How To Get Instant Confidence

Posted on 14 April 2008

Imagine you’re walking down the street and as you walk past a bakery you get hit by the smell of fresh bread. Within moments you are transported to a different time and a different place without the aid of hallucinogenics, a time that you remember with fondness, a time when you were blissfully happy and content. Without anything else happening your step becomes lighter and you’re thinking to yourself “Aint it great to be alive?” Alternatively, you’re driving down the highway when a certain record comes on the radio. It’s the record that you and your ex-partner thought of as being written just for you two. You’d get all dewy eyed and weak-kneed when you heard it together and you’d probably stare into each other’s eyes for days on end or until you keeled over from severe dehydration. Unfortunately, he or she ran off with your insanely wealthy former best friend to live in bliss on a Caribbean Island, and now it just makes you want to sob your little eyes out.

The reality is that nothing really happened in either of the above events. You were still in exactly the same situation on the same day with the same clothes on and the same amount of cash in the bank, yet your state shifted in an instant. That ladies and gentlemen is what we call an anchor and you have thousands of them whether you know about them or not. Some are beneficial like the former example but a lot aren’t.

When I was about 12 I was traveling home from school on the bus eating a scotch egg. For the uninitiated, a scotch egg is a disgusting concoction of a hard-boiled egg covered in sausage meat. I have no idea why it’s called a Scotch egg unless it’s because you need to have drunk half a bottle of scotch to find them appealing, but I digress. I ate this thing at a time when I knew I was coming down with flu or something similar. I spent the next 2 weeks in bed feeling awful and the Scotch egg wasn’t even to blame. However, afterwards the thought of eating one of those things was anathema to me. I would have rather eaten my own spleen such was my level of revulsion.

That is a negative (actually it could be said it was positive) anchor going into overdrive. My unconscious mind was linking egg to sickness and said “No way kiddo, you aint eating one of those nasty things ever again” People can have a similar reaction after becoming ill though excessive alcohol intake. The thought of drinking afterwards can cause their unconscious mind to recreate the same feelings in an attempt to stop them. Some people actually do say never again and stick to it.

How is this information useful you may be wondering? It’s very useful if you work in advertising and/or marketing because they are constantly trying to create positive anchors to their products, but that’s another post for another day because I’m more concerned what it can do for you.

Imagine having an anchor for confidence or focus or even self-control. Would that be a cool thing to have? Well why not? Anchors can be set intentionally just as easily as they can occur by chance. If you ever watch a big event like the Oscars where there are numerous speakers, look to see if you can spot a speaker that’s coming to the stage doing something a little out of place. It may be something as subtle as pulling on their ear lobe or placing their index finger and thumb together. There’s a good chance they’ve anchored that action to a feeling of confidence.

What are you waiting for? Instant confidence beckons so let’s get to it!

1. Firstly, find a time when you can close your eyes and you’re not going to be disturbed for 15 or 20 minutes so it’s probably not wise to try this in a busy office or whilst operating heavy machinery.

2. Take a deep breath, exhale slowly and as you do allow your eyes to close and a wave of relaxation to flow down your body. Do this three or four times with your eyes remaining closed and just allow yourself to become completely relaxed.

3. When you are at a stage that we professional life coaches officially call ‘chilled to da bone mon’, start to re-create the feelings that you are looking to anchor and have on tap. If it’s confidence, think of a time when you were full of confidence. I’ve had clients tell me that they have never felt that way. I then ask them if they could find their way to their car parked outside. “Of course” They reply. “Are you sure” I go on. “Of course I’m sure” “So you’re confident are you?” I then look very smug for demonstrating that they do have confidence and they punch me in the face.

To create what ever state you want you need to see what you would have seen when you previously experienced it, hear what you would have heard and feel what you felt. If there are any tastes or smells associated with the experience, then allow them to be present too. When you are in the moment let the feelings double, then double again and then continue to intensify.

4. When you get to a point when you just know they are about to peak, set the anchor. This simply involves touching a place on your body that you can replicate easily at any time in the future. Common places are the forearm, knuckles, pulling ear lobe, index finger onto thumb but nowhere that might get you arrested. Try to avoid a motion that you already use regularly as we don’t want you firing this anchor by mistake all the time. The only absolute requisite is that you can replicate exactly whatever it is you decide to do. So if you use fingers on forearms you need to use the same amount of fingers and the same amount of pressure each time.

5. When you have done this break your state by thinking about something completely different for a few moments, like what happens to the millions of birds that die each week. I mean c’mon, where the hell do they all go to and how come you don’t know anybody that’s been hit on the head by one?

6. Now fire the anchor by repeating whatever action you decided on. When you do this allow the feelings to flow, do not fight them, just know they will be there.

7. If they are not as intense as you would like, no problem, do the process again and reinforce it. You can do this as often as you like and each time you’ll increase the intensity, so stick with it because it always works although it take different length of times for different people.

That’s all there is to it. It’s not rocket science, brain surgery or even needlecraft, but it is very effective and used by a lot more people that you probably realize so give it a go. You can even check demos out on YouTube, simply enter NLP Anchoring and there’s always stuff there.

If you want to know more about NLP and what it can do for you, check out this link, and yes, I do get paid vast amounts of cash if you buy something. It’s still good stuff though!

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6 Comments So Far.

Comment by Evelyn Lim | Attraction Mind Map on 4 June 2008:

Tim, call it coincidental! I have slated an article on anchors for publication tomorrow. We must be having some kind of telepathy going on…perhaps in our sleep…LOL!!

Your article has been stumbled! Well explained!

Evelyn
Pingback by 5 quick methods for building courage on 10 June 2008:

[...] quickest way without a doubt imho is anchoring. Check this out Another way is using submodalities, that’s a little more complicated and you’ll need some help, [...]
Comment by montdor1 on 6 July 2008:

That all sounds like Proust’s madeline and tea event in “Remembrance of Things Past”. In your first example, things did happen. I disagree. Being transported mentally is exactly what NLP seems to do, or ask one to do, so why is it bad when one’s nature buds in and says, “Remember when ” after smelling a perfume or whatever. Do you see the contradiction? Is there one (am I wrong, which is possible)?
Comment by Tim Brownson on 7 July 2008:

montdor1, I never said it was bad, it can be good, bad or indifferent. Also, I was meaning nothing has changed in the physical world to create change, of course lots has changed internally.

Thanks for your comment.
Comment by Karanime on 7 November 2008:

Something so much more powerful than mere taps and touches (which is what most anchors are made up of–in my experience) is exactly the two examples you provided in the beginning of the article: smells and music. Anchoring a feeling to those will entice a strong memory, much stronger than any tap or touch could do.

But, it’s a tad more inconvenient, considering you’d either always have to have that smell on hand (and may even smell it on accident), or you’d always have to have a music player with you (and if the same song’s on the radio, once again, it may deploy by accident). So, it does make a little more sense to anchor with taps.

But as for me, I’m totally buying fifty different scents of liquid potpourri and mixing them together to use for anchoring. :P
Comment by Tim Brownson on 8 November 2008:

@ Karanime - You’re absolutely right with smells. Smells are the one sense that we don’t filter. They pass straight into the olfactory part of the brain and can be incredibly powerful.