These tips are from a webinar on Building Resilience in the Workplace Using NLP. Watch the replay here.
Anchoring Positive States
1. Think of a time when you felt proud, confident, happy, or calm.
2. Visualize the moment with as many details as possible.
3. Close your eyes. See what you saw, hear what you heard, and feel what you felt then as
if it were happening right now. Bring in as many visual, auditory, and kinesthetic
elements as possible—both internal and external (smells, voices, sounds, faces,
self-talk, etc.).
4. The emotion associated with that moment will slowly start growing in your body.
5. When you sense the emotion reaching its peak, fire your anchor of choice.
6. Break state.
7. Open your eyes and do or think about something trivial and unrelated (even just for a
few seconds).
8. Fire the anchor and see if it brings the emotion back.
9. If it doesn’t, repeat the process.
Anchors can be visual, auditory, kinesthetic (touch), olfactory (smell), or gustatory (taste).
Requirements for creating powerful anchors:
- Intensity: Access a strong emotion.
- Timing: Set your anchor at the peak of this emotion.
- Uniqueness: Choose a unique anchor that your subconscious will recognize.
- Replicability: Repeat the process until the anchor is effective.
Rewiring Negative States
1. Think of a time you felt a specific negative emotion.
2. With your eyes closed, recall the scene in detail until you start feeling the negative
emotion.
3. Shift your focus from the content of the thought (image, voice, or feeling) to its construct.
Image:
- Size: Big/Small
- Distance: Close/Far
- Location: Where is it located relative to you?
- Color: Color/B&W
- Movement: Still/Animated
- Sharpness: Sharp/Blurry
Audio:
- Volume: Loud/Quiet
- Origin: Left/Right/Behind/In Front
- Source: Mono/Stereo
- Pitch: High/Low
- Quality: Bright/Muffled
- Speed: Slow/Fast
- Tone: Whose voice is it?
Sensation:
- Location: Chest/Belly/Arms/Legs
- Temperature: Warm/Cold
- Weight: Heavy/Light
- Tension: Loose/Tight
- Shape
- Color
- Movement: Still/Moving
- Texture: Rough/Smooth
4. Play around with the structure of the thought and notice how it changes the negative
feeling. For each modality, go to one extreme, then the other. Leave each modality where it
feels best, then move on to the next.
5. Get rid of the thought in a way that ensures it cannot come back. See/hear/feel it vanish.
6. Try to feel the negative feeling and see what happens instead.
Using Language to Become More Resilient
How to identify limiting beliefs
- Why am I not getting the results I want?
- How does believing this cause me to act?
- What outcomes is this leading to?
How to find new empowering beliefs
- Desired Outcome: what do I want?
- Required Actions: what would I have to do for that to be possible?
- Empowering Belief(s): what would I have to believe for me to behave this way?
Another way to find empowering beliefs at the moment is to use reframes.
To reframe a tough situation, ask yourself: What else could this mean?
Examples:
- In front of a challenge: “This is an opportunity to learn.”
- After a setback: “Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn.”
- When asked to step up: “I can’t.” -> “I’ll try.”
- On the verge of giving up: “I will get there eventually.
How to imprint new beliefs
- Repetition (inner and outer dialogue)
- Evidence gathering: What evidence is there in my life that [empowering belief] might be
true?