Anchoring is a perfectly natural process that is part of your brain's memory storage system. By connecting sensory experiences with simple reference markers, an entire memory can be brought to life with one simple stimulus, like a certain smell takes you back to that holiday, or a certain piece of music brings to mind a vivid memory of someone special.
Advertisers know how this process works and they use it to connect a particular emotional state with their brand name and logo. If you watch commercials on TV, you'll notice that some of them seem to bear no relation to the product they're advertising. You'll see a series of images that have certain connotations, like security, happiness, love and desire and at the end of the advert you just see a brand name. You should pay attention to the music, as it's just as important as the images. One group of adverts that spring to mind are those for the Peugeot 406. The images were of great heroic acts, saving lives and being generally manly, whilst being caring and understated. The music was M People's "Search for the hero". There's no need to say what Peugeot 406 drivers are supposed to think of themselves.
So, how can you use this natural process to your own advantage? Here are a few ideas. Preparing yourself for an important presentation, reprogramming phobias, as an accelerated learning tool, as a tool for focussing the attention of a group, for influencing behaviour, for relaxing yourself or other people, for getting yourself into bed on Monday morning, for getting yourself to sleep on Monday night or just for making yourself feel great about dealing with life's distractions.
So, how does anchoring work? Well, you basically get yourself into a heightened emotional state - any one will do - and then see, hear or feel some unique, simple sensory stimulus such as a word, sound, image or touch. You could visualise a colour, hear a word, speak a word or squeeze your hand in a certain way - all of these work well as anchors and work best when used together.
Anchoring has always been a difficult process to describe in text as your attention is on the book instead of your own state, so I've tried something different here. Have a go and see what you think. Read through this next piece of text, only clicking on "More..." to turn the page when you reach the end. You may want to be somewhere relatively quiet to read this.
Imagine yourself lying in a warm meadow. The Sun is shining and you can feel the warmth of its rays on your skin and in your hair. Every now and then, a cool breeze whispers past the hairs on your skin like someone gently breathing your name.
You can hear some sounds. They're very quiet and distant and as you lie there with your eyes closed, you can just begin to make out the distant sound of birdsong. You realise that the birdsong is all around you, moving up and down, left and right. You open your eyes and see swallows darting through the crystal blue sky. Realising how bright and clear the Sun is, you take a deep breath, let your eyes gently close again and your attention drifts back to those sounds. You can hear the wind moving calmly through the trees and the sigh reminds you of the voice of your favourite person.
The breeze is drifting lightly across the meadow too and as you reach out you can feel how cool the grass is. Notice how it feels slightly damp, as grass often does, even though your back feels totally dry. The touch of the grass is so soothing on the palms of your hands, so you touch the backs of your hands to the grass and feel its coolness. You notice the way that it gently tickles the backs of your hands. Once again you press your palms into the grass and feel your fingers stretching right out as far as they will stretch.
As you hold your hands up to your face to shield your eyes from the brilliant Sun, you notice the smell of the grass on your hands and it reminds you of long summer evenings at home when the smell of fresh cut grass lingered in the air. Letting your mind wander through these wonderful memories for a while, your attention is slowly drawn back to the meadow as you realise that this is the most relaxed you have ever been in your life.
Now, look away, look up and think about the first thing you remember doing this morning. What does a creaky door sound like? What does butter feel like?
When we set up an anchor, it's important to test that the anchor works as expected. The instructions above are designed to change your emotional state by shifting your focus of attention. Hopefully the feel of butter may have confused you a bit, unless you feel butter regularly.
This is an interesting glimpse into the world of human sensory perception and it reminds me to get back onto the subject of anchoring.....
Now click here to test your anchor...
Now, pay attention to any feelings of relaxation, or any memories of that meadow that the image brought back for you. If you want to try this differently then go back to the last page and sit in front of your screen with your eyes closed. Run through the whole meadow story again in your mind, using all of your senses. As you feel most relaxed and calm, open your eyes and as you see the image on the screen, say a word and squeeze your hand in a particular way.
When you want to test the anchor, say the word and do the hand squeeze and see what happens.
Testing the anchor also reinforces it, so you can run through this as many times as you like. Then, next time you want that feeling of relaxation again, use the image, sound or touch anchor and just sit back and relax!
Of course, this works with any emotional state, I chose 'relaxed' as it's a fairly safe one. Sports players use this widely to anchor peak performance states. Public speakers use it to anchor powerful states.
You can use it to get control of your own emotional states, enabling you to decide how you're going to feel in any situation.