Hi and welcome to your session with Coach Gilles. My name is Gilles Brideau and I’m a psychotherapist, counselor, and coach that lives in Sudbury Ontario, Canada. Today we will be doing technical Tuesdays. On Tuesdays I will focus on a technical, a more technical issue as it pertains to counseling or coaching that hopefully will be beneficial to you and your life. Let’s dive right in.
The technique that I’m going to cover today is around anchoring. Here’s the power of anchoring. I was first exposed to this actually many, many years ago not knowing the power of anchors. When I took advanced neurolinguistics programming, my coach at the time, who is Dr. Scott McFall who has a hugely successful practice in the states. He was originally in Bismarck, North Dakota and now he lives in Florida. He was training me on NLP and advanced NLP and I had a question for Scott which was, I’ve always questioned why it is when men, specifically, put their arms around my shoulder. Kind of like the buddy thing, that I would instantly become frustrated, upset. Just kind of in a negative state. He was explaining the concept of anchoring and he asked me, “Has anything ever happened to you earlier in your life where that would have been reinforced?”
I really couldn’t think of anything. He just out of the blue mentioned did you not tell me at one point that your father passed away when you were in your early 20’s. I said, “Well yeah,” and he’s like, “Well that would probably be one of the most traumatic events in your life, especially if you have a good relationship with your dad.” Which I did. He said, “You were at probably the most negative time in your young life and chances are mostly men would come and try to console you by putting their arm around your shoulder in that way.” I said, “Okay.”
He says, “What’s interesting is it’s usually just men that do that thing and what you probably noticed too is if a woman did that thing which is not very common where they put their arm around your shoulder, you would feel indifferent. It wouldn’t affect you in the same way. Men specifically really kind of gave you more like a heebie jeebie thing.” I thought for a while. I said, “I’m not rally homophobic. I hug most of my friends which often makes them uncomfortable, but I really didn’t understand for many years why I was affected in that way. He says, “Well that’s how an anchor works.”
When you’re at the peak of an emotion, whether it’s positive or negative, you’re touched in a very unique way. Which for me was that arm around the shoulder. It anchors that negative feeling in that area. That’s not to say that every time I was touched in that way that I felt grief. I just, the best way to summarize it, I just felt awful. He kind of continued and he was like, “Well similarly when you get set that way in a negative way you can also set it in a positive way.” That was really reinforced for me when I went to UPW in Dallas and our instructor Joseph McClendon III reaffirmed this for me. I’ve been using it with clients ever since with really great results.
How do you set an anchor? Like I just mentioned in the story with my dad, it’s really important that you achieve a peak state. Peak state often times can be really negative, but in our example today, I want you over the course of the next week if you would to just pay attention to when you’re feeling good. That could be I feel grateful, that could be I feel loving, that could be that you feel joyous. It could really be any positive state. When that happens, there’s 2 ways that I want you to set the anchor.
The first is I want you to touch your body in a unique way. That sounds a little bit pardon. What I mean by that is, like for me for gratitude, I just tug my right ear. Whenever I feel grateful, that’s my gratitude set. When I feel loving I just kind of set it on where a band would be placed. Just kind of a unique location. Obviously if it’s the palm of your hand a lot of people will touch you there and it makes the anchor that much weaker. Again, that’s why there was so much strength in the back of my neck. Because it’s probably a unique location not a lot of people will touch you there in that way.
For me the one that I use the most, like I said, is gratitude and that’s a right ear pull. What I’d like you to do for the next few days, several times a day, is just notice when you feel grateful or good. I want you to just set that anchor in that unique position. Again, that could be an ear, it could be just the closing of a fist and that could be it for you. Just kind of a unique location. Peak of an emotion, set the anchor. The next thing that’s important is while you set the anchor I want you to smile, notice that feeling of gratitude, or love, or whatever it is, smile and say yes.
For me when I say gratitude, I just change it up a little bit. I don’t say yes I say yeah. Because I don’t know about you, but when you’re feeling grateful it’s more of a yeah kind of feeling. Just that you feel okay. Once that anchor is set, celebrate a little bit. How do you celebrate? You just, as Joseph would say, you would just smile and shake your booty for maybe 4 to 5 seconds. Celebration is just as important as any of these steps. We want to celebrate when we are feeling positive states rather than negative ones.
Once those anchors have been set, and like I said, I’d like you to repeat this for at least 3 to 4 days. Maybe 4 to 5 times a day. Whenever you feel grateful. Whenever you feel good. Whenever you feel proud, set your anchor, set your anchor, smile, say yes, and celebrate. Once that’s done and that’s a really kind of fun process, the next step is to put it together. Whenever you’re in a negative state, just notice what’s happening with your physiology. Notice what’s happening within your body. Where your eyes go, where is your breathing, does your jaw clench? I did this with a client the other day. His fists just got really, really tight. He started to shift a little bit more within his feet both right and left.
What I noticed for him is he does this pattern every single time he gets upset. His upset was frustration. I got him to notice that. The second part is around pattern interrupt. Pattern interrupt is simply where you create this kind of vacuum in the brain. Now you’ve all experience this where let’s say you’re doing an activity, like you’re reading a book or you’re playing video games, or you’re watching TV. You stepped out of that activity to go to the kitchen. You get in the kitchen and you’re just kind of what am I in here for? A lot of people say that’s just an old moment, like you’re getting older, but that’s really what a pattern interrupt is about.
There’s kind of a vacuum created in the brain, and your brain gets searching for more information. How do we do a pattern interrupt. Again, once you acquire that negative state of mind, what I’d like you to do is just jump up and down. You get up from that negative position. If you’re sitting down, jump up and down. What’s most important is that your feet lift off the ground. What I usually do is just make big movements like flail my arms, and just do this for 5 seconds. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Once you’ve done that, fire your anchor, smile and say yes, and celebrate. Again, the celebration is hands on the hips and shake your booty for 5 seconds.
One last time. First part is setting your positive anchors so whenever you’re feeling the good part of the emotion where you’re just having a great day. Where you’re feeling on top of your game, set that anchor. As you set that anchor, smile say yes. Once it’s nice and set, celebrate it a little bit by shaking your butt for a few seconds. When you want to go from a negative state to a positive state, notice what you’re feeling when you’re in that negative state.
Notice how your body is so that you can kind of circumvent it quicker in the future. Most people get into states it’s like hypnosis. They just don’t know how they do it, they just are negative. I often work with clients that just say, “I don’t know. I’m just angry. I’ve always been angry. That’s how I’ve always been or I’ve always been a worrier. It’s how I’ve always been. That’s all I’ve ever known.”
What I say to people is you have specific behaviors that you do in order to access those states. Just be aware of them. Aware of the negative behavior. Jump up if you’re lying down. Shake your body out. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Fire off your anchor and say yes and then celebrate. That’s it. That’s today’s coaching lesson. Thanks so much for joining me. I hope you enjoyed the video. Don’t hesitate to hit the like button on the bottom. I often welcome your comments and suggestions in terms of what videos you would like to see in the future. I thank you so much for joining me. Have a great day.