Going back to the theme I stress constantly, mastering NLP has a lot more to do with noticing what’s going on than doing anything per se.
This is especially true of anchoring.
Anchoring is generally mis-taught in trainings because it leads students to focus almost exclusively on setting kinesthetic anchors by touching people on the shoulder or on the elbow.
And yet, anchoring takes place ALL THE TIME and in ALL sensory modalities.
Let’s say you’re having a conversation with a friend of yours and all of a sudden you make a face and they burst into laughter; that particular face you made triggers their laughter and thus serves as an anchor for that particular laughing state.
Michael Breen mentions often that anchoring is a tool or a quality that we use to learn new things by linking together different stimuli. To master it, you must begin noticing it as it happens in your day-to-day experience.
Here is your exercise:
For the rest of the day, focus your attention on state changes that occur in your interactions with others. A really easy place to start is your family. Open all your sensory channels to detect anchors.
- Notice particular sounds that trigger state changes (one such sound might be a fart imitation done with the mouth — seems to work across cultures as an anchor)
- Notice how your facial expressions trigger state changes
- Notice how the speed of your movement triggers state changes
- Notice how certain touches change states (particularly in kids, this is very effective)
Open your senses up to all the linkages that take place around and in you. You will feel baffled by how much had eluded you in the past.
