“Most people are prisoners, thinking only about the future or living in the past. They are not in the present, and the present is where everything begins.” … Carlos Santana
The Number 1 Trick To Staying Motivated On the Guitar
Without doubt one of the most common issues I come across with people trying to play the guitar is that they have lost their motivation; here’s a sample email…
“Hey mike I realize you get thousands of emails I really want to play the guitar I just can’t get started I have so little time to practice can you give me any motivation”
The truth is I can’t motivate anyone (long term), external motivation always results in a short term burst of activity that quickly fades as soon as the first distraction appears on the horizon.
The trick is to really get to the bottom of the problem:
fact 1: only internally motivated people succeed on guitar
fact 2: the reason why people are not motivated is largely due to previous unsuccessful attempts to learn
fact 3: everyone has exactly the same amount of time; it’s just that some people make different choices as to how they spend their time
How to overcome loss of motivation and become a successful effective and efficient player right NOW!!!
Realize that the whole process of successful learning comes down to the formation of habits; and if our previous attempts have been unsuccessful we need to form NEW successful habits!
Start by working out why you are not getting the results you want; get a piece of paper out and make notes, ask yourself what is going wrong…
What do you want to achieve?
Do you want to learn songs, play faster, learn more chords, a new lick… zero in on what you want to learn.
Let’s say you want to learn songs, you may have 12 songs that you can play sections of but there isn’t one complete song that you can play successfully from start to finish… there’s your cause of loss of motivation right there!
Absolutely no one wants to keep banging their head up against a brick wall… the feedback from previous attempts to learn songs is that we just are not any good at playing songs; in reality we have fallen victim to the habit of successfully learning how to NOT play songs.
Time to turn that around!
Step 1: Pick three songs that you really want to play.
Step 2: record these (on your phone or computer anything that will record sound – you are not concerned with sound quality at this stage only feedback); don’t edit your performance you want an accurate representation of where you are at with these songs.
Step 3: listen back to the recordings and make notes on what you need to work on; these recordings will provide you with the feedback you need to overcome the learning/performance blocks.
Action plan: Take the first song and listen for the first stumbling block…
Maybe you forgot the chords; in that case the remedy is to put the guitar down and practice writing the chord progression out without the guitar; if you forgot the chord shapes try writing the chord shapes out without the guitar.
If you fumbled the lead riff or guitar solo, work with a metronome at a slower tempo, identify the exact section of the riff where the problem occurs.
The trick in every situation is BABY STEPS!
Take everything apart, break the project down into very small bite size pieces, slow everything down so that your fingers learn how to accurately perform the task flawlessly every time.
That’s how you form the habit of successful learning.
By Mike P Hayes
Mike Hayes develops systems and products to help you succeed in your guitar playing. Find out more about how to learn guitar fast with his popular free ecourse, available at: