Your Guitar Resolutions
Strategies to ensure you stick to your New Year resolutions
Setting goals and starting new activities are often easy for most people. However, the real challenge is maintaining the latest actions to form positive habits that will help you get you where you want to be. In other words, if you are setting New Year’s resolutions, that’s the easy part. Keeping them is where things can get sticky.
There are some strategies that have surprising results to get you where you want to be with your guitar goals.
Identify your goals and the actions that will get you there
The goal is to an awesome guitar player. Determine the best, most realistic way to improve your skills based on your availability and finances.
Be clear about how the actions fit into your real life
If you are passionate about playing guitar, think of how to incorporate your practice into your life. For example, if you haven’t played for an audience, you can plan to perform for friends and family in the spring. Besides motivating you to stick to your timelines, it will help you focus and dedicate more time to practice.
Be very specific about your goals and new habits
Let’s say you’d like to play a solo over the spring. The first step is to decide how long your practice sessions should be to improve your skills in this timeline. Since you already know what new actions you’d like to include in your session, structure the time available to accommodate them.
Eliminate existing habits that don’t contribute to your new actions
You may have the right mindset, but distractions are always tempting. When you get a challenge or feel frustrated, it’s easier to pick up your phone and scroll through social media. As much as decompressing is important, going through social media during practice will become a habit. To avoid this, you can decide to leave your phone in a different room to help you regain focus.
Create a commitment schedule
Once you determine what to do to achieve your goals, it’s time to commit yourself to them. Schedule regular practice sessions, starting from a specific day, get in touch with your accountability partner (who may very well be your guitar teacher) and talk about these goals at your guitar lesson session.
Monitor your new habits
This will ensure that you are progressing. A great way to track your progress is to get a wall calendar for your practice space. After every session, mark it with a sticker or note in in your journal.
Get ready for setbacks
Setbacks are a part of life, so you must think about all the ways that distract you from your purpose based on your previous experiences. For example, if your practice sessions are in the evening, there will be days when you get home too exhausted to practice. Maybe on those days, wake up 15 minutes earlier the following day and play for a few minutes to avoid losing momentum.