When we’re doing NLP training, there’s a process that comes into quite a few different NLP interventions we teach called ‘anchoring.’ This is where you get yourself into a positive emotional state and later can activate that state by using an external trigger. Normally, what happens is we have our client remember a time when they felt a good feeling and at the time of feeling it they might press their middle knuckle so the brain starts to create a connection between that feeling of touching your knuckle and the feeling of feeling that good emotional state. The two things become wired together. It means that later you can press your knuckle it will take you back into the same positive emotion. Very often when I’m doing this with people either on training or in a therapeutic setting, I ask “What positive emotions would you like to be able to access quickly and easily at the touch of the button?”
Control comes up quite a lot.
I’ve got a couple of issues with the fact that people want to feel in control. Have you noticed that if you feel happy, you might acknowledge that happiness. If you feel in love, you might acknowledge the feeling of being in love but has anyone ever felt the feeling of being in control and thought “I feel so in control right now”?
I’ve got a couple of issues with the fact that people want to feel in control. Have you noticed that if you feel happy, you might acknowledge that happiness. If you feel in love, you might acknowledge the feeling of being in love but has anyone ever felt the feeling of being in control and thought “I feel so in control right now”?
I think control is something you only notice when you haven’t got it. People notice the feeling of being out of control more than they notice the feeling of being in control. Surely the feeling of being in control is you don’t feel anything in particular. You just feel okay. I’m not entirely sure that there’s an emotional state that goes with control. Maybe there’s a state of mind such as calm but then the emotion that goes with that would be a sense of peace and calm. For me, it’s more about what you do rather than a particular feeling that you have in that moment. I’m sure a lot of people in particular, the hypochondriacs felt out of control when we got hit by a virus last year (C19). The good news is that for most healthy people the virus did come and go and did not leave any lasting effects. The bad news is that for those who are more vulnerable from a health perspective or because they were elderly there was a number of fatalities associated with them. The media are good at putting the frighteners on people. I don’t read the newspapers for that very reason. I find them depressing so I only know it kind of the more factual side of the news. I don’t indulge in the other side of it, some people do and if what you want is a little bit more in control, then one of the best things that I can recommend that you do is to cut the level of media that you are exposing yourself to and that might even include something on the more social side like Facebook, for example.
To help yourself start to feel more in control, make some contingency plans. By contingency plans, I’m not necessarily saying to you let’s just put a positive layer of fluff over the top of all of this. Having contingency plans in place can help stop us from feeling like we do not have a grip on the situations that might be coming in our direction and it helps us to remember that we are resourceful human beings. You must remember that you’ve been through challenging times before if you are feeling out of control because of something that’s going on in your life or the world right now, then remember that there have been times in the past when human beings overall have proven to be resourceful, robust, strong creatures who problem solve and figure things out and you are amongst that race of beings. Everything is going to be alright.