Guitar Lesson: No Such Thing as a One-Way Door

I’m learning to play guitar. Definitely a humbling experience. While I’ve gotten to the point of plucking a few melodies that I actually recognize (who knew Beethoven’s Ode To Joy would be fun played on a cheap folk guitar?), about half the few chords I play sound like dying cats.

As a child, my parents thought it would be a good idea for me to do something musical. So, I chose the trumpet. (I think I saw the instrument on TV somewhere.) I spent about five years going to trumpet lessons and at times pretending to practice so my mother wouldn’t nag me. Despite all my puckering in the mouthpiece, it just never sounded that good.

For many years, I’ve wished I’d learned to play the guitar as a kid instead. But there was an essential trap in my thinking. In my mind, deciding on something besides the guitar all those years ago was like a one-way door. Once I had gone through, I could never go back. The fact that I hadn’t learned guitar back then meant it would never happen. I could even think of all the reasons why: Kids learn to play instruments so much easier than adults, I could never hope to reach a high level of proficiency, I didn’t feel like I had time for lessons and practicing, and on and on from there.

The way out of the trap was to bring my thought process to a much lower level and make the stakes lower. Beginning guitar players can pluck a few strings in a way that sounds good, even if they hardly know what they’re doing. With that in mind, I just reframed my goal: I was going to try out the guitar for a few months. I made a deal with myself that I would keep going until I could play at least one song that I knew, and I would practice, but I wouldn’t feel too guilty if I missed a day here or there or if I had to keep my practicing short. Lani had an old folk guitar that wouldn’t cost much to restring. My parents bought me some guitar lessons as a holiday gift. Then I decided to reduce the pressure further by scheduling lessons every other week instead of every week. (Notice how each step made the stakes lower?)

So now I’ve been playing for about four months. I’ve been enjoying playing basic melodies much more than I expected. I’m a big fan of the “Worried Man Blues” (I can play the basic melody line, but I'm a very long way from the chord progression.) Mostly, I’ve been trying to show up to my lessons and keep making progress, no matter how slow. At the beginning I was worried about being the oldest beginning guitar player. But my teacher, Julie, told me that at least half her students are adults who always wanted to learn to play guitar but had never gotten around to it. Finally, my playing has had a big side benefit: I’ve noticed that it’s much easier to think through a problem I have in my regular consulting work, or even a post on this blog, after I’ve cleared my mind by practicing.

Some thoughts:

• Invest in the future: I have a friend, a psychologist, who believes that one of the most important steps in changing your life is being willing to invest in the future. By that, he means overcoming your own internal barriers in order to learn new things and have new experiences that will be useful down the road, even if you don’t know how. It’s a way to get out of the mode of thinking that life is a series of one-way doors. And it’s not hard to find stories about people have done the same thing, like the 60-something going back to graduate school, or the guy who left his career as a computer consultant to open a pizza parlor.
• Start with skills: For me, it’s always best to start by adding new skills. They can be directly helpful or they can give you a new perspective. But they are basic, tangible results. As long as you keep showing up, there’s a good chance you’ll know how to do something you didn’t before.

Next time, I’ll tackle something about the what neuroscience is showing about how people learn skills.