Anchoring, Triggers and Consistency
A month into 2021 and I am yet to take up any New Year’s Resolutions and also a little un-enthused to draw up goals. Truth be told I have not been feeling my usual motivation to kickstart the year. Recently however, I gained great energy and inspiration from working with a client around what consistency looks like to her.
A simple question “What will be your default mode in order to keep you on track”? opened a very interesting conversation around automatic behaviours and triggers.
Often, we are well aware of what might trigger us and our usual reaction or subsequent automatic negative thought. E.g. feeling of guilt for not controlling our temper or having junk food to cheer ourselves up. But rarely do we consider that we can in fact choose our reactions.
As I have discussed previously, often these automatic behaviours are hardwired in us. This begs the question, why not short circuit to a new behaviour?
A simple concept that may be just as simple in practice is the researched Neurolinguistic Programming technique of Anchoring. Anchoring is where we think of a triggering behaviour or situation and visualise how we would rather react or a new behaviour we would like to adopt instead. Next we associate this with a physical gesture (this can be anything and doesn’t have to be obvious) E.g. pressing our thumb and index finger together. Then the next time we are confronted with this trigger we take a few moments to physically anchor ourselves by doing our chosen gesture and then practicing the new desired behaviour.
It can be useful also to think of the acronym T.A.C.T when practicing this exercise.
Tune in- to what happened and how you were feeling. (Triggers and response)
Acknowledge- and interpret the meaning of triggers and your response at that time.(Include all factors at play)
Choose Response- you would prefer to have taken.
Take Action- plan to make sure you act as you would like to in the future.
Here is what I came up with to help keep me on track and consistent daily:
T: Re-assessed my triggers-Tiredness, morning time, perceived stress.
A: Tiredness and irritability led to poor time management and feelings of unease.
C: Improved energy and a more relaxed approach to my ‘to do’ list. My new anchors are taking 6 deep breaths if I am feeling stressed and immediately acknowledging what’s stressing me.
T: I will habit stack onto existing behaviours to make sure I turn my lights off and go to bed by 11.30pm. When I get into bed I will turn my phone off (new behaviour) before I read my book for twenty minutes (existing behaviour). Also separately deciding not to have more than 3 things on my morning ‘to do’ list.
Very simple and a little mundane I know but bear in mind yours will probably be entirely different and likely a little more interesting!
So, instead of New Years’ resolutions why not do a spring clean and brush up on our existing behaviours?!
I reckon for the year we have all had we may need to scale back on resolutions and scale up on self-compassion and positive self-care strategies!
I would love to hear how you get on with this so feel free to DM me or send me an email :)