from our body, our personality. All of these different things culminate to create our experience in the world. Because think about it, if you’re not feeling valued at work, if you don’t feel happy to be at your job, are you going to be operating at full cylinders? Are you going to be your most vibrant self? Are you going to be the best worker possible or would you be your best self, your best employee, if you felt really valued, if you felt like you showed up to work and people really cared that you were there, that you felt your job mattered and that you were making a difference? Would you be a different person in those circumstances? I think the answer is yes for most of us.
So when you’re in that position of not feeling valued or whatever kind of circumstance it is, where you are in kind of a negative space or operating under limiting beliefs, then you’re not going to be your best self. You’re not going to be emitting this vibrant personality that you really do have deep down. The more that that happens, the more that we give in to not being our most vibrant self, not thinking our most vibrant thoughts, the more that we attract those types of things into our life, because you can’t have a positive life with a negative mind. So a lot of what Deepak is going to be sharing today has to do with your thoughts and how they end up creating your reality. So if you can change your thoughts to better ones, then you can change your life to something better too. If you remember in episode 14 with Jim Kwik, he mentioned that on average, humans have – I think it was 60,000 thoughts per day. The weird part and the scary part is that 95% of those are the same thoughts you had yesterday and the day before and the day before. Because we’re operating under this mindset of all of these limiting beliefs that we’ve carried with us since we were children most of the time, or things that have been so ingrained in us that we don’t even realize that they’re creating our reality, that they’re ruining our lives.
So you might be thinking at this point, well that sounds convincing, I’m sold. How do I change my thoughts? How do I make that 95% of those same thoughts that are hurting me every day, how do we turn them into more positive things? Well Deepak also gives a couple of suggestions that I want to expand on right now. One of them is called cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). So this is something that I actually learned way back when I was in therapy. My therapist suggested this to me. Here’s how it works. It’s very simple. You can totally do this on your own as well, but when you have a limiting belief in your mind, when you have a negative thought, something that tells you that you’re not worthy, that you should be afraid, that there’s something that is negative in your mind space, write it down. Literally write it down. Don’t just think about this activity, but write it down. I actually had a little notebook where I would write down all these things, and I would bring it with me in case I ever had a negative thought when I was out and about. So I had this little notebook. You could do the same and write down that negative thought, that limiting belief. And then write down three pieces of evidence why that limiting belief is not true. Think of this as the court of law of your mind.
So when you do this, you’ll start to find evidence that says that those slimming beliefs actually are not logical, that they are not rational, that they don’t hold any weight to who you are. So you might write down something like I am not valued at work, and then you might have a few pieces of evidence that say things like well actually today my boss just told me that I was doing a fantastic job, or today I was working with some clients and they were praising me on how good my presentation was, or today I had lunch with my coworkers and we had a really fun conversation, we were laughing a lot. So we might think subconsciously that we’re not valued at work which often comes from some kind of limiting belief that we’ve had throughout our lives, maybe we didn’t feel valued as a kid, maybe we didn’t feel like our parents valued us. We start to repeat that negative thought pattern in all of our relationships and circumstances that we find ourselves in throughout our lives. So it might not be that you’re not valued at work. It might just be that you’re replaying those same thoughts over and over again that you’ve had all your life and don’t even realize it. So doing CBT can really help to rewire your brain so that you do realize how valued you are. Eventually, if you do this enough and if you do this with every negative thought that comes into your mind space – and they don’t have to be the same limiting belief, you might have different ones, but when you do this enough, it really will create this impact in your life where you’ll feel happier, you’ll feel more valued. Therefore, you’ll just be operating on this more vibrant frequency where you start to attract all of these great, amazing things that you want to have in your life. Because when you are your best self, when you are more positive, more happy, more giving, you start to attract that stuff into your life too.
Another thing that Deepak talks about is how our sensations in our body mirror how we feel in our mind, and that if we want to ground ourselves more, if we want to not feel these crazy thought trains happening all the time, instead we can ground ourselves in our body. Remember that we are just a body living on this massive earth, that we are part of this planet, this Earth, and that all of the stresses and anxieties that happen to us are minuscule compared to the reality of this planet in this universe. So one thing that you can do to really feel those sensations in your body and releasing from your body, rather than getting so caught up in this negative mind space – and I actually got this from another coach of mine, is to take a few objects. Different types of objects, maybe just a bunch of different things that are sitting on your desk and sit with your feet on the ground so you’re grounded into the earth. Hold on to these objects one by one, keep them in your hand, rub them around, kind of feel the different parts of the object that you’re picking up. If it’s a pen, maybe kind of hold the pen in your hand, feel the tip of the pen, feel the different sides of the pen. What does it feel like in your hands? As you’re doing this activity with your eyes closed, you start to feel more grounded, because when you’re done with the first object, you pick up the next one. You kind of feel them around in your hands for maybe 30 seconds each, 1 minute each. You start to just feel calmer and less stressed. It’s almost like a form of meditation, where you’re grounding your body into the earth, and not feeling this kind of crazy train happening in your head, where you’re just thinking all these thoughts and you’re putting yourself in this more and more negative mind space. Instead you’re feeling these objects, these pieces of the earth and really focusing on the sensation of these objects, rather than how you’re feeling in your mind. So these are just a couple of activities to help you retrain your thoughts, to ground you to feel more calm and less anxious so that you can start attracting the most amazing thing into your life.
So I’ve said enough. I want to pass the mic over to Deepak Chopra now. I hope you love this interview and that you get a ton out of this episode.
Melyssa Griffin: So Deepak, you’ve spoken a lot about the law of attraction and how our thoughts impact our life. Can you tell us a little bit more about why and how you feel that our thoughts impact the reality that we have?
Deepak Chopra: Well thoughts are one aspect of awareness. There are other aspects. Awareness modifies itself not just into thoughts, but also into emotions, also into sensations that we experience in our body, also into images and what we call imagination, and also into perceptual experiences. So what you see around you right now is what you’re putting your attention on. So it’s not just thoughts. There are of course woven* thoughts and images and emotions and feelings and sensations. They are all inseparable. They’re entangled. When you change a thought, you also change your perception, but when you put your attention on a certain sound or an image, you change everything else. So in every moment of your life, what you’re experiencing as situations, circumstances, events, relationships, people, abundance, poverty – whatever, it’s a reflection of yourself. The self is conditioned by society. Actually nobody has original thoughts unless it’s E=mc2 or Beethoven’s 5th or Picasso. Most people’s thoughts are recycled collective conditioning. So you have to actually question when you see – when you have a thought, you should ask yourself why do I think like this, because most thoughts have been programmed into our consciousness and become beliefs, beliefs that [inaudible 13:56] to be true. Most beliefs are unlimited*. I’m not attractive enough. I’m [inaudible 14:02] make money. So when you have a thought like that, you should say where did that come from. Does it belong to me or is it recycling from my childhood or whatever? And then you should ask yourself is it true, and then you should ask yourself am I 100% sure that it’s true. You’ll soon see that all limiting thoughts or beliefs are conditioned. And then you should ask yourself what’s the opposite of this. Turn it around. Ask yourself what is holding on to that limiting belief doing* to me. This is a process that many people call cognitive therapy, but you don’t have to [inaudible 14:40].
Melyssa Griffin: Right. So what if you discover this and you start practicing this, where you question every thought that comes in, but you just don’t know? You’re like I guess that’s an original thought. I guess that’s who I am. I don’t really know.
Deepak Chopra: Well questioning of the thought is an elaborate process that can be learned, but you would go crazy if you’re questioning every thought. I think what you have to do is start to observe your thoughts. That’s what mindfulness is, and that’s what these mindfulness practices are. If a thought is negative, it will probably also cause some discomfort in the body, some sensations. Because as I just mentioned, sensations and thoughts are entangled. So when that happens, just observe it till it goes away because nothing lasts forever, particularly a thought. They come and go in the twinkling of an eye.
Melyssa Griffin: Right. So when you say sensation and thoughts are intertwined, you mean like your body and your thoughts?
Deepak Chopra: Yeah your body. That’s why we call sensations, feelings. So what are emotions? They are thoughts linked to sensations in the body. If you put your attention on the sensation, then you decouple the thought with the sensation. That’s a very important aspect of what we call response flexibility, which means you have the ability to put the pause button on and be a little more creative in how you respond to situations and circumstances, and not be a biological robot.
Melyssa Griffin: Right. Is it almost like you feel a thought that’s maybe negative and then you feel it more in your body and just kind of…?
Deepak Chopra: Correct… feel your body every time you have a distressing thought, and just seal* it. That’s all. You don’t have to do anything. You decouple the sensation and the thought.
Melyssa Griffin: So it’s almost like you’re feeling the sensation in your body rather than letting your mind just run rampidly…
Deepak Chopra: Correct. You’re actually taking your attention away from your mind and feeling the sensation in your body, which in most cases is in the gut or in the heart area for most people when they’re distressed.
Melyssa Griffin: Right. I practice that when I do meditation and it’s helped me just so much with my own personal life. I’m curious. Are there other habits or even meditation that you’d recommend for people to do on maybe a daily basis to…?
Deepak Chopra: Yeah. You should get into the habit of being aware of sensations, images, feelings, thoughts, your own body. Of course when you’re aware of your body, first it’s the muscular skeletal system, but also the viscera, which means inside, what’s happening inside. With little practice, you can start to know what’s happening inside your body. And then the five senses; sound, touch, sight, taste and smell. And also mental space which is basically images that happen in the mind. And then also, be mindful of your relationships; relationships with your family, with your friends, with your professional colleagues, ultimately relationship in the entire breath of existence which is relationship with the environment, nature, with the universe. So the word mindfulness is actually an inaccurate word because you’re not using the mind. The awareness of the mind is not the mind. It’s just being still and watching. The highest intelligence is to observe yourself without judging yourself, and then transformation* occurs by itself.
Melyssa Griffin: What can we do to be more mindful and really have those experiences on a deeper level?
Deepak Chopra: Start practicing. Come back to your [inaudible 18:19] every time you’re distracted, because anxiety is never in the present moment. It’s a fear of the future which is the result of some memory in the past. In the present moment, there’s no anxiety. Everything is totally fine. I would say that the worse use of imagination is stress and anxiety, and the best use of imagination is creativity. Ask yourself. You can reframe every problem into a challenge and then reframe every challenge into an opportunity, and then you’ll only see opportunities.
Melyssa Griffin: I love that. I think it’s all just about reframing things in your life.
Deepak Chopra: Because context is always frame* that we learn. Context meaning relationships – these are stories that we’ve been told and we hold them to be true. There is nothing true or false about the story. It’s just a story.
Melyssa Griffin: Absolutely, yeah. Do you feel like there is anything that you see people doing consistently that’s keeping them from living their best life?
Deepak Chopra: Yeah. I think people just recycle what everybody else is saying. That’s why there’s very little creativity. It’s just as I mentioned, most people behave like biological robots. That’s very unfortunate because today with media and social networks, the same thing gets recycled over and over again. Then it becomes real news. And to some extent, we have to be grateful to this guy, Trump, for popularizing the word fake news because there is no news anymore. It’s all opinion.
Melyssa Griffin: Right. Yeah that’s interesting. Do you feel like people would be better off if they took a pause from all of the noise, the social media?
Deepak Chopra: Correct. Press the pause button and take a few deep breaths, smile, observe what’s happening in your body. And then proceed with compassion and awareness.
Melyssa Griffin: Love that advice. So I want to talk about your latest piece of work which is called “Home: Where Everyone Is Welcome”, and it’s a collection of poems and songs inspired by American immigrants. I’m curious, why did you decide that now was the right time to create this piece of work?
Deepak Chopra: Well I co-authored this with other people, particularly Kabir Sehgal who has won Grammy Awards in the past. We have a CD that goes with it. The CD has all the songs, the music, and the poems that are inspired by people like Einstein and [inaudible 20:58] and Celia Cruz – all the people who brought vibrancy to this country. This is the strength of America. It’s diversity. It’s a microcosm of the world right now. I’m sitting in New York City, I look out at the window and I see the world.
Melyssa Griffin: Yeah I love that and I love the theme of the book too, because I feel like with our current political climate, it feels like immigrants and refugees are in an even worse position than they were before, and just not being as welcomed in their new homes as they could be.
Deepak Chopra: I think it is a [inaudible 21:33] and soon it will be over. We can’t find darkness with darkness, so we’re shining the light.
Melyssa Griffin: Yeah I like that. Do you feel like there’s anything that we as a society or individuals could do to create more…?
Deepak Chopra: Yes. I think angry activism is self defeating. You can’t be an angry beast* activist. It’s a contradiction. So ultimately, we have to be the change we want to see in the world and we have to hang out with other people, and harness our collective energy and creativity with projects like this one.
Melyssa Griffin: Right. Yeah I think that’s beautiful. So I have one more question for you that I like to ask all of my guests. That is: what do you feel like people could do to live more meaningful, fulfilled lives?
Deepak Chopra: I think the first thing is to ask yourself what is my purpose, what is my passion, what are my unique strengths. When passion, purpose and strengths come together, then you should write your story. What is your story? Every story has ups and downs and challenges. Ultimately, the best stories are love stories. Write your own love story.
Melyssa Griffin: Thank you so much Deepak. I appreciate your time. Have a great…
Deepak Chopra: Thank you, Melyssa. Thank you.