Anchoring

how to produce confident feelings any time you wish.

People tell me I'm lucky, but I've noticed the harder I practise, the luckier I get. - Gary Player

Anchoring is a way of drawing on past experiences in which you felt confident to help you cope better in the present. It's another powerful weapon in your confidence armoury.

An anchor is any stimulus that consistently triggers an emotion. To use an anchor you have to:

1. Generate in yourself the particular set of feelings you wish to recreate.
2. Programme your subconscious to associate those feelings with specific words and gestures.
3. Use those words and gestures to trigger the desired feelings when required.

Sportsmen and women use anchors continually. For example, tennis players bounce the ball repeatedly before serving to calm themselves; most runners go through an elaborate routine to centre themselves, much of which is not strictly necessary to the actual performance; and the mighty All Black rugby team go through a series of rituals before each match to intimidate the opposition and fire themselves up.

You constantly anchor feelings in the nervous system whether you like it or not, so why not learn to use this to your advantage? Using anchors you can feel calm and confident, or energised and confident whenever you wish.