Category Archives: PEP TALKS

While playing guitar can be a very personal and delightful journey, it can also be frustrating, anxiety-producing, and discouraging at times. Sometimes all you need is a good pep talk from someone who knows the territory well.

Start Where You Are: The Power of Baby Steps


I’m trying to make a vision come true, one in which my little machine functions so elegantly that I can make it do anything I want, at any time.

The problem is, I can get way ahead of myself. I stare off into space, my head full of ideas and speculations, how it will be and what I’ll be able to do once X, Y, and Z are finally in place.

Or, will X, Y, and Z ever really be in place? Am I kidding myself?

And then I realize that in order for any of that to actually come true, my only option is to start exactly where I am at the moment. And that can be distressing because it forces me to contend with the truth of exactly where I am at the moment, and I may not be particularly happy to have that fact rubbed in.

It makes me feel far from my goal, discouraged by the current state of affairs.

But the truth is, it is actually bringing me that much closer to my goal, for this reason: it is pretty much guaranteed that I will never get there if I don’t properly string together all the little things I need to learn to do and understand and operate my machine. I will never get there. My goal will never come true if I live in fantasy mode all the time.

The very first step to bringing it closer is to start exactly where I am now, and advance it just a little bit. Baby steps. Even the greatest marathon runner that ever lived moved in baby steps at one time.

Starting where you are is powerful. It is so powerful because it is the ONLY way to get there. It is busting with pure potential.

Anticipate the anxiety and the angst that will come up. Say to it, “ah yes, there you are, I figured you would show up.”

But don’t listen to it. Let it sit there and watch you courageously move ahead despite the fear, the inertia, the doubts that say you can’t get from here to there.

The ONLY WAY to get from here to there is to start here, and inch your way towards there.

Your Guitar vs. Your Career

I had a “Driveway Moment” the other day when this interview came on my NPR station. Physician Rupa Marya talks with Dick Gordon, of The Story, about being both a physician, and a guitar player. She is so real, so honest. I’m sure many of us can relate to her story. Here’s some of what she had to say:

 

Dr. Rupa Marya: Physician, Guitar Player

Dr. Rupa Marya: Physician, Guitar Player

 

 

“Picking up the guitar again, I felt like a jellyfish. I was wobbly and had too many arms, and didn’t know how to make a sound. And so the whole process of re-approaching “How do you make a sound that is clear and true?” became my first question.

And from there, it just continued to grow.”

(Dr. Rupa Marya, in an interview with Dick Gordon of American Public Media, for The Story, North Carolina Public Radio, WUNC, 2009)

READ MORE, AND HEAR RUPA’s INTERVIEW & MUSIC HERE

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