We tend to think of frustration as something external... something we can't control... but that's not true. Frustration does not attack us from the outside, we create it ourselves. Logically, then, if we create our own frustration, we can also remove it. This video will show you how to identify sources of your frustration and then take steps to take back control. Frustration can only affect you if you let it.
Video Transcript:
Hello everyone, this is Dan Vuksanovich at WhyISuckAtGuitar.com and today’s lesson is called “I Suck at Guitar Because I’m Too Easily Frustrated.” Frustration in small doses can actually be a positive force that drives us to achieve, but many of us experience it in large doses and then it can have a negative impact. We stop thinking clearly. We lose patience and try to force things, and ultimately if it’s too bad we may actually just give up.
I used to be an incredibly impatient person who was easily frustrated. In fact, a few years ago I was playing a video game and I got so frustrated that I threw the controller at the floor so hard that it broke and I had to go buy another one. Frustration also slowed my guitar progress for many years and even caused me to quit at one point. The worst part was that guitar wasn’t fun anymore. I had to force myself to practice. I tried to short-circuit the learning process by rushing everything. Performing was absolute hell, and all of this produced a vicious cycle of frustration leading to sub-par performances, which led to more frustration.
The good news is that we have a choice. We can choose not to be frustrated by doing a few simple things. We can have a rational approach to learning. We can set reasonable goals for ourselves. We can stay aware of our frustration level, and we can enjoy the learning process. Let’s look at these one at a time:
A rational approach to learning is really what this site is all about. We’ve already covered this in the other two prerequisites which hopefully you’ve already watched. The rest of this site is about giving you examples of rational approaches to getting you over various guitar obstacles, hopefully with the ultimate goal of you learning how to think like this for yourself.
Setting reasonable goals – the most important thing here is to understand the difference between short and long term goals because often they get confused. My long term goal might be that “I want to play like John Petrucci,” but my short term goals might be that “I want to memorize all the notes on the fretboard,” that “I want to write a harmonic minor chord progression,” or maybe even something as micro as “I want to understand the rhythm of a difficult passage.” Long term goals are something that might take years or even decades to achieve. Short term goals are things that we can achieve in months, weeks, days or maybe even a couple of hours.
Awareness is your own personal monitoring system. If you’re aware of your own level of frustration this can help you determine whether or not you’re on the right track. When I’m getting overly-frustrated it’s usually an indication that some part of my approach is a little bit off. Is my definition of the problem wrong? Am I making a false assumption?
Enjoying the process – at this point I’d like to relate a story from my childhood. When I was about eight or nine, my parents bought me this big Lego set. I loved putting Legos together and this was the biggest set I ever had. It was a car that was about this big and there were lots of parts that worked. There were gears all over the place and when you rolled it the pistons would go up and down. You could turn the steering wheel and the front wheels would actually turn back and forth. I remember sitting in my bedroom with all the little pieces spread out around me and then looking at the picture on the front of the box and thinking to myself, “I am NEVER going to get this thing put together.” At that point my mom came into the room and I think she knew what was going through my head and she just said, “Look at the instructions. They’re right there. Step one is really easy. All the steps are really easy, just start with step one. Take it nice and slow and you’ll have that thing built in no time.” She was right. But that’s not the point of the story. The point of the story is that I built it, which took a couple of hours, and then I played with it for ten or fifteen minutes, and then I tore it apart so I could build it again. Building it was more fun than actually having it built.
So in other words, if all you’re concerned about is the destination, with guitar I’ve got some bad news for you… there really is no destination. There is only a continuous improvement process. If you do it right you’re never going to be “there” or “done.”
And if we’re not going to enjoy the process, what’s the point? There are really only two kinds of guitarists. There are hobbyists, and hobbies are supposed to be fun from what I remember. And for professionals, if you’re going to be miserable, there are far more lucrative ways to be miserable than to be a professional musician.
I have three pieces of homework for you. The first is to re-evaluate your goals. Separate them into long term and short term goals. Do you have too many long term goals and not enough short term goals? Are your goals reasonable? If you don’t have goals that are reasonable and attainable you’re setting yourself up for failure and frustration.
Second, monitor your frustration level. Instead of going insane, which as we learned in the previous prerequisite means “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” try to look at the problem in a new way instead of banging your head against the wall over and over and over again.
Third, enjoy yourself. Find something that you enjoy about the process of learning. For me the most important thing was the revelation that there is no destination. That took all the pressure off me and then I just started enjoying what I was doing on a daily basis with the guitar.
In conclusion I’ll leave you with this, and this is something that I’ve learned not only about guitar but about other learning processes as well: fast is slow and slow is fast. In other words, if you try to short-circuit the learning process and rush, you’re actually going to slow yourself down and you’re going to frustrate yourself at the same time. But if you take things slowly you just might find yourself improving faster than you ever thought possible.
Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next time at WhyISuckAtGuitar.com.