How to Coach Yourself and Others Coaching With Meta Communication | Page 15

8. Practice Anchoring
Emotions are associative; they get linked to particular stimuli, which
can later revive that emotion, even if there’s no logical connection
between the stimulus itself and the emotion.
Lots of people react very emotionally to certain old songs, because
they automatically connect these songs to a special moment in their
life. There are places, sounds, … that make us feel very good or
sad, depending on which experiences we associate them with. If
you had a truly positive experience with an Italian girl many years
ago, you may suddenly realize that you have become a lover of all
things Italian and maybe not even be able to remember or explain
why.
In exactly the same way, you can “anchor” strong emotions, that is:
mark them and in this way link them to a touch, to a specific motion,
to a painting, to the starlit sky … in fact, to anything at all.


The stronger the emotion felt when the anchor is set,
the stronger the response will be when the anchor is
“fired” later.



The more special and specific the anchor, the longer it
will retain its function.

Remember Jung’s Archetypes? People share a numb