You Can Do It!

In this week’s article, we have a simple reminder for you – yes, you can do anything that you set your mind to!  Here at the Rob Compagna Guitar School, we experience this first hand.  Students who start here having never played a guitar find themselves playing it in no time at all. 

Having said that, we all know that it takes effort to get what we want in life.  We don’t just pick up the guitar, have the most awesome instructor ever and then we can just magically play the guitar.  We must first put something into whatever we want to do before we get something out of it.  There is no free lunch in doing anything worthwhile in life.

A frequently used metaphor here at our guitar school concerns hiking (yes, Rob loves to hike), “Learning guitar is a lot like hiking a mountain; you have to do it one step at a time.  Every time you play your guitar, it is another step towards the top.”  And, as we all know, it can take a thousand steps or more to get to the top of a mountain.  Along the way, we’ll encounter beautiful little glades where we can see glimpses of our progress and we can enjoy the “view” of where we are at on guitar.  

But, we’ll also encounter steep rises that really challenge us and make us doubt that we can really do it at all.  It’s at these times, when we are struggling the most that we must realize that we are actually making the majority of our progress.  It’s these steep rises that are taking us up higher the fastest, and when we reach the top of the rise, we’ll have a beautiful view and will be able to enjoy our progress.  It’s in these cases that we must arm ourselves with the knowledge that when we struggle we are actually making the most progress and if we can strive just a little more, just a little longer, we’ll make it to the top of that next rise and be able to enjoy our progress.

Rob’s karate teacher, Neil Stone of Neil Stone's Karate Academy, frequently instructs that all students go through three phases, the Novelty phase, the Perseverance phase, and the Rewards phase.  The Novelty phase occurs just once, when you first start and everything is new and wonderful.  

After a while though, things become challenging and we enter the Perseverance phase, where we must realize that we’re being challenged and therefore must keep on doing whatever we’re doing, because if we go just a little bit longer, we’ll run into the Rewards phase.  

The Rewards phase is a wonderful time to enjoy just how far we’ve come.  Many people think that the most progress is made in the Rewards phase, but this is not true.  It’s actually the Perseverance phase where the most progress is made.  We must realize that we are forever cycling back in forth between the Perseverance and Rewards phase.  It’s just the nature of life!

So how does this all tie into our theme of you can do it?  What we are saying here is that you can do anything that you want in life – get a college degree, buy a home, learn to play guitar, be a parent, become a black belt in karate or do whatever you set your mind to do – you can do it if you just stick with it.  There will be challenges, yes, but if you arm yourself with knowledge and a positive attitude and the dedication to stick through it when challenges occur, you literally can do anything!

So, we’ll leave you with this last question:  what phase are you in?  Novelty, Perseverance or Rewards?  Understanding where you are is a key element in getting you where you want to be – on guitar – on anything.  You can do it!

Interested learning guitar with us?  Visit our home page to learn more.
 

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