We have anchors that work for
us as well as anchors that are
unproductive❏ A favorite piece of music.
❏ A special perfume.
❏ A specific touch.
❏ The taste of a memorable meal.
❏ The view of a special place.
❏ Someone who is close to you.
❏ The memory of a particular time in your life.
❏ The anticipation of a future event.It is also likely that you have anchors that are currently
counterproductive.Consider this scenario.You get up and look out of the window. It is cloudy and wet and
your heart sinks a little. You think about the day ahead and
anticipate your first meeting. You know the person you are
meeting and you start to feel a bit heavy as you think about how
you expect this meeting to go. You think about the journey you
have to make and you begin to imagine how difficult that can
be and the sort of delays you might experience. You wish it were
still the weekend and slightly dread the week ahead.
En route to the meeting you get stuck in delays and begin to
feel tense and irritated. You can feel yourself fidgeting as you wait
for the delays to clear. You get to the meeting with little time to
spare and it goes much as you expected.
You arrive at your place of work and there is a stream of
messages to deal with, some of them marked urgent. You start
to feel stressed. The phone rings and you hear the voice of a
colleague whose calls you dread, as he seems only to tell you
problems. The day continues in a similar way and you arrive
home in the evening with a headache and feeling tired.Now consider this:You get up and look out of the window. It is cloudy and wet. You
are glad you didn’t have this weather over the weekend—you190 NLP AT WORK