My guitar teacher made me feel like a beginner again, and it's amazing.
To become good at anything, you have to do what David Goggins calls “embracing the suck.”
The guitar is a difficult instrument to learn, not only because of the mental aspect of learning something new, but also physical barriers. Your wrist will hurt. Your fingertips will hurt. Your forearm will ache.
There’s no avoiding this. It’s not a sign that you’re not cut out for the guitar. Every player you’ve ever heard will have gone through this stage.
So you embrace the suck, make it out the other side, and consider yourself a decent player.
But then what?
You have two possible paths:
Stick with your comfort zone. This doesn’t mean never learning anything new, but you’ll generally be restricted to techniques, chords, and picking patterns that you’re familiar with.
Find new things to suck at, embrace them, and push through them.
Having first picked up the guitar as a child, being a guitar player became part of my identity. My ego then made me want to stay inside my comfort zone because I wanted to feel like I knew what I was doing.
The problem was although I started learning the guitar as a child, I didn’t go on a consistent learning journey. There were many years when I barely touched it, or I played but didn’t learn anything new. The result was predictable: I stagnated.
Eventually I realised that I needed to be an active learner again, and I found a teacher.
I’ll spare the finer details of how I chose him and how we decided what I should focus on, but we agreed on a fingerstyle arrangement.
The song my teacher assigned me with took me out of my comfort zone again.
Whereas I’d mostly learned songs that prescribed using my thumb on the 3 bass strings, anchoring my pinky to the guitar body and using fingers 1 to 3 for picking melodies, this song has me use my thumb only on the E and A strings, requiring me to use my pinky finger to pick as well.
My other hand was facing its own struggles too, with lots of chord movement.
Needless to say, I went right back to feeling like a beginner again. I was slow, plucking the wrong string, and couldn’t time the melody to save my life.
And you know what? I loved it.
It was so refreshing, and I was transported back to being a child and relishing the challenge. And of course, I quickly improved. Within minutes, my fingers were cooperating and I was identifying the best chord shapes to use to fret the notes cleanly and be well positioned to play the next sequence.
The great thing about feeling like a beginner again is that as soon as you start to make headway, you feel immense pride. An amazing sense of accomplishment that you did it.
I love that. I love the fact that no matter how good you get, how much experience under your belt, you can still find a way to challenge yourself and then enjoy the satisfaction of beating the challenge.
If you’re not there yet, and you’re just facing an uphill battle, stick at it.
Have you challenged yourself lately?