The Circle of Excellence is a basic self-anchoring process originally developed by Dr. John Grinder co-creator of NLP. Circle of Excellence can be used to elicit, create and stabalise desired states.

1. Identify the external triggers for unresourceful state. These could be visual, auditory, tactile or smell or taste stimuli.

2. Build a powerful resource state using the circle of excellence technique. To create a circle of excellence, draw an imaginary circle on the floor or mark a circle in chalk large enough to step into.

3. Remember experiences where you felt powerful, creative, composed, or any resourceful state where you felt balanced and centred.

4. Step into the circle only as quickly or slowly as you remember and re-access the resourceful state through your inner senses. ie. See what you saw through your own eyes within the actual experience, hear the sounds and language used, and get in touch with your posture, breathing and emotions when inside the desirable resource memory. Note that an observer would see changes in your physiology such as better posture, deeper breathing, and skin colour changes. If there is no noticeable change In your physiology the resource state is either poorly accessed or low intensity. If it is low intensity, choose another resource state that is more powerful.

5. Repeat step 4. with an additional resource state, continuing to add resource states One at a time. When you have enough resources, you step automatically into a very powerful state on entering the circle which is truly now a circle of excellence.

6. Recall a trigger for the unresourceful state as you step into the circle of excellence. Repeat process with each old trigger. Or ask your partner to play role the various triggers (gestures, words, voice tones etc) as you step into the circle of excellence.

Reference for Circle of Excellence Process:

Circle of Excellence developed by John Grinder

Collingwood, J.J.P., Collingwood, C.R.J. (2001). The NLP Field Guide; Part 1. A reference manual of Practitioner level patterns.