Create new emotional responses with ease.
If you are really going to attempt this on yourself, master ‘The Shake It Off’!
Literally, Physically, Shake It Off. Go Taylor Swift on yourself.
Shake it off from your palms, forearms, arms, head, body legs and feet and any other place you can possibly imagine.
If by then you have changed your mind about doing this pattern, good job. You are ready to do the pattern.
State of mind is tricky that way and this pattern is all about states. What is a ‘State of Mind’? (May I tell you later please? Thanks!)
Prerequisites to this pattern effectively:
- Two distinct states eg. Anger and disconnect/calm that can integrate effectively.
- Ability to break state elegantly. (shaking it off)
- Patience for integration to complete.
- A real life scenario to check if it worked.
For the purpose of making this easy for us to understand I will take Sam’s example I shared with you on my blog that I wrote about Scrambled Thoughts and gaining clarity of speech in 15 mins (read here).
- Two distinct states that can integrate effectively: For him two distinct states were the state in which he was talking (scrambled thoughts) and the states in which he was selecting, deselecting, sorting and singing/performing the songs.
- Ability to break state elegantly: For him an element of surprise worked beautifully when I asked him if he sang and if he would sing for me.
- Patience for integration to complete: A very subjective experience. I observed him to check when the work was done. In his case it took approximately 15 mins but it can take hours at times. If you want to know for yourself, make a mental note of The Shake It Off State because it might feel something similar or more intense or note the changes in physical sensations i.e. buzzing in the ears or tickling sensation in any part of your body.
- A real life scenario to check if it worked: This is very VERY important. For him, challenges were in an on-going situation so when he started forming sentences I knew it had worked and half an hour later it was clearer as he spoke more clearly and had more words in his sentences, fuller sentences. But for your specific challenge keep a real life situation in mind and post the pattern to do a test run in real time. But I will propose another way to do a test run while finishing the pattern below in the step by step description.
Collapse Anchor: Step by step
- Start with shaking it off.
- Anchor (kinesthetic) by touching a specific part of your body or simply pick one of the fingers in the right hand and gently touch with the thumb, while reliving the situation in the past. Eliciting the state of mind by going back in the situations in which you faced the difficulty and want more choices i.e. if you are working on getting over hesitation while making sales calls, see yourself making that call in the past and relive it, see what you saw, hear what you heard, think what you thought while making the call and relive that moment one last time. Please don’t use this pattern for extreme fear, phobia or traumatic situations. Release the touch. Let’s call this Anchor A.
- Do your shake it off again.
- Test Anchor A (simply touch the selected finger with the thumb). Memory and the feeling and the state of mind will come right back even without thinking about it. This means that the test was successful.
- Do your shake it off again.
- You may already know the choices that you want in the problem situation where you are stuck. Go into a situation where you have these resources available i.e. for the above example go through situations when you speak to someone comfortably and clearly, situations in which you feel a sense of authority and so on. Begin to replay those over and over again and whenever you are ready, pick a finger in the other hand and use the thumb of the same hand to anchor these resources. Do the anchoring right before your states are most intense. Stack as many states or choices as you need in this resource anchor and let go. Let’s call it anchor B.
- Do your shake it off again.
- Test Anchor B.
- Hold both anchors at once and let your brain do the rest. Follow your lead, let it all settle.
- Once the integration is complete. Let’s go of both anchors and do these tests – think about the past scenario that you thought of while anchoring the anchor A. Notice what’s different about you in the situation. Make a mental note. Go through a few similar scenarios that may have happened to you in the past. Whenever you are ready, think of a few similar situations that may happen in the future. Notice how you respond and make a mental note of all these differences.
- Now let’s do the ultimate test. Make the call. And close that deal.
A very simple yet powerful tool that can do wonders when we want more emotional choices in the way we react to a particular situation. At times a different choice is all we need to make the most of a situation, meeting, conversation or moment.
Do let me know in the comments below how you would use this. Hopefully that may inspire someone else to make a generative change in their life.
Disclaimer: I am a strong believer of human intelligence. And my philosophy is, “if a person could do it they would have done it (worked out of their challenge)”. And I promote Self Care over self help so if you are facing difficulty no matter how big or small. For a proper diagnosis consult a professional.