SP.T2. Unit 7 Anchors Reading Assignment

Unit 7: NLP Anchoring

“It might be a part of a grand event or a very simple moment, perhaps a brief interaction with another person. The grand or the simple, it doesn’t matter. Just the remembering will lift your spirits, and warm feelings will fill your soul.” ---Marjorie P. Hinckley

Chapter 1: What is an anchor?

You have likely heard of an anchor for a ship. Maybe you have seen the anchor

on display on the Xuhui campus in front of the SJTU C. Y. Tung Maritime

Museum. An anchor is something that holds something else in place. The

anchor of a boat holds the boat in place so it does not drift away from where

the captain wants it to be. The anchor is dropped out of the boat or ship to

the ocean floor where it catches the sea bed and holds the ship tight. A ship

may be anchored for the night, of during a storm, or when it is being unloaded.

There is another use for the word anchor. It can be used as something that holds us to a feeling

or a thought. Think of your grandmother. As soon as you think of her, what do you feel? Each

person will feel something different but likely you will feel a sense of love. You may also feel her

warm arms around you or her soft touch. These are all kinesthetic anchors holding you to your

grandmother.

Are there other anchors? I like olfactory anchors. When I smell floor wax it brings me back to

the memory of my grandmother who always likes shiny floors and would keep them waxed.

Does your grandmother or grandfather, or your parents make a special kind of food? When

you smell it does it immediately remind you of them? Then it is an olfactory anchor for you.

As I travel through Shanghai, I see many ads for Pizza Hut. The ads are very carefully

developed to create in you anchors. When you think Pizza Hut what do you imagine? Family,

friends, good times. Those are anchors they work hard to develop.

Sounds can also be anchors. If you hear a fire cracker go off, what does it

anchor you to? I imagine a lot of you will say Chinese New Year, or good luck.

Not me. Once a fire cracker went off in my hand. When I hear a fire cracker I still

remember the pain and how scared I was.

I wonder how many of you are anchored to ice cream. What do you think of when you think of ice cream? It is likely something good.

When I was 12 years old, my school had an ice cream bar machine. I really liked them. Each

week I would get an allowance of 10 cents. That was a lot of money then. An ice cream bar

cost 5 cents. If I was careful with my money, I would have enough left on Friday to buy an

ice cream bar. Those bars became for me an anchor in the feeling of being mature enough

to manage my money wisely.

When a boy promises to marry a girl he often gives her a ring. The girl will love to look at and play with it because it is an anchor to her boyfriend and to his love for her.

There is a famous cartoon strip in the USA called Hi and Lois. Here she talks about how her ring is an anchor for her.

Chapter 2: How anchoring was first discovered

Ivan Pavlov was a Russian physiologist who lived from 1849-1936. He is most famous for his experiment with dogs. We call it Pavlov’s Dogs. The Pavlov's Dogs illustration helps us to understand why we respond sometimes irrationally to certain situations. It is all in creating anchors.

Pavlov's Dogs provides a wonderful and true example for anyone seeking to explain or understand how our past experiences can prompt certain behaviors in the future. This can even include fears like the fear of speaking in public, taking a test, spiders, or of flying.

The initial Pavlov's Dogs experiment was simply to place a dog in a sound-proof, smell-proof cubicle, with no outside view - a controlled environment in other words. Each time a sound was made when food was given to the dog. Then the amount of salivation the dog produced was measured. After repeating this several times, the sound was made but no food was given. The dog still salivated. The sound became an anchor for food.