What is your anchor story?
You don't have to post it or share it with anyone unless you want to, but it's essential that you know your anchor story or stories and that you tell them to yourself often.
What is an anchor story? When I was going to Weight Watchers 11 years ago in 2009. I attended the weekly meetings to hear tips and strategies from the Leader. The Leader told us that losing weight may seem difficult and we may not think we can not do it .. but you can. She said just use your anchor stories to help remind you that we were capable of doing very difficult things. She told us to think about a diffucult struggle we overcame or a difficult goal that we succeeded at. And tell ourselves that if we did that, then we can do this. Those previous successes are our anchor stories and our anchor stories help us be successful with other difficult goals, like losing 60 pounds.
Here's my favorite anchor story: 23 days after I graduated high school I arrived at Marine Corps Bootcamp at Parris Island, SC. I was 17 years old.
About halfway through our 13 weeks of Bootcamp our three drill instructors took our platoon of 75 recruits to middle of the woods. There was a tall tower. I think it was about 60 feet high. Taller than the trees. There were 2 other drill instructors standing on a platform on the tower rigged up with ropes .. it was rappel gear. There was another drill instructor on the ground holding a rope that was connected to the drill instructor on top of the tower"s platform. All of a sudden the drill instructor on the platform yells.."AAAAHHH MARINE CORPS! And then jumped off that 60 foot tower into a free fall. The ropes caught her in mid fall and she rappelled the rest of the way down to ground.
We were all impressed .. that is until our drill instructors told us that each of us would have to jump off that tower too. Most of us were scared to death.
One by one each recruit climbed that tower. Our drill instructors rigged each recruit into the rappel gear and each recruit yelled AAAAHHHH Marine Corps! And jumped!
When it was my turn, I climbed the tower and stood on the platform. I am afraid of heights and I was standing on a small platform with 3 other people looking DOWN at pine trees! I was frozen with fear.
My drill instructor, Sergeant Rohr, told me to jump.
I just stood there.
She said"Jump recruit.".
My eyes were tearing up. I said "Ma'am, the recruit can't jump ma'am. The recruit is scared of heights ma'am".
She came up me and whispered in my ear and asked "Where are you from recruit?".
I answered thru tears "the recruit is from Hickory, Mississippi ma'am".
She whispered "Recruit if you don't jump off this tower, we are going to send you back to Hickory Mississippi".
I closed my eyes. I prayed. I cried. I yelled AAAHHH Marine Corps. And then I jumped.
