Feeling Stuck

[petelanger]

No move on! We really should not be thinking in terms of perfection in TAC. Give it a good 10 to 20 minutes and mark complete! Once you get to the daily challenges you may not be able to do more than one measure, and that’s fine! Mark complete and continue. You want to consistently show up every day and play, Don’t worry about completion/perfection!

[SCGobbler]

Bless ya heart and thank you!!! That truly was the motivation I needed.

[petelanger]

Absolutely @SCGobbler . You can search the Forums and you’ll find a wealth of feedback from others on the same topic. I could have gone on for several paragraphs to drive home the principle but it’s already been said and documented.

Try searching on the word “stuck” for example! Don’t hesitate to ask questions in the Forum though, no question is dumb!

[jumpinjeff]

@SCGobbler , @petelanger ; I wanted to hit something again that Pete nailed beautifully, “You want to consistently show up every day and play, Don’t worry about completion/perfection!” This is key and huge! ……my two cents…engagement is the M.O., don’t sacrifice engagement for the sake of completion or perfection. What ever it takes to keep you coming back with that fire for learning, do that. If you can stop at a high point (this bears repeating) do the same lesson maybe for three days. In the end though this practice will become limiting thus the variations of the Daily challenges. Balanced building as it were. There is a physical reality most people overlook when starting up with guitar: your fingers are incapable, at the get go, of doing that which your brain is sure you should be able to do. You could do the same lesson 1000 times but you would not be able to do it until your body catches up with your mind. It is why enagament in the begining is darn near equialent in importance as the content until you have developed the neural pathways and kinestethic awareness in your back, chest, shoulders, elbows, wrists and fingers. I like moving along…I have experienced and seen the benefit over time as well as with others who did it moving on. When I let go and started doing it the way Tony was hammering home I was not sure. Now I know. I got better faster. And now I know why! : )

[sjessen]

Thanks so much for this Pete! I too am “stuck”. I have a psychological block with not doing the chords to perfection before I continue. I will trust I’ll pick them up eventually. This is a totally new concept for me.

[petelanger]

@sjessen that is an adjustment to make! Most of us have been trained by our families, school teachers and bosses to be more or less perfectionists. Many instructors will want you to hold in place until you have “mastered” a certain skill. I had to unlearn my perfectionism too when I came to TAC.

I still remember like it was yesterday, I was in a wood-working class at 12 years of age. We were carving animals; only not with knives but using a rasp (kind of a file but with rough bumps that do the cutting). I had mine in the shape I wanted and I asked the instructor for sandpaper. But he said that I wasn’t ready for sandpaper yet. I needed to have my hippopotamus much more evenly smoothed out first. I couldn’t have any grooves on it that didn’t belong and it had to be uniformly smoothed out all over before I could move on to finishing. I could not go to step 3 until step 2 was perfectly done. In the coming weeks I had to go to him several more times and he would examine my work and then point out little scratches to work on. I felt like I was being held back from finishing my project. It turns out, I was.

[Skyman911]

Great point @petelanger. My first guitar teacher was like this. I had to perfect every single note, over and over again. It was not only discouraging, but it made me question why I wanted to try and play this complicated instrument. I dreaded going to practice and quit after almost a year. The TAC system if used to its full extent is based in science, giving your brain small chunks of information, then the small chunks come back again in a few months and its more familiar the second time, and third and so on. The brain is stimulated with the “small wins”, and those small wins keep you motivated and going. Your progress can also be tracked and measured reinforcing what you are learning.

[Skyman911]

Agree with petelanger. Keep moving on. Stagnation is the enemy of progress. You can always come back and do the 30 days to play again if you feel the need to. Don’t spend too much time on each lesson, but always do at least 10 minutes minimum.

[albert_d]

I affirm what everyone else has said. Forward Ho.

[Doc_Holliday]

I’m in my 30days as well… frankly I stumbled at the same place (boogie week1) but kept going as suggested, week2 was (for me) way easier as I’m comfortable playing chords, so as part of my daily 10mins routine, I go back every once in a while to playing that infamous boogie exercise lol! I know it by heart, don’t have to replay the lesson, just get the finger movement and alternate picking going… It somewhat reminds me of learning to play the piano with both hands.

[Bill1am]

Great advice here! I love what you say in your profile, you wanted to play one song, now you want to play all the songs! Same here! My taste in music has drastically expanded thanks to TAC. I picked up the guitar to play and sing one song, I am the Highway, by audioslave. Now I play that pretty well, and I’m obsessed with blues and learning fingerstyle and sending my wife love songs at work! I love this journey, and don’t forget to record yourself. If you stick with it, you will be stunned by your progress in a few months!

[Loraine]

@SCGobbler Welcome to TAC! Trust on the great advice being given to you above. I guess I can’t stress the importance of letting go of perfection like others mentioned that is one of the hardest things in life to learn is to let go of something that has been drilled in your head. I’d be in so much trouble if this required perfection, and I would’ve quit a long time ago. Trust in the process, create a habit of showing up every day, picking up your guitar, becoming familiar with your guitar, because it is an extension of yourself. You’ll be much happier with this mindset and you will actually get much further.

The only other thing I’d like to touch on is anytime you learn something new, it seems too challenging, or that it’ feels like you’re climbing a formidable mountain. climbing a mountain. Maybe the goal should be instead of reaching the peak you’re going to reach for the next shelf or ridge on the mountain. All of a sudden it feels like you can breathe, and you can focus on that small piece instead of the big picture. Just be kind to yourself, especially the first couple years, and I always tell everybody don’t quit before the magic happens. Because it will happen. You’ll reach a point where all of a sudden everything just clicks and you’re able to do things that you struggled with . There will always be new things to skills to learn and improvements to be had. You will never reach perfection. It’s impossible. Don’t try to control the outcome, so much, but still have quarterly goals to work towards. But, keep them realistic, do your part (practice), but don’t be too hard on yourself. If you don’t reach what you envision on your mind a lot of times we have to lower our expectations just a bit in order to allow allow the small (and sometimes big) wins to come through.