Solving the Problem: "NLP Anchoring Doesn't Work For Me"

Thursday, July 1st, 2021 : Read 1,923 Times : 326 words (Aprox 2 min read)

One of the most common complaints I get in this field of training and practice is, "anchoring doesn't work on me."

People look at me with desperation and say, "I just can't imagine a stimulus, like a touch, creating such a strong response like that."

I say, "Really? Have you never been at the club when the song "Don't Stop Believing" comes on? How do you react? You and your friends immediately light up and being dancing, right?

What about smelling a food that takes you back to your mom's kitchen. Mmmmm.

Or seeing a show from childhood, and you feel 15 years old again, don't you?

That's right!

So what's the difference between these anchors that work "in the wild," versus the anchors we try to set and trigger in a session, or in a training room?

Nine times out of ten, it's physiology.

This took me some time to figure out for myself, as I had a hard time with creating strong anchors.

Very often, when we ask a client to enter a state, such as confidence, they sit there like a "lump on a log," close their eyes, huff, and say, "ok."

The problem is, "state" is intimately tied to physiology. Just going somewhere in the mind will usually produce a lackluster result for all but the most kinesthetic of people.

We all know kinesthetics don't usually have a problem with this. Heck these are the people who often turn in their easy chairs to face the past when doing timeline. They can't help but get physiology involved.

This is so important, that at my training institute, we have changed the acronym for creating strong anchors from what it used to be: I-TURN

To what it is now:

TURNIP

• Timing
• Uniqueness
• Repetition
• Number of Times
• Intensity
• Physiology

Posted by Michael Stevenson in NLP, Techniques on Solving the Problem: "NLP Anchoring Doesn't Work For Me"

Tags: Anchoring, State Elicitation