Wish you could recreate feelings as and when you want to? Ever wished you could keep a positive feeling for longer? Just follow these simple steps using Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP)

Walking along the seafront with my partner Sara one recent Saturday morning was wonderful: the warmth of the sun on my face, the salty sea air smell, the smiles on other people’s faces, the shouts and laughter of excited children – my senses were almost overwhelmed.

The time I had spent on the sea front acted as an ‘anchor’ for the wonderful experience which immediately followed it. The next time I saw and heard the experience, albeit in my mind, my brain started to produce the intense physical responses that it ‘knew’ were coming next.

What is an anchor? Why is it so useful?

In the field of NLP, an anchor is any representation in the human nervous system that triggers any other representation. For instance the word ‘danger’ will immediately trigger images and sounds related to the word.

The word ‘fire’ will trigger different associations. In these cases the anchors are words but anchors aren’t confined to words. With NLP, we identify that anchors can operate in any representational system (sight, sound, feeling, smell and taste).

Tonal: For example, the special way a certain person has of saying your name. My mother shouting my name when I was a child often signalled the fact she had discovered something I had done and that meant trouble for me!

Tactile: The sensation of a reassuring hug can rekindle wonderful feelings.

Visual: I recently had lunch with friends and several of them commented on a jacket I was wearing. Now, whenever they see it, it reminds them of the comments and makes them smile.

Olfactory: Smelling certain foods being cooked can suddenly make you remember the school cafeteria, for example.

Gustatory: the taste of your favourite food can make you remember how you felt when you had it before.

While the anchor I created for the sea front was unintentional, it is possible for you to use this NLP technique to anchor yourself intentionally.

Feel Good Whenever You Want To?

This simple but powerful NLP technique enables you to have access to the states and resources you want, when you want them.

To make the most of anchoring with NLP, it is important to really engage in the experience – make it wonderfully vivid in your mind – and put effort into recalling it the first few times you activate your NLP anchor.

The use of your thumb and forefinger in an example of a tactile anchor, but you can use any representation to anchor something for you or someone else.
To get a ‘strong’ anchor or an experience, it is important to remember the following:

a. Ensure you have a powerful example of the experience to work with.

b. Anchor in as many representational systems as possible: Use sounds, images, feelings, and sensations as much as you can.

c. Set the anchor just before the experience peaks.

d. When you activate the anchor, do it accurately. Be as precise as you can!

e. With tactile (using feelings and sensations) anchors, pulsing the anchor can help maintain or enhance the experience.

Now Set Down Your Anchor…

Step One: Think of an occasion when you had a highly pleasurable experience. See what you saw then (looking through your own eyes), hear what you heard and feel what you felt. As you feel the sensations increase in intensity, squeeze the thumb and forefinger on your left hand gently together for a few moments then release them.

Now ‘break your state’ (for example, remember what shoe you put on first today). Squeeze your thumb and forefinger together again, gently pushing them. The state will return.

Step Two: Identify something that someone you know already does, and create a subtle anchor. Set the anchor while they are doing the activity. Later, use (or ‘fire’) your NLP anchor and see what happens. If they do the thing you anchored then it worked!

Step Three: When you experience something you want more of, anchor it.
Use your NLP skills wisely – it’s a powerful technique. In the meantime become aware of when it is being used on you: advertisers, politicians, and stand-up comedians all know the power of NLP anchors and all use them to great effect. Awareness with NLP is key – have fun.

Hiring a life coach helped Morgan Nichols to completely transform her life and as she explains, to enjoy the process not just the results.

I started life coaching because I was confused. Confused about how to get out of my dead-end job. Confused about my next step to becoming self-employed and financially free. And most of all, confused about which of my many interests to focus on.

One of the most useful things I learned through being coached was that I didn’t have to focus.

Focusing is one way people achieve success but it’s not the only way. It was only one of my many ‘a-ha’ moments in my process where I discovered that my way could be just right for me.

What a relief!

I had spent years trying on various jobs and careers, either because I was presented with them, or I saw them as a stepping stone to something else. The problem was, I had been in the job market for five years and was stuck in debt and a job that didn’t inspire me. I was underpaid for my skills and experience.

My coach helped me to discover that I had been going about things with an external frame of reference. I needed to re-connect with what made me tick, and investigate what kind of work could satisfy my needs and values.

During the course of my coaching this changed from having a holistic business (although this is still a long-term dream of mine) to returning to my lifelong love, writing, as well as building on my yoga teaching which was naturally expanding.

I learned how to not only set goals but to engage with them, transforming goals from “shoulds” to “want to’s”. I learned techniques of neuro-linguistic programming to transform the way that I visualised my life, and to deal with fear of failure.

I discovered that I am by nature a multi-tasker and can make that work for me rather than trying to follow others’ moulds.  My coach pointed out that the ‘focus’ theme is used so often in self-help literature because it’s exactly what people don’t do. But once I liberated myself from the mentality of “I have to write x pages a day or I won’t be a success”, I could see opportunities that had been closed to me.

My positive projection began to attract people and resources that could help me reach my goals. For example, I was asked to appear on radio shows to perform my poetry, and one of my poems was accepted for publication in an anthology.

Meanwhile, even at my “dead-end” job I was given an opportunity in line with my broader goals of serving society: I began to supervise less experienced members of staff, thereby getting a chance to apply some of my counselling training.

An unexpected pregnancy came just at the time when I was looking for another job. While I had always wanted to be a mother some day, I had ruled out being ready for it at this stage – I wasn’t financially well-off enough, I hadn’t established my career, and so on.

This could have been a serious spanner in the works, but in fact it gave me a welcome break to re-evaluate my career and where it was going. I realised during my pregnancy that I wanted to create work that fitted around my life, not the other way round.

I stopped working two months before my due date and used this time to rest as well as write, plan projects and await this next phase of my life. I learned a lot about pregnancy and birth which has inspired me to do doula training inj the future, as well as begin an antenatal yoga teacher training later this year.

Looking back at the past year, I can hardly believe that I came from such a stuck point; from being unable to sense and trust my own direction, to being motivated and sure of my path (even the many unpredictable twists and turns on that path!)

In the past 8 months, I have qualified as a yoga teacher (writing my exam at eight months pregnant!), had work published in literary magazines, made radio and live performances as a poet, finished the first draft of my novel, started a successful mother-and-baby yoga class, and started to get back into freelance writing.

And the biggest creation of all: giving birth to my beautiful son six months ago.

The best thing is that all of this was without driving myself on mercilessly, as I used to do.

I have enjoyed the process and not just the results.

Your procrastination habits may seem to be very deep rooted and, indeed, they probably are. But that doesn’t mean they can’t be changed.

Forget everything you have ever been told about laziness, tardiness, lack of application and short attention span; procrastination is about how we think. More specifically, it is about how we allow certain thoughts to morph into beliefs.

If we are serial procrastinators then we will have some underlying beliefs that are getting in the way of action.

Changing our beliefs is essential if we want to procrastinate less but it isn’t easy. So here are 10 quick fixes. They won’t mend the engine but they are good for a jump-start.

The 10 quick procrastination fixes

1. More Challenge

To be motivating, a goal needs to be challenging enough to stimulate our interest but not so difficult as to be demoralising.

Too little challenge and we can’t be bothered to start, too much and we don’t know where to.

2. A Suitable Reward

A stroll in the park, a shopping trip to New York, or a room with a view in Florence – choose a reward to fit the challenge and that’s worth the extra effort.

3. Penalty Points

For some of us the idea of losing something is more compelling than the idea of gaining it. Write a cheque to an organisation you can’t bear. If you don’t get the task done, post it. Ouch.

4. Double, Not Quit

Procrastinators tend to be super-optimistic when assessing how long a task will take – so there’s no need to start just yet. We imagine no traffic, a full tank and perfect directions.

Double your estimate for how long the task will take. Better get going.

5. Dive In

Tackle the tough stuff first. After that, it will be downhill all the way.

6. Move

Stand up, change position, go outside; do something to change your mood and your perspective.

7. The Fast Set

We adapt our behaviour to fit in with the people around us.

If we mix with a crowd of action heroes and heroines, we are much more likely to kick into action ourselves.

8. Bite Size is Right Size

You can’t eat an elephant in one mouthful. Break the task into small chunks and identify the end for each bit.

Concentrate on one chunk at a time and congratulate yourself each time you finish an element.

9. Time Fragments

Do you feel you need to have an uninterrupted slug of time – say, between 2 and 3 pm – to complete a task? This doesn’t need to be the case.

Try using four 15-minute slots instead.

10. Five Minute Start

Do it just for five minutes. No more, no less. When the time is up to decide whether you want to continue. If you do, commit another five minutes to it. Review and then, if you want, another. And another.

If you got this far, you’ll be motoring.

*This is an edited version of the Mañana chapter in the MindGym’s Give Me Time book (TimeWarner Books, 2006).

My journey to becoming a successful coach started back in 2005, while considering what options I had for creating a different lifestyle to the one I had then. I was successful, working in Supply Chain Management for GlaxoSmithKline, travelling the world, leading major change projects and found myself at a point where I knew things had to change. When I say change, I mean for me personally, it was time to do something that gave me time to do some of things I missed, such as reading, studying and just being with friends and family.

I considered a number of options, the wild card being a ski instructor, but the thing I kept coming back to was coaching. Friends and colleagues had more faith than I did, that I had a natural aptitude for coaching and could make a success out of it. In 2006 the decision was made by an offer from Leadership Trust to join them as an associate Leadership Coach. I had a long relationship with Leadership Trust having worked as a Tutor (team coach) on a number of their programmes over the years, so this just seemed like a natural extension.

You could say the rest is history, but having trained as a Leadership Coach it took another couple of years before I felt confident that I was making a difference and enabling my clients to move forward and develop their leadership skills. 2008 was a busy year and I was conscious of applying my learnings, using the CLEAR model, thinking about client’s “Maps of the World” and actually getting deeper into the Leadership Models I had been using for several years.

Early in 2009, I started to think about Coaching as a business and making it the part time occupation that I needed to pay the bills and that led me to think about the different types of coaching and a niche market. In addition I felt a need to continue my development in Coaching and in the summer of 2009 I attended a 2 day course at the The Coaching Academy. I enjoyed the approach and the trainers and took the opportunity to sign up for The Diploma in Small Business Coaching as well as a Diploma in Corporate and Executive Coaching. Adding the GOAL model to the frameworks I was already using was useful and filled in some gaps in my thinking.

The big thing for me though, was discovering my interest in Small Business and how its values and dynamics fitted the way I like to coach, to see quick results, and take a holistic approach looking at both the person and the activities. As a practical person, practising coaching alongside the theory was a great way of learning and reflecting back using Case Studies for my Diploma was really rewarding. I started in September 2009 and gave myself a year. However by June of 2010 it was clear I was going to need to step up the pace and use my own coach to get everything done and complete. In the end it took a couple months longer, but it felt worth it.

For the last year I have focussed my marketing on Small Business Owners, in particular those that deliver a Profession such as Accountancy, Law or Optometry while running their own business. I have often noted the challenge that business owners face getting the balance right between what they are trained to do and what they need to do to be successful in business. I still work as a Leadership Coach, but the Business Coach side of my business is growing.

For me my favourite coaching question is the one that enables the light bulb moment, the point when something changes and enables the client to move forward. Consequently it is hard to have one favourite as the point when this happens in coaching is so different with every client and situation.

I enjoy being a coach as it gives me a great mental challenge, I can’t just listen and make the odd comment, I need to be watching, listening and piecing all the bits together, making sense of conversations and steering the client towards the clarity they are seeking. I want the questions I ask to have impact and inspire people to take the actions that move them towards their goal.

If you are considering Coaching, think about whether you are a Coach or a Consultant, an asker or a teller. If you like to share your knowledge and give advice, coaching isn’t for you. If you like to listen and challenge peoples thinking to enable them to make the right changes for them, then take up Coaching.

If you are training as a Coach, make lots of new mistakes, push the boundaries.

If you are about to qualify, think about how you want to work as a Coach, for yourself and all that entails in running your own business, or as an Associate.

The key priority for me now and for others that are past the first period of enthusiasm, is to keep things fresh, to challenge myself to keep moving forwards.

The best thing that could happen to my coaching business in the next two years is to combine the Corporate and Small Business elements and land a contract supporting a chain of business, all with their unique operating unit. The first step is to change this statement from being a dream to a goal!

Carol Skolimowski

Sarah Fraser qualified through The Coaching Academy programme and has enthusiastically agreed to share her coaching experience, so we have put her in the Coaching Hot Seat. Here is Sarah’s story:-

The coaching seed is sown

My first introduction to coaching came in 2000 when, whilst working in marketing at Philips, I was selected to participate in their talent programme – a one-week personal development course during which we were coached individually and learned to coach each other. I remember learning how to actively listen for the first time in my life! After the course, I was asked to coach new talent coming into the company.

When I first applied for The Coaching Academy’s free weekend course in 2008 I actually had no intention of becoming a full-time coach. With the recession, many of my marketing projects had been cut and I was simply looking for some new mental stimulation. Coaching seemed like a good choice – after all it could always help me be a better manager.

Finding my passion

After that taster weekend I was hooked and signed up for the Diploma in Personal Performance Coaching. That’s when the real magic started to happen! The further I got into the course the more I felt like I’d found my true passion. I threw myself whole-heartedly into the experience, travelling from Amsterdam to every Accelerator Day and clocking up more than 70 practice coaching sessions along the way.

In 2009, I put myself forward for redundancy – at once both the scariest and most exciting thing I’d ever done. I still remember the first time I said out loud that I was going to become a coach. It was daunting to hear myself utter those words, but I felt I was right to take the risk. And I’d had such great feedback from my practice clients, helping them make major breakthroughs in their lives, that I felt confident in my potential to become a great coach.

The redundancy package gave me the financial security to focus on finalising my studies and developing my business plan. This resulted in a ‘distinction’ for the Diploma (Jan 2010) and a well-researched business plan for launching my coaching business in London, having decided with my husband that we would move there in 2010.

It wasn’t all smooth sailing, however, as early in 2010 my husband was offered a not-to-be-missed job opportunity down the road from our home in Amsterdam. After much reviewing of pros and cons we agreed he should take the job. This of course meant that my business plan was now rather out of sync with my actual situation! But with the help of my coach I was able to re-think my approach and tailor my plan towards the local market.

Happiness Express

In May 2010 I officially registered my coaching company at the Dutch Chamber of Commerce. My initial focus was to build a solid base of private clients, targeting the expat market. I work on a variety of topics including career change, building confidence and adjusting to expat life, and I find that the name of my company attracts people wanting to get a more positive outlook on life. I’m happy with the number of private clients I have today.

For the immediate future my goal is to maintain a steady stream of private clients and increase the coaching I do within organisations. Philips and Heineken have hired me as a freelance coach and I’ve been running workshops at the US Consulate in Amsterdam. I aim to grow my corporate coaching experience further and have submitted pitches to various other companies in The Netherlands. I find there’s not such a huge difference between coaching within a company and coaching privately – people are still people. The main challenge seems to lie in the length of time it takes to simply get accepted into a corporate coaching role. Here I’ve had to balance my expectations considerably and learn a little patience!

I’m a big believer in continuing my professional development. In 2010 I became an NLP Master Practitioner and in 2011 I will get MBTI certified. Continuing to learn and add extra techniques and approaches to my toolkit helps me to increase my value to clients. That’s good for them and it’s super rewarding for me too!

My two cents

If you’re planning on becoming a coach I would advise you to get coached yourself on what you really want, what you value most about a coaching career and what you will need to sacrifice along the way. Once you’ve got that clear, don’t give up! I’ve met with lots of entrepreneurs (I network like mad!) who’ve all said that it’s taken them 2-3 years before they would confidently say that they were financially successful.

I also suggest you make a plan, but be flexible in your planning. Eisenhower (US President 1953-1961) once said, “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable”. The process of making a well-thought-through plan will help you easily adapt to later changing situations or wrong assumptions.

Also, get creative with your marketing. I approached the local expat English-speaking radio station in Amsterdam and now pop in once a month to talk to them about various issues that their listeners might be facing. Get listed on as many online directories as you can. Figure out where your target audience hang out, physically and virtually, and make a point to be there. Attend networking events, submit articles to websites and e-zines read by your target audience, post reactions on their favourite blog posts. People will only find you and remember you if you’re regularly engaging with them about problems they may be facing.

And finally, relax into it. If it feels right, go with it. This can be applied to your coaching sessions too. Trust that the right next question will come and focus instead on really listening to your client. Having a few simple back-up questions like “What question should I be asking you right now?” will help you stay focused on the client and their goal.

Connect with Sarah Fraser through The Coaching Academy’s LinkedIn discussion group.