Miscellaneous psychological impediments -- had 'em? How'd you get past them?

[Charlie Bernstein]

Don't think. Play.

[Gordon Currie]

I see a lot of evidence of low organization skills, something I've dealt with over the years. I had to put a lot of effort into learning ways to slot things into productive time chunks.

I've experienced most of this at some point or another, and in my experience, you have to COMMIT yourself to the time and mental energy needed to counteract these poisonous life-wasters and joy-stealers.

It's not an easy job, and you'll never be 100% done, but it is TOTALLY WORTH IT if you decide to go for it.

Originally Posted by funkapus

1. Guilt over all the other stuff I need to do, blocking me from practice.

I don't personally understand or experience guilt, but this also looks like avoidance behavior. You need (more than most people) to create a specific time to practice and play.

Originally Posted by funkapus

2. Inability to make the rest of my life structured enough to create a reserved time slot for practicing.

The way you phrase this indicates that it is out of your control. Learned helplessness. Nothing could be further from the truth.

If you truly cannot - in your current state - carve out ONE HOUR per week, and guard it as if your life depended on it (which is in many senses absolutely true), then you might seek professional help to learn some good psychological techniques to strengthen your abilities.

Originally Posted by funkapus

3. Feeling overwhelmed by how much there is out there that I'd like to learn.

One of my all time guitar heroes said that once they realized they would never know anything about music (as it is effectively infinite), they stopped worrying about learning it ALL and learned what they wanted and needed.

Originally Posted by funkapus

4. Difficulty choosing some things to work on over others.

OK, been there. For now, forget about playing lap steel, or 12-string, or bass guitar, or [fill in many many blanks]. You may be dealing with paralysis of choice. Most times just another variation on avoidance.

Choose one thing for right now. Doesn't matter which one (for now), you just need to choose and then act on it.

How do you get through the grocery store with so many choices? Use the same approach here. "No, I'm not going to buy the Brazilian coo coo nuts THIS week, maybe another week. This week I'm buying brown rice."

Originally Posted by funkapus

5. Stress because I am getting old.

Getting old has two major aspects - things you can do something about, and things you cannot.

Pro tip - only spend time and energy on the first aspect. The second one can (and does) drive many people insane.

Originally Posted by funkapus

6. I can't stop comparing myself to others.

One of the hardest bad habits to change. While honest self-assessment is powerful, most of us confuse it with comparison and ranking. Whether you are 'better' or 'worse' than someone else will never help you progress in anything.

Frankly, I see a lot of my own issues from younger times in your post.

I needed to do a lot of things to counteract and relearn - and counseling and organization training were critical in this. I learned that I could not lift myself up by my bootstraps, but I needed outside help to move me out of a hole I was living in. For YEARS.

[Horseflesh]

Originally Posted by funkapus

So I'm wondering if anyone else out there has struggled with and overcome any of the things I'm about to mention -- and if so, how you did it.

Everything you listed looked sadly all too familiar to me. How did I get past it? Still working on it! Sometimes studying the guitar is extremely frustrating. And getting in the headspace for quality practice is always kind of hard for me. I actually started a "help, thinking about quitting" thread here the other day because I was so down.

I didn't quit, but I still have bad days and bad habits to overcome.

Part of the problem is actually forums like this, at least for me. While there are a lot of friendly people on forums, it makes it all too easy to compare yourself to other people. I feel like the worst guitarist on this forum; it's probably literally true. That's ... no fun, even if I just check in to look at peoples' opinions on guitar strings. So I need to cut down on this kind of activity, even though I sure benefit from the knowledge here too.

The best and most common advice I have read is to "find the fun" in it all and stop worrying so much. Stop comparing yourself to others, stop being hard on yourself, try to get into a child-like state where it's easy to be pleased with modest accomplishments... Or even, none at all. How to do that still eludes me; I am super hard on myself and am still working on how to get past that. I mean, to my mind, I can't actually play the guitar. Playing is some higher level with fewer mistakes, a level that I have not reached yet. Getting over that self-destructive idea is really my main challenge in guitar.

I'll tell you one thing that has helped me to stay happy and motivated... Studying music theory. I'm a poor guitar player, but I really like knowing how music works. Every time I have some kind of musical epiphany, I am recharged, even if I can't play what I learned just yet.

For example, just yesterday I finally started to study arpeggios and the various shapes, and saw Justin (of Justin Guitar) play some cool bluesy stuff with only relatively simple dominant 7 arps... It was music like I have heard a million times, but this time, it all made sense! I can't PLAY like that yet but I know what he did and why it worked, and it's something that is realistic for me to learn to play, albeit with much work. That was energizing.

Songwriting is another thing that helped a lot. I always thought it was impossible, something for Real Artists Only. Then I knuckled down and wrote a darn song. It's not great, but that melody is mine. It wasn't impossible! I broke the dam. That gives me a whole new thing to think about.

It's probably cold comfort, because it was for me as well, but... I was talking to a friend of mine who is a band leader, a real actual honest-to-god professional guitar player. And she has a fair amount of impostor syndrome, and so does everyone else she knows playing music at a relatively high level. So if you can't stop comparing yourself to other people and coming up short, know that those people probably suffer from it too.

[Doug Young]

Some of these issues are familiar to probably everyone. For example, no one has enough time in life to play all the styles of music we like. I recall an instructional video by Phil Keaggy, a great guitarist and one of my heros and inspirations, where he talked about some guitarists he admired, and ended by saying something along the lines of "I can't play like those guys, so. I just play like myself". That was eye-opening to me at the time - it's fine to learn from everyone, but the real goal is to play music - your own, whatever that may be. Life's too short to be chasing what others have done - you'll never catch them all, so just play and be yourself (doesn't rule out learning anything you want to learn, tho)

The cool thing about guitar is that there's both no limit to how good you could be, (even the people who we think are masters are still trying to improve), and at the same time, you can make wonderful sounding music if all you can do is strum a few chords.

I suspect you could address quite a few of your issues by setting a simple goal. Up to you what that is, but it could be to play a song for your spouse or friends at the next dinner party, or to play an open mic, or to record a complete song and post it here on AGF. You could also join a local song circle where you need to be able to share a song once a month, or decide to attend a guitar gathering/camp where you'll likely get to play with others. Having a goal tends to clarify things - what you want to focus on (got to learn this song by next tuesday...) and help prioritize all those other things in life that get in the way (the car doesn't *really* need to be washed today) and so on.

[mr. beaumont]

These impediments are all the same issue really.

You can never know it all. Take a few deep breaths and strive to know a little more each day. Or week. Or month even.

The journey IS the destination.

[Cecil6243]

Originally Posted by Mr. Jelly

There's a lot of thinking going on. I play guitar because it's fun and takes me away from the human condition. You may want to visit the thread about drinking while practicing.

No disrespect meant to the OP. Just thought the last sentence was funny.

[Robin, Wales]

Find a specific, time bound, stretching goal.....

I can empathise with the OPs situation. I can (and do) fall into each of the 6 problem areas highlighted.

What has really helped someone like me with a butterfly brain is rock hard deadlines. Things such as booking into the local open mic' each month. Volunteering to play/sing a solo slot at our monthly MVC concerts etc. These are absolute specific deadlines with measurable performance outcomes that require focused preparation.

A few week's back I played one song at a local open mic' with a friend; it was the first time we had played together. The venue has asked us to do a gig on 22 Dec. I'm away for the next 5 weeks and we have only been able to get together twice so far. We need to decide on a set, decide how to arrange each song, and practice to achieve that specific performance on the night. It is a lot to organise, and a lot to learn in a short period of time. This week I converted an old A shape mandolin I have to left hand for my duo partner as mandolin will sound great on some of the songs we want to do. That took 3 hours or so to make a new nut and set-up the instrument - but I had to get it done for our practice last night as I'm overseas from next week. He has until the 22 Dec to learn to play mandolin, but judging by the way he swung into it last night on 4 of our chosen songs, after just a 30 second look at an online chord chart, he is going to be bloody great!!! It was like he had been playing mandolin for years. But that's the sign of a good musician - and why I started stalking him as a possible duo partner when I saw him play at the local open mic'.

If I didn't have these very specific, time bound challenges then my guitar playing would be completely aimless. There's no way I could focus - I would just drift. But consequential deadlines mean that I cut out the crap, I don't waist time. And my performance improves quickly.

I don't have set practice times, I don't have a set routine - my mind just doesn't work like that - it never has. So I put consequential deadlines in place - and everything else just flows from that.

[ghostnote]

I’m no expert on anything, and I really don’t like to comment on anyone else’s life given that we’re all imperfect, but:
Some people aren’t as capable as others in dealing with the big picture. You need to grab onto a single pixel and perfect it. 100 instructional videos aren’t going to help you play better, but one or two might. Pick one song and play it until you’ve got it perfected before you go on to the next one. You know what they say: you’ve got to crawl before you walk. I think we’re all scatterbrained to some extent, and we don’t get sharper as we age. Older folks have to cheat to keep up! But above all, music should be a joy in your life - and it can be. Grab that guitar and get lost in the sounds you make. Not the math: don’t worry about scales or chords or any of that. There’s plenty of time for those things once you get your joy back.