Charisma Chronicles

I often get asked to drink. Probably because I’m 21 and probably because a lot of people use it as a social tool. Lets be honest, how often do you get together with your friends and the drinks come out. Right away you all start sipping away and bonding over a few drinks to loosen yourselves up. Ill make it clear that there is nothing wrong with this. What becomes wrong is the process your mind goes through when this occurs and that process becoming excessively needing of your attention.

So by now your probably confused. Let me explain to you psychological anchoring. Say you have a stressful job and everyday you come home stressed out because your boss just yelled at you for 2 hours straight. You are really on edge and need to unwind. You take a glass, throw some ice in it and pour a few ounces of scotch (no offense scotch, you’ve put plenty o hair on me chest). You take a sip and immediately feel it sooth you as you recline in your chair and sink back into relaxation. mmm. Scotch. That’s what your all thinking right? Well you’ve just been through the process of psychological anchoring. You are now anchoring the feelings of relaxation, unwinding and relief from the bottle of scotch. Whats even worse is now you see it as a solution to your stress. Instead of telling your boss how you feel or where to go you are just drinking when you get home. You have successfully psychologically anchored an unhealthy habit.

The reason I bring this up is because psychological anchoring, wether you know about it or not, is absolutley key to living a healthy lifestyle. Being weary of how you deal with your stress, how you deal with your happyness and how you attach those emotions to your needs, desires and activities is incredibly important. As an example I recently read an article in Psychology today that outlined the impact of marketing on our lives. Most people say that they tune out ads and the daily bashing we get from marketers. On average we are exposed to about 3000 ads per day. Seriously. Just TRY not to be affected by that amount of bombardment. What was interesting about this article is how people subconsciously link emotions and feelings with the names and logos of companies. For instance, when someone mentioned the name “Disney” to an individual they described feelings of happyness, joy and adventure. When someone looked at a Coca-Cola symbol they imagined excitement, fulfilment and fun. Its unreal how much of our brain capacity is being occupied by products and images.

With this in mind we can start to realize the true potential and power of psychological anchoring, emotional value elicitation and association. While I won’t get into the emotional value elicitation and association just yet I will talk about how you can use psychological anchoring to IMPROVE your lifestyle. Next time you go to the gym, reward yourself with something that is also healthy. For me, its a protein shake. The thought of the thick chocolatey goodness of a sexy protein shake makes me want to go to the gym and push my body so it uses every last gram of protein in that shake. Some people it may be a smoothie, others an extra break at work or some a well-deserved day at the spa after a long week of training.

So next time you think of doing something unhealthy like drinking excessively, eating an entire cake or tub of ben and jerries, being lazy or just generally lacking motivation, think of how your achoring your feelings to these activities and how you can improve upon that process. Oh, and next time I decline an invitation to drink its not because I don’t appreciate your company, its probably because I appreciate your company even more than to need alcohal.

Maleszyk out.