Chaining Anchors

In this chaining anchors video, you can see a live demonstration of the technique that is taught during the NLP practitioner training. The video has been edited to save time, but you can see the individual parts that make up the technique.

Remember we said that chaining anchors is for when the present state and the desired state are far apart and that the present state is usually a stuck state. The example we use during the training is often procrastination to motivation. This is a very good technique to help get rid of procrastination.

So as procrastination and motivation are quite far apart from each other, we need to anchor some intermediate states that will assist the client to get from procrastination to motivation. Think of it like stepping stones to get across a pond.

Consideration for the intermediate states in chaining anchors.

• The first intermediate can be a towards or an away from state. So either something the client wants to move towards or something they want to move away from.
• The second to last night must be a towards state. In this example we will use four states in total. I’ve done chaining anchors with three states and some even had five steps. Typically though we will work with four.
• The next thing that is important is that the following state must have movement. “Being” is typically not a good state as it does not have movement. Example if a client says, “I’ll just be so relaxed,” or “a feeling of Nirvana.” That probably is not going to get them going and moving on to the next state towards motivation. However work with what your client feels is right for them.
• We need to ask ourselves what will be a sufficiently strong state to move the client forward to the next state. Mild interest will probably not work. Have you ever been mildly interested in something and not done taken action, thus procrastinated?
• The state should be self-initiated an internal to the client. So shame is typically not self-initiated, because normally there must be somebody else present for the client to feel shame.
• The state must also not be how the client is currently doing it. So if the client says, “I feel pressure from looming deadlines,” they are probably already feeling that and it’s not working for them. Thus it is not working.
• Lastly, we don’t want to include any major negative emotions. First of all because we don’t install negative emotions and secondly, once we get rid of the negative emotions, then the chain might not carry through.

Examples of towards and away from states in chaining anchors.

Away from states examples are: boredom, confusion, frustration, irritation, agitation ect. So these are states that people don’t want to experience. Be careful with confusion as it can be a stuck for some people. Also words like frustration could have some charge behind it and actually be another word for anger for some clients.

Some towards state examples: excitement, enthusiasm, desire, anticipation, arousal, inspiration, ambition etc. I also like to add the word “extreme” as a prefix. So extreme curiosity or extreme excitement. That doesn’t work for everybody, but you can get a nice strong, intense state for most people.

Final steps.

Once we’ve decided on the intermediate states we going to anchor each state on a separate knuckle and stack the anchor at least 5 times. So example, procrastination 5 times, boredom 5 times, extreme excitement 5 times and motivation 5 times.

Then we are going to test each state by firing each state to ensure that the client goes into each state. Once we have done that we are going to chain the states together. Then you will fire the first anchor, example, procrastination, and the client should carry themselves through to motivation.

In the video above you see a live demonstration that’s been edited to save some time, but you’ll see each of the steps being done. So enjoy and I hope that you find it useful and beneficial.

As always, if there are any other techniques you would like to see, then let me know and I’ll be happy to post them.

Please go ahead now and like and share this post and video so that other people may also benefit from it.