How to STOP the 11 Guitar Lies Halting Your Progress • Acoustic Tuesday 264

You told yourself you’d be a guitar player this year. Have you met your goals and aspirations? Or are you guilty of telling yourself one of these 11 lies? Watch now to learn how to find progress again.

Every year, thousands of people pick up the guitar. They dream of playing songs, solos, and licks that sounds like their guitar heroes. Every year, though, people give up on playing guitar or don’t touch it for months on end.

In this episode, we’ll talk about what’s going on when this happens. I’ve found that it most of this boils down to 11 common lies we tell ourselves. It can be something as small as saying you don’t have “enough” time or as large as gatekeeping yourself.

Whatever lie you tell yourself, I’ll show you how to move beyond your pattern of self sabotage. This all sounds like a self-help seminar. In some ways, it is. But I stand by examining your obstacles and roadblocks to progress on guitar.

Whether you’ve just started playing guitar or you’ve played for decades, there’s plenty to learn in this episode, so be sure to watch the whole way through. You never know what you’ll find!

Submit your guitarsenal at the link below!
https://airtable.com/shrpAVAi9HUGVUW8b

Featured in this episode…

  • Emerald City Guitars
  • Martin Guitars
  • Dead Horses
  • Adam Grant
  • Mary Spender
  • Normans Rare Guitars

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  1. This hit me where it counts. Indeed I can count countless lies that limit my success.
    A friend of mine cannot afford a guitar so he spent $25 on a cigar box guitar and is having fun until the money comes for the guitar.

  2. Great show regarding 11 Lies…I tell a lot of them for sure. Another one was “my fingers are too short to reach very far”. Awareness is the key and I can stand to live with some discomfort!

  3. Hi Tony
    Really enjoyed the acoustic Tuesday review on 11 lies we tell yourselves and need to get away from. In my past working days (I’m now retired), Three mantras my business coaches stressed all the time were these:
    1. “Don’t spend all your time getting ready to get ready, to be successful”
    2. “Can you show up ready to be no place else??”
    3. My favourite “are you willing to do what the goal requires?”
    All these help in silencing those inner negative voices that hold us all back sometimes
    Really enjoyed this week’s topic

    Jack

  4. Wow. Tony, for me, this was your most enlightening and freeing episode EVER! Fantastic, especially at the end of the Eleven Lies when you slowed way down and got real, telling us that there’s nobody out there telling us these things and all we have to do is stop. Pow, smack right up side the head! You really reached a lot of crap that’s keeping me from playing. I’m tagging it to watch over and over again. Thank you.

  5. Excellent Acoustic Tuesday. Ive made a lot of those excuses and going to use the tips to be more consistent. Not going to beat myself up with the fretboard wizard. Stop trying for perfection, get a good basic understanding of the wizard and I can go through it again a few months down the road. Love Dons comments, im retired too. Going to start playing in the morning. You are fresher in the morning.

  6. Hi Tony:

    Thanks for the great tips on Lies. One you didn’t mention that my mind wants to bring up is “I don’t have any Rhythm.” All the other ones have also talked to me and I have dismissed them as any time my mind comes up with something negative I turn it into a Positive.

    I took up playing guitar in 2015; buy December of 2021 I still wanted to play guitar but needed to find someone who could teach me. I found you on You Tube and watched your introduction to TAC. I decided to join your TAC Family and have played everyday (forgot to sign in to your site one time) I now tell people that I have been playing guitar since the end of December 2021.

    I have had so many moments when I genuinely celebrated understanding something I had heard or a terminology that finally came through to me. It has been a great Joy in my life. Example learning what a “note” was. I am building my foundation not rushing and and almost done with the “Thirty days to play” I have also signed up for your FBW.

    I have lived a long life and your inspiration, couching and style have been so beneficial to my life’s Journey. I have a long story like everyone in life. I live my life everyday (guitar included) by repeating a quote from Michael Singer: “The purpose of my day is to let go of my Blockages and evolve Spiritually.” This fits very well for my learning and loving guitar.

    Thanks for all you do for everyone.

    John Jennings

  7. I have huge hands and a Taylor guitar, no excuses here. I split my practice into learning theory and learning songs that I love. No one Evers hears me play, so I don’t care if I meet anyones standards to what “good” is. However, I stay clear of videos of 9 year olds playing like SRV. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy for them but it just messes with my head.

  8. “I can’t sing a lick!” This is not a lie at all (my wife will attest). This truth has been an enormous hurdle in my progress over 40 years (I “believe” this to be true). You mentioned that guitar playing is not genetic, but voice is it seems. A good voice paves the way for your journey; it is truly an interstate. A bad voice makes for a very rocky road that reaches a dead end.

  9. Another guitar lie I have told myself and I’ve heard many other people say is, the hands/fingers lie. You know my hands are to big, small, fingers are to short , fat etc.

  10. It is funny how living with dare I say, even embracing the discomfort, seems to be an amazing way to progress. And I am not talking about a little bit, I am saying an exponential progression. I had a chance last week to play at a live open mic in Eugene OR, it was my first live open mic in front of people I didn’t know. I percieved it one way as the player but others who were listening perceived it another way. I am learning to let go of my perception and continue to do the practice that will improve my playing and I will say it is totally different than “rehearsal”. I am talking about the repetitions done in our Daily Challenges on TAC. I was grateful to play the open mic with another TAC member who I met at the Acoustic Life Festivals. I am slowly wrapping my mind around that I may also be able to perform as well as play. Play is what I like to do…so far. Performing is the discomfort that I endure to become the better player. I will continue to do it because it is moving me toward my goals. It was so cool to go to a city where I didn’t know a soul and remember that there was a TAC member there. We met and a whole city opened up as a direct result of connecting through music. Thanks Tony for creating this wonderful music world. Thanks for providing the exercises necessary for me to progress. Thanks for sharing the mindset I can embrace to get to my goals: live in the discomfort. I am on it!

    1. Congratulations, @jumpinjeff
      Thank you for sharing your inspiring story.
      ‘Very happy for you!
      Happy playing, Cherie!

  11. Telling myself, “I can’t learn that because it’s got ____ (fill in the blank) barre chord (or other chord shape) that my fingers just WON’T do…”
    Bull.