Anchoring is one of the most fundamental NLP techniques.
Anchoring in NLP enables stimulus-reaction in a targeted manner. This enables us to store feelings and recall them when needed. Make your daily life easier and improve your customer relations with the knowledge and use of our natural conditioning mechanisms. Learn to create beneficial emotional reactions and to dissolve restrictive ones whenever you want to.
How to use anchoring in NLP? Setting Anchors
Setting an anchor means consciously linking an external stimulus with an existing experience. Anchoring can use all sensory channels (pictures, sounds, sensations, smells, tastes). Anchors can be set and released by oneself or by others (self-set, external anchor). Firing an anchor means triggering the stimulus, reactivating, and experiencing the previously anchored experience.
Standard steps:
First determine the resource, the state you would like to have available “at the push of a button” and select the anchor with which you want to retrieve this state. The anchor can be a certain smell, a song, or simply a pressure on a certain place on your body.
- Remember, fully associated, an experience in which you had the desired resource available
- Trigger the selected anchor just before the peak, i.e. the highest intensity of the resource-rich state
- Separator: interrupt the state, e.g. with a distracting question
- Test: Trigger the anchor again to test if it works
The Concept of Anchors
An anchor is a stimulus (stimulus, trigger) that causes a certain reaction in a person that is always the same. Unlike a reflex, however, this particular reaction has been learned and is not innate. Thus, an external stimulus, such as a certain song, can be linked to an inner state, e.g. a feeling of being in love.
Further examples: Ringing of the telephone or memorable pieces of music, traffic signs or holiday photos, a hot cooker, certain smells like freshly baked bread or taste memories, logos, slogan (“Just do it!”, “simply good” – McDonald’s”), distinctive voices, certain items of clothing.
Anchors influence our emotional states almost non-stop. However, special importance should only be given to anchors with intense emotional states.
Recognizing your anchors and replacing them with more positive ones if necessary is an important step on the way to good self-esteem.
Conscious anchoring represents an extension of the concept of classical conditioning according to Pawlow. Pavlov first noticed, rather by chance, that the dogs he was researching with salivated as soon as they heard the footsteps of the guard, who would give them their food shortly afterward. Curious, Pavlov would ring a bell before the dogs were fed and after a while, the mere ringing of the bell would cause the dogs’ mouths to water.
CLICK HERE For More Course Inclusions and Our June Main Event
