Anne Lamott on the mental landscape of guitar practice

Tuesday Quotes are short explorations of music, life, and the daily endeavor of practicing classical guitar. Enjoy!

“My mind is like a bad neighborhood, I try not to go there alone.”

Anne Lamott

To enjoy a fulfilling classical guitar practice, all it takes is to show up regularly and do the work. When we sit down and focus daily, we gain skills and see improvement over time.

That’s really all there is to it. But we can easily psyche ourselves out.

We may start to think, “I should be improving faster…” or, “This piece should be easy – something must be wrong with me”

These thoughts are Trojan horses that soon have us “forgetting” to practice, or getting too busy with other things. Any thought about where we are in relation to some fantasy ideal is trouble.

We all want to be our best selves. We want to experience mastery. We want to actualize what we believe possible for us on guitar.

But the only way to get these is to sit down and practice. A little bit today, a little bit tomorrow, a little bit the next day.

When we miss a few days of practice, it’s tempting to put a story behind it. We create a meaning, such as, “I’m not cut out for this..” or “I’m too busy.” or “The world is conspiring against my learning guitar!”

But that’s all hokey pokey. As the Bard gives us in Hamlet, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

Part of mastering guitar is mastering our minds. The question is, “What am I focusing on right now, at this moment?” In guitar practice, the answer should be something specific pertaining to our music or the act of playing in that moment.

Otherwise, we’re just distracting ourselves from the work that will get us what we want.