Anchoring

Be the person you want to be
…………. any time, anywhere

Anchoring is a technique from Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) which, when mastered, allows you to instantly recall a required resourceful state in any given situation.

Follow these steps and, with a little practice, you can call upon empowering feelings whenever you want.

1. Choose a feeling that you would like to have in a particular situation.
   (eg. more confident for public speaking, more motivated and energized at work)

2. Take a few moments to remember a time in the past when you had that feeling.
   Be sure to choose a really strong example.
   If you don't have one in your past, imagine what it would be like to feel this way.

3. Close your eyes and remember that feeling in vivid detail.
   Put yourself back there now and relive the whole experience in all its intensity. In order to enhance the experience experiment with the following:

   - make the image sharper
   - be totally in the experience
   - make the colours brighter and bolder
   - bring the image closer, recall absolutely everything around you
   - shift the image position on your mental screen
   - make the sounds clearer
   - let the feeling you are recalling flood over you
   - choose a word that enhances the feeling (eg. "Yes!", " Brilliant!")

4. As your feeling reaches its peak and is most intense, create a physical association by making a unique gesture (eg, squeeze your thumb, make a fist, press your middle finger and thumb together or pull your earlobe). The gesture must be something that you would not normally do in other circumstances.

5. As the feeling fades, release your gesture or 'anchor spot' and relax.

6. Break that mental state by thinking about something completely different.

7. Repeat the process from step (1), using the same memory and the same 'spot' or gesture twice more.

8. When the 'spot' has been set 3 times, test it by making the gesture as decided above.

9. Have you got the desired result? You will know you have got it right when you experience the feeling without recalling the memory.

10. If the feeling is not intense enough, repeat the procedure.

Change Negative Feelings

You can use the technique above to change these negative feelings into positive empowering ones.

Practice the following steps:

1. Identify the situation that evokes the unwanted negative feeling.

2. Select a feeling you'd prefer to experience in this particular situation and create a positive 'anchor spot' for it (see instructions above).

3. Think of the negative situation, then set off the positive gesture. Keep doing this until you feel neutral about the formerly negative situation.

4. Do this in the real world as soon as possible.

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