Senior Instructor at Halifax Guitar Lessons
You tell yourself that playing the guitar is very important to you.
In your mind you really want to be able to do this. You have wanted it for a very long time.
But here you are again, you haven’t practiced in a month or more, you can barely play things you learned only a few weeks ago, you feel like giving up.
Why bother, why continue to get better and then lose it, why waste your time and energy when you can’t seem to progress as fast as you think you should?
It seems useless to even bother trying anymore.
Busyness Of Life Keeps Taking You Off Track
Sounds like you are a very busy person. I can relate. I had a full-time job, a family of three kids, a hobby, and a business all at the same time.
And I still wanted to learn to play the guitar. And I did experience the same things you did above. I practiced faithfully for a while then stopped and repeated these many times.
There was always something that seemed to happen once I started to make some progress on the guitar and it would take me out of the habit and I stopped.
Work got busier, my wife got sick, a family member was ill and we had to travel to see them, I got sick or injured, etc.
Can busy people like us really learn how to play the guitar? It does not seem like it is possible does it.
Most People Are Not Convinced They Can Succeed At Learning Guitar
Having taught many people how to play the guitar I have concluded that most of you really want to learn how to play.
Without this first piece in place you are not going to get far. Learning to play the guitar is not the easiest thing in the world so it has to be relatively important to you to succeed or you will drop quickly.
For some people learning how to play the guitar is a way for them to have fun, to relieve stress and at the same time achieve something meaningful and decide to go for it.
They more successful students I have had usually believe they can learn and do not allow setbacks or difficulties to stop them. They see the progress they are making and do not expect miracles.
Those that are less successful are usually people who do not believe they can learn to play properly even after they see progress and tend to downplay everything they achieve.
They are usually comparing themselves against professional guitar players and instead of focusing on their victories see all their flaws.
Make A Serious Commitment And Focus On The Positives
The secret is to decide once and for all that you are going to learn how to play the guitar and then stick with your decision and follow through until the end.
It really is that simple, however it is not usually that easy for everyone to commit to it. But there are ways to help you make the commitment and keep it.
First of all, you do not want to make this commitment to your life’s or family’s detriment of course, but everyone has things in their lives that are not going to matter in 5 or 10 years.
The problem is we tend to value certain things more than our commitment to learning the guitar. The best and typically easiest way to tip the scales in guitar’s favor is to increase the value attached to it.
You can do that in several ways but the best way is to make a weekly commitment to learning by taking guitar lessons. This works wonders because you raise the value of learning guitar immediately.
This is because you are now allocating blocks of your life to learning but more importantly it raises your financial commitment which is typically how we measure the value we put on something.
If you stick to that commitment you will definitely be a very good guitar player in 5 or 10 years.
What You Can Do To Make This Commitment Stick
There are many ways to help make your commitment to learning the guitar stick.
For example, you could go out and buy a really nice and higher end guitar. They cost more and will raise the value of learning to play it, much higher than a cheap entry level guitar.
That’s a good start but you can do much more. One of the best ways you can increase your commitment and accountability to learning the guitar is to take guitar lessons.
The financial commitment is going to help raise the value of learning guitar and if you stick to learning and taking lessons you will progress.
Even better yet, you should take guitar lessons from a professional guitar teacher who is highly trained. This will then take the value you invested in lessons and transfer it to more results sooner.
Seeing progress on a regular basis helps your confidence which definitely also helps you stick with your commitment to learning to play the guitar.