Spent a weekend in early October hanging out with Tom and Kim at their rapport and anchoring bootcamp. And I was talking in email with my friend Cris Neckar afterward where we were talking about the large number of pre-existing anchors that exist within someone’s already vast consciousness.
Cris’s comment was that using pre-existing material for anchors is “sort of like exploiting around DEP” – basically, the idea of a “Return-to-libc” exploit. You have pre-existing functions that perform the task that you’re hoping to do.
This reminded me of something that Tom did to me during the weekend. Tom walked up to me this weekend and said:
“So, you’re a hypnotist right? You’ve been in trance before, you know what that feels like, don’t you?” And, as soon as I think about it (which I have to do to understand his question), he achors it.
Tom then proceeded to spend the rest of the weekend enjoying firing off the trance anchor at opportune times.
So, in our email conversation, Cris and I were talking about some good elicitations to anchor that many people would already have:
“Hey… remember that scene from Say Anything where John Cusack was standing outside with the boom-box on his head? How romantic was that? What was the most romantic movie scene you remember… one that just made your heart melt?”
Or: “As you wish” (for anyone who has seen the Princess Bride).
Or: “What’s the song that gets you most in the mood?”
In other words, the “Return-to-Barry-White” exploit.
Note: I’m well aware that this isn’t at all new. Neither’s ret2libc, really. But it’s a great example that hopefully drives some new ideas and new thinking.
