Anchors, not just your typical dead weight.

This ain’t no anchor from your rich uncle’s yacht.

An ‘anchor’ is basically any kind of stimuli that triggers a response, whether on the conscious or other than conscious level (or subconscious if you will) level. The smell of fresh baked bread may cause you to return to the time when grandma was baking, a perfume reminding you of a love since passed, a tone of voice that instantly irritates you, a touch that reminds you of pleasant times, the sight of something that returns you to arguments passed, (a kick to the groin to elicit pain perhaps?), these are all examples of states or emotions anchored to something we can perceive through any one of our sensory modalities (sight, touch, smell, taste, and sound for the layman).

What people don’t realize is that we are constantly surrounded by a tremendous amount of stacking anchors that have the effect of maintaining your patterns of living. Cant get any work done in a certain chair? A certain room where you just spend a lot of wasted time? When we speak to old friends after several years intervening, we often feel as though we pick up where we leave off. We are following patterns of behavior. Just as that may be well and merry the more insidious ones are the ones that surround you, the rooms you live in, the furniture, perhaps even the keyboard you type on, we constantly and easily make associations. Its all frighteningly easy. It becomes even more-so with my experiences with hypnotism. Just telling a person only once to re-enter a trance instantly with the snap of the fingers and later doing so innocuously while they are midword and they drop back down almost as if turned off was, to me early in my hypnotic career, startlingly powerful. Even that aside, a couple days ago while I was opening a package of plastic knives I entered into a short, unpleasant exchange with someone else. The next time I returned to that package the next day, all the unpleasant sensations returned instantly without me even consciously considering the source. It happened again later before I decided to evaporate the anchor.

The point once again is, we create these associations, naturally, unconsciously, and powerfully. We do not have to be aware of them, to experience the impact.

All of which was powerfully reminded to me this morning.

The past few days I have ‘rediscovered’ chess, once again playing and enjoying it. The last time I did so was around the end of high school, in the same room, on the same computer I’m typing with now. Just as then, I would play to the point of distraction and neglect other responsibilities. I recognize now that I should have taken it for the warning sign it was. This morning I received my usual stern reprimand from my dad that there was something he wanted that I didn’t accomplish, and he tagged on ‘You said you’ve been changing but…’. This never fails to irritate me severely and so I retorted with a generic peevish rejoinder. For all my skills, there is no more powerful influence to undermine and ruin my morning than my dad, he’s almost supernatural gifted. Then again he was right. A habit I’ve been developing has been to step outside my own perspective to truly gain an understanding of another, and then to move outside of that to focus as dispassionately as I can on the perspectives. Having become a habit, I do this mostly reflexively, and to my displeasure, recounting the past few days I noticed straying from the path of purpose. This morning I re-aligned myself, gave up chess once more (which felt oddly liberating), and forged ahead with my day pushing past the sloth, eroding confidence etc. Once more I cannot overstate the strength that one can draw from aligning their actions with what they want to do. By fulfilling goals, you are positively reinforcing yourself, and by taking time to enjoy the rewards of the present, you find satisfaction. When you find happiness from your accomplishments, it feeds into itself, causing you to be more effective, productive, and clear-minded. By the middle of the day I felt intensely stronger, more content, and more powerful than I have in weeks, because I discovered my wrong behavior and am taking steps to correct it.

5 days until I meet Alyssa Milano and 7 days until my surgery. I’ve got a great week ahead.
The Rapport Series will continue as time permits.