Apologes for the recent lack of updates. I’m working on a little side project which is taking up some of my processing time, based around providing some information on NLP for volunteers to sample my new skills, to give me some practice and help people rid themselves of some stuck states, unproductive behaviours and annoying phobias. Once it’s up and running I’ll put details here. In the meantime I might be cutting back on the volume of waffle here on my blog.
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.
Well as quickly as these anchors can be made, they can be broken. One of the simplest ways to do this is to collapse anchors - to take a negative association and corrupt it with a good one. This has the effect of breaking, or diminishing the strength of the negative anchor, giving the person back some choice in how to behave.
There is also the very cool ability to design your own states. Collapsing anchors of different positive states can create a supercharged state of mind that can be instantly recalled by an internal anchor, such as a particular tune, or colour, image or situation. Sufficient practice at this can reduce the amount of time we spend in states caused by external sources, giving us control of our state of mind, our behaviour, and hence giving us much more control of any given situation.
Cool? You bet. Read on if you would like more info.
Anchors
An anchor is simply a stimulus that is linked to a physiological state. When the anchor is fired (the stimulus activated) the linked physiological state is triggered. Anchors can be naturally occurring through association by classical or operant conditioning or they can be programmed. Anchors are a great way to achieve desired states when they are needed, such as confidence before having to speak to an audience.
The case of little Albert, a study by Watson and Raynor in 1920 was a famous demonstration of anchoring in action that sadly went terribly wrong. The experiment carried out on an 11-month-old baby (Albert) was supposed to demonstrate how phobia’s can be conditioned. Albert was shown a rat of which he showed no fear. However, each time he reached out to touch the rat, the experimenters banged two pieces of metal together making a loud noise that scared Albert. Albert soon associated the sight of the rat with the scared sensation and quickly learnt to fear it. This fear was then generalized to other objects that resembled the rat, such as cotton wool and fluffy toys. Albert had developed a strong anchor between a stimulus (anything that resembled a rat) and a response (feeling scared). The experimenters had then intended on using similar techniques to allow Albert to unlearn the feared response. Unfortunately it was at this time that Albert’s parents became too concerned about his well being and withdrew him form the experiment. Albert left the experiment with a very powerful anchor demonstrating the awesome power of simple association.
This study demonstrates how powerful anchors can be. Other famous experiments such as Pavlov’s salivating dog illustrate the power of association. Natural anchors are fired all the time, smells, a favorite song or even finding an old childhood toy can bring about a flood of memories fully charged with emotions perhaps not felt for a lifetime!
Anchoring is used to great affect in TV commercials to make products more appealing. The advertisers encourage positive feelings of happiness by playing favorite records and using appealing scenes, actors or colors. As you innocently watch the TV feeling great because your all time favorite song is caressing your ears. You begin to associate the feeling with the product on the screen. Pretty soon all it takes is a single glance at the product and all those lovely feelings come flooding back. The deal is clenched as you walk through the supermarket, the product proudly displayed on the shelf waiting to trigger you emotions… you see it…. you feel great… you buy it!
How to Create an anchor
It is easier to learn how to create an anchor by actually doing it. So I will run through the steps of creating an anchor here as I create one for myself.
First you need to choose a state or resource that you would like to have instant access to. I, like many people, am not too comfortable with public speaking… so lets use confidence. Confidence would be the required resource that would greatly aid my public speaking problem.
Next I think back to a time when I was extremely confident…. OK, got one! …..I am 14 yrs old at the local fair ground about to win a huge soft toy for someone I have had a crush on since primary school…. To win I need to hit three playing cards with darts, I have always been a good darts thrower and very confident I am going to win… which I did, and my skill was rewarded by my first real kiss! My confidence bucket was well and truly overflowing!
Before I reach the peak of the experience (that’s the point when the last dark hit the board and I knew I had won… and the resulting prize!!) I need to choose my anchors. Kinesthetically I choose to clench my left fist (I would choose both fists but I might be carrying something when I need to activate the trigger!) as an auditory cue I will say the word CONFIDENT is a positive and confident tone. For a visual cue I have selected the image of an audience looking up at me, it is an easy visualization and is likely to be present when I need my confidence boost the most!
With my anchors ready I get back to the fair ground, really getting into it and seeing through those eyes and feeling those emotions as I did on that day… My confidence builds as I run through the chain of events. As the last darts hits I am feeling more confident then any other time in my life! The moment the confident feeling hits its peak… (Oh. she’s about to kiss me!) I fire all three anchors at once! “CONFIDENT!â€
Now that the anchor is installed I break the state, by walking around and thinking of unrelated thoughts etc. Next I trigger the anchor to see if it worked….
Give me a second… (Clenching left fist visualizing the audience and using that same positive confident tone… “CONFIDENT!†Excellent!! I do feel confident, and oddly enough the thought of having to give a speech is actually exciting, not scary!
So, that’s how you can create an anchor! Play with it and enjoy it, once you have created your anchor test it out. If it is not as powerful as you hoped you can simply repeat the process, or, try stacking many resources on one anchor. Think of times when you have been happy, excited, confident, brave etc., Associate with the memory as described above and really feel those positive feelings come flooding back. At the peak of the experience fire off your anchor, using the same anchor to stack many states is an extremely powerful process.
Collapsing Anchors
Collapsing an anchor is a process that allows us to break our negative anchors. As mentioned, an anchor may be created naturally through association. If the anchor results in an undesirable state then we can use collapsing techniques to break the association.
To collapse an anchor you must first identify the problem state, and decide upon an alternative positive state to take its place. You then create the positive state anchor in the usual way. Once complete you must break state and then create an anchor for the negative state, so that both states are anchored and can be triggered easily.
After breaking state again you need to fire each state in turn without breaking state between. Finally fire both anchors at once… this will cause a little confusion while your physiology attempts to achieve both states simultaneously, now break the negative state but keep the positive state going.
To test the success of the collapse break state and fire the negative anchor, the result should be a neutral state, somewhere between the two states. If the negative state persists positive anchors can be stacked on the same anchor and the procedure repeated.
It is important to create a very powerful positive state, even if this requires stacking states together, as the positive state must be stronger than the negative state to collapse the negative anchor.
