How Good Could You Get on Guitar/Bass, If You Weren’t Afraid To Fail?
Everybody tries to avoid failure because they think that it’s bad.
You probably don’t remember that there was a time in your life when you couldn’t walk. The baby version of you, crawled. And before that there was a time when you couldn’t crawl. All of a sudden you started crawling and your parents were, “YEAH, look at the baby!
And you started crawling and all of a sudden, one day you’d grab a hold of the coffee table and you stood up for about two seconds and you turned loose and you fell back down. And you stood up again and you fell back down, you stood up again and this process went through and then all of a sudden one day you could stand up and then you took a step and you fell back down. You tried to take another step, and, all of sudden one day you started taking steps and you went from one side of the room to the other and your parents were hollering and screaming, and clapping and it was a good thing.
You could tell by the expressions on their face that they were just… Man! They were excited! And you were excited too because now you could motivate them a lot faster. Well, that sequencing of events was the brain learning from falling. Interesting that falling and failure begin with the same letter. Now, if you had gotten mad when you fell, then you probably wouldn’t have tried to stand up anymore. But if you looked at the fall and the sequence, as just something that is; it is what it is. It becomes what you make of it.
And you looked at it as opportunity to learn; which you did as a baby, okay? Every baby does. And you got right back up regardless of failing, you got right back up and tried it again and you kept doing it again.
And then all of a sudden, one day you began to walk. How good could you get on your instrument (or life) if you weren’t afraid to fail?
Here's some of the common reasons we may (or have ) quit learning guitar:
Self-doubt: Feeling that becoming a great guitar player is unachievable, especially when facing learning challenges.
Lack of confidence: Being intimidated by others' progress or talent can be discouraging.
Lack of fun: Struggling with scales and poor instruction can make practice feel tedious and unenjoyable.
Forgetting the results: Losing sight of the benefits and goals of learning to play can lead to a loss of motivation.
Poor planning: Without a clear vision or plan, progress can feel unattainable.
Our brain does not learn from success. The brain learns from failure, and it’s not the failure that it learns from, it’s the intense scrutiny after the failure to chunk whatever you’re trying to do into four or five different parts and figure out what part of the sequence was out of order or didn’t work right and then to make a decisive change in the way you were going to do that and then fire the circuit again. Do it again, do it again, do it again regardless of result, keep doing it and keep refining it and it’s the intense scrutiny after the act that builds what’s called a myelin sheath, it insulates that circuit with a living protein called myelin. The more you refine and fire the circuit over and over again; eventually you get what you want.
All great performers have two things in common: Uncanny emotional control and a greater tolerance for failure and setback than everyone else because they realize that even if they won an event, they know, even though they won, that there were several things that they could have done better and they have a very hard time savoring victory; because they know within their hearts and within their minds that they could do better. And that’s why there are so few really great performers. Most people just want to get by.
STOP IT!
Most people are trying not to fail; so they never get better.
To overcome these obstacles, it's important to set realistic goals, find enjoyable ways to practice, and remember why you started learning in the first place. It's also helpful to ensure your guitar is properly set up to facilitate easier learning.
