The other day I was sat on my pc building a new playlist on iTunes aimed specifically for listening to in the gym. My aim was to generate a list of tunes that motivate me to put in that little bit of effort.
The kind of tunes that I selected included:
Eye Of The Tiger - Survivor
Take A Look Around - Limp Bizkit
What Time Is Love? - The KLF
Three quite different genres, and yet the playlist keeps me going and stands repeated listenings. It occurred to me that my reasons for selecting each tune were based on any anchors that I have associated with that particular tune. I started to explore what the common themes might be between the tunes.
Eye of the Tiger is an obvious selection. For me, as with many people, this song has an anchor to the Rocky movies, that, aside from being full of people exercising, are about rising to the challenge, insurmountable odds.
When I hear the tune the immediate anchor for me is visually Rocky running up those steps, in fact it seems to link to the “Gonna Fly Now” tune from the films, so in my head, one tune is actually anchoring imagery AND sounds. A very strong anchor indeed, it would appear.
Take a look around is an odd one, it would appear, until you think that it, for me, links to the movie Mission Impossible 2. This movie is 2 hours of action and testosterone, and the immediate anchor when I hear the tune is the bit in the bunker, lots of violence, kung-fu kicks and over the top karate chops. For me this would seem to be about energy.
What time is love? is a straightforward anchor, linking me back to Uni days, pogoing on the dance floor of the friday night Mega at the Student Union, drinking Purple Nasty (beer, cider and blackcurrant), without a care in the world.
So it seems that every time i select a track it is based to some extent on memories or emotions tied to that tune. Not all tunes have attached anchors; there has to be some experience or related happening to anchor a tune, and I think that often you won’t even be able to understand why you like a particular tune - one of my favourite tunes of all time is Radiohead’s “Talk Show Host”. To my knowledge I can’t think of any anchors attached to it, but perhaps there are other sensory anchors that in my current state of mind I can’t get to?
So the point of all this is that music is an incredibly powerful way to change state. I use it to attempt to get in to an energetic, positive state when I drag my sorry carcass down the gym. I like to listen to Rock when I drive but find that if I do, I drive faster than when I listen to alternative music. I chill out in the bath to some laid back ambient and on a monday morning, as I psyche myself up for another week at work, trance is the order of the day. And I did all of this before I discovered NLP. But I certainly use it more deliberately now I understand the power of music in changing states.
And on a final note, when I hear “Simply The Best” by Tina Turner, all I think of now is David Brent (The Office). So not all anchors are positive!
December 3rd, 2006 at 7:15 pm
[...] So last weekend was module 2 of my NLP practitioner course. In this module we concentrated on states and state management. This refers to the overall emotional physiological and psychological condition of an individual. It involves the beliefs, values, capabilities and behaviour within a context at a particular time. The concept of state can also be applied to a family, corporation or any social system. So within any day we will enter numerous different states, mostly affected by environmental influences; weather, traffic, music, TV, other people, our wellbeing, books, the radio etc. Many states we enter everyday are triggered by particular sensory experiences (tunes, places, words, people etc), and I’ve discussed this previously on this post. From a positive perspective, I wonder if you can recall a tune or a smell that reminds you of a happy time in your life. Well we make these associations consciously and unconsciously - the unconscious is constantly making associations (or anchors) on your behalf. Unfortunately sometimes they have a negative impact - a tune reminds you of a sad time in your life or a particular person annoys you without even speaking. [...]