myth or magic? my perspective on EVIL EYE
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Hello and welcome to the Claim Your Power podcast, the ultimate show for all things self-love, spirituality, and personal growth. I'm your host, Kim Peretz. I'm a three-time author, content creator, avid traveler, entrepreneur, and matcha enthusiast. You are at the right place if you're ready to rediscover the love within, align with your purpose, and unleash your highest potential. It's time to claim your power.

Hello my friends and welcome back to another episode of The Pod. Guys, I have to tell you that I am in my cozy fall era, okay? The other day I went to a candle making store. I made this all natural fall candle that smells like actual heaven and

I deep cleaned my whole room, my whole bathroom. I did my nails. Like, I feel like a new woman. It's currently 8.41 p.m., which is so unusual of me to film a podcast episode at this time. I usually film episodes...

in the morning, but for some reason I just felt really called to talk about today's topic and I'm just in my cozy era. After this, I'm gonna put on some Gilmore Girls, I'm gonna sleep like a baby, and I'm really excited to dive into today's topic.

because I feel like it's a little bit taboo and esoteric and I love talking about things that I don't want to say like controversial but things that are a little less concrete in a way. And so today we're going to talk about the concept of evil eye. Is it myth? Is it legend? Is it real and magic?

I'm sure many of you guys have heard of it. I'm going to tell you my take on it, the psychology behind evil eye, and let's just get right into it. I'm sure many of you guys have heard of the evil eye because it's present in a lot of different cultures, and I feel like it's been very westernized to the point that even people in the States or North America know about the evil eye, wear the evil eye, and I want to share my own take on it because I

I grew up with the concept of evil eye. My grandmother is from Iraq. She was an immigrant from the Middle East. And in Middle Eastern cultures, a lot of people believe in the evil eye. It's...

symbol and a concept that is very existent on the spiritual side of my culture and my background and so I feel like I've always grown up with the concept of evil eye so just to give like a very foundational definition of evil eye then we'll dive more deeply into it but

But in most of the cultures that believe in the evil eye, it's this idea that when somebody else has jealousy or envy towards you, you would say that that person possesses the evil eye towards you, which means that their negative thoughts or negative energy has the power to bring harm or misfortune into your life. That's what a lot of people believe. And that's why a lot of people wear evil eye necklaces, for example, to kind of ward off

off that harm or that negative energy. And while I definitely believe that when you surround yourself with negative people, or really low frequencies, low vibrations, and you don't protect your energy, you don't protect your peace, you can attract more negativity into your life.

I think it's really disempowering to believe that somebody else has more power over your life than you to the point that their jealousy and their bad energy can impact your life and your destiny. Now don't get me wrong because I do still believe in this concept of surrounding yourself with the right people, with the right energy and that's also kind of the core of Evil Eye and I still wear my Evil Eye necklace and I love it.

But I do think that sometimes it pushes through this victim mentality of, okay, this person has bad energy towards me. This person is jealous of me. So I'm going to give my power away to them to the point where they can impact my life. Now, do you see how you give your power and energy away when you believe in that concept?

And I even have certain friends in my life that when something goes shitty in their life or they attract a situation that is misfortunate or just kind of things aren't going right in their life, they just tell themselves, oh, somebody put an evil eye on me.

And while I do think like, okay, that's amazing that like you can think that, you know, things aren't going right in your life and you can become self-aware to that. When you tell yourself that, like somebody puts the evil eye on me, that puts you in such a victim and helpless state because you're

How are you supposed to change your reality? How are you supposed to change your circumstance if you believe that somebody else's energy or thoughts or beliefs about you were the ones impacting your reality? And this is why as I grew older, I decided to kind of readjust and reinvent my own relationship with the evil eye. And so now that I wear an evil eye necklace, it's more for me to symbolize my relationship with myself

and my knowing that I'm always guided and protected and that I don't wear it as a means to, you know, from a state of fear or anxiety of, oh my God, this person, if I don't wear the evil eye, then something bad is going to happen or bad luck is going to be attracted into my life. Because a lot of people believe when it comes to the evil eye, and this is where I'm going to get into how it also connects to a lack mentality,

A lot of people believe that the more successful they become or the more happy or abundant they are, the more that they will start to attract negative envy and negative energy, which will be sent back to them as kind of like a curse of bad luck in their way.

And this is why I believe that that's actually a lack mentality that was conditioned in a lot of us to not reach our full potential. Because the truth is, it is your birthright to be abundant, to be successful, to be happy, to be healthy, to be loved, to feel worthy. Those are all your birthright.

And when we believe that that can be easily taken away from us because if somebody else is feeling towards us, we give all of our power, all of our sovereignty away to that person. And also, I want to touch base a little bit about the psychology of the evil eye if you think about it. So for many of you guys, you've heard of the confirmation bias in psych, which says,

that your internal belief systems, what you believe about yourself and your life, your subconscious mind will look for external validation in your reality to confirm that belief system. And so if you constantly believe that when you're successful and you're happy, that's also going to attract envy. And that means it's going to be taken away from you because people aren't going to appreciate you or clap for you and you're going to attract bad luck.

that's literally the reality you're gonna live because that's how psychology works, that's how your brain works, and that's how manifestation works. What you focus on expands. So the reason that I decided to kind of reinvent my relationship with the evil eye is I'm not dismissing the evil eye completely because I think it's rooted in a really beautiful way of saying, okay, protect your energy, protect your peace, know your worth, but I do it from a place where I'm no longer giving my power away to external sources.

It's a way of living an abundance mindset of knowing, okay, when I'm successful and I'm healthy, when I'm happy, that can't be taken away from me unless of my own doing, unless of my own sovereignty, of my own free will. Nobody else has that power to take that away from me because I don't give them that power. I don't give power to other people outside of me to dictate how my life is and to dictate my luck.

I have a friend that always, always tells me that I have really, really good luck. Whenever I'm with her, she's like, "Oh my God, of course this happened to you. Of course you got this free thing. Of course this worked out for you, Kim, because you have amazing luck." But on the other side, she really believes that she has bad luck. Like she walks around being like, "With my luck, I'm never gonna get this. Like, of course this happened to me because I have really bad luck." And she just keeps reconditioning and reaffirming that belief to herself that she has bad luck.

And so she has attached herself to this identity of a person who has bad luck. And so when misfortunes happen to her or when things go out of her control or when just something is out of her circumstances, she truly believes it's because her luck is bad.

Me, on the other hand, I'm as the Lulu as it gets, okay? I truly believe that life is rigged in my favor. I truly believe that the universe has my back, that I'm the luckiest person on earth. And by the way, I filmed a whole episode on the lucky girl syndrome. So if you want to learn more about that mentality, you guys should definitely listen to it on the pod.

But I genuinely walk around believing that and I believe that when I'm a good person and I radiate love and wholeness and abundance and truth and clarity, then I continue to attract that vibration. Like attracts like. But what a lot of people believe, and this is where the lack mentality is, is that when they're happy, when they're abundant, when they're doing good, that also means that they're going to start attracting the polar opposite to it because they're

That's just what they believe. It's a belief that's been conditioned to all of us. And this also kind of, for a lot of people, stems in this abandonment wound of like, okay, like this can be taken away from me, this happiness, this joy, this abundance can be taken away from me at any point. I see that with a lot of people when it comes to their relationships and

They don't love all the way and they kind of attach themselves to a person instead of unconditionally love them because they are living in this deep fear that that love can one day end and break their heart. Like guys, this is really deep stuff. And this is something that I used to live by too.

I used to have this belief that when I'm dating someone and when I'm in love with someone, I shouldn't love them all the way. I shouldn't be vulnerable and peel myself to them all the way because one day they can walk out of my life and break my heart. But at the same time, one day I realized that if I live my life like that and I love people in that really small, scarce way, I can't truly be myself. I can't truly experience all the blessings of love, all the blessings of joy, and I end up closing myself off.

And so in everything in life, there's kind of a risk, right? But if you don't take the risk, you can never actually reap the rewards. It's like you're going to live in this very average, vanilla place in your life. You're never going to experience the amazingness that maybe that relationship could offer you because you're living in that fear.

And that's literally adjacent to this idea of evil eye, which people believe there's an evil eye on everything, right? An evil eye on relationships, an evil eye on your career, on your health. And the reason I gave the example of relationships is because that is the concept of evil eye playing its force.

Because people live their life in a scarcity mentality of, okay, I can't fully be immersed in this. I can't fully enjoy this because I'm scared this is going to be taken away from me. And that same goes for like your career. You're scared that,

okay, once you gain followers, once you are successful, once you make this amount of money, once you achieve that project, once you land that job, that can be taken away from you. Or maybe you'll lose friends who don't clap for you. Or maybe you have to move away and so that causes stuff in your relationships or in your friendships or whatever it is. Like there's so many things in the human mind can come up with a billion excuses to why you shouldn't be present and fully enjoy the blessings and the miracles that life has to offer you.

And that's what I want to tell you today is that you are worthy of all the miracles and all the love and all the abundance that the universe sends you. And nobody can take that away from you unless you give them that power. The best cure, in my opinion, to evil eye when you feel like life is furrowing a lot of misfortunes or pain or losses or rejection or triggers at you and you feel like you've been evil eyed. The best thing you can do in that moment is stand up.

stomp your feet on the ground and remind yourself who you are and tell yourself no. My life is in my hands. My destiny is in my hands and I have free will and I get to choose right now that my good luck belongs to me and to me only and nobody outside of me has the power to dictate how my life will go and when you start living your life like

that, you will see that you will also become immune to so many other negative things like the need for external approval or the need to be validated or the need to constantly be liked or loved by other people because you will start taking life into your own hands and realize that the power was always in you. Everything you needed was always inside of you. And so something that I really love to do is when I do wear my evil eye, I wear it from a state of trust.

of trust and faith and not from a state of fear. And so I don't wear it thinking, okay, if this breaks, that means something bad was about to happen to me. I wear it inherently knowing that I am protected and this symbol of the evil eye that I'm putting on me is just enhancing that. It's alchemizing that. So when I put on my evil eye, I just tell myself, I am protected from all forms of evil or negative energy. My space and my aura is connected.

clean. It's radiant. I am guided. My ancestors, my spirit guides, my angels are with me. And I'm

And I am always supported by the universe. And so there's no need to fear. There's no need to have anxiety or panic or stress because I have this inner knowing. And something that's really helped me also come to this reality where I know that I'm always guided and protected is my angel energy meditation, which I'll link in the episode notes if you guys want to download it. It's three minutes long. I do it every single morning to cleanse my aura, to cleanse my energy, to clear my field, and really to align with the highest level

good and the highest energy out there. A lot of you guys have downloaded this meditation and you've told me how much it's helped you and made you feel so good. And the thing is, it's only three minutes, which is the craziest part. It's only three minutes and you can do it from literally everywhere in the world. But I'm telling you that those three minutes shift your energy so much.

And so I'll leave the link in the episode notes if you feel like downloading it. Now, I also want to talk about how the concept of evil eye can manifest in your friendships and your relationships. So I want to kind of step away from like this idea of you have to wear an evil eye to protect yourself and kind of get into the root of what evil eye is.

because there's a lot of wisdom in it and it's also connected to this idea that evil eye can stem from you surrounding yourself with people who don't actually support you, don't actually clap for you or don't have your best interest in mind.

And I really believe in this idea of constantly reassessing with yourself, where is my energy going? Is this supporting me? Is where I'm putting my energy and to the people and the things around me, is that supporting my growth?

And if I don't feel like it's supporting my growth anymore, being able to make a change, being able to shift, to walk away, to let go if needed in order to continue maintaining my peace and maintaining my joy. I cannot tell you how important it is to surround yourself with people who

who see the good in you and want to continue bringing that out who bring out the best in you the positive the happiness who clap for you when you succeed who share in your celebrations who share in your successes that is so so important and so i really recommend you if you're like thinking of the evil eye you're thinking of everything in your life right now make a list

Don't even think about it too much. Let your subconscious mind do the work. But on a sheet of paper, take out your pen and write down two columns. One is people who support my growth and on the other one, people who are not serving me anymore.

Don't think about it too much and just let your subconscious mind run and write all the names down and then after a couple of minutes look at the piece of paper and really consciously assess with yourself what you just wrote down because that's how you truly feel Intuitively you always know if someone's good for you and somebody isn't right for you anymore But a lot of the time we let our logic or our egos trip us out and not allow us to make the decision That's aligned with our hearts even recently. I

I decided to let go of a friendship and I knew for a while in my heart that this person wasn't right for me anymore. This person wasn't bringing me up. They weren't evolving with me, but I really held on because I had a lot of love for them and so I didn't want to just walk away so easily.

But I decided to walk away from this friendship at the end and I can tell you that I walked away from it with peace, knowing in my heart that this person served their purpose in my life. I will always have love for them, but sometimes not everyone can grow with you and it is really harmful to keep people in your inner circle and in your energy if they're not actually raising your vibration. If someone is constantly depleting you, that's literally what the evil eye is. You don't need a curse. It's not taboo. It's not juju. Like,

It's just energy. Like if someone is constantly around you and they're not bringing you up, they're not adding anything to your life, they're gonna end up depleting you. They're gonna end up making you feel bad about yourself or you're gonna end up stooping to their level.

Sink or swim. That's what I always like to say. If somebody in your life is constantly bringing you down, you're either going to sink with them or you're going to swim off to your own shore and make your own decision about how you want to live your life. Because I can tell you, I used to be someone, you guys know about my whole journey of being a people pleaser and how I used to have friendships in my life that really didn't serve me when I was younger. And I'm not going to lie to you.

And I ended up becoming versions of those people I surrounded myself with because I was spending so much time and so much energy with those people. And so this isn't like a curse.

it's not magic, well everything is magic, but in the sense that like it's not taboo, like it's not just spiritual, it's also just quantum physics and psychology and this is for all my logical girlies who aren't always up in the air flying, even though we're all delulu, like claim your power girlies, we're all delulu, come on, let's be real, but there's a lot of science to it, when you surround yourself with people who don't bring you up,

that's who you're going to become. You become the five people you surround yourself with. And that's kind of the real concept of evil eye. Who are you spending your time with? Where are you investing your energy? It all begins and ends in your energy and in your mind because what you give power to has power over you.

That's the thing you really need to understand about the basis and the realness of evil eye is who and what beliefs and what thoughts and what people you give your power to are going to have power over you. So give power to positivity. Give power to your own intuition, to your own heart. Give power to the universe. Give power to your trust and your hope.

and stop giving your power away to people who are constantly trying to bring you down. Stop giving your power away to negativity, to your limiting beliefs, to the past, and claim that power back sis. Another thing I really want to touch base on, like the last part about the evil eye, is this idea of evil eye that incites jealousy and envy is...

Because certain people believe that when you over show your blessings or over show your success and every detail of your life on social media, that attracts so many eyes on you and that attracts so much energy and so many opinions that can end up attracting negativity into your life. And in that sense, I have to agree, not in the sense that people can send you bad luck and dictate your life.

But in the sense that there's value in staying humble and letting your success speak to itself. And there's value in protecting your energy and having privacy and not letting the whole world know everything about you and not letting every single person know how much money you have or who you're dating or

or every single thing that's happening in your life. Like there is value in staying humble and having humility and really being conscious of what you're sharing with those around you. The clean hearted always win in the end because when you keep your energy clean and you operate from your soul and not from your ego, you attract good energy to you. It's

the ego and the arrogance and the flashiness and the bragging and the superiority complex that attracts the negativity. And we all have it. We all have shadows. They all exist in all of us, but it's about taming those parts of us because when you operate from like the guilt and the bragginess and the flashiness and the superiority complex, even in the spiritual community, I see that for a lot of people, the spiritual ego is

That's what attracts the negativity, not other people, your own state of vibration. And so it's so important to take responsibility for our own energy, for our own frequency, for our own actions, because what we do, how we take inspired action, that's how we attract more of that energy into our life.

Sometimes you block your own blessings by telling everything to everyone. And so I'm not saying never share, be completely closed off to society, and only keep to yourself. No.

No, I'm saying have balance. Balance in everything in life. Know your non-negotiables. What is it that you're willing to share with the world and be open about? And what is it that you would rather keep to yourself and maintain that peace within yourself? Sometimes you want to let your success and your actions and your happiness speak for itself. Let me give you a good example for this. How it plays in my life is one non-negotiable for me is my romantic relationships.

When I'm in a romantic relationships, I will only share details of that with people who I genuinely trust, who I genuinely think have my best interests at heart. And I will probably not share it much about it on social media because I don't need all eyes on that. Sometimes the part of the relationship of the happiness and the joy should be kept between the two people. And I think that's something really important that I see a lot of people do as the years pass by because a lot of us have realized that

that relationships are something that is sacred and not everyone in the world should be entitled to knowing every detail about your relationship. Because think about it, let's say you start dating a guy or a girl and you've been seeing them for like two, three weeks.

Suddenly you tell every acquaintance, every person that you have some slight of connection with, you show them photos of them, you ask every single person you know if they think they're cute and at that point you've involved so much energy and so many other people's opinions in it that it kind of causes you to have a disconnect from your own heart and your own intuition, i.e. evil eye.

And so I'm not saying never share because I think there's so much value in like sharing important things with your loved ones. Like of course if I started seeing a guy, I would tell my best friend about it. But not the whole world needs to know and the people that you share the intimate details of your life, not just relationships, but maybe your next career moves or maybe struggles that are happening in your family or with your health, the people that you share that with, it's important that those people have pure intentions for you.

And so my whole thing is just let people show you who they are instead of you assuming who they are. So if you've just met someone, you don't have to tell them all of your biggest secrets, everything about you, your childhood trauma. You can get to know them lightly and a playful energy.

until you can both see what role you're both meant to play in each other's lives. Because not everyone is meant to be the most loyal, amazing person in your life. Some people come into your life, you know, for lighter friendships or some people come as lessons or as triggers and all of those things are valuable, but it's important to know who you share the things about your life with.

Because honestly, not everyone deserves to know the highest, most intimate version of you. Because let me tell you something that I've learned on my own journey. A lot of the time, jealousy and envy isn't even about the material. A lot of the time, it's not even about the money or the car or the things you have or the relationships.

Like a lot of people that might be jealous of you for those things, you think that they're jealous of you because of that, but it's not. It's deeper. Jealousy stems, for a lot of people, what causes it is other people's essence or their energy and how you carry yourself and your

aura and the way you manage your values in life because those are the things that truly make you shine and make you be different and make you feel very radiant and abundant. It's your energy and your essence and that's something that can't be taken away from you and no one can turn that off.

And that's why I always say, like, this is the moral of this podcast episode is do not let anyone else ripe your energy. Do not let anybody else take that power from you because that's your essence, that's your truth, that's your authenticity. And people, a lot of people that have shadows and darkness inside of them will be triggered by your light. But guys, the sun doesn't stop shining if it blinds people and neither should you.

Beautiful souls, thank you so much for joining me in today's episode. As always, I will talk to you next week. Bye!