Insights Into the Law of Substitution - The Power of Saying “Yes” to You

Humans, by nature, are masters at saying the word “no.” We are conditioned to focus on the negative. Survival of the fittest. We learned about danger and what “not to do” in order to avoid extinction.

Many of the tools and coping skills we developed as hunters and gatherers does not apply to the world we live in today. Living at that time was dangerous. They had to always be on the defensive. The primitive parts of our brains, which focus on survival needs, have not caught up to the age of technology.

Many people continue to live in a place of lack with the glass half empty. They are not even aware they are always focused on the negative and blaming everyone else for their circumstances.

You have a choice. Choose to continue to blame others and give your power away. That is one option. Or choose to take responsibility for yourself and become empowered. Taking responsibility for your thoughts and actions is the more difficult choice. It is not easy being healthy. The potential for satisfaction and inner peace is huge when you make the choice to live in a healthy way. There will be a sense of peace between what you say you care about and your actions. This creates congruency. Our minds and bodies thrive on congruency, having it all line up.

Your thoughts, beliefs and perceptions contribute to your reality. When you are always negative, your world becomes an unsafe place. This contributes to fear, anxiety and pain. When people are in this state of mind, they are focusing on survival needs. This is a defensive position. You will respond from fight, flight or freeze.

Brian Tracy, author and speaker, discusses the Law of Substitution. He claims your conscious mind can only have one thought at a time. Only one. The choice is yours, positive or negative. Once you recognize you are focused on something negative, you have the ability to replace a negative thought with a positive thought.

Once you become aware of how many times you are focused on what you do not want to do or what is not going well, you have created an opportunity to make a correction. It is possible to replace a positive with a negative, putting the Law of Substitution into action. My goal is to help you focus on moving forward and taking the steps toward your greatness.

Consider the fact that your brain will not hear the words “no,” “don’t” or “won’t.” Hypnotherapists are trained to only give suggestions in the positive. They know our brains do not respond to those words. Your brain will hear the adverbs, or action words, and the nouns, people, places and things. Focus on the goal for your business. Using Law of Substitution, state it in a way where you are moving toward a goal instead of moving away from a problem.

Think about the next step you want to take to grow your business. There are many unknown factors as well as multiple variables on how to take your next step. It is possible you know what your goal is, but you don’t know what to do next. When you consider everything that needs to be done to grow your business, the tasks can be overwhelming.

Once you begin to focus on the feeling of overwhelm, then other limiting thoughts begin to appear. You’ve opened up a door for negativity to step in. Fear of failure, conce
you are not doing it right, and the fact you are already doing so much how could you possibly add one more thing. None of these thoughts are helpful for growing your business.

Become aware of your language. When you are talking about your goals for your business are you discussing what you do not want to have happen? For example, do you think about “not having to close your practice and return to a job?” If your brain is unable to hear the word “not” it will be focusing on “closing your practice to return to a job.” Although you might think you have a good reason to stay in practice, the message your subconscious gets is about giving it up in order to get a J-O-B. This point of view is problem oriented and focusing on trying to get away from something.

Here is the kicker, not only are you trying to get away from a problem but you now have a visualization in your mind of closing your practice and going back to a job. You have just created an image in your mind of what you do not want to do. Your brain tunes into the visualization. Subconsciously you have begun to sabotage. You subconscious will now begin looking for the actions which will reinforce the “goal” of closing your practice to go back to a job.