We all have habits that shape our daily routines and personal identities. But with busyness of our everyday lives, it’s easy to drift away and fall into routines or behaviours that aren’t serving us. So, How do you increase your effectiveness in building new habits? And how do you train yourself to stick to them? Anchoring your desired changes to pre-existing habits will set you up for more success.
When pursuing a change in your life whether it is big or small, it is important to be consistent in your efforts. However, most of the times, we reason ourselves into elaborate excuses, grow inconsistent, and give into instant impulses. As a result, we enter into non-resourceful states that trigger our resistance to change.
Change doesn’t happen overnight. And same holds true for changing habits and behaviours. It’s nearly impossible to succeed on pure will power. Because at some point, you will need more than just motivation to keep you going. With an anchor, however, you will have something to come back to, to make the changes as part of your routine.
Practice isn’t the thing you do once you are good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good.— Malcolm Gladwell
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So, What is anchoring?
An anchor is a stimulus that creates a response in either you or in another person. Every time someone says or does something to you that’s an anchor. It is a connection, an association that we make to something else. And Anchoring happens when an action or event acts as a stimulus to generate a response.
We all develop such associations when aspects of daily life trigger an emotion, behaviour, or a psychological state. Whether it’s a certain smell that relieves you of anxiety or a certain outfit that gives you a sense of comfort, a song that evokes a past memory, we all develop anchors automatically throughout our lives.
Science behind anchoring habits
According to neuroscience, When we have an emotional experience, if specific stimulus is either introduced or applied, a neurological connection is naturally established between the emotional state and the stimulus. We each have a set of anchors, that we’ve picked up through our lives. Some that have been deliberately trained into us, and some of them we develop unconsciously.
Furthermore, our brains build a strong network of neurones to support our current states, habits and behaviours. The more you do something, the stronger and more efficient the connect becomes. Like for instance, your current habits are already built into your life, and have patterns of behaviours that are strengthened over years. So, when it comes to building new habits, anchoring your new habits with your existing ones will make it easier to stick with them and make them a part of your routine.
In other words, our anchors give us a frame of reference to refer back to or look forward to as the reasons why we repeat certain behaviours and habits. Also, there are a kind of anchors that can really hold us back in life, and there are anchors that can help us access positive states of mind.
The benefits of anchoring
When you use anchors deliberately, they can become a tool to help you build habits, perform better, increase your focus and help you reach your goals. They are like using resource states from past, and link that state to situations in the present or the future when you really need it. Anchors further help you to:
Reduce friction.
One of the reason why we have trouble in shifting to productive habits and mindset is that we let inertia gain power over us. We resist the prospect of starting with new routines that take us out of our comfort zone. Anchoring on the other hand helps you begin right away by inserting new behaviours into the middle of your current routines. And this process can be repeated to chain habits together each one acting as the cue for the next.
Access resourceful states
Anchors help accessing resourceful stages in any situation. You can create specific triggers to tap into right emotional states rather than react automatically. When you identify which states you want to change, you can chain yourself to positive anchors. For instance, when you are stepping yourself up for doing something important, instead of anchoring yourself in nervousness, you could probably choose to be confident or excited.
Shift to positive experiences
Because anchors are experientially reinforced states, it is something positive or negative that provides comfort, security or stability in times of transition, turbulence or doubt. Through anchoring, you can condition responses in different ways than previous. You can change any negative associations to a positive one and vice versus. By anchoring yourself into the similar experience you need, you can choose which habits you want to break and which new habits you want to build.
Regulate your emotions
Since our emotions change and some can stick around for a long time, unhelpful emotions can interfere with our habit formation. Anchoring can help you manage your emotions so that you can respond more appropriately. For instance, if you want to attain a more calm state of mind, during a difficult conversation, recall a situation where you felt more compassionate calm and positive.
Different types of anchors
- Visual anchors — Sometimes, certain visual elements like sight might trigger a certain mental state. For instance, an object, an image that you look at, like a picture, a photo, or a specific colour. Visual anchors also can be something you visualise in your mind, such as a place you visited or a person.
- Kinaesthetic anchors—Touch or movement evokes a specific mental state. These might be anything, like making a fist with your hands, or a compassionate touch or a pat on the back. Kinaesthetic anchors are easiest to use because you can do them anywhere at any time.
- Auditory anchors include sounds that pull us back to a certain state of mind or evoke a memory. Listening to different sounds and mantras is probably the most commonly used auditory anchor to improve focus, attention and concentration.
- Olfactory anchors refer to the things that give us our sense of smell. Scents or fragrances are olfactory anchors used to create a sense of calmness and relieve you of stresses.
- Gustatory anchors—taste creates a specific mental state.
What you need to consider when creating habit anchors
To anchor in your habits, there are five keys to getting anchoring to work. If you ever happen to try to set an anchor and it doesn’t work, it’s because one or more of these keys are missing. Tad James created an useful acronym to help you remember these five keys: I-TURN
Intensity of the Experience. Anchors are known to work better when they are associated with intense emotions or associated states of mind. The stronger the state, the easier it is to anchor your behaviour or a habit. These can include happiness, motivation, comfort or other positive emotions. Make sure that you have a strong state before you attempt to anchor it.
Timing of the Anchor. To set an anchor, it is important to make a note of its precise timing. Since states follow a kind of curve pattern— they get stronger, reach a peak, and fade away again. The ideal time to apply an anchor is just before your experience reaches the highest point of experience. Time your stimulus or the trigger to associate with the state just before it peaks.
Uniqueness of the Anchor. To better reinforce your anchor, it can be helpful if the stimulus is unique, rather than something that happens all the time. Using stimuli that are common may not be effective because it can result in random reflexes that will minimise over time.
Replicability of the stimuli. When you anchor yourself in stimuli that are easily replicable, an anchor is strongly embedded into your neurological process. When you set an anchor, you are going to want to replicate that stimulus any time you need it. The trigger needs to be exactly the same each time you use it in order to work. So anchor yourself in a stimuli that’s easy to replicate. This includes location, speed, frequency, duration.
Number of times. Our brains make associations in two ways. Just one instance can be enough to associate a state with a stimulus, if the state is intense enough. But if the state is not so intense, repetition is the way to condition in the association. For instance, to strengthen your new habit, stack it up on existing habit and the more you practice, the more it will lead you to automatically make it a part of your set routine.
So, how do you use these anchors to build a more resourceful state?
Elicit a desired resourceful state
Make a list of typical situations that you find challenging-it may be keeping up with your new habits, it may be changing a behaviour, or facing a difficult situation. What resource state would it be useful to you to have—confidence, calmness, determination, curiosity. List out each situation, and for each one, write down how you actually feel in that situation, and how you would ideally choose to feel to be able to perform better.
For instance, if you are anchoring yourself towards being more confident, you can elicit a state from memory that is more vivid and associated. And if you believe that there is never been a time when you’ve exposed the desired state, you can create one through visualisation. In case of the above instance, want to be more confident, picture yourself responding differently to challenging situations with your head held high, radiating self-assurance.
Choose the anchor you want to use.
Anchor yourself in a specific stimulus. It might be an auditory mantras, or a phrase you repeat to yourself or one that gets you pumped up. Start building the association between the sound, and the feeling of confidence. Choose a suitable anchor, that you can easily replicate any time you want to go into this state. You can stack the habits better if you choose an anchor that’s meaningful to you.
Start small and repeat the process
Every time you reach that state of confidence, play the sound, and repeat. The key to transforming your habits is to start small and build from there. Don’t try to anchor big. Shifting your routine in ways you might not be ready for can be unrealistic. Anchor new resourceful states in old routines, and make incremental changes to make a progress towards a bigger goal. Build it as a habit by repeating it again the next time you are feeling confident.
Questions for self reflection
How often do you use habit anchoring to build new habits?
What are your anchor habits and have they been effective to you?
How can you use your existing habits as anchors?
Which stimulus creates a stronger response—visual, touch, smell, taste or sound?
What are some of your strategies to be consistent with your new habits?
To Conclude,
Anchors power us up to a more energised and productive state to solve a problem or to meet a goal. When you proactively start to use anchors, they help you to get into the right frame of mind and thereby act as a mental or psychological anchor for success. Since anchoring works differently for everyone, it is useful to understand what types of anchors to use and when. It is also good to experiment and create your very own anchors that truly resonate with you to use in your day-to-day life.
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