Have you ever heard a song on the radio that instantly transports you back to a specific time in your life or a particular memory? Or smelled a certain scent that reminds you of someone or something and the feelings that you felt at the time? In NLP we call these associations ‘anchors’.

Your mind naturally associates and connects things together, with scent being a particularly powerful way of connecting feelings and memories. This usually happens unconsciously but we can also learn to do this consciously and deliberately. It’s always good to have a resourceful state that you can access whenever you need or want to feel better.

To create positive feelings, first think of a time when you were really strong, happy, and felt great! Really associate into the memory, imagine looking through your own eyes, make it bigger, brighter, see what you saw, hear what you heard, feel what you felt. Turn EVERYTHING up and make the experience as intense as you can. When you are at the peak of the moment, press your finger and thumb together or press a knuckle or acupressure point. Hold it for as long as the feeling is strong, then release when the memory and feeling begins to fade. Do this a few times with different great memories in the same pressure point to get a really FAB strong anchor!

Test how you feel when you press the anchor point, to see for yourself how intense the good feelings can be when you fire off the anchor. This is a great way to use your brain’s natural ability for association for all sorts of things. Try creating different anchors for different