Wednesday, 29 April 2009

NLP - Musical Anchors

In NLP we talk a lot about anchors, anchoring good feelings and states, maybe a confident state, a happy state, relaxation, calmness, focus, motivation.

Okay, now I'm going to talk about something that ought to be obvious and yet sometimes it's the obvious things we still need reminding to do from time to time in order to keep feeling good now.

We explore anchors not only when we first learn NLP, also as we become more and more accustomed to using what we've learnt daily making profound, positive and lasting changes to the way we think and feel powerfully. (Now would I do a thing like syntactic ambiguity ;))

So I was quickly reminded today of one of the easiest and lasting anchors - musical anchors. I am still astounded at how quickly and easily I can change state just because a certain piece of music is playing. I instantly chill when I listen to one of my yoga CDs. And when I have work or tasks to do I can immediately become energised by one of the CDs in my collection of dance tracks. I even get the washing up done at triple speed with musical speed.

Today I received a beautiful new CD from my friend Cherry. The CD is by Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu , a very talented aboriginal musician from Australia. I was fascinated at how quickly and instantly the music put me into a relaxed AND motivated state - a great combination. Now I could analyse why this particular CD should make me feel so good. Was it the association with my good friend Cherry and the great times we spent together at her home on the mountains in Tasmania? Maybe the gentle soothing quality of Gurrumul's voice and guitar revivified feelings associated with other similar music? The truth is it doesn't matter why it makes me feel so good, because now I know whenever I want to feel relaxed and motivated I have a powerful anchor available for me at anytime.

Sometimes we can search everywhere for ways of feeling good, trying out different therapies, buying more stuff, moving home, getting a new job.... Yet sometimes the key to feeling good is just listening to a special piece music, something that, for whatever reason, always puts us into a pleasant state as soon as we listen to it. How cool is that!

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