TAC Family Forums

You need to REFRAME!

So you have recognized that you are dissatisfied because your expectations about your progress are not being met.

There are a few things wrong with that:
How would you know how long it should take to progress according to your own standard? You have never learned guitar before so you can only compare it to other skills. Most of those, like touch typing, surfing, driving, sewing, knitting are not nearly as complex as playing guitar. They can be learned in a shorter time because there are only a few components to learning them. Guitar is different, hundreds of little movements in the hands required to get it right. This overloads your brain quickly. Progress will be slow in the beginning, but it picks up and surprisingly it will happen without you realizing it. You struggle and struggle and then suddenly at some point when you aren’t expecting it, you can play that chord, mimic that rhythm, hit the right string without looking, or remember those notes!

The next is not everybody learns how to play guitar at the same pace. I am sure that my progress is at the low end of the spectrum. I’ve been playing for a year but still would not perform for anyone but myself. I have moments where I sound pretty good, those last about 3 seconds, lol! Maybe 10 -15 seconds if it’s an easy lick. But I am so much better than I was a year ago

Change your perspective, you have to reframe what a successful session is. Take something away from each time you are involved with a daily challenge or a skill course! Any small thing will do. Maybe you understood clearly what Tony was doing and mentally you had it, but your fingers can’t quite do it yet. Maybe you did a section a bit better than yesterday or last time. Maybe you showed up and gave it your best.

I find it isn’t hard to pick a win every time I play guitar. You have heard the old saying: “How do you eat and elephant? One bite at a time. Becoming a proficient guitar player is a good sized elephant! Take small a enough bite so your brain isn’t overloaded. Tony sets this up for you. He doesn’t ask you to sit down and play Alice’s Restaurant. He has you do challenges that take 5 – 15 seconds. Then at times he’ll ask you to try to piece 2 or more of those together, but it’s still a win if you can do them individually.

Try very hard to not focus on what you can’t do yet. Reframe your thinking, uncover what you have been blind to, and notice what you can do now!