by Jason Linett
Behold, the power of anchoring.
The results can be magical, though it isn’t magic.
You already know how to do this. You hear a song on the radio. The memories of what you may have experienced as you first heard the song come back to your mind. A smell comes into the environment, triggering the memory of locations or people you’ve been around before.
Anchoring is the principle of connecting one sensory verifiable experience to another sensory verifiable experience. Our experiences are based on associative memory. This naturally-occurring phenomenon is one you will learn to do on purpose.
Everything is a “state.” You have a state of frustration. You have a state of happiness. You have a state of hunger. You have a state of satisfaction. There are states of pleasure, success, exhilaration, and learning. Do a search online for research on “state-dependent learning.” If students are relaxed as they learn new information, and if they can achieve the same mental state at the time of exams or tests, they’re more likely to recall the information.
Some would liken this to Dr. Ivan Pavlov’s studies on classical conditioning. He rang a bell every time he fed the dogs in his laboratory, and they wound up salivating every time he rang the bell. What makes this different is the hypnotic ability to tap into the mental and emotional states, not just behaviors.
Donald Hebb, a Canadian psychologist, is credited for the understanding that “neurons that fire together, wire together.” This is known as Hebb’s rule. As two parts of your mind activate at the same time, they link together creating a new connection.
Anchors should be simple yet specific. The posture of my chest muscles and the deep slow breath is the anchor I can use nearly a decade later to bring back the same mental state of timelessness, love, and relaxation.
A “best practice” tip is to combine two sensory elements for your anchor to be specific. A deep breath and the squeeze of a fist. A shift in visual focus and standing upright. A smile and a clap of the hands. The position of your hands holding the golf club and the posture of your shoulders. Anything can become an anchor. You can train your actions to “Be Hypnotic” in addition to doing a formal process of hypnosis.
Anchors become effective either through repetition or through intensity. When I close a successful sales phone call, I smile and clap my hands once. It’s a silly ritual, yet, to be fair, I’m in a room by myself. I close another sale, I repeat the ritual. When the phone is dialing to follow-up on a potential contract, I repeat the ritual. Now I’m “in the zone,” receptive to the needs of my client and navigating the sales process. I built this anchor through repetition.
When my daughter was asleep on my chest, it only took once or twice to build the anchor. The positive intensity of the experience was enough fuel to build the connection.
Your environment can also become an anchor. Through a brief bit of self-hypnosis, I’d close my eyes and imagine the threshold of the doorframe on exiting my office. This could act as a cleansing mechanism. I conditioned my mind to expect that passing through the doorframe would release the “business time” mode I was in to have a clean slate for the next part of my day. This mental exercise is how I leave the office with as much energy as when I first walked into the space. This is also a big part of the appropriately compartmentalized world I’ve built. When it’s time to work, it’s time to work. When it’s not, I’m present to the world around me .
Bring your thoughts to a specific positive memory. If it helps to close your eyes when you do this, that’s fine (assuming you’re not operating heavy machinery). Relive the experience with your sensory awareness in as much detail as possible. What can you hear? Are you connecting with specific images? What’s that feeling in your body? Are there any smells coming to mind?
You’re about to learn what I call “the anchoring sandwich.” Between two moments of increasing the state of mind you’re generating, you’ll establish the anchor. Turn it up. Build the anchor. Turn it up even more.
Go into that positive mental experience with as much sensory awareness as you can create. There’s no right or wrong. However you experience this is what’s right for you.
When you feel you have it near the peak, create a specific anchor. The specificity is easy as long as you choose two sensory actions. A breath and a fist. The squeezing and pulsating of a finger and thumb.
As you hold onto that positive state you’ve created, establish your anchor, and turn it up even more. This is the sandwich. Turn it up, anchor it, and turn it up even more .
Now break the state. Disconnect the anchor and shift your physiology and focus elsewhere. Look somewhere different. Move your body. Now repeat the entire sequence again.
It’s as if you’re installing a new software program in your mind. As you’re creating it intentionally, the method is to use repetition. Run this sequence several times, then put it to use. Fire off your anchor in the scenarios you choose for it to be effective.
Eventually, the “technique” of this falls away. The more you make use of this method, the better it will work for you. The better it works for you, the less you’re going to need it. You’ve conditioned the new automatic response.
Our brains are hard-wired to establish new neural connections, and the skill of anchoring will empower you to build these connections on purpose.
WORK SMART ACTION STEPS:
☞ What are your natural “in the zone” states? Realize you can copy-and-paste one part of life to another. Take a positive feeling from one part of life, create an anchor for it, and fire it off in another part of life. I once had a lawyer create incredible confidence by taking the feelings he experienced while playing basketball with his friends into his closing arguments. Model your own states of excellence.
☞ You can also “stack” your anchors. Bring several emotional states into one specific gesture, posture, or word to design your own peak performance state of mind.
☞ Receive a self-guided hypnotic audio program to create your own confidence anchor for free by visiting:
https://JasonLinett.com/wsbconfidence/
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THE “SERIAL KILLER STRATEGY”
The concept of this strategy begins with a reframe. Take the simple idea of mind-mapping and give it a ridiculous name. Now it’s memorable! Mind-mapping is a visual strategy where you draw lines between ideas on paper or in computer software. I’ve made the process more kinesthetic and flexible, and somehow, the nickname “The Serial Killer Strategy” stuck!
You know the scene in the movie. The detectives have been hunting down a killer, and they finally discover the secret room of their prime suspect. The walls are covered with photos of the victims, news stories about their crimes, and strings connecting all the pieces. I’ll admit the content of the example is not inspiring, yet the context of the image was the strategy I needed to map out high-value products, programs, and live events .
An executive client came into my office a few months ago to work on his public speaking strategy. His eyes glanced into my storage room where an entire wall was blanketed with Post-It notes; frantically scribbled phrases written on the bits of sticky paper. I can admit the image had to be alarming.
“Is everything alright?” he asked.
“Absolutely. That’s a book I’m writing.” And it’s the one you’re reading now.
The “Serial Killer Strategy” takes brainstorming and turns it into a physical experience. If you work on paper, you create the challenge of erasing and rewriting information as you explore an idea. If you work on a computer, the technology sometimes can hold back the creative experience. Or, perhaps, you get distracted by the million other things your computer can do.
Find an empty wall. Grab a stack of Post-It adhesive notes and a pen. Start to brainstorm whatever your next project is going to be. Is it the content of a training session? The features of a product? In the first phase of this strategy, just create the pieces and stick them to the wall. Don’t worry about where they go. Just put them up t
here.
If a wall isn’t available, purchase a big sheet of posterboard. The added benefit is now your project is mobile. The book currently in your hands was mapped on half-sized posterboard sheets, which I carried back and forth from my home to the office in an artists’ portfolio case.
When you have enough pieces, start to move them around. Is your product or service going to a singular thing or perhaps a modular experience? Will you create a linear course or a choose-your-own-adventure method of learning? As you look at all the sticky papers on the wall, the delivery mechanism of the program may explain itself. Additional ideas may also pop up, so the fact that you can re-stick the papers to the surface makes it more flexible.
Remember the story of the actor turning his back on the audience so he could make another entrance? When you feel you’ve got the project just right, walk away from it. Give it a few hours. Wait a day or two. Then go back to it and explore the workflow again.
Only after you’ve got the idea mapped out, grab a sheet of paper or computer and convert your mind-mapped concepts into an outline. Now, you’re ready to begin creating.
WORK SMART ACTION STEPS:
☞ It’s arts-and-crafts time! Hit your local office supply store and invest in some Post-It notes. Find space on a wall or perhaps use the mobile posterboard solution. Don’t get caught up trying to make sure the materials are “just right.” This strategy is supposed to be the messy part of planning your project. With full respect to the 3M corporation, spend the money on name-brand Post-It notes. Theirs really are the best.
☞ Consider one of your entrepreneurial concepts and translate it into this physical mind-map project. Have the user experience in mind as you realize breaking a massive concept down into smaller chunks makes the customer’s journey more comfortable. It makes your design process even easier.
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GET THE RESULT BEFORE YOU GO FOR THE RESULT
You’ve likely heard that some people in business stand in the way of their own success because they are too cautious to ask for the sale. What if there was a way to open up your full sensory perception to calibrate when your potential buyer is already sold on your process? Imagine the growth of your business when you tap into the ability to only ask for the sale when you know you’ve already made it?
This may sound like you’re going to learn some kind of hypnotic, Jedi mind-trick. In some ways, yes, yes you are. What you’re really about to learn is a method to appropriately stack value, so your buyer is primed to make a decision that’s already a done deal. The obvious disclaimer, once again, must be repeated. Please only use your powers for good .
Think about the person who signs up to run a half-marathon. They spend several months training, gradually increasing their endurance to run long distances. By the time race day arrives, there isn’t much doubt as to whether or not they’ll finish. It’s going to happen, it’s just a matter of how long they’ll take.
Consider: a family decides to move their home. The offer is accepted, the contract has been ratified, and it’s now a game of waiting until the closing date. The last inspection of the property goes well. They’ve even paid down some debt in advance of the final mortgage review. There’s little doubt the contracts will be signed and the keys handed over. It’s a done deal.
Remember the lesson on relationships from “Harness Lead Generation?” I didn’t approach the girl at college who would become my future wife and say, “We’re going to have children.” The telling of this story earlier in this book would cause you to assume I first asked her out on a date. That’s not the entire story. I left out a very important detail. Allow me to rewind the story back a little further. We met working together on a student project, and we did not get along. It wasn’t like we were fighting or yelling, it’s more like we just got on each other’s nerves. The project was completed, and, in spite of our rocky work relationship, we still hung out with each other. I knew I liked her, yet I hesitated to move things forward .
I didn’t first ask her out. Instead, I asked her permission if it would be okay if one day I could ask her out. You read that right. I believe the clinical term of this situation would be that I was “chicken.” If she said “No” to my asking permission to could ask her out, it wasn’t like she had said no to my asking her out, because technically, I wasn’t asking her out, right? She didn’t say “No.” She said “Yes.” It took me at least two weeks to eventually work up the real courage to ask for the date. Thanks to my “market testing,” I already had the answer. She said yes, and now we’ve been together for more than fifteen years.
There’s a correlation between the marathon runner, the family buying the home, and my cautious beginning to an amazing relationship. We got the result before we asked for the result.
I’ve applied this principle in my work as a hypnotist. Whether I’m speaking to a group of business people or working privately in my office, there’s often a moment by way of hypnotic suggestion where a person’s arm becomes stiff and rigid as a steel bar. The more they try to bend it, the stronger it feels. In my delivery of this, the subject often has their eyes open, and they’re laughing at how unique the experience feels. They know it’s the same arm they’ve carried around their entire life, yet, in this moment, it won’t bend! The benefit of this experience is that it helps a person validate the experience of hypnosis, rather than just feeling the experience of deep relaxation. It eliminates the virus in the hypnotic profession of someone saying, “I felt relaxed, but I don’t know if I was hypnotized.”
Many practitioners don’t use this method due to fear it might not work. Rather than say, “That doesn’t work,” my intention is always to ask, “How do I make it work better?”
I previously mentioned the idea of stacking value. So, by the time you make the sales offer, it’s virtually a guaranteed “yes” response. I apply this concept to this moment. I stack a number of hypnotic principles to fully compound the intended result that it’s as if the arm won’t bend. I put my complete focus on the person’s arm, so I can observe the moment the “magic” effect kicks in. My language includes the patterns of “Feel your arm getting stronger and stronger, stiff and rigid like a steel bar!” My language patterns pivot to “Try to bend that thing, and it gets stronger and stronger!” once I see the hypnotic effect has already taken place.
I only go for the “testing phase” when I’m 100% convinced it’s already been achieved. The tone of my voice brings about my laughter and theirs as they enjoy the brief novelty of the situation. And before you can ask, yes, we release the tension so their arm can relax. The hypnotic moment serves as a metaphor for letting go of previous issues that seemed more difficult than they actually were .
Get the result before you go for the result.
Let’s now talk business. What if you only asked for the sale when you knew you already had it? What if you asked somebody to take a step forward in a funnel sequence only when you knew they were ready to do so?
When I’m speaking to a group of business people, my primary goal is to deliver the intended message of motivation and personal success. I may also have the goal of people extending this relationship into another speaking engagement, becoming a coaching client, or, perhaps, attending one of my courses. In addition to these goals including financial gains, there’s incredible power in having a “list” of people interested in what you do. If it’s appropriate for the event, I’ll invite people to sign up to receive the regular updates and resources I share by email.
But remember, “Nobody wants your newsletter.”
The method I’m about to reveal is what I’ve found to be the most effective way to motivate people to take action and join my list. Note that I’m not going to pass around a clipboard with the request to “sign up for my newsletter.” I’m going to make a specific offer, with the right timing, that will get the maximum result. It takes a little preparation and advance thinking, but here’s how it often plays out .
I’ll wait for a moment where I n
otice people writing down some notes about something I’ve said. I’ll now ask a question to establish a checkpoint. “I can see some of you are frantically trying to write down some of these ideas. Would it be helpful if I shared an outline of this presentation with you?” The audience responds “yes.” I’ve just been given permission to someday ask them out on a date. I acknowledge the positive response, though I don’t make the offer yet. Are you noticing a trend here?
I’ll perhaps do a demonstration with one person from the audience or maybe something experiential for the entire room. “Wouldn’t it be great if you could relax that deeply after work to unwind from the day? I have a program I sell on my website that teaches you a similar method. In less than ten minutes, you can dissolve away stress and feel more focused to move on with your day. It’s only thirty-dollars on my website, though as a thank you for having me here today, would it be alright if I shared that with all of you for free?” I receive another “yes.” I have my second checkpoint that they’d like to advance our relationship, so now it’s time to make the ask.
The key here is to be able to provide something that will enhance their experience from the talk. It’s not like I’m making an “upsell” offer. Instead, think of it as an “upgrade.” The resource they will receive will help them find a benefit more easily and expand our relationship beyond this initial meeting. Value first .
Now I can make the request. “Great, I’ll pass around this iPad. Please share your email address to immediately receive those resources, just please make sure it gets around the entire room. If for some reason you miss it, please see me at my table after this program. I’ll make sure you get everything I’ve promised.”
Use your favorite method to collect the contact information. There are many “text to opt-in” services you can find online. I would not recommend the texting option if you’re speaking to an international audience. A clipboard will work, though I’d suggest having several of them to go around the room. For a small-to-medium sized group, I like using an app called iCapture, a service which integrates with most of the email automation platforms. Thanks to a little technology, the attendees receive the content immediately in their email. I don’t have to go home and transcribe anything. Once programmed, it’s all automated. Set it and forget it.