Feeling Amazing Or Not So Great On Demand - Triggering An Anchor

Every Friday morning I would go to the assembly held at the primary school my children attended. It was a small school and I knew every one of the kids there. Many of the mothers or fathers also worked their week around getting to the assembly too, so it was an extraordinary sense of community that developed and was maintained, every Friday morning. Assembly would start with the National Anthem. To see the toothy grins and plaits, and hear the earnest singing in both Maori and then English was one of the highlights of my week. I would often experience tears of pride watching those beautiful little children being innocent and full of curiosity and energy.

Fast forward by ten years and I was attending the graduation of my daughter from her Diploma course, in Queenstown, New Zealand. We all stood to sing the National Anthem, alongside a local school choir, dressed in Maori costume. I couldn't wait to stand proudly and be filled with national pride. Well, I was knocked sideways - my voice cracked, a lump came to my throat and tears stung my eyes instead, as I watched and listened to those children with their toothy grins and plaits, innocence and energy.

You see, the National Anthem is an anchor to me. It creates a trigger like effect within me of a 'state' change – how I am in that moment - by associating a memory with the song sung by the children from years ago.

Bandler & Grinder, the 'fathers' of NLP say that anchoring refers to the tendency for any one element of an experience to bring back the entire experience. Anchors therefore produce a state change within all of us that has been built by repetition and association.  They are based around our five senses - sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell. Listening to a song, or even only a riff, could remind you of a moment in time where you were playful and carefree. Other songs can push you to tears as you remember a sad time, of maybe heartbreak. The haka of the All Blacks can put a chill into grown men, but also gives that rugby team a feeling of togetherness and grit! The smell of the dental clinic, or hospital is enough to put some people into a state of panic and seeing a spider can really make some people run the opposite direction. The smell of a perfume – maybe that reminds you of a past lover! Just seeing a tattoo of an anchor can set off a chain of reactions of thoughts, feelings and behaviours for some people!

Have you noticed that some anchors can put you into a negative or positive state? And sometimes this is gentle or powerful. So in the case of a spider phobia, the spider is just a spider, it is the individual that has added in the significance of seeing one. Singing the National Anthem is simply singing a song. It is the whole experience and memory that makes it more than simply a song, yet the change in state is so automatic and instant that it requires no searching the memory banks! Pavlov's Dogs is the famous experiment that created an 'anchor' for when the dogs heard the bell, they would associate the sound with food, and start to salivate - food or no food! The sound of the bell was turned into an automatic reflex.

Once ‘practiced’ and established, anchors can be used automatically for advantages – positive states. These ones are useful to cultivate. The danger is if we are unaware of their negative impact. 

And this is how anchors can affect our health. As our state is changed, our health is affected. There is evidence that anchors can directly affect our immune system which is the field of Psychoneuroimmunology (PNI). This field is the exploration of how our beliefs, behaviour and environment affect our immune system. Our immune system is the part that protects us by destroying antigens, bacteria, viruses and cancer cells. And also ourselves – autoimmune disease. (So measuring the strength of the immune system is one of the most direct ways that medicine can measure how healthy we are.) It has been suggested that some food allergies are a result of associating a state of that moment with the food being eaten at the time.

So have you ever considered that the ‘state’ you are in affects your health. And that even certain anchors can put you into a stressed state that can affect your health too. Like hearing the rain on the roof in the morning (for some), seeing a bulging in box in your emails, hearing a particular voice that may make you feel stressed or pressured. These can then start the thoughts that are negative and ruminant and spiral down to lower energy. And as Deepak Chopra says:

Every cell in your body is eavesdropping on your thoughts.

Anchors and Health:

1.  What triggers a negative state? What sights, sounds, tastes, smells and touches put you in an state or irritation, hostility, depression, helplessness, feeling harassed or fearful?

2. If you are in a negative state, how do you change it? First you could stay with that state, but be interested in how you have been affected. Simply noticing that something has triggered you into an unresourceful state can be enough to change and evolve. Give it your attention. Or, you could change your physiology or thinking. Breathing differently will produce biochemical changes. Laughing will start an avalanche of physiological changes too.  This is why pretending to be happy can actually have real physical effects. It has been reported that by laughing your way through the day has assisted in a turn around of serious disease. Just changing our thinking is not enough. Move around. 

3. And being aware of those anchors that put us into a negative state will go a long way to maintaining positive states and positive health. There are techniques to collapse an anchor so that it is no longer has that power over you…..when I see (….), I then feel (…). Collapsing an anchor takes away that automatic association into the experience when the anchor is sensed. (My son broke the spell that 'Fix You' by Coldplay had on me by clowning around and changing the beat one day when it came on the radio - I went from balling my eyes out upon hearing the song, to laughing and now can listen to it, while holding myself together!)

4. We can even create an anchor to experience a positive state - maybe of playfulness, creativity or calm. When you need to be in a different 'frame of mind', it would be useful to 'fire off' the anchor and change it to one of the positive ones you have created. Your body will respond with a positive immunological change too.

There is a particular song I like to play – it instantly takes me back to being 17 and walking home in the sunshine, after an exam at school. I remember vividly the houses, the grass, the smells and the happy, confident state I was in. I sometimes like to remember that scene and even play that song to instantly change the way I am feeling if at that moment it is not entirely positive. I have other anchors to use for motivation or playful.

Look out for your own anchors as they can determine the way you run your life. Positive ones are great to leave alone, but those negative ones can be changed. Get a coach if you want to change!