Part III: Opening the Toolkit
Starting Out With NLP Anchors
NLP tools that help you create positive states in yourself are known as anchor-
ing techniques, based on the principle of a boat’s anchor that provides stabil-
ity in open water. NLP defines an anchor as an external stimulus that triggers a
particular internal state or response.People set anchors and respond to them all the time: for example, you know
to stop your car at a red traffic light, and you find that certain foods get you
licking your lips.You may be wondering why anchors are helpful. The answer is that when you
discover how to anchor, you can take all your positive experiences and mem-
ories and use them to deal with challenging situations more resourcefully.The idea of anchoring in NLP came from modelling the techniques of the
hypnotherapist Milton Erickson. Erickson often used cues as triggers to help
people change their internal state. More recently, in the work of NLP co-
creator John Grinder on NewCode NLP (see Chapter 1), a great emphasis is
placed on getting both client and practitioner into positive states, such as a
‘high-performance state’ or a ‘know-nothing state’.From Twitmeyer to Pavlov, or how it all started
What the Russian psychologist Pavlov found
out with his famous dog experiments was an
early example of anchoring. Set a stimulus –
food – and get a consistent response – salivation.
Pair the sound of a bell – the conditioned stimu-
lus – with placing the food in the dog’s mouth,
and soon the dog learns to respond to the bell.
Pavlov’s less well-known colleague, Twitmeyer,
was examining the human knee-jerk reflex in
1902, before Pavlov studied salivation in dogs.
Twitmeyer took a hammer to the knee and had a
bell that sounded when the hammer fell. Like so
many discoveries in science, a single acciden-
tal change in an experiment leads to the most
exciting breakthroughs. One day he rang the
bell without dropping the hammer. And guess
what? Yes, the subject’s knee reacted to the
sound of the bell alone.Unfortunately for Twitmeyer, he was slightly
ahead of his time and the medics of the day
ignored his contribution to the science of behav-
iourism (the theory of personality that ignores
the inner workings of the mind and focuses
on how people are conditioned to respond to
stimulation in their environment.) Fast-forward
the story a couple of years to 1904 and Pavlov’s
work on dogs grabbed people’s attention and
won him the Nobel prize in Physiology.
Since then studies of animal behaviour have
become increasingly more scientific and
sophisticated. Every day you can read new
research on the brain and increase your knowl-
edge of human intelligence and behaviour.