An anchor, as you know, is an object that helps seagoing ships to dock and stay in place.
In NLP (from English: Neuro-linguistic programming) an anchor is an object, a stimulus, a word, a phrase, a sound or a memory that determines a thought, an action and influences behavior. The influence created determines you to stop or to follow a certain directive represented by that stimulus. For example, the brand of the car your father drives can cause you, when you see it on the street, memories related to him, from your childhood.A car that you saw on a celebrity and it conveyed wealth to you, every time you see that car, wealth will come to mind and you will consider that only a very rich man, such as that man, can afford such a car, and you, perhaps, will never own it.
Anchoring is a continuous process. It manifests itself every day. Taking place at an unconscious level (the irrational part, determined by instincts) this process can have both a positive, useful effect and a negative, useless one. How can it have such diametrically opposed effects? Well, let’s see how anchoring manifests.
Money and human psychology
“If you don’t have that car, you’re not successful!” “If you don’t learn programming, you won’t have money.” “If you’re not a businessman, you won’t have financial independence.” All of these are anchors in your financial life. All of these statements can come from people around you. Their role is to determine an aspect. The meaning is unique, as you can see. It’s a conditioning and if you haven’t fulfilled it, you won’t have what you want. However, there is no single recipe for financial success. You can be a successful person, a financially independent person if you draw up a plan and establish who you want to be and how you want to be.
Once you respect a conditioning, you will reach a ceiling. If you analyze your situation and find that you are not part of a rich family, as it is said that a person must be in order to be rich, you have stopped on the way. The anchor has dropped and you end up not working hard to develop yourself, to grow in your career and to evolve financially, because you have found that you do not meet that single condition. If you are 30 years old and you do not have any money in your retirement savings account, and the conditioning said that: if you reach 30 years old and do not have any money in your account, you will not be able to survive to retirement age, you should not stop and do nothing about it, but on the contrary. At such a moment you must realize that now you must act to avoid ending up in that situation.
How can an anchor determine you to act against yourself?
I have seen how. It can stop you in your tracks and you end up believing that it is impossible to achieve anything anymore. Also, in the example with the car, you may believe that if you don’t own that car you won’t be happy or you want to be like the star who drives it and you buy it. On credit. You end up getting into debt just to anchor yourself in that illusion of happiness and fulfillment.
The person in question thinks that if he owns that car, people will consider him a successful man, they will give him more confidence and he will end up having that status. Well, in this way, an anchor with a useless, negative effect is created, since the person enters the mirage of success and pays for that car, much more than its actual value, because it is purchased on credit. His budget goes into a abyss, and success is only at the level of impression. The unconscious has determined an unhealthy action from a financial point of view. In conclusion, a useless action.
What positive anchors should we take?
“If you have financial knowledge, then your old age will be a happy one, free from worries about tomorrow and you can even help your grandchildren.” This statement is again an anchor. An anchor, this time, useful, productive. Why?
A positive anchor is one that is consistent with your goals, your needs, and that drives you to develop and evolve.
This way, you program your brain to absorb all the financial information necessary to develop skills in that area. You will subsequently acquire all the skills necessary to filter information in this area. (Financial information can be transmitted for a specific purpose, especially to influence action regarding the sale of loans, insurance, or stock market trading, but you will learn to identify it.) Once you have gained experience, you will put the information provided into practice and you will achieve prosperity.
Anyone who is an expert in this field knows that before investing or saving, you must have a goal, or an anchor. You cling to it and it leads you to achieve what you set out to do. You follow the news in that field, you constantly inform yourself and have discussions with specialists. Then you plan to achieve your goal. Planning includes strategies, changes, durations, amounts, evaluations and the adoption of new strategies if necessary.
The defining criterion for concluding whether or not you have achieved financial literacy lies in the ability to realize whether the desired goals are achievable. Here you imply the possibilities of the financial market and the economy in general and you particularize.
Such an anchoring is a valid, useful one.
Psychological implications in advertisements
Most advertisements or sellers appeal to anchoring. An object – anchor – is promoted in order to buy it. This object is presented as the guarantor of a desired outcome: “driving this car denotes success. Only successful people own this car”. Now, your brain is programmed to continue the statement in the direction of the anchor: “if I buy the car, I will show that I am successful, I will denote credibility, I will have the respect and appreciation of others; by attracting the attention of more people, I will be able to find my business partners”. And you end up buying the car.
In such an anchor, money will not stand in the way of completing the transaction because there is a personal loan that will be approved immediately. This is how “credibility” begins to appear!
It is normal for sellers to reinforce the idea, from the beginning, that nothing will stand in the way of your success, not even the fact that you have no money. As you can see, the bank already accepts your credit, because you want to buy that car that denotes credibility and appreciation!
Smooth road in the awareness of purchasing actions!
Success in the awareness of money!
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