Anchors aweigh. Imagine the impact on your life if you could switch on your high performance states at will. Top performers in politics, sports, the arts, and business must be able to be resourceful in the moment. The actor must be able to commit himself to the role when the curtain goes up, not an hour before, or half way through the second act. This is the bottom line of professionalism. It is just as important to be able to switch off. The actor must be able to drop his role when the curtain falls. Many people in business become highly motivated, achieve great things, yet burn themselves out and become unhappy, lose their family life, or in extreme cases, suffer from a coronary. Managing our states needs balance and wisdom. We each have a personal history that is rich in different emotional states. To re-experience them, we need a trigger, some association in the present to elicit the original experience. Our minds naturally link experiences; it is the way we give meaning to what we do. Anchors away. In NLP, the use of a trigger that promotes the recognition of and use of physiological state in understanding is called an anchor (Seymour, 2011). In NLP, learners acquire skill sets that allow them to calibrate with others’ states of mind using these anchors. The subtleties of the faces and bodies of others are used to distinguish the memory they are accessing, and their state of mind (O’Connor & Seymour, 2011). As one continues to grow in skill at this, so the depictions get easier and more descriptive. The slightest emotive change can become simple to detect. The triggers and cues that a skilled NLP practitioner may use include olfactory images, a certain expression, a tone of voice, and/or a favorite photograph. The level of emotional involvement also parlays with the setting of anchors as those that are positive to us will gather a strong placement. Many people are simply deluged with past fears that come searing back often inappropriately, now attached to a memory and so the present. Thus, in order to hang a new memory on an experience or an anchor, it will be useful to have a new one in association with it. Getting in tune with sets of our own positive anchors and making resource state changes may be the easiest way to change other’s behavior. RESOURCE ANCHORING Here are the steps for transferring positive emotional resources from past experiences to the present situations where you want them to be available. Think of some specific situation in which you would like to be different, feel different and respond differently. Then choose a particular emotional state, from the many different ones you have experienced in your life, that you would most like to have available to you in that situation. It can be any resourceful state— confidence, humour, courage, persistence, creativity— whatever comes intuitively to mind as being most appropriate. When you have a specific instance in mind, real or imaginary, you are ready to go to the next step, which is to choose the anchors that will bring this resource to mind when you want it. First, your kinesthetic anchor: some feeling you can associate to your chosen resource. It is important that the anchor is unique and not part of your ongoing behavior. Now the visual anchor. You might choose a symbol, or you can remember what you were seeing when you did feel confident. As long as the image you choose is distinctive, and helps to evoke the feeling, then it will work. When you have chosen an anchor in each representation system, the next step is to relive those feelings of confidence by vividly re-creating the resource situation. Step forward or change chairs as you associate fully into the experience. Putting different emotional states in actual different physical locations helps to separate them cleanly. Take some time and enjoy reliving that experience as fully as possible . . . When those feelings have come to a peak and start to diminish, physically move back to your uninvolved position. You have now found out how best to recreate your resourceful state and how long it takes to do so. Step into your place for the resource state and re-experience it again. As it reaches its peak, see your image, make your gesture and say your words. You must connect your anchors to the resource state as it is coming to its peak. The timing is critical. Sometime after your resourceful feelings have peaked, you will need to step out and change state before you are ready to test the anchor. (O’Connor & Seymour, 2011).
Posted on: Sat, 31 Aug 2013 14:25:17 +0000
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