Transcription
[Music] Anchoring yourself to success. We're here. We've made it to day 16, and we're still on a roll. Today, what our focus is going to be on is how to take these rituals for successful living and really install them, if you will, get them so we don't have to think about them consciously.
I've mentioned earlier, and I want to remind you again, that one of the biggest challenges for most people when they really want to succeed in their life is they go to try and make a change. But what happens is they try and do it purely consciously. That is, they say, "Okay, now what I want to do is stop procrastinating. What I want to do now is start getting myself to take action." And so they work at it for a time or two, but they don't really install the ritual. Do you follow me? In other words, they get themselves to do it a time or two, but they don't develop into a habit that absolutely sticks. It doesn't become a conditioned response that the environment itself triggers. They have to do it themselves.
So, what we want to learn to do is really use anchoring effectively. So, I want to cover about five things with us here real quickly. One is just remind you of the fact that you're always anchoring. In other words, your brain is making neural associations. You're learning to associate things and create meaning out of things constantly. It's happening all the time, even when you least suspect it. And I want you to know then, I don't have to teach you how to anchor yourself or anchor other people. I have to make you aware of the fact that you're always anchoring and show you how to take control of it.
Now, the second thing I want us to do is review what anchoring is. We've talked about it several times, but let's get clear one more time how anchoring actually occurs. Remembering repetition again is the mother of skill.
Thirdly, I want to show you how to take advantage of anchors that are already around you. In other words, there are certain things that already make you feel good automatically. For example, there may be some music that you've got that the minute you hear it, wham, it makes you feel great. Well, once you know that, why not use that anchor to induce the emotions that you want on an ongoing basis? Why not have that tape there? That's an example of making use of anchors that are around you. You know, if you know what they are, you can utilize them and really create the results you want right now. You don't have to wait. You can trigger yourself.
Fourth thing I want us to go over today is how to eliminate negative anchors. In other words, if something happens in your world and immediately it makes you feel lousy, I want to show you how to get rid of that once and for all, right now. Or you can do that in a few minutes. That may be the most valuable thing you're going to learn in a long time.
And finally, how to do what I call a swish pattern, which is a way to program ourselves or condition ourselves or anchor ourselves, if you will, so that we are continually pulled towards our goals without any real conscious effort. In other words, we develop a new habit of thinking, literally, without having to do it consciously. Those are my five outcomes today. We've got a lot to do in a short period of time, so let's crank.
First of all, just remember what we said to start with: you're already anchoring. You're doing it right now. So, when I'm describing these things, all I'm describing is what you already do.
Step two was: how do anchors actually occur? Let's remind ourselves. Any time you're in an intense feeling state, an intense emotional state, anything, I repeat, anything that happens around you consistently while you're in that state gets associated to the state into your nervous system. Are you following me on this? In other words, if something happens and I'm laughing hysterically, and while I'm laughing hysterically, you go, "Ah," and you keep doing that, making this weird look on your face, "Ah," pretty soon what happens in my brain is the two get linked up. It's the basic principle we've talked about many times: Ivan Pavlov and his dogs. The dogs are in a state of hunger. He rings a bell, rings a bell, rings a bell, rings a bell while they're in state. Pretty soon, they become connected in the dog's nervous system where the state and the stimulus, in this case, the bell, are linked. Therefore, in the future, he rings the bell, they go into state. We already talked about examples that commercials use this on an ongoing basis. Most advertisers have learned to anchor us.
How do we anchor ourselves? Let's say, for example, somebody goes to a funeral, and it's one of their parents' funerals, and say, their father. Obviously, they're not going to be feeling too terribly good. They're going to be in an intense state of emotion, let's say depression. Now, when that happens, anything that happens consistently, and let me be more specific, anything that happens to this person while they're in this peak emotion called depression, anything that happens that is unique and specific and happens consistently while they're in this state will get linked. So, what if a well-meaning person comes up to this person while they're feeling depressed and walks over and taps them up on the shoulder and says, "Hey John, I know you feel bad, but it'll be okay." And the next person goes, "Yeah, John, it'll be okay," and hits them in the same place a couple times, and it doesn't change John's state of mind or emotion. In other words, John stays in that peak of emotion, and this consistent touch happens. What has happened? Well, a negative anchor has been installed. In other words, six months might go by, and John will be okay about the situation, and his father passed away, and you know, he's learned to adjust. But all of a sudden, somebody comes by at a party and goes, "Hey John, how's it going?" and they hit him in the exact same place, the exact same way. In other words, the same exact stimulus, the same trigger, and within five or ten seconds, what does John feel? Depression. And worse, he doesn't even know why. Has that ever happened to you? Have you all of a sudden felt depressed and not known why? I'll tell you why: because an anchor got fired off.
Now, you might say, "Well, Tony, nobody touched me." Well, are touches the only kind of anchors you can have? No. You can have auditory anchors. You could have walked in a room and heard some music that you weren't even aware of that's being played low in the background that maybe you associated with something depressing. Or somebody may have looked at you a certain way that somebody else who used to treat you poorly looked at you, and boy, wamo, that fires off the feeling. Or it can be fired off by a smell. Hey, did you have a smell from maybe your grandma's apple pie or something like that that, whamo, you smell it, you're right back there again? So, they're all kinds of anchors, and they're happening all around us. Again, and I'm saying this because I really want to stress it: anytime you or anyone around you is in an intense feeling state, and what I mean by that is their body is involved, their whole emotion is really focused, a strong emotional state. Anytime somebody's in a state like that, anything that happens that's unique and it happens consistently while they're in that state will get linked. That means if you're in a really upset state, and somebody loves around you, keep seeing them, and that doesn't change your state, and you're upset, and you see them, you're upset, and you see them, you're upset, and you see them. Pretty soon, seeing them can make you actually feel upset. And that's how a lot of relationships die by what we call negative anchoring. They have problems in their life. It may not even be with each other. They're always frustrations and things because of financial problems, or because of maybe an upset in the family, or something at work, and it gets brought home. And if they don't work hard at reinforcing the positive anchors that made them feel good about each other in the first place, the positive associations, if you will, sometimes the negatives get stacked one after another after another until a couple starts to say, "Gosh, I want to be with somebody else because when I'm with them, all I feel is good feelings. I don't have all this other burden." And that's how a lot of these relationships break up. You don't want to fall prey to that. You want to start paying attention to anchoring so you can condition yourself to create the results that you want.
You might say, "Well, Tony, what do I do if I notice I've got an anchor?" Well, you learn to get rid of negative anchors. And the way to do that is called collapsing an anchor. First, let me say this to you: if you want to create your own anchor, two steps. Put yourself in an emotional state that you want to anchor in. In other words, if you want to get anchors where you can trigger yourself to feel motivated, all you got to do is think of a time you're motivated, really get there. And when I mean get there, I mean breathe the way you breathe when you're motivated. Go back to a time when you felt motivated. Put yourself right at the peak of the moment. And at the peak of that moment, once you're in state, step two: consistently do something unique and link it to that emotion. So, you could be in this emotional state of total motivation, and then clap your hand and say, "Yes." Clapping, saying, "Yes." Clap your hand and say, "Yes." You do that over and over again, and each time you do it, you make the emotion stronger and stronger, just by doing that over and over again with deep emotion. That's the key. You got to really have strong emotion. You can't go, "Yes, yes, yes, yes." That won't do it. You got to really be what we call associated, where you feel it throughout your whole body. If you do it over and over again consistently, you will condition your emotions and your mind and your nervous system to link "yes" to feeling absolutely motivated. Does that make sense?
So, all you want to do is set that up. I've created them for myself on different fingers where I can literally touch my forefinger, my thumb, and wham, I can get absolutely creative instantly. And that's how I wrote my first book, *Unlimited Power*. I mean, if you've seen my first book, it's a rather big book, so has *Awaken the Giant Within*. I've managed to write a few smaller ones since then with *Notes from a Friend* and *Giant Steps*, but the point is, I wrote that first book in one month. I had to. Well, I didn't have to, I chose to. Remember that I wanted to. They said, "Look, you know, you're gonna have to wait like six months until the next run goes. We start putting out books again." That was like the next deadline. I said, "No, I want this out now." He said, "Well, then you have to write it in a month. There's no way it can be done." I said, "There's no way." Hey, I believe there's always a way. And so I went to work on it, and I was doing it literally while I was on the road doing my *Unlimited Power* seminars all over the country. We'd do a firewalk evening, and then I'd go home at midnight or one or two in the morning. When I go home, I mean, go to the hotel, and I'd sit down and have to get myself creative and write. And I didn't feel very creative, but I learned to fire off times when I was creative, and I linked them to the point where I could just touch my fingers, and all of a sudden, instantly feel that creative flow, and literally would start to pour out of me.
Remember, how we behave is based on the state we're in. If you want to get better performance out of yourself, you want to be able to trigger yourself into a state of mind that supports you. I did this with Ken Blanchard. Ken has become a great friend of mine. And years ago, when we first met, he actually attended one of my firewalk seminars and was impressed by the incredible results we got with people, and also impressed that we'd get people like himself to actually walk. People that weren't having that intention at all, and they had this, and he had this incredible breakthrough. Well, one day, we happened to be on an airplane together. We both live in San Diego, and we're coming back. And he mentions that he's been working on his golf game, and that specifically he was hired by *Golf Digest* to go out and basically work with the best golf instructor in the country, spend four or five days, hopefully improve his golf game, and then after doing so, to write an article. Because Ken is excellent at taking things and simplifying them, make them so people can really use them. That's one of his greatest powers. And so they hired him to do that. He said, "You know what's great? I went there, I worked with this guy, I knocked three strokes off my golf game." He said, "I was thrilled." He said, "But there's a problem." I said, "What's that?" He said, "Well, I can't remember all the things he said to do." He said, "You know, like, I get up there, and I got to try to remember all this stuff." And he said, "I just, I don't know. I'm just getting the same results." I said, "Ken, you don't have to remember all that stuff." I said, "Let me ask you a question. Have you ever hit a golf ball perfectly?" He said, "Well, of course." I said, "Have you done that more than once?" He said, "Well, of course." I said, "That you don't have to think about how to hit a golf ball perfectly. You already know how. Your subconscious mind knows the rituals you need to go through to hit a golf ball perfectly. All you have to do is put yourself in the same state of mind and emotion where that happens automatically." Here's what I mean: Haven't you noticed that when you do your best, you aren't like consciously thinking of each and everything you're supposed to do at that moment and talking to yourself, all those kinds of things? Aren't you in what I call a flow state? Isn't that really where things are just happening, and you like surprise even yourself? You say, "Well, yeah." I said, "Then all you've got to do is put yourself in that same flow state every time you pick up your golf clubs." He says, "Well, God, how do you do that? I mean, I've been there, but how do you get back there?" I said, "You anchor it." And I worked with him on the airplane for about 20 or 30 minutes and showed him how to trigger so that every time he picked up his golf clubs, he could fire off that set of emotions. Well, he got pretty excited. He said, "Well, you know, I think it'll make a difference." But he had no idea how big a difference. He called me back two days later to tell me he took 15 strokes off his golf game. Now, if you play golf, you know that's impossible. Yeah, well, it's impossible, and that's why he wrote the introduction to my book, *Unlimited Power*. We became even better friends, as you can imagine. But Ken is a phenomenal man, willing to use it. Are you willing to use anchors for your benefit? You can anchor yourself to anything. So, if you need to be humorous or creative, hey, listen, I don't always walk in, and probably you don't do this either. I don't always wake up, let's say, on Monday morning and walk into, let's say, a seminar room and go, "Oh boy, another seminar to do. This is only my 97th one in 103 days. Wow." That doesn't always happen. But I am committed to giving my all every time I communicate with people. That's what I do. What I do for. And so, instead of like feeling bad or giving, you know, a decent performance, what I do is I've got anchors on myself where I can trigger myself instantly to be absolutely at my peak. And I demand that for myself. I'd like to challenge you to do the same for you. Develop some anchors so that you could go from being frustrated to excited in a moment, or to go from being angry to laughing. Wouldn't that be valuable? And all you got to do is think of times you're laughing, create an anchor. Think of times you're laughing, create an anchor. Think of times you're laughing, create an anchor. Maybe it's grabbing your... and I don't know what it is, but once you know what it is, next time you get angry, reach up and go, and wham, you can put yourself into a laughter state, or at least a minimum of a smiling state. I want you to have buttons to your own brain. You should be in charge.
Now, that's how you create an anchor. Two steps: Get yourself in a state, and at the peak, consistently do something unique over and over again. And just do it until it's conditioned. If you want to learn more about anchoring and you really want to find it so you're really, really good at it, one, practice. But two, if you want some additional distinctions, then contact us because we have a series of videotapes that will show you exactly how to do anchoring, and we do it in slow motion, and we actually demonstrate it over and over again, including how to eliminate phobias and so forth. So you could do those for yourself, for other people. But for right now, today, let's make sure you utilize what you already know because you can get results right now without any more instruction.
Now, you might ask me, "How long does an anchor last?" Well, it depends. When you go to do an anchor, if you want how long it's going to last, part of what makes it last is how intense was the state you anchored in the first place. In other words, if you're in a state of absolute total motivation, excitement, and you anchor that, that's going to be more powerful than if you go, "Yeah, I'm kind of motivated. Yeah, anchor that." In other words, if your state is not real intense, the anchor may not last a long time. Does that make sense? Secondly, if an anchor is going to last, you need to link it to something unique. So, for example, if somebody else is laughing, you want to anchor them. So, while they're laughing, you reach over and give a handshake. Is that going to work? Well, if you shake their hand uniquely, and you do it over and over again, that handshake can later, when you shake their hands, cause them to smile or laugh. There's no doubt about it, if they're laughing strongly enough. But handshake, what's going to happen? Somebody else is going to shake their hand, they're going to laugh for no reason. Their brain is going to go, "What's going on here?" And pretty soon, it'll begin to dilute the anchor. So, if you want an anchor to last, make sure you're really in state, and make it be unique. That's why I'm using some of these weird noises, and I would like squeeze a part of my body. In other words, I would link to the state I want a unique kind of touch and a unique kind of sound. Does that make sense?
Okay, next, what I want you to do is pay attention to how to get rid of negative anchors. How can you get rid of them? Now, again, we call that collapsing an anchor. So, let's take the scenario we talked about earlier. Let's say you've had this negative anchor, and it's over here on your left shoulder. In other words, somebody touches you, then wham, you fire off this depression from gosh only knows when. You don't know what caused it originally. You went to this funeral, whatever. How do you get rid of it? Real simple. Step number one: Create a series of positive anchors. What do I mean? Well, let's say I got this negative anchor on my left shoulder. While I'd go over to my right shoulder and I think of a time in my life, in my mind, when I felt absolutely incredible, unstoppable, fun, outrageous, whatever. Let's say outrageous and unstoppable. And I think of a memory when I felt that way. I close my eyes, I go into the memory, I actually step into the picture or into the feeling, so I'm absolutely there again. And right at the peak of the emotion, right when I'm feeling absolutely incredibly outrageous and strong, I reach over and touch my right shoulder. Remember, the negative anchors on my left. I go to, let's say, my right, and I touch it and squeeze it, and maybe make a sound. Maybe I go, "Yes." And then I think of another peak time in my life, something else where I felt really incredible, powerful, like I could handle anything. Right at the peak moment, I reach over and go, "Yes." And I do this over and over again until I've literally conditioned my right shoulder area where I can just go, "Yes," and wham, I feel strong immediately. Are you following me on this? What we're doing is creating a series of positive anchors, what we call stacking an anchor. Now, what do I do? Well, once I've got it, I test it. I get out of state, meaning I don't think about anything that would excite me, and I just reach over and I do the same thing. I'll go, "Yes," and sure enough, wham, I start to feel the same kinds of feelings. Great. I've got an anchor that works. What I do next? Step two. Step one was: Create a series of positive anchors. Step two: I fire off both the positive and negative anchors simultaneously. What the heck does that mean? I mean, I'm gonna reach over and I'm gonna touch my left shoulder where normally I get depressed, and I'm also gonna reach over and touch my right shoulder where I feel great, and I'm gonna say, "Yes." I'm gonna fire them simultaneously in my brain. Now, when you do this, usually steam will come out of your ears. You may feel actually a little weird at first. In fact, if you watch people do this, sometimes their face becomes asymmetrical for a moment, where one part, like a cheek, will start to come up and the other goes down. That's because in your brain, you literally fired two completely different types of emotions in your brain simultaneously, two different nerve messages, if you will, and when they collide in your brain, the one that is strongest literally collapses the other one. Does that make sense? That's why we create a series of positive anchors instead of just a negative one. Otherwise, we'd have you just do something, you know, a positive anchor like, "Remember time you felt good?" "Yeah." "You anchored?" "Yeah." "Angry?" "Yeah." "Anger?" "Yeah." Now, what if you did that? One side is total depression, the other, "Yeah, you feel pretty good." You wham, guess what? Now you'll be depressed on both sides. But if you create a series of positive anchors on one side, a series of them, they're really strong, and you now fire them both off, it'll overpower the negative. What does that mean? It means now when you touch your left shoulder, you'll feel neutral feelings, or maybe even positive. When you touch your right, you'll feel neutral or positive. It's called collapsing an anchor. Again, I'm trying to jam it in real fast. I'm going to give you a way to do it before we leave here as well.
So, let's just review some of the key elements to make an anchor be effective. Number one is the intensity of the state the person's in. In other words, if you want a strong anchor, make sure that when you go to anchor yourself or somebody else, that you're really feeling strongly about what it is you're linking in. So, if you want to anchor in something like motivation, you got to really be in a motivated state, not like a partially motivated state. Two, you've got to make sure that you create the trigger that is, let's say, the touch or the voice tone at the peak of the emotion. Imagine it like a roller coaster. You don't want to do it as you're about to hit the top or on your way down. It's got to be right at the peak. Now, you might say, "Tony, I don't know when the peak is." Trust your subconscious mind. And if you're not sure, anchor yourself too soon and too often rather than not enough, and you'll get good at it. It's just a matter of conditioning. Just remember, if you ever want to study anchoring, watch any commercial, and you'll have great role models to follow where they'll link every kind of emotion you can imagine to a product that has nothing to do with those emotions. It's a great example of how they do it through imagery and sound. They get you to feel a certain way, and right at those key moments, wham, they flash the product over and over again. That's all you're doing to yourself. But notice, they work hard to get you in a peak state before they show their product, and they try to do it right at that key moment. Thirdly, is you want to make sure the anchor is unique. In other words, anchoring yourself just by touching your hand with your other hand is not really unique. A handshake is not really unique. So maybe what you do is you grab the skin behind your middle fingers, right, and knuckle, and you pull on it at a certain moment. That's a unique trigger. You follow me? And then finally, if you're going to make an anchor work, you got to fire it off the same way it got set. In other words, if I anchor myself on my shoulder, and then I come back and try and fire off the anchor by touching my elbow, clearly it's not going to work. If I anchor myself with a strong touch, and then I come back and try and fire it off with a soft touch, it's not going to work because nothing's linked to that soft touch in my nervous system. So again, I know it's dumping a lot on your brain, but take a look. You can listen to this tape over and over again because anchoring is worth it. And remember, you're already doing this. You're already anchoring. So all I'm doing is trying to bring your conscious awareness to what you're already doing so you can take some control, so you can start to condition yourself to feel the ways that you want to on an ongoing basis. And one of your assignments today is going to be to literally create a positive anchor so you can trigger yourself to feel a specific emotion you want at any moment in time, no matter what's happening around you, where you're in charge.
Now, let's take a look at two final aspects of anchoring that I mentioned we'd talk about. How do we take advantage of anchors that are already there? Well, one thing I already mentioned is how you could use music, for example. Another example I can give you is what we do with our own people around the country. We're fortunate enough to have some really powerful and successful people who represent us, and whose job it is is to go out into organizations and do talks, free talks in the business community, the purpose of which is to share this technology with people. And by our giving tons of value, much more than we expect back, to entice people to come to our actual programs. We do business programs around the country, and we have a thousand to two thousand people at them, and we fill them with a few key powerful people who do this for us. Well, doing this day after day, just like anything else, is not always easy. So, what we help them to do is to get themselves in state by using anchors that already exist. So, we fire off anchors of my own tapes. We use various tools. One thing we do many times is we get some comedians' tapes. You take Eddie Murphy or somebody that we know that they like, and we have them listen to him right before they go in to speak. Well, what happens is they're laughing, and they're in this wonderful state as they walk in. That's totally different than sitting there and putting yourself in a state of, "Oh my God, will I do well or not?" Total different shift. So, you can use those kinds of anchors. I can give you a good example of how you can use them in business. If you're a business person, anchors are rampant in the business community. There are all kinds of rituals and triggers and protocol, and if you learn to use it effectively, it's amazing the kinds of results that you can produce in a business environment. Let me give you an example. I mentioned earlier on these tapes about the work I'd done with the army. What I didn't mention is how I negotiated that deal. I went in and basically convinced this general that one, that I could at least potentially produce the results I had promised him, and two, that even if I didn't, he had nothing to lose and everything to gain, and that we could create a win-win deal. He decided to go ahead. So, he set up a meeting with myself and my partner and the appropriate officers who could work out, you know, the times and the prices and locations and all the other things that would be involved. So, what was interesting is we met in this incredible conference room, underground, literally a war room. It was rather dramatic, to say the least, like being in a movie. And this whole thing was set up in this giant horseshoe, and at the front of the table is where the general sits, was his chair, which, by the way, was marked out very clearly. Well, as we negotiated and we came down to price, we kept running into this problem. That is, they didn't want to pay me what I thought it was worth, which was a challenge, especially since I was willing to be paid nothing if I didn't produce the results I promised. But we kept going in this circle. Finally, I came up with an idea. While I was talking, I began to walk around the room, and I began to stop periodically right at the general's chair. Now, realize, the general's chair is what we call a major anchor. In other words, these people have been conditioned, meeting after meeting after meeting, that anything comes out of that chair, you respond to immediately, instantly, without any question whatsoever. It was an anchor of power. So, all I would do is walk around, and at certain key moments, stop there and communicate something. And I began to notice that what I thought might be true was true. The ideas I promoted at the moments I was at his chair seemed to get very little or no negative response. Finally, myself and my partner began to alternate our conversation right around the chair. And I sat down in the general's chair and offered, at that moment, the price that I must have. There was no argument whatsoever. They looked around each other and said, "All right, well, let's just go ahead." That is how powerful anchors can be in negotiations. I want you to know that anchors exist around you all the time. You need to pay attention to them and utilize them. Again, that's what advertisers are doing. You remember the story I talked to you about earlier with Michael Jackson, right? They used him as an anchor to get people in state, and then they transferred his power to Pepsi. Now, as you also know, when it looked like Michael Jackson may have done something wrong, they got rid of him. They didn't want to be associated to him. Now that a lot of people think he didn't do anything wrong, now they're wanting him back again. This is the power of anchors. It's amazing. Now, you can do this to influence your own children, though. You can use the same techniques. Find somebody that they have as a role model, and communicate something that this person has said. In other words, say, "Well, you know, I noticed this role model person of yours says you've got to do this, this, and that." And immediately watch what happens if you're convincing, if you're really certain when you deliver this communication, you may find your children respond very powerfully. Better yet, if you can find an article where they were interviewed, and this person they respect says something that you agree with, I would clearly actually show the child that article, or show them a copy of a video of that news piece. This has tremendous power to influence. I want you to think creatively. What are some of the anchors around you that you could use to immediately be more effective? If you're in sales, what are some triggers you could have so when people first meet you, they immediately like you? Do you remember Colonel Oliver North? Do you remember back in those days of the Iran-Contra affair? Did he use anchors in an effective way to influence mass number of people's feelings about him? Hey, statistics show that before the Iran-Contra hearings, which of course were televised, and most of us watched, did you watch them? Before that happened, less than 25% of the United States, depending upon which poll you read, was in major support of him. Within a couple of days, it was up around 60% or more, to begin, depending upon which poll you're at. What was different? Well, I'll tell you one thing that was different. Colonel Oliver North showed up wearing this little thing called a uniform. Now, think about that. Not just any uniform, a Marine uniform with every medal you'd ever earned since the Cub Scouts. I mean, this guy was loaded. I mean, clearly, the minute we saw him, the anchor was: This man is a hero. Do you think that affected the way you would evaluate his answers? I'm not saying it was right or wrong or anything like that. I just want you to know they used anchors brilliantly, his advisors did, to make sure he felt that way. Did he wear his uniform every day at the White House? No. Why was he wearing it that day? Because he hadn't worn the uniform in a long time, and he wanted to wear it. Obviously, clearly, he understood the power of anchors. And anyone who's successful does. Take advantage of the anchors that are already around you, or create some.
So, what we've talked about then, in the following one, is that we're already anchoring. We just have to become aware of the fact that we're already doing it so we don't create negative anchors accidentally. Two, we've reviewed the process of anchoring, and we've given you some key fundamentals on that. Three, we've talked about how to really eliminate negative anchors. So, if you've already got some associations that are not supporting you, like you see your boss and you get angry, we've given you some ways to literally get rid of those. And then four, we've talked about how to utilize anchors that are already around you, and hopefully get you to start paying attention to those so you have more power, you utilize what's already been created in your environment.
The last thing I want to chat with you about, and actually have you do, is something I call a swish pattern. And again, what a swish pattern is, is a way not just to anchor one feeling. In other words, I can have you think of a time in your life when you felt really loved, and at that moment, I can reach up and let's say touch your ear with a real soft touch and go, "Yeah." And have you thinking another time you felt really loved, and right at that key moment, I can reach up and go, "Yeah." And I can do that enough times until pretty soon, I reach up, touch your ear, even when you're not feeling love or even thinking about it, and go, "Yeah," and you'll feel loved. Now, that's not special. It's done over and over and over again. But here's the point: that's anchoring one specific state. Would it be useful for you to be able to anchor yourself to move in a new direction of life? Sounds like a pretty big chunk, doesn't it? What I mean is, would it be useful for your mind to continually move in a particular direction? In other words, keep you focused on going in a certain direction? The answer is obviously yes. And a swish pattern is a way to do that. Now, normally, we teach this with videotapes because it's something that's useful to see. But stay with me on this, and I think you'll pick it up rather quickly. Also, I want to warn you that if you're one of those people that says, "I don't visualize," then don't even bother to do this tape because you're wasting your time. No, I'm being facetious. Anything you can do with pictures in your mind, you can also do by talking to yourself or getting feelings. I do want you to know that everyone visualizes. It's impossible not to. Invariably, if I'm doing a seminar and somebody says, "Well, I can't visualize, Mr. Robbins," I'll say, "Well, let me ask you a question." Close your eyes. And they will. And I say, "What color is my tie?" And they'll go, "Red," "Yellow," whatever it is. And I'll say, "Well, how do you know?" They say, "Well, 'cause I see it." I said, "But your eyes are closed." They go, "Well, you know, I got this 'see'." We all have pictures. But see, some of us see pictures so fast that we don't become consciously aware of them. And also, a lot of people think that people's pictures in life are like crystal clear, perfect movies with every shade and hue. But mine aren't that clear, so obviously I'm not good at making pictures. Totally false. Most people's pictures are not that clear, although they could be. All you have to do is practice. How do you practice? Well, you don't try and master everything overnight. You take a look at somebody's nose and you focus just on the nose, not their whole face and body, and you look at it, and then you close your eyes, and then you pretend that you're seeing it in your mind. Don't actually see it, because then you'd be visualizing, we'd already be done. So don't do that yet. Actually look at their nose, close your eyes, imagine you're seeing it, open your eyes, see the nose, close your eyes, imagine you're seeing it. You do it over and over until pretty soon you're opening and closing your eyes so fast, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, back and forth, that your brain doesn't know when you're actually seeing it and when you're making it up. Pretty soon, you'll get good at seeing the nose. You'll close your eyes and just be able to picture the nose. Then do nose and eyes, the nose, eyes, and mouth, and the face, and expand until you can see the whole person. If you do that for 10 minutes a day for 10 days, you cannot believe after 10 days how good you'll be at visualizing. It's like any other muscle. Needs to be developed. And that's how you do it is through use and practice.
So, right now, let's just do this thing called a swish pattern. And again, there are lots of ways to do it. I'm going to use the one that uses pictures because it's quick, and we're running out of time. So, let's do the following one. I want you to think of a negative ritual you partake in. What I mean by that, I mean, what's a behavior or something that you do, you know, a lot of the times, and it really bothers you, you don't want to do it anymore. Well, here's what I want you to do. I want you to close your eyes. And again, it's useful if you're not driving when you do this, okay? So, this is something that if you're driving your car, now is the time to pull your car over or stop the tape until you park. Preferably, pull it over and do it right now. Keep your momentum going, as you notice I've asked you to do things over and over again, and I've harassed you and teased you and played with you and cajoled you, but it's because I know the power of momentum. Don't just stop the tape and say, "I'm going to do something later." Ideally, just pull over right now. It's only going to take five minutes and do it. Have some fun. Besides that, people driving by will have a good time laughing as they wonder what you're doing.
Now, here's what I want you to do with your eyes closed. I want you to imagine the behavior you want to change, and make a picture of it. So, for example, let's say, picture yourself procrastinating. What you look like, how you behave, the very beginning of the pattern, okay? And get a picture of that in your mind. Picture of yourself about to procrastinate. Or if you pick something else, let's say about to bite your fingernails, or you actually see yourself about to partake in that behavior. Now, obviously, before we even do this, I hope you've decided that you're tired of this behavior, that it's something that you associate more pain to doing it than changing it. In other words, you want to change it. Now, make sure you got some leverage on yourself. But with that presupposition in mind, what I want you to do now is see in your mind yourself beginning that pattern. And I'm talking a little bit to make sure you got time to get it in your mind, okay? As soon as you got that image now clear in your mind, make it as clear as you can, where you really see the beginning of the pattern when you're about to either bite your fingernails or procrastinate or whatever it is you want to change. Now, what I want you to do is imagine the image just being pushed aside, and in its place, what I want you to do is put a big picture in front of you of how you'd like to be ultimately. In other words, create an image of yourself the way you would like to be. I'll give you a specific example with myself. I used to bite my fingernails, and I learned lots of techniques, none of them seemed to work. I even put pain on my fingernails, you know, I put some of that stuff you bite on, and it tastes terrible. That didn't even stop me. I was on a roll. The bottom line is the only way I stopped myself was the use of a swish pattern. How I pictured myself about to bring my fingers up to my face to bite on my nails. I was doing this, by the way, most of the time subconsciously. I wasn't even aware I was doing it, but I was biting my fingernails literally down to the quick, where they would bleed. Now, I pictured this in my mind, bringing my fingers up, and I do that over and over again, so I could get that picture clear. Then I put some pictures aside. I made a second picture, the way I would like to be ultimately. Not just not biting my fingernails, but the kind of person I'm committed to being. The kind of person who would never bite their fingernails. I pictured myself dressed a certain way, with certain jewelry, with certain communication styles, with certain gestures. I saw myself having this tremendous impact on all these people. I looked like and felt like I was that. That was the person I'm committed to being. Someone absolutely a model of success, happiness, joy, power, wealth. Sure enough, as I got this image, I got inspired. And that is the second thing you've got to do: create a new picture of how you want to be, an image of yourself the way you really are committed to being, your ideal self, your ultimate self. So, two steps so far. Step one: You get a clear picture of the behavior you want to change, and you get it where you see it bounding to happen. Now that you can create that picture, put it aside. Second picture: You made is how you absolutely committed to being your ultimate self, your ideal self, how you behave, and make that picture something that would inspire you. In other words, it's the kind of person you want to continually move towards, no matter what you're doing, even when you're not thinking about it consciously. So, after you've established these two pictures, what do you do? We want to condition your brain so that the old behavior, the beginnings of it, like for me, starting to bite my fingernails, will trigger a new behavior that empowers you and actually doesn't just change the habit, but enhances your life in many ways. How do we do that? Well, it's a matter of positioning and repetition. Let me tell you what I did to give you an example. I took this image of myself biting my fingernails, the behavior I wanted to change, and I made that picture really big, and I put it right in front of me where I could see it. Then, what I did is I took this picture of the kind of person I was committed to being, the ultimate Tony Robbins, and I took that image and made it small and tiny, and imagine putting it behind the big picture, and making it part of a slingshot, and literally pulling...
It back, pulling it back, in other words, further and further away from me. But as it got further and further back, it got smaller and smaller. And I felt like there was tension connecting the two. And at the last moment, I literally let go of that picture. I let go of the positive image of myself. And what happens is, it came screaming in, getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and wham, exploded through the old picture into my mind.
And you go, "What in the world are you talking about, Robbins?" Here's what I'm saying. You do that over and over again. What you're saying to your brain is, "See this? This thing I don't want to do. Whap! Boom! Do this. See this? Wham! Do this. See this? Wham! Do this. See this? Wham! Do this." You do it over and over and over. Now, each time I did it, I made a weird noise. You go, "What's the weird noise?" I said, "Whoosh, whoosh."
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Now, you go, "Well, that sounds like a real technical approach, Robbins. Maybe even a bit juvenile." The point is, by making the sound, I was putting my physiology, my body, into an excitable state. So, we call it a switch pattern or a wish pattern. By doing this over and over again, you condition your mind so the old behavior literally moves you towards being the ideal person you want to be. So, with myself, it was over and over and over again until pretty soon, literally, if I started biting my fingernails, my brain would immediately push that picture away and see me being the ideal person who had perfect nails, great jewelry, great communication skills, great person. And it chunked up. I know those things aren't supposed to connect, but your brain doesn't work logically. And my brain said, "Hey, I'm this kind of person. I don't bite my fingernails. I don't do any of it." Consciously, by doing it over and over again, it literally stopped my fingernail biting.
How often I did it? About 25 times as fast as I could, where each time I felt the picture breaking through, and I saw myself as being the ideal person, each and every time. And I felt the joy of that. I did it for 25 times for a couple of days. I didn't bite my fingernails at all. In fact, a couple of times, I noticed my fingers coming up to my mouth where normally I wouldn't have noticed anything. See, my brain became sensitized. One time, I actually started to bite. Now, my brain could have said, "Oh my god, that's failure. This stuff doesn't work." That'd be pretty stupid, wouldn't it? All it says is, "I need to condition it a little bit more." So, I did 25 more of these things, and I've never touched my fingernails since. I mean, it literally can be that strong for you if all you do is do it through repetition. And again, speed. It's important. You see this? Wham! Do this. See this? Wham! Do this. The speed is what's most important, and that you really feel the breakthrough each and every time. Does that make sense? Let's do some, and we'll finish up this session.
One, put in front of you the picture you want to change, maybe the picture of you beginning to procrastinate. Two, take the image of your ideal self, the one that inspires you, the kind of person that would never procrastinate in a million years, that make-it-happen type of person. Take that image, make it small, and literally, with your hand, pull it back behind the other one, and feel as if there's tension there. That's right, like it's a slingshot. When I say "now," you're gonna let go of, and actually feel it come through and break through. And while you do it, you're gonna say, "Whoosh." Actually, you might even bring your hand forward with it, actually, as if it was breaking through, so you can feel the breakthrough. See and feel yourself being your ideal self.
Then we're going to do it again. Bring back the old image, the behavior you don't want to have happen. Make it big and bright in front of you. Take the way you want things to be, and make it small and dim. Pull it back. And remember, when you let go, it's like a slingshot. It gets bigger and brighter, and it literally bursts through and destroys the old picture. And in its place, creates this new image of how you want to be. And you see and feel the breakthrough as if it's real in your body right now. Ready? Do it again. Ready? Whoosh. Okay, do it again. Bring back the old picture. Small picture in the back. Ready? Go. Whoosh. Actually feel the victory each time. Ready? Do it again. Whoosh. Do it again. Faster. Whoosh. Do it again. A little faster. Whoosh. Do it again. A little faster. Whoosh. Stop.
Now, I want you to do this five times in your head as fast as you can. I'm not gonna say anything. You just do it five times. Each time, feel the breakthrough. Go for it. Should be good. Make sure you feel the breakthrough. Excellent. Do it again. Good. Make sure you do it at least five times. Faster each time. Do it faster. You can do it more than five times. Great. Now, you should have done it by five times at least by now. Now, try something. Now, think of the old behavior and tell me what happens in your mind. If you've done it fast enough, either you won't get back to the old image, or you'll just get the whoosh. You'll get the image or the feeling of that. All you have to do is do this rapidly.
So, here's your homework for today. Number one homework for today is this: I want you now to stop and pick an emotion that you'd like to be able to have literally at your fingertips again. Whether it be motivation, passion, excitement, happiness, curiosity, confidence, creativity. And I want you to anchor it in how you're going to do that. One, you're going to decide the emotion. Two, you're going to get yourself back in times when you really felt that way. And three, you are going to link that feeling to something. Snap your fingers, making of a fist, clapping your hands, and saying "yes." Something you do it over and over again until when you do it, you can condition yourself, and you'll literally feel the way you want to feel. You follow me? Create one positive anchor that really works and do it over and over again until it works.
And two, I want you to do at least 15 swish patterns, taking you from procrastination into the person you absolutely committed to be, who makes things happen, does not delay. Those are your two exercises. We've covered a lot today, to say the least. But if you go through and apply these, you can find this to be something that can literally change your entire conditioning and therefore your ongoing behavior. There's real power in this. So please discipline yourself. And if you need to listen to some things twice, that's fine. Again, there are lots of ways to get more information. Start with what you got right now. If you want more, let us know. But the point is, use what you know already, right now, today. When you come back tomorrow, we're going to work on unleashing the financial genius within you. Till then, have fun with your anchors and live with passion.
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