Some people may demonstrate a dramatic change in their body language, whereas for others the differences may be so subtle that you’re hard pressed to spot them.
An NLP presupposition goes as follows: people can’t not communicate. Like it or not, you’re continually influencing other people. Just by a look or a word, you have the skill to elicit states in other people and in yourself, and it happens so easily – just by being yourself and doing what you do, with no conscious effort.
When somebody, such as a boss, parent, teacher, or partner, praises you, tells you off, or expresses joy or disappointment, you recognise that they use a particular tone of voice. Well, your own tone of voice also acts as an anchor.
Varying your tone of voice is a way to change other people’s states. Try out this technique when you want to change the state of an audience or an indi- vidual person you’re talking to – sometimes you may need to be animated, at other times authoritative, calm, or restful.
Developing your own repertoire of anchors
One great way to work with NLP concepts is to find optimal states for your- self: simply put, the best way for you to be yourself. The idea is to develop this ability in the same way that you may acquire a repertoire of tennis or golf shots. To start, ask yourself what may be the best way for you to do the following:
✓ Learn effectively
✓ Perform at your best
✓ Relate to other people
Remember times in the past when you’ve been particularly successful in these areas. What was going on for you at the time? Where were you, who were you with, what were you doing at the time that was helpful? What was important to you?
Build a range of visual, auditory, and kinaesthetic anchors that make you feel good about yourself and other people. You may want to enlist the help of a friend and work with each other on this project.
Recognising your own anchors
What are the triggers, the stimuli, that affect you most at home or work?
Make a note in the chart shown in Figure 9-1 so that you begin to become aware of the times you’re feeling good and when you feel less good. Your aim is to concentrate more on your positive experiences and change or let go of the negatives.
Figure 9-1:
A personal anchor chart:
V = visual;
A = auditory;
K = kinaes- thetic;
O = olfac- tory; and G = gusta-
tory.
AT HOME
Good Bad
AT WORK
Good Bad V-Sights
A-Sounds K-Touch/feelings O-Smells G-Tastes
Take some time to record details of different experiences that make you feel good or bad. These experiences can be seemingly insignificant everyday events and are bound to be very individual.
You may feel good at home at the sight of a log fire or a vase of tulips on the table, the sound of your favourite CD, or the smell of a hot meal on the kitchen stove. Equally, the sight of your computer on a tidy desk, the buzz of people, or the smell of a steaming hot drink may welcome you to work in the mornings.
Alternatively, if you get angry when someone turns the TV up loud, or another email or piece of paper plops into your in-tray, you may need to find some strategies to switch the negatives into positives. Only when you iden- tify what you do and don’t like, can you start steering the minute details of your daily experience in the best direction for you.
We’ve organised the chart in Figure 9-1 by the different senses (head to Chapter 6 for more on these modalities). Here are some anchors to notice:
✓ Visual – pictures, colours, decoration ✓ Auditory – music, voices, birdsong, sounds
✓ Kinaesthetic – textures, feel of the physical elements, emotional vibes
✓ Olfactory – smells, chemicals, scents ✓ Gustatory – tastes, food, drink
Return to this framework every few weeks or so to help you get more of what gives you pleasure. If you have a dominant sense – for example, more visual anchors than auditory ones – check whether you’re missing out and filtering information unnecessarily.
Your anchors are going to change over time. As you concentrate more and more on the things that give you pleasure, you may begin to notice that those that upset you become less relevant over time.
Here’s an exercise that you may want to turn into a healthy daily habit. As you go through every day, pick out five events or experiences that have given you pleasure. Keep a private notebook of what’s going well for you. Often, the small things are what make the difference – a pleasant conversation, a kind gesture, the smell of a bakery, or the sun breaking through the clouds. When you’re feeling under pressure, refer to your notebook, and ensure that you spend at least part of every day on the important things that matter to you.
Going Through the Emotions:
Sequencing States
Think back to yesterday. As you review the events of the day, ask yourself how you felt at different times. Were you in the same state all day? Unlikely.
Just as with a temperature gauge, you may have blown hot or cold or expe- rienced all the dimensions on the scale: you may have been cool and calm, warm and interested, hot and excited, plus any number of degrees of permu- tations along the way.
Humans are blessed with behavioural flexibility and the wonderful ability to change state. In fact, you need to shift states. If you operate on a constant high, you soon become exhausted. Peak performers have to be able to switch off and regenerate, recharging the batteries. Otherwise they suffer burn-out.
During a presentation, for example, varying the pace and rhythm is important so that your audience stays interested. At times, you want them to be relaxed and receptive to what you’re saying, at other times highly alert to the details, at other times curious and interested.
While working in one-to-one coaching sessions and facing up to difficult prob- lems, clients regularly demonstrate a full range of emotions from extreme anger, frustration, and worry to laughter in a very short space of time. At times, when the going gets tough, the territory constantly sways to a point where someone exclaims: ‘I don’t know whether it’s best to laugh or cry!’
Humour offers an incredibly resourceful and valuable way to change state.
For example, cartoon characters often provide the ability to see the opposite perspective on your experience; to take a serious subject and put it in a new light. The skill of any leader – whether as parent or manager – lies in your ability to pace somebody through these different states and lead them to a positive outcome.
Altering states with anchors
Your states are constantly shifting, and the value of anchors is that they enable you to alter your state to a more resourceful one when you need to.
Say, for example, you have a difficult decision to make, a person to meet, or an event to attend – at weddings and funerals, emotions run high and you may want to manage your feelings closely. By being in the right state, you can make the best choices and act for the best result.
As an analogy, imagine that you’re sailing a dinghy in a storm, and you want to reach a safe harbour. By developing the ability to fire anchors, you can secure a calm state for yourself or switch to an energetic, risk-taking mode as neces- sary. An anchor, by definition, is attached to a stable position: it keeps you safe and stops you floating away. Strength and stability are the keynotes here.
Whenever you notice that you’re not in a ‘good’ state, you have a choice.
Either you stick with this uncomfortable state because, for some reason, you get some value out of it. Or you decide that you prefer to identify and shift into a ‘better’ state. To do the latter, you can fire off an anchor to create a more positive state for yourself. (Flip to the earlier section ‘Setting an anchor and building yourself a resourceful state’ for how to do so easily, in just three steps, and see Chapter 6 for more on resourcefulness.)
Constantly overriding negative anchors with positive ones can lead to prob- lems. Negative anchors can be one way that the unconscious mind indicates to you that you need to work on an underlying issue. For example, feeling tired may be an indication that your current work patterns are exhausting you. If you continue to override this warning sign with an energetic anchor, you can become burnt out.
Getting with the baroque beat
The Ancient Greeks knew it, early psychologists used it, and modern science confirms it: music affects both mind and body. Music alters the brainwaves that demonstrate the electrical activity in your brain. When you’re relaxed, your brainwaves are slower and they speed up as you become more ener- gised. Music with around 60 beats per minute seems to be the most comfort- able across cultures, because it corresponds to the beat of the human heart at rest.
Baroque music is especially suitable for creating a state of relaxed awareness, known as the alpha state. To explore this kind of music, look out for the largo and adagio passages in pieces composed between about 1600 and 1750 – Bach, Mozart, Handel, and Vivaldi all offer good starting points.
Here are some different ways to think about the music you play. Perhaps you’re stuck in a groove with your listening taste:
✓ Vary the range of CDs you listen to or the tracks you download to your MP3 player – from baroque to classical, jazz and blues to reggae, or pop and rock to opera.
✓ Change the rhythm – compare predictable rhythms with varied and unfamiliar ones to encourage your creativity. World music is good for this aspect.
✓ Instrumental or vocal? Words can distract – solo instruments tend to encourage relaxation.
✓ Intuition – trust your own tastes. Don’t struggle with a piece of music you dislike: turn it off because it’s unlikely to make you feel good.
✓ Start the day differently – when you feel good in the morning, you get off to a flying start. Try swapping the confrontational news channel on the radio for inspiring and uplifting music.
Here’s an exercise to work through an issue with the help of music: