When my son Grant and I were recording a podcast about archangels, he stopped and pointed to his computer screen, exclaiming, “Look! When you said the word angel, the graph made angel wings!” Sure enough, his computer program showed all sorts of shapes representing each word I’d used. And when I said “angel,” the graph looked like a celestial being soaring from heaven.

Grant and I began experimenting with other words to find literal graphic representations of their meanings. What we discovered was remarkable: the words we consider positive and feel-good were significantly larger than those considered negative.

We were astounded by this visual representation of positive and negative utterances! Here was tangible evidence of high and low vibrations within speech. The positive words exhibited a much bigger impact, like light shining radiantly. Meanwhile, the negative ones looked tight and constricted.

The word admiration shows evidence of big radiant energy, while the word jealousy shows the opposite. This makes sense, since when you admire someone, you’re affirming that there’s abundance in the world. You’re saying, “Wow, isn’t it wonderful that this person is enjoying success, health, love, and happiness. If he or she can do this, then so can I!” Doesn’t that feel expansive and generous?

Contrast this with the word jealousy, which is based upon a belief in lack and limitation. Jealousy says, “Hey! How come that person gets to have fun? How come I can’t have what he or she has?” and “This isn’t fair!” Can you feel the underlying fear within jealousy? No wonder it shows up as a small graph!

This very message was demonstrated during one of my appearances on the Oprah television show. My book Losing Your Pounds of Pain had just been released; and Oprah, her guests (including me), and the audience were discussing the psychology of weight loss and gain. This was in the early 1990s, when the talk-show host had lost a great deal of weight while working with a personal trainer and a personal chef.

Oprah’s staff had collected and divided letters she’d received into two categories: (1) those from viewers who admired her weight loss and said that it inspired them to take up this goal themselves, and (2) those expressing jealousy about her accomplishment. A sampling of the letter writers from both viewpoints had been flown in to the studio.

What Oprah discovered was remarkable: those who admired her weight loss had all been subsequently successful with a fitness, exercise, and weight-loss plan. Conversely, those who were jealous reported that they hadn’t been able to lose even one pound! Clearly, this negative emotion blocked them from emulating Oprah’s healthy habits. Their negative mind-sets wouldn’t allow them to follow her positive example.

Similarly, a woman named Sharon Gartner (a reader of my books who contacted me) found that her smoldering jealousy of her neighbors blocked her from living the lifestyle that she desperately wanted. She’d look at others’ nice houses and cars and say, “It’s not fair! I never have enough of anything!”

Sharon felt as if she were living in a dark hole of despair and worry. She told me, “My thoughts and words were the shovel digging my way deeper into darkness.” Sharon was so consumed with jealousy and loathing for those who had more than she did that she hadn’t noticed that her husband had become withdrawn and moody and her children were unhappy. Nothing seemed to be going right in her family’s life.

One night, Sharon had a dream of sitting on a park bench under a tree. A man who looked like a hobo sat beside her and handed her a piece of paper, which simply read: “Let it go.” Sharon awoke with the knowledge that everything would be okay. She started affirming, “I give love and I receive love,” and “I am open to receiving prosperity from expected and unexpected sources.”

Sharon now describes her life as wonderful. She and her husband have fallen back in love and feel that they are living their dreams together. Wonderful opportunities come to them daily, and their children are now happy. Why? Sharon says: “It’s because I changed my thinking pattern, guided by those three simple words: Let it go. I now realize that the reason my life wasn’t going well was because my dark, jealous belief was that I wouldn’t have ‘nice things,’ since I thought I wasn’t worthy of having such things. I now live in a constant state of love and joy, with the knowledge that I am only open to receiving all that is good in my world.”