# Chaining Anchors — Full 4-MAT Presentation Script **Presenter:** Dustin **Total Time:** ~20 minutes (plus ~30 min exercise) **Has Demo:** Yes --- *Last updated: March 21, 2026 at 12:00 PM MT* ## 1. WHY — Motivation (~3-4 min) *Goal: Short motivational opener. Why should the audience care about chaining anchors? Pull them in emotionally before teaching anything.* --- Have you ever watched someone -- maybe a client, maybe yourself -- know exactly what they need to do, have every reason in the world to do it, and just... not do it? I am not talking about laziness. I am not talking about lack of information. I mean that thing where you are sitting there, staring at the thing you know would change your life, and your body just will not move. Like there is a wall of glass between you and the action. Everyone has been there, haven't they? > [STORY PLACEHOLDER: Tell a personal story about being stuck in procrastination or watching someone stuck. The story should be vivid and sensory-rich -- where were you, what were you doing instead of the thing, what did it feel like in your body? Build the tension of being trapped in that stuck state. The key moment: something shifted -- not willpower, not a pep talk, but something that moved you through a sequence of feelings until suddenly you were in motion. Do NOT name chaining anchors or any NLP technique. The story should naturally show that the gap between stuck and moving was too big to jump in one leap -- there were steps in between.] Here is what most people try to do. They try to jump straight from stuck to motivated. They read the book, they watch the video, they give themselves a pep talk. And maybe it works for a day. Maybe two. But then they are right back where they started, because the distance between where they are and where they want to be is just too far to cross in a single step. You're probably thinking about a specific time that happened to you right now, aren't you? And that's the most important thing to recognize -- because when you understand that the gap is too wide, you can **begin to see** why a single leap never works. People often find that real change does not happen in one giant jump. It happens in steps. One state leads naturally to the next, which leads to the next, until suddenly you are in motion. Now think about that as a coach. Your clients come to you stuck. They are procrastinating. They are frozen. They know what they want but they cannot get there. And if all you can offer them is "just do it" -- well, they have already tried that. What if instead, you could build a bridge? Not a single leap, but a series of stepping stones that carry them from stuck all the way to unstoppable -- automatically, neurologically, so that the next time they start to feel that stuck feeling, their brain just runs the sequence and they end up in motion? Whether you realize it now or see it during the demo, this changes everything about how you work with clients who are stuck. That is exactly what we are going to learn. It is called **chaining anchors**. And Gina says it might be her favorite NLP technique of all. --- ## 2. WHAT — Information (~15 min) *Goal: The main teaching block. What chaining anchors IS -- definition, when to use it, chain design criteria, the process. Pull heavily from Gina's transcripts.* --- ### What Chaining Anchors Is So what is chaining anchors? > "Chaining anchors could be one of my most favorite NLP techniques." To understand chaining anchors, I first need to distinguish it from collapsing anchors. Collapsing anchors is a simultaneous process -- I hold both anchors at the same time and they integrate. Chaining anchors is different. It is sequential. > "Whereas collapse anchors is a simultaneous anchoring process where you hold both fingers on the knuckle at the same time, chaining anchors is sequential, so you go from one to the next to the next to the next." That distinction matters. Simultaneous means two things happening at once. Sequential means linked, step by step by step. ### When to Use It The signal for chaining anchors is simple: the client is stuck. > "When you hear a client is stuck, so they're procrastinating or they're just stuck and they want to be motivated or they want to be moving and they just can't, they just can't get it done, then that should trigger in your mind chaining anchors." The classic example is procrastination to motivation. The client is sitting in procrastination and the desired state -- motivation -- is too far away to reach in a single jump. There is too much distance between those two states. That is when I need intermediate states to bridge the gap. > "Sometimes they're going to need a chain or a sequence of states, of intermediate states, in between to help bridge the gap between where they are in terms of procrastination to motivation." Typically a chain has four states: the present state, two intermediate states, and the end state. Four states maps neatly to four knuckles. If the client really struggles, I can add a fifth state, but two intermediate states is the sweet spot. > "Typically you're going to have a first state, a last state and two or three maximum intermediate states. I like two intermediate states and the reason why is because then you can do four knuckles and it's nice and neat and easy." ### Chain Design: The Criteria This is the most important part. Gina is emphatic about this: > "The most important thing in chaining anchors is the setup. You've got to design the chain. If you design the right chain, then all you got to do is install it. It's easy." So I take time before the process to get the design right. Here are the criteria for choosing intermediate states: **Toward or Away-From?** Each intermediate state is either a toward state or an away-from state. Toward states are states I like to move toward -- I am drawn to them: > "Towards states are states that we like to move towards. Things like curiosity, excitement, enthusiasm, desire, anticipation, inspiration, passion." Away-from states are states I want to get out of -- I am pushed away from them: > "Away from states are states we like to move away from. We don't like them. We don't want to be in them. States like frustration, irritation, annoyance, confusion, agitation." Either type can work as an intermediate state. However, there is one hard rule: > "The second to last state, the state right before motivation, must be a toward state." So if I have procrastination, irritation, enthusiasm, motivation -- that works. Irritation is away-from, but enthusiasm (the second to last) is toward. That chain pulls the person away from being stuck and then draws them toward the end state. **Each State Must Have Movement** This is a critical criterion. The intermediate states need to have an inherent sense of motion. > "Each state must have movement. That means there must be some sort of impetus to move. Boredom doesn't have a lot of movement. When you say I'm bored, you don't really picture movement. But agitation, for example, or irritation definitely has a bit of like nervous movement. Agitation literally means to shake. Or enthusiasm has movement, but peace and love don't really have movement." I am trying to get a person moving from a stuck state to an action state. So every link in the chain needs momentum. States like boredom, calm, or serenity -- those are fine states, but they do not carry movement. I need states with energy in them. **Sufficiently Intense** > "What will be a sufficiently intense state to move the chain on to the next state? It's got to be relatively intense." A mild, lukewarm state will not have enough power to pull the chain forward. Each state needs to be strong enough to create a handoff to the next one. **Self-Initiated** > "The state should be self initiated. The person needs to be able to do the state without you helping them or without somebody else having to be there." If the client can only access a state when someone else triggers it, that is not useful. The chain needs to fire on its own in the real world. **Not How They Already Do It** This is where it gets interesting. If I ask a client "What gets you off procrastination?" and they say "I get really frustrated," that is how they already do it -- and it is not working, or they would not be sitting in front of me. > "You might say to them, if you're procrastinating, how do you get off procrastination and they say, oh, I get really angry or I get really frustrated. That's how they currently do it. So that's not how we want them to do it. We want to do something different." **No Major Negative Emotions** > "We don't use major negative emotions like anger, sadness, fear, hurt, guilt or anxiety because that can install a whole bunch of crap that you don't even want to deal with." Minor away-from states like irritation or agitation are fine. But I stay away from the big, heavy negative emotions. Those are not stepping stones -- they are sinkholes. ### Designing the Chain With the Client So how does the actual design conversation go? I walk through it with the client, testing states as I go. > "What you want to do is you want to say to your client, okay, what would get you off procrastination? And they say maybe they get really frustrated. You don't want to do that because that's how they already do it. So you might say, what about irritation? Could that work? And they go, I don't know. You go, well, try it on. Could that work?" "Try it on" -- that is the key phrase. I have the client mentally step into each proposed state and feel whether it could actually move them. If it works, I write it down. If not, I try another. > "And then from that state, you want to say, okay, what moves you on from that state? So they might say, oh, I get inspired. But again, we don't want to do it the way they always do it. So we want to try something else." Once I have my chain -- say, procrastination to curiosity to enthusiasm to motivation -- I check it against all the criteria. Are the states toward or away-from? Is the second to last toward? Do they all have movement? Are they intense enough? Can the client self-initiate them? Is this different from how the client already does it? No major negative emotions? > "Make sure that that chain hits your criteria. Are they toward or away from? Yes. Is the second to last state towards? Yes. Do they have movement? Curiosity does and enthusiasm does. Are they intense? Yes. Can the client do it? Yes. It's not how they currently do it. And it's not a major negative emotion. So it meets all the criteria for chain design." If the answer to all of those is yes, I have a solid chain. I write it all down before I start the process. ### The 10-Step Process Now I have my chain designed. Here is how I actually install it. **Step 1: Get in rapport.** This is always a given. Nothing in NLP works without rapport. **Step 2: Tell the client what I am about to do.** I explain that this is a sequential anchoring process that will move them from their stuck state to their desired state. And because it involves touch, I ask permission. > "In a moment, I'm going to do a process called chaining anchors and explain that it's a sequential anchoring, chaining of anchors that will move them from procrastination to motivation. That will necessitate that I touch you. Is that okay?" **Step 3: Identify the present state and the desired end state.** Procrastination and motivation, or whatever the client's specific stuck and desired states are. **Step 4: Design the chain.** I have already covered this in detail -- the intermediate states, the criteria, the "try it on" conversation. **Step 5: Elicit and anchor each state separately.** This is where the stacking comes in. I assign each state to a specific knuckle -- decided ahead of time -- and then I stack each state five times on its knuckle. > "You're going to anchor procrastination, five separate times on the same knuckle. Procrastination, procrastination, procrastination, procrastination. So you have to stack all states to get a high intensity." For each instance, I use the standard state elicitation script: "Remember a time when you were totally procrastinating. Can you remember a specific time? As you go back to that time now, see what you saw, hear what you heard, and really feel the feeling of totally procrastinating." And critically -- I break state between each knuckle. When I change knuckles, I break state. > "Make sure that the subject is out of the previous state prior to anchoring the next one. If you're using the knuckles, when you change knuckles, you should be breaking states. So do you smell popcorn? Do you smell coffee or something like that?" Then I move to the next knuckle and stack the next state five times. And so on through all four (or five) states. One practical note: if the client cannot come up with five different instances of a state, I can reuse a particularly strong one. > "If the person can't come up with five different instances, you can use one of the more powerful ones multiple times." **Step 6: Test each anchor.** Before chaining anything together, I test each knuckle individually to make sure the state is strong enough. > "You would test procrastination, then you would break state, then you would test the intermediate state. And the way you test an anchor is you just fire it by tapping it. You don't hold it, you just tap it. And then you watch with sensory acuity to make sure the client recalls that state." I break state between each test so the states do not accidentally link. **Step 7: Chain the states together.** This is the actual chaining process. I get my fingers positioned over the four knuckles ahead of time so I do not fumble. > "You're going to chain them together so that as one peaks, the other one comes on. So you start by firing number one and holding it. And when you see them hit the peak of number one, you add knuckle number two with your next finger and then release one. And then when two comes to its peak, you add number three and then release number two. And then when that comes to its peak, you add number four and then release three and then you wait and then you release the final one." This is NOT collapsing anchors. Two states never peak at the same time. It is sequential -- I am adding the next anchor at the peak of the current one, then releasing the current one. I am linking the states together like links in a chain. > "This is not a collapse anchors because two states do not peak at the same time. This is sequential. You're adding the anchor at the peak. And so what you're doing is you're linking the four states together." **Step 8: Test the chain.** I break state, then fire only the first knuckle -- the procrastination anchor -- and watch what happens. If the chain is installed correctly, the client should move through all the states and end up in motivation. > "What you do is you just tap the procrastination knuckle and you should see the client go through the states and end up in motivation. You might see it physically, they might look like a little bit of a roller coaster or they might just go procrastination boom to motivation." What is happening at the neurological level is that all the states are now linked. The moment procrastination starts, the chain fires and runs through to motivation. > "Basically what's happening at the neurological level is all those things, all those steps are chained together. So the minute they start to procrastinate, they should end up in motivation." If the chain does not run cleanly on the first test, I can chain them again. That is perfectly normal. **Step 9: Ask the client.** After the chain tests well, I ask a simple question: > "How do you feel about procrastination?" In the demo, when Gina asked this, the client's response was "Why?" -- as in, why would I feel anything about procrastination? It just was not a thing anymore. **Step 10: Future pace.** I give the client a way to test this in their mind for the future. > "Can you think of a time in the future, which if that had happened in the past, you would have procrastinated and tell me what happens instead." This helps the client consciously rehearse the new automatic response, which strengthens the chain for real-world situations. ### Why This Technique Is So Important Gina is clear about the significance of chaining anchors: > "I cannot tell you how powerful chaining anchors is because really it is the most important anchoring technique you need to know how to do it and you will use it especially because procrastination is such a big problem." Every coach will encounter clients who are stuck. Procrastination is everywhere. This is the tool for that situation. And once the chain is installed, it runs automatically -- the client does not have to think about it, will it into existence, or give themselves a pep talk. The neurology does the work. --- ## 3. HOW — Exercise (placeholder) *Goal: Brief setup for the demo and exercise. Chaining anchors HAS a demo.* --- Alright, so now you know what chaining anchors is, how to design the chain, and the ten-step process. Before you practice, you are going to see it in action. Demo goes here. Now it is your turn. You are going to get into groups of 2. One of you will be the practitioner, the other the client. Then you will switch. You will have about 30 minutes to practice. A few things to keep in mind as you work through this: spend real time on chain design before you start anchoring anything. Make sure your intermediate states meet all the criteria. When you are stacking, get five solid instances on each knuckle. Break state between knuckles. And when you chain -- watch for the peak before you add the next anchor. Exercise goes here. --- ## 4. WHAT IF — Future Pace (placeholder) *Goal: Self-discovery. Three questions.* --- **1. What questions do you have?** **2. What did you learn?** **3. What do I need to know?** --- **Word Count:** 3,124 words | **Estimated Talk Time:** ~22 minutes (at ~140 words/min medium pace)