Being The Best You Can Be For Success

Being the best you can be for success is what we will explore this week. Do you remember a time when you needed to be your best? A time when it was important you were in the right frame of mind to make things happen? A day when everything else had gone wrong and you did not know how you were going to get through?

Using NLP anchoring is the way to make sure you are motivated, positive and ready to succeed.

Anchors will help you:

Access the resources when you need them
Replace unwanted feelings with desirable ones
Gain control over your emotions
Keep on course in times of intense change
Positively influence what we trigger in other people
Experience the day we want, no matter what else is happening in our life

The way we feel is determined by associations we have made with events we experience. We make these associations throughout our life and what we choose to think is one of the most powerful influences on how things will turn out. Anchoring is the way we can choose the experience we have in life, irrespective of external circumstances.

BASIC NLP ANCHORING

NLP Anchoring uses the same principle as Pavlov’s dog that salivated when he heard the bell ring because he knew it meant food would appear. When a phone rings you feel you must answer it because you have answered that sound in that way so many times in your life. When you move house, have you ever found yourself driving towards your old house instead of the new one? I am sure there is a piece of music that reminds you of how you felt at a good time in your life and maybe one that does the opposite.

Everything we do is in response to something else that causes it and often it is a completely unrelated trigger that produces the response. An anchor can be defined as a stimulus that influences someone’s state of mind. The process of anchoring is working on how a particular event or action influences your or your client’s mind.

Anchoring is a hypnotic phenomenon and it will work in the way you organise and want it to happen. Anchors can be used to help you move in a specific direction and if anchors get triggered in the wrong situation they can be quite disorientating. One of the ways anchors can work is when we expect them to produce a particular effect that is helpful to us.

It is possible to anchor other people when you have a good rapport with them. The way to make an anchor for yourself is like this:

Select a strong feeling you would like to have in a particular situation
Take a few moments to remember the last time you felt this way
Close your eyes and remember the feeling as vividly as you can
Try and experience it as an image in your mind, or a colour, or a sound
Make it brighter, more intense, sharper
Bring it closer so it gets bigger
Move the experience about in your mind
Make it as clear as you can
Find a word that describes how you feel, like YES! FANTASTIC! AMAZING!
Choose an action or physical gesture as an anchor, like making a fist, pulling your ear, squeezing your thumb
As the feeling becomes less intense, relax the anchor you chose

Find another example of having that feeling and start the process again using the same anchor

When you have been through this procedure a couple of times take some time out, then come back, use the anchor and see how it makes you feel.

COLLAPSING AN ANCHOR

Some times you will want to neutralise or collapse an anchor. To do this:

Find a situation where you have a negative feeling
Make an anchor for this feeling as in the previous process
Break state and rest
Select a positive feeling you would rather have and create an anchor for it in the same way
Break state and rest
Now trigger both anchors together
This may cause some confusion as both states sort themselves out into a new integrated form.
Repeat the process

Think of a time when you may have felt the undesirable state and see how it feels. If you have collapsed the anchor there should not be a problem any more.

Anchors are used by sportsmen like Tiger Woods who always wears a red T-shirt for final rounds. It is believed this goes back to his college days and symbolises aggression and assertiveness. The red shirt is the anchor giving him the feeling he can win.

Comedians use anchors using gestures and facial expressions to communicate to the audience they will do something funny. Because they have used the same anchors over a period of time the audience knows what to expect.

You can find out how people use anchors by watching and listening. As you get to know your client better you will be able to know the anchors being used and use them to your advantage.

Using an anchor is a way to get better at what you do, better at influencing others and getting the success you need. Being the best you can be for success will give you a real advantage.