[Music] thank you so much it's really really interesting to me that for every single speaker that you've seen today including me as soon as we walked out of stage without anyone ever explicitly telling you to you started applauding and then it's also really interesting to me that every single speaker including me today walking out on stage after you applauded said thank you again without anyone explicitly telling us to it's almost like that's a conditioned response now conditioned response means that a certain trigger or certain stimulus in this case me walking out on stage elicits a certain cue or a certain response in you we meet these responses everywhere in life all the time I think one of the best examples that I could think of is when you walk down the streets and a certain smell comes in - you know it takes you right back to childhood did you ever experience that is that something you know about I think it is right it's a cue response system today I'll talk about where we find these cue response systems how they work and more importantly how we can make these cue response systems work for ourselves now before we get to that I think it might be interesting and fun to actually do a quick demonstration concerning cue response systems so let's take a quick look I think we're gonna have to have somebody join us up on stage and that we're with the puck so fair enough somebody like in the very very back is that right who's that oh he's too needy what is fine let's get him up on stage give a round of applause it's gonna be a long way it'll be a long way get him up on stage long long way fantastic it'll take a little while until he's okay he's coming from all the way in the back at some point during the talk I will be teaching you how to elicit cue response systems yourself at will we will get to that in a moment I will also talk about how they work and the neurological processes behind cue response systems so let's see if that dude is already walking out I think he's coming yes we have an ice rink in the backstage and as soon as he comes to give around the floss fantastic how are you I'm team on it's a pleasure to meet you are you good fantastic Tony you're good amazing did you enjoy the talk so far yes and if you really inspiring and did you have a good date way amazing Tony can you do me a favor and maybe think back to a moment from last week or the last few days that made you happy something that made you feel really good fantastic that is already good enough it's good enough for me now Tony being a marketer come up to the front being a marketer you already obviously know about conditioning don't you you might I'll explain it to you I'm not sure if you realize but every time since you've been on stage and you smiled or said yes I touched your arm that you notice this yeah it's ranged isn't it put your hand out Tony put your hand out just realize what happens in your minds that your mind go blank when we go back up there and you memory might be linked to the spot in your minds it's realized what happens when we go up your arm and we touch that arm can you feel that happiness coming back in you does it feel good it's a conditioned response it's a neurological response the cool thing Tony is that you can do this yourself as well would you like me to show you extend your hands perfect move your own hand up there go ahead and move it slowly up there and just realized it when you touch that arm it comes right back to you doesn't it just touch that arm how does that feel it feels weird but good enough yeah I think that's good enough give me a round of applause get you seated thank you Tony fantastic I think that was good for a quick demonstration thank you Tony now I'm seeing some of you thinking what the heck did we just see what just happens what we just did was a very very quick and very brief demonstration of conditioned response in action the first time I got into investigating Commission response was when I was 12 years old and I saw Hypno's to show being played at a holiday park and to me seeing that hypnosis show was the most magical thing I had ever seen and it was the moment that I decide that I wanted to become a hypnotist or Mentalist or a magician I went on that path I went to write some people to learn about hypnosis or mentalism or mind-reading and everybody thought that at 12 years old I was too young to do that so I did what any twelve-year-old would do I started teaching myself and I copied exactly what I saw on stage and took it from there I think there was more luck involved than actual skill but I made it through at 16 years old I went to New Zealand I found a mentor he helped me write my very first book on hypnosis which got me in touch with people all around the world I then got to be awarded the title of best European Mentalist last year and finally got to fulfil my dream to play in Las Vegas for the very first time last year as well and I was amazing was really cool now I'm not gonna talk to you about the drive for the inspiration or the love that I have for that and it is a love it's in fact so much of a life that I have my logo which stands for the love for magic tattooed onto my wrist because it's the one thing I love most in life because I think there's people that will talk about inspiration way better than I but I will talk to you about one tool that I have used that has done me well over the last 11 years time and time again which is anchoring or conditioned response I think the best definition I think if you have anchoring or conditioned response would be an anchor refers to any specific hue that elicits a predictable response a predictable response means that it repeats itself now if it were to ask some of you if you feel like having a coffee right now some of you might say yes some of you might say no 10 minutes from now this might be different it's not a predictable response it's not conditioned but a person that's maybe hugely afraid of spiders as soon as they sees the cue the stimulus of a spider they're pretty response will predictably be fear that's what it means for it to be a predictable or a conditioned response when I first encountered this concept I thought great it's good for me to know that there's specific cues that trigger specific responses but what good does it if I can't control those cues I will let you in on two secrets about conditioning the first one is that if you know the correct trigger you can elicit any response in yourself or others that you wish and some of you already know this I'm sure there must be people in the audience right now maybe wearing a special piece of clothing that makes you feel sexy and it makes you therefore feel confidence or maybe some of you put on a piece of jewelry that you consider to be a lucky charm I put on my lucky socks they've pucks on them because I love pucks and they make me feel really happy and all these things really are are certain cues that trigger a specific response in you doesn't make sense so you already know that you can trigger these responses the second secret and this is where it gets really cool is that you can set up create new trigger response systems at will again are you thinking that's great but how do we do that now before we get into the how that works let's talk real quickly about why that works and it works due to to mental slides if you want two slides of minds that your brain is capable of doing the first one of which being pattern recognition pattern recognition will get to the Damone pattern recognition means that your brain is able to learn from past experiences and then to apply this learn behavior to new similar situations basically what this means is that pattern recognition helps us not make the same mistakes twice there's a reason for this it's an evolutionary reason when you think about maybe your caveman ancestors running into a ferocious cat and they're barely escaping with the lives it would now be good for the brain to make the leap that when next time they enter a similar situation they meet a similar cats they don't want to go cuddle it but they apply the learned knowledge and realize that it's not a good idea to go near that's what pattern recognition is it's also how anchoring or conditioning works in anchoring and conditioning we enter a situation we get a specific Q and this Q will elicit a specific response q could be anything me saying something it could be a smell it could be a jewelry you put on the list the response and depending on if that situation plays out well for you positive effect next time round you get a strengthened positive response to the same or a similar view or if it plays out negatively next time you get a reduced or weakened negative response to the clue effectively driving you away from similar situations doesn't make sense I think it does yes it's also the reason that at some point only imagining an anchor is enough and we'll get to that the second slide of mind that our brain is capable of doing is called action energy it's research and I think that's one of the most fascinating pieces of research ever done by dr. David Hamilton dr. David Hamilton had a group of people over the course of several weeks practice a very simple piano song once he was sure that these people had really hammered that song in there he took them into his laboratory and he took a brain scan while these people were playing their simple set of nuts that's a boring part fascinating part happened right after because he took another brain scan this time however asking the people to only imagine that they were playing the same thing the really cool thing is that if you held up both brain scans next to each other just from looking at them there was no way to distinguish which brain scan was taken when they actually played the song and which brain scan was taken when the male imagined playing the song what this tells us is that now our brain there's no essential difference between having an actual experience or vividly imagining it and that's exactly what will enable us to create anchors for ourselves let's get to that again how do we do that there's a simple plan I devised for you a five-step anchoring plan to doing this yourself the first step that we will always want to take when we set up a new Q response system for ourselves is to decide on the stimulus and the state the state could be the emotion that you want to anchor maybe happiness or confidence or focus or concentration for the sake of demonstration we will do this together in a moment let's say that the cue the trigger that we will use is going to be this placing your pump and your forefinger together like this do it with me place your thumb and forefinger together fantastic like you did it before amazing technique love it very well done this the response to this state are the response to this trigger will be I think happiness is a good one that's generally accepted to be a good state of mind to be in isn't it I think that will be good happiness will be the response the next step you will want to take is to vividly imagine this state and the simplest way I found of doing that is to found two or three better three memories where that's where that state is prominent we just did that when we had our volunteer on stage with one single memory two or three memories are going to be better so if you're not already thinking about it please start finding two or three memories where you felt happy that could be really prominent that could be fresh that could be spectacular or it could be something as simple as that you really liked your sandwich this morning it could be something very straightforward but wherever the emotion of happiness is prominent that's gonna be good for this step number three is going to be to step inside this daydream this is where you're going to utilize your brain's ability to imitate a real experience I'll walk you through the script in a moment once you're there and once by stepping inside your daydream you pump that emotion up to as height as high as you possibly can in that very moments you will apply your stimulus essentially training yourself to respond to this stimulus with the state that you want to respond that way all that's left afterwards us to test use and enjoy your anchor will do the together so if you're ready if you found two or three memories to do this with let's go close your eyes for me I'm not gonna punch you just close your eyes for a moan trust me on this okay fantastic take your first memory and this could be the stronger memory or it could be the first one that comes up in your mind and when you have that then focus on the visual aspect of that memory what do you see where are you who's with you and try and go into the details a little bit in your mind and from there shift your focus to the auditive aspect of that memory listen to what you heard words environmental sounds your own heartbeat breathing and from there shifted again to what you smell the might have been good smells or bad smells prominent smells subtle smells and when you're already added go to what you could taste and maybe there was no specific taste in your mind right now and if that's the case then be aware of that as well and from there one more time shift your focus which you could feel just the physical feeling position of your body exhaustion energy touch temperature clothing any of those things will do and from their shift your focus to what you could feel inside that emotion notice where in your body it starts and allow it to grow stronger with every breath you take give it a color if you can and make the color brighter make it move through your body quicker and quicker allow it to grow into your hands your fingers your legs into your toes up into the tips of your hairs into your face if you want to smile you can smile it's absolutely fine and in a moment I'm going to count from three to zero and each number that I counted like you to let that emotion grow stronger and stronger as strongly as you possibly can and once we are at zero do your anchor movement thumbs and forefingers for three seconds then release and keep your eyes closed we will do one more memory afterwards there will be three allow that memory to go stronger and stronger allowed to curse through your body leavitt smile to spread onto your face there will be two making it grow warmer and warmer heart and heart throughout your body that'll be one get ready to press and zerah press your anchor together for three seconds two one release close your eyes and let go fantastic you're doing amazingly well I can see so many of you smiling right now it looks really good we'll go to the second memory we'll go through this one a little more quickly because you already know what's about to happen second memory take a look at the visual aspect of your memory what did you see where are you day or night details people around your location then go to what you heard may be words being spoken heartbeat breathing and what you smells good smells bad smells subtle smells intrusive smells and from there once again shift to what you could taste and if there's no specific taste and be aware of that as well and once you've done all those things and you reconstructed your memory bit by bit once you've done all those things go to what you felt in your body just a physical feeling physical sensation of temperature movement position and once you've got that once again notice where in your body that emotion of happiness is located notice where it starts and allowed to grow stronger with each moment that you're listening to me with each breath that you take and allowing it to curse through your body more and more get ready in a moment I'm again going to count from 3 to 0 and again with each number that you hear me count aloud that emotion to grow higher and higher once we arrive at 0 press your thumbs and your forefinger together once more to condition yourself to that stimulus and that response that'll be 3 allow that memory to grow stronger and stronger through your body into every aspect of your body and being that'll be to allowed to grow more and more and 1 and 0 put your hands together fantastic that's looking good 3 2 1 and release and let go and you open your eyes and shake it off fantastic it was already worth it to me to just do this for seeing so many of you smile really cool very well done we're missing one last step and by the way if you want to do this at home for any other emotion than happiness focus or concentration on the TAT X website or TEDx free slant website we have provided this very script for you to use and enjoy you can do this with other people you can do this with yourself you can set more than one single anchor the last thing we need to do is to test and use the anchor so let's do a quick test for the anchor maybe all of you let your minds go blank and give yourself a scaling from 1 to 10 as where you would hurry rate your happiness right now maybe one means I'm just about to leave and 10 means I'm really really very happy let your mind go blank it might be 3 or 4 might be somewhere in the neutral I'm I'm happy everyday kind of vibe so give yourselves rating for that how happy I right now and then in a moment we're going to use the anchor together from 3 to 0 in a moment we'll use this together and at 0 you will press your anchor together you'll do this for 10 seconds and you will do your very best to bring that emotion of happiness up again and we will test it against where you are right now so if you have a rating in mind close your eyes get ready to do your anchor this is the test I will count from 3 to 0 on the kind of zero put your anchor together you get 10 seconds to bring that emotion up as highly as you can that'll be 3 2 1 press your anchor together and 10 seconds 9 allow that emotion to growl growl growl growl 7 6 5 allowed to grow more and more throughout your body 4 3 2 1 let release fantastically done the more often you do this the stronger it will actually get and just test yourself against that check again on a scale from one to ten how happy are you and if you are after doing your hanker even only one or two or three points happier raise your hand for me I want to see this who feels happier and that's quite a lot of you and that's for you is how you create an emotion or happiness literally at the push of a button thank you very much glad to be with you thank you [Applause] [Music]