Law of Correspondence

In this episode of Just Call Jenna, Jenna explores the Law of Correspondence and the idea that “as within, so without”—our inner beliefs, thoughts, and patterns can influence how we experience the world around us. Rather than suggesting we’re responsible for every hardship or circumstance, Jenna focuses on the power we do have: examining our responses, choices, and awareness. Using the mirror principle and the idea of changing the “root” rather than the “fruit,” she explains how shifting our thinking can begin to change our decisions, habits, and ultimately the results we experience. 

Jenna also dives into how the brain’s filtering system can reinforce what we already believe, causing us to notice evidence that supports the stories we tell ourselves. Through neuroplasticity and greater self-awareness, however, those old patterns can be interrupted and replaced. From questioning long-held beliefs about worth, love, success, and asking for help to recognizing that healing begins with acknowledgment, this episode is an invitation to examine the stories shaping your life—and decide whether they’re still true or simply familiar. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Welcome back. Today I'm going to talk about the law of correspondence, a universal law. Many of us have heard it as as within, so without. It's internal versus external. Like what you believe inside will actually be your reality. And that's the lore of correspondence. So, in other words, your inner world influences how you experience your world, what you think shapes your reality. This doesn't mean that you cause every difficult thing that happens in your experiences. Sometimes that's just life. Life actually includes unexpected events, loss, injustice, circumstances that are outside of your control. But how you feel about them internally is going to be how you experience them. So the law of correspondence actually invites us to examine our responses, our choices, and our awareness around this information. You've heard me say many times, I name my emotions. I feel this about it. There's a mirror principle to it that happens in psychology, which is imagine if you're standing in front of a mirror. You don't like what you see, so you try to wipe away the reflection, but you make changes. And life kind of works the same way. You can't always wipe away the image that's reflecting back. But if you don't like it, you can move on. So the mirror principle in psychology again is that imagine you're standing in front of the mirror. You see something you don't like. The natural reaction is to wipe it away versus going, hey, I don't like that. I'm gonna go move on. But that's the law of correspondence. How you feel about that reflection helps shape what you do about it. As within, so without. If you don't like it, you're going to try to wipe it away as in the mirror principle. If you don't prefer it, you have the choice to do something about it. But if you like it, you're probably gonna stare longer. This is the mirror principle in psychology. So I think about that a lot that, like how I feel about it is how I reflect it as a mirror. What I feel is what I reflect. And what I reflect, the mirror is gonna show back to me. This is kind of how the law of correspondence works. We spend years trying to change a boss, a partner, a friend, a family member, our finances, our circumstances. But the greatest transformations actually happen when we examine what we need to change within ourselves. You have to take a little personal accountability with the law of correspondence you do. You have to change how you feel. And the gap might be huge. You might think, I want to know what it feels like to be a happy, confident person. But right now in life, you're experiencing the worst heavy things, like the mirror principle. I don't like the reflection, I want to wipe it away. Maybe try to think about a time when you felt better. What was going on in your life? How did you feel? What were the emotions? When you change your thinking, your decisions change. When your decisions change, your habits change and your life begins to change. That's the love correspondence in real time. If nothing changes, nothing changes. So if you don't like the reflection, you can change it. As within, so without. Think about a time when you were happy. Now, if you're experiencing joy and all that, please don't try to think about a time that was negative. I don't suggest you drag yourself backwards. But if you want to be somewhere that you're not, think about a time that might have felt like that or what that person might feel like. For me, when I was trying to become this peaceful person, I was thinking every day, what does future Jenna think? What does she act like? What does she do? What are her activities? And yes, I had to use my brain to think about times when I was happy, peaceful, joyful. And what kind of life did I want to live? What did that person feel like, think like, act like? What was the identity around that? I changed my thinking. And so the habits I were doing daily naturally changed, and life begins to change. So before the stroke, I was not somebody who read. You've heard me say this before. I read every morning for 30 minutes to an hour. And that changed because I became the kind of person who read. I thought about what is future Jenna wanna be and what do those brain things do. I do a ton of puzzles every year. I like doing puzzles, but I was forced to train that hand-eye coordination that I needed for my brain. So when they were giving me tools that I could do with that, they gave me some choices, and puzzles was the one I chose. Some of the other ones, I was like, yeah, I'm not gonna sustain that. I don't like doing that. But that's part of the law of correspondence. I may have to make choices, but I can make sure those choices are enjoyable. So when I keep thinking about future Jenna as I age, puzzles is a part of it, reading is a part of that, but those changed because my decisions changed about how I was going to spend my time. And from those, more habits changed, and then my life began to change. But that's the law of correspondence. There is a little bit of a time buffer in it. You know, you can't expect to change everything overnight. Sometimes there will be those, but consistently making those choices will get you there. And that's how you will feel a certain way in inside. And then that mirror principle will come back and you'll like what you see in the mirror. You will change the root of the tree and not the fruit of the tree. I don't know how else to say that other than, you know, if you have a tree that's not getting nutrients, you're not gonna get good fruit. If you nurture the roots, you're gonna get great fruit. The house I bought a couple of years ago had an old lemon tree in it. Now, the lemon gave great fruit, but it wasn't producing a lot of fruit. Not what would be normal for a lemon tree. Now, I'm not saying I got onsies, twosies, but I didn't get 20, 30 of them. And lemons are kind of year-round, but so I found some fertilizer for the tree. Now, every time it blooms, I at any given time, I've probably got 50 to 75 lemons on my tree. I have enough that I can share with all my friends. People come over and I'm like, here, you want some lemons? But I think that that's a good example of you take care of the roots and the fruits will take care of themselves. That's another way of thinking of the law of correspondence in real time. You have to do that within yourself. So you're nurturing your roots and not necessarily focused on the fruit. I think our society, our culture, or what we're awarded for is the fruit. Is the fruit you produce good enough? Is it good enough? And we all beat ourselves up for that's not a good fruit. But if you take the time to nurture the roots and take care of what's on the inside, next season the fruit that comes out is gonna be better and it's gonna keep getting better because you're taking care of the roots. You're taking care of the base, right? So, like you imagine an apple tree that's producing sour apples. You can paint the apples, you can polish them, but until you change the health of that tree, your apples are going to continue to be sour. The fruit won't change until you change the roots. You can change the appearance, you can make it look pretty, but it's not gonna taste any different until you actually nurture the roots. Our lives really work the same way. The results are our fruits, and our beliefs are actually the roots. So if you want different results, start with the roots. If you want different fruits, nurture the roots. If you want your fruit to be sweet and plentiful, like the good stuff you get at the farmer's market, take care of the roots. The law of correspondence is not about blaming yourself, it's about recognizing your ability to shape your mindset and the next step. So I love the change the root and not the fruit. I use those examples because you have to treat the problem and not the symptom, right? So you have to change how you feel inside if you want your outsides and your external world to change. I think that that's really important that you think about the law of correspondence, as within, so without. So when I talk about changing the roots, I think you have to understand that your brain is always looking for evidence. It's a prediction machine. Your brain has a built-in filtering system, the Raz. I've talked about this a lot, but every second, the brain can't possibly process all of them. So it filters based on what it believes is important. And it will believe things are important by predicting them. So those habit loops, right? Repeat, repeat, repeat, rinse and repeat. That's how the brain works. So you have to change your roots following the law of correspondence, as within, so without. You have trained yourself and conditioned yourself to be where you're at today. But that doesn't mean that you're stuck here. You can go and be what you want to be. The law of correspondence comes in to train your RAS, your filter, you train it, what's important. It will filter in that evidence into your awareness. And as it filters in, you'll recognize more and more. And the brain will keep predicting more and more. So if you believe bad things happen to me, guess what? They will. Your brain will actually start collecting evidence to prove it. Your awareness will show you all the bad things that happen to you. But if you believe I always figure things out, your brain will start noticing opportunities, solutions, and all those small wins to prove you right. If you've been listening to me, you know I always say I'm the kind of person who. That's important because I'm telling my brain and my filter, I'm the kind of person who does X and it will find more evidence and I will get further and further away from all the things that keep me from going there. The world doesn't suddenly change because you change your words, affirmations, or your filter, but your perception changes things. That's the law of correspondence. So try to think about that like your experience doesn't change overnight, but your perception of it will, because the law of correspondence is what you think will happen outside. I always say, as within, so without. What I think is what determines my reality, and my brain will make sure of that using my RAS filter. It will look for all the evidence. Your internal dialogue and how you talk to yourself will become your external experiences. If you're the kind of person who has bad things happen to you, guess what? You're gonna experience a reality of a lot of bad things happening to you. Soulfully, law of attraction will come in and be a magnet of more bad things. But really, the science of it is that the ridicular activating system will find all the reasons why bad things happen to you. It will go, hey, this is important. You want to see bad things happen to you? Here you go. Here's all the evidence. If you're the kind of person who always figures things out, your RAS filter will give you all the reasons why things always work out. It will find more evidence of things working out. And I think it becomes easier to just, I'm the kind of person who my internal dialogue shifts and I become the kind of person who. Every experience you've ever had in your life, there is one common factor in every experience of your life. You. So your voice is the one you hear most often. If you constantly bully yourself, your nervous system will begin treating yourself like those are the facts. It'll go, oh, okay, you want to be treated badly? I'm gonna go find all the evidence to get you treated badly. Oh, you think you're stupid, I'm gonna go find all the reasons you can be stupid. Oh, you think you're smart, I'm gonna go find all the reasons you can be smart. It's just literally not good or bad. It just says, hey, you wanna see this? I'm gonna show you this. The that is the experience of you. So the voice you hear most often is your own. Talk to yourself with some kindness and compassion. Don't bully yourself. Your nervous system will learn to look for treating that as evidence. Oh, I think I'm bad. Here's all the reasons you're bad. But here's the beautiful thing about all of that the brain is adaptable and it can change. The brain is not stuck. Neuroplasticity comes in and it can be rewired. If I can rewire my brain to work after a stroke, if I can figure out how to walk and talk again, you can figure out how to be nice to yourself again. Just start saying what you want. The voice you hear most often is your own. Talk to yourself with a kindness. Every time you interrupt your old thought patterns and you replace it with a new one, you're creating your future. So it's not about how good or bad something is. Don't beat yourself up because you've been unkind to yourself. You've been doing that for a long time. Just start being the kind of person who. Think about that mirror principle. You're gonna like the image. If you say bad things about the image, your brain is literally gonna go find all the reasons bad things exist about that image. If you like the image, your brain is gonna go find more evidence to like it. It's very simple. I know it's complex and we have all these overthinking and reasons, but it's actually very simple. I can rewire my brain to think good thoughts. I can rewire myself. I can treat the roots of me so that the fruits of me come out the way I want them to be. Now, sure, it takes a little work. I wish it was an easy button and you could do it overnight, but you just start talking to yourself different. Again, remember the one constant you have in your life is that it's you. You have experienced everything in your life from this time you were little till now. You are the common factor. You are the one who has control of talking to yourself and treating yourself the way you want to be treated. Nobody's gonna do it for you. In fact, if you expect externally everybody to give you what you want, but you're saying internally, I'm bad, I'm this, I'm that, no matter how much joy and good people give you, you won't be able to receive it. Being able to receive it is about accepting. It is the correspondence, right? The law of correspondence is as within, so without. The world doesn't suddenly change because you start talking to yourself, right? Think about a tree. It doesn't just suddenly you plant a seed, a tree's there, and all of a sudden you got all this fruit. No, there's a cycle to it. But by nurturing the roots, the next cycle of fruit, whatever that is, that time buffer, that fruit will come out sweeter and better than last season's. And that's your goal is just make the next season of you more the direction you want it to go. More of this, less of this. But that voice you hear is you. You are responsible to yourself. Be responsible to yourself before you're responsible to anybody else. Because how you feel inside is how you're going to experience life outside. This is the law of correspondence at work. How I feel inside is how I'm going to experience life. And why would you want to experience bad stuff that hurts? Why not make your time here the best it can be? Just being kind to yourself, giving yourself everything you need to feel the life you want to feel. That way you're experiencing that reality. There's a little bit of science and a little bit of woo-woo to it, but your brain is always looking for evidence. It will just keep predicting based on what you know. You've predicted a lot of things up to here. There is not a human being out there that has been kind enough to themselves. We strive for it. So just keep being kind to yourself, giving yourself grace. I'm the kind of person who makes sure that voice you hear in your mind, that reflection you see in the mirror, make sure it's what you want and that you appreciate it. And you know what? Everyone around you will start shifting, whether you like it or not. But that's the law of correspondence. As within, so without. When you're thinking about the law of correspondence, and I talk to you a lot about, you know, how you used to be, you sort of conditioned yourself to hear. I think about it from the perspective of the stories we carry. Most of us aren't reacting to what's happening to us today, but stories that we've carried for years. Somebody told me something long ago, and now I believe that to be true. I can remember when I was a little girl, I had a neighborhood girl. I mean, I'm thinking I'm probably seven or eight, but it was my first experience in backstabbing. I thought this girl was my friend, and I showed up at school after we had gone on like a trip together. I went with her and her family unexpected, and I think I'm eight years old, something like that. I show up and this girl would had told everybody how awful I was, and just I had no idea. It didn't dawn on me that people could be so cruel. Like the mean girl symptom, but I was eight. And so I had this story that was in my head all the time that friends couldn't be trusted. So that was a story I had told myself without even realizing it. And it had kept me from keeping people at a bay for a very long time. Very few people could get into my squishy marshmallowy center. Now, I'm more willing to let that vulnerable side of me out now that I've healed, but that's an example of we carry these stories with us, and sometimes we're not even aware of how those stories we carry affect us. Maybe someone told you you weren't smart enough, or that you grew up believing you had to earn love by overworking or overachieving, or you've convinced yourself that asking for help is a weakness. Oh yeah, I'm guilty of that one too. I think that you grow up telling yourself these stories and you have to understand the way the brain works, is this was a story you experienced and that RAS filter just kept looking for evidence. So your whole life you kept looking for evidence. If you're the kind of person that's fearful of getting comfortable and the other shoe is gonna drop, guess what? Your brain is gonna keep looking for evidence that the other shoe is gonna drop. If you determine I have great people around me and I'm comfortable and I enjoy my life, guess what? That's gonna happen. I didn't realize until I had healed from all of this that the law of correspondence internally, I was believing that people couldn't be trusted. I couldn't let them into my inner circle. I have a lot of great relationships, but I kept a lot of people on the acquaintance thing. There were a lot of people I think that would have called me their friend, but I would not have referred to as a friend. That is not the case anymore. So I used that example so you understand you can change what you feed the roots of your life so you get different fruits. I now have many great relationships. I feel a great community, I don't feel lonely even when I'm alone. I am happy with my life and have great relationships. So these stories I was telling myself came from things that happened to the little child inside of me. And yes, y'all have to heal those things. We are responsible to heal those things. They become the lenses of how we view the world. And over time, we just kind of have stopped questioning what we think or feel about them. We just accept them to be truths because we've had enough evidence in the brain to do so. It's going to be very uncomfortable to put on another lens. I'm not saying just pop on the rose-colored glasses and fake it till you make it, but talk to yourself with kindness. The law of correspondence invites us to ask: is this thing still true or is it familiar? Be curious. Is it true that people are gonna backstab me or is it just familiar? Is it true that I can't ask for help? Or is it just familiar to do everything on my own? I'm still to this day uncomfortable asking people to help me. Got a little piece of humble pie when I was needed help with after the stroke, but I think I have to realize I'm not afraid to ask for help in the ways that I used to be. People like to help. And I think there's a difference between seeing asking help as I'm a burden, right? Those are two different things, but asking yourself with curiosity, is this still true or is it just something that's familiar? Our world, our reality, our awareness will all reflect what we practice. Your brain will actually help with that, repeating things over and over, and your RAS filter will let them in. For example, grateful people will naturally find more reasons to be grateful. Confident people will discover more opportunities to be confident. Kind people will have stronger relationships. These are all important things that come from the law of correspondence. So what you think is what you experience. If I experience abundance and I have more to give, I will experience more abundance. If I experience more freedom, I'm gonna find more reasons to feel free. It's not magic, it's actually practice. Repeat, repeat, repeat. That's how the brain works. What we constantly think we notice. What we constantly notice, we reinforce. And what we reinforce will actually become our experience. So one of my favorite stories about the Raz filter and to see how it works is what they call the lucky photo story. I talked about this in a previous episode, but they grabbed a bunch of people and divided them into two groups: those who thought they were lucky and those who thought they weren't lucky. And the test was take the newspaper, count each photo, and go give your answer to the guy over there. When your answer is right, you will win a $250 gift card. So what was fascinating about this is that the group that experienced themselves as lucky, they were done in half the time. They were 100% accurate, and the people that were unlucky got to the end with maybe an 80% accuracy. Here's the fascinating part. On the third page of the thing was a big ad that said, stop counting. There are 41 photos. Every lucky person saw it and was done faster. Now, the un people who saw themselves as unlucky just flipped through it. Most of them still got the right answers. It took them longer, but they just missed the stop. This is how many photos there are. So when you see yourself as lucky, you just notice more opportunities. The unlucky people believe they were unlucky, so their brain showed them evidence that they were unlucky. The lucky people believe themselves to be lucky and they notice the opportunity to be lucky. So that's kind of how the law of correspondence works in real time. It's not magic, but it's practice. What you practice is how you will see the world and how you will experience it. We constantly think about things, what we think we notice. And what we notice, we reinforce, we repeat, and what we reinforce becomes an experience. You can't heal what you don't acknowledge. You can't fix what you're unaware of. But healing doesn't happen through avoidance, it actually happens through awareness. And awareness is the beginning of freedom. So if you want to change how you're experiencing life, just start changing how you talk to yourself. It's that simple. As within, so without. And this is the law of correspondence. If you want to change your life, start changing how you think about it. If nothing changes, nothing's gonna change. What you're getting is what you're gonna keep getting unless you do something different. Thanks for joining me today. Remember, karma is real, energy is contagious, check your vibes out.