Tips for If You Need Motivation to Practice

I can always tell immediately when a student is starting to lose drive and motivation. That student’s energy changes over the course of a couple of weeks, progress comes to a halt, lesser positive attitudes and insecurities start to muddy up communication with the teacher during lessons.

One of the main reasons for motivation dwindling is not picking up one’s guitar often enough.
So here’s an overview of 7 things you can do if you feel like you need to force yourself to practice.

Stop calling it “practice”
One of my favorite guitar players, Guthrie Govan, said in an interview: “practice” is such a nasty word”.
He went on to explain that you’re more likely to want to pick up your guitar to learn new things when you give the activity a name that doesn’t remind you of work or doctors.
It’s called “playing” music. It pays to keep that in mind.
Pick It Up Every Day
The only people to ever fall out of love with the guitar, or who say things like “It starts to feel like work”, are the ones who don’t play enough.
All high-quality motivational authors really are right: inaction leads to problems and unhappiness.
I can also speak out of the personal experience. I noticed that it is harder for me to get myself to practice when I hardly ever practice.
But once I pick it up and force myself to keep going, I can’t put it down anymore. I just need to get over this initial hump.
Think Positive and Be Kind To Yourself
It’s not going to help your motivation if you beat yourself up over skipping a couple of practice days. It’s ok! You’re not going to take a huge leap back in skill level from skipping a couple of days of practice.
Negative thinking is also not going to help your drive to want to learn new things. Telling yourself that “you’ll never get good at this”, or that “learning guitar is hard”, is not conducive to wanting to pick up the guitar.
Get your mind right! Stop the negative narratives and mind chatter.
Create Routines and Momentum
The guitar becomes an amazing fun addiction when you get into a daily practice routine.
Everybody, no matter how busy they say they are, absolutely certainly does have the time to play about 30 minutes a day at a minimum.
Anyone who says differently is simply not prioritizing time with the guitar.
It’s as simple as making the decision to make it happen and doing what needs to be done to make it happen.
I have the same with for example meditation. I know it’s very good for me, but somehow I kept not getting to it.
That changed the day I made the decision to make it a habit to meditate first thing in the morning. Now I can’t even imagine ever not getting to it.
Getting it done, every day will create momentum where you’ll suddenly start seeing a lot of progress again, which will make you want to practice all the time.
Write Down Affirmations
I LOVE reading my positive affirmations every day. They help me recenter my focus on what I really want to achieve and how important it is to achieve those goals.
I literally feel my passion, drive, and energy blossom each time I read my affirmations.
Have Measurable Targets
It’s motivating to pick up your guitar if you have a reason to do so. That is why you want to set yourself targets you’re trying to hit.
For example:
1. By my next guitar lesson I want to master the guitar solo I just learned.
2. With the next 10 days I want to learn and memorize 10 Bob Dylan songs and perform them for my spouse who loves Bob Dylan, as a surprise.
3. In the next 3 days I want to master the Hotel California solo and post a video on YouTube to show off how well I can play it.
4. Exactly a week from now I want to be able to solo in all 12 keys
Those little targets to work towards and look forward to, makes one want to practice more.
Make It A Habit To Jam with Other People
It’s easy to lose the point of why you’re learning or practicing guitar if you never get to use any of the things you learn in a real-life situation.
You get a much deeper sense of purpose, which is motivating when you get to rock out with other people, seeing how all the things you learned and practiced make sense, and hearing how cool they sound.

A quick bonus tip: Put Playing Guitar On Top of Your Daily To-Do List

Things that are written down, get done. You wouldn’t say at the end of the day: “Oh, I didn’t have time to brush my teeth today”, or “I didn’t have time to drive my kid to school”, or “I was too busy to go to work today.” Point being made: every day you have things you can’t get out of. Making playing guitar one of those things.

Conclusion

Hit me up anytime at vreny@zotzinmusic.com if you have any questions, or if you would like to book a lesson.

These free lessons are cool, but you will never experience the progress, joy, and results that my students experience in lessons when you’re learning by yourself from blogs and videos.

That is why people take lessons: way better results and progress, much more complete information, exposed to way more creative ideas than you can get from a blog or YouTube video.
There is only so much that self-study can accomplish.

If you want to see amazing results and progress in your guitar playing, buy your first lesson here and get started ASAP.