Subject: Do the Work, The Passion Will Follow
You are getting this e-mail because you subscribed to it on www.learn-to-play-rock-guitar.com. If you don't want to receive these e-mails any longer, go to the bottom of this message and click on "unsubscribe." Hey there Friend, I'm a big fan of the idea that you should follow your passion in the work you do. I believe if more people pursued doing work they enjoy and love, we would see productivity and happiness explode, not only for individuals, but also for the companies they work for (or own). Relationships would change, organizations would become more focused and influential, and life in general would become more fulfilling.Granted, some of this could be accomplished if companies would recognize that people don't fit in neat little boxes of skills and aptitudes. Many potentially valuable employees are overlooked because companies lack insight and don't value the individual over a somewhat more cookie-cutter approach to hiring and job placement. But I digress... Passion alone is a fickle companion, though. All the passion in the world for something will do absolutely nothing if left on its own. The proof of passion is taking action towards validating that passion. The proof of passion is work. What do I mean? Let's look at some examples. Joe Satriani started playing guitar as a teenager. His desire to play like Jimi Hendrix drove him to practice for hours every day - despite claiming to have no talent for guitar. Today he is considered a virtuoso. His passion for guitar grew as he put in the practice hours to master it. Tony Iommi was all set to go on tour with one of his pre-Black Sabbath bands when he lost his fingertips in an accident on the job. Most people would have quit playing guitar, but his passion for making music drove him to learn how to play with his damaged fingers despite the pain. Mark Tremonti of Alter Bridge and Creed quit guitar lessons after the first one because he didn't want to spend years slogging through playing children's songs to learn the basics. He developed the discipline to study, learn and practice on his own, by himself. He, like Joe Satriani, took a road that isn't often traveled - he did the work to take the spark of passion and turn it into a raging fire. A goal or desire, backed up by action and discipline, builds the framework where passion can grow and thrive. That, my friend, is a major key to success. But here's the rub. What if you don't know what your passion is? What if you're mentally in a place where there are many things that excite you, that you'd like to do or be. On the other side, what if you're lukewarm about everything - like you're still searching to figure out what you want or are good at? what if you're just toying with guitar as a hobby. Even here, with just a desire to play for your own personal enjoyment, you're going to need to work to grow your skills in order to feel like you've reached your goal. For most of us, we don't start off playing guitar, or any musical instrument, because we have a burning passion to be the next Jimi Hendrix or Steve Vai. We start because either our parents or schools tell us we need to take a musical instrument and we figure guitar is the coolest out there (clearly, I'm biased!) or we see a band or a video and think it looks cool. But it starts off as a hobby, something to do outside of our normal routine of school or work. Hobbies are great, but they can lack a certain level of commitment that is required to get good at something. We often treat hobbies as a diversion from our day-to-day lives. Unfortunately, our normal lives tend to be incredibly mundane, which is typically why we start looking for hobbies in the first place. We're looking for something to help add some balance into our lives. We're looking for fun to cancel out the boredom we feel in our jobs. Take me as an example. I started working on Learn To Play Rock Guitar as a hobby because I have always loved hearing well-played guitar and have a passion for the instrument. I like writing as well, but I wouldn't say I had a passion for doing it when I started. However, to help you learn to play guitar and to share different ideas with you, I've needed to do quite a bit of writing. I don't consider myself to be great at it, but it is work that needs to be done to share my information with you. To be honest, the more I write, the more passionate I become about writing and sharing, although the focus has changed a bit from just guitar to the experience of music in our lives. As an aside, I'm not exactly excited about asking you to buy things either, but because I fund this site through my own money, I think you'll allow me an occasional request. I only promote things I feel can help you as a guitarist. As I work to develop new ebooks and courses, I'll let you know about them and about other programs I find that can be beneficial to your growth as a guitar player and musician. Because writing is the work behind sharing my passion for guitar with you, I've had to force myself to improve my writing skills. And I've found that the more I write, the easier and more enjoyable it becomes. Sharing information about music and guitar is becoming more important to me, growing into a passion to teach and help, through the writing that I do. Okay, back to you and developing your passion(s). You do many things every day that you're not passionate about. In fact, I suspect most of us go through our days doing nothing that we could say we're passionate about. There's no escaping regular routines and chores. We might not even be able to think of anything that causes our hearts to beat a little faster. This is one of the main reasons so many people give up on dreams - they've lost touch with that feeling that stirs them. So we look forward to enjoying our hobbies whenever we can. You can turn this around and can create a desire or passion in a very short period of time. It starts by choosing to do the work to grow your skills. Practice and experience will give you confidence and help to grow your credibility. As you get better, you're willing to invest more time into learning and practicing. Then at some point you become the go-to person for this skill (as long as you share it with people). In time you become the resident expert, and you begin to develop a passion for doing the work people seek you out for. If you have a developing passion for your guitar hobby, do more work at learning guitar. If guitar is what you want to do as your profession, have the discipline to do the practicing. Passion is great to feel, but action will allow you to collect the rewards that come from the cultivation of that passion. Because guitar is simply a hobby for most of us, we don't really think it's necessary to have a structured approach to learning it. But like anything else, we need to establish a regular schedule to pick up our guitars and do some practice. We do it for our jobs by having the discipline to show up and do the work assigned to us - so why not do it for something we actually enjoy? Here's how we can get the process started. Create the habit to play your guitar every day. To help you with this, I suggested investing 5 minutes every day to doing something with your guitar in last week's message. Five minutes to work on a riff or chord progression. Five minutes to play through a song you're learning. Five minutes to practice a scale. I'm going to make it easy to decide what to do - you should receive an email later today or some time tomorrow with a link to sign up for a daily reminder and exercise that gets you started creating you daily five minute guitar habit. Watch for it - once you sign up you'll receive some guidance and suggestion for tools you might need as we progress. And then we'll get started. Until then... Peace~ Dave Dave "Eddie" Vance is a rock guitar enthusiast and gear nut. He has been playing guitar for over 30 years and enjoys tormenting the neighbors every chance he gets. When he's not slaving for the man, you can find him rocking out with his B.C. Rich Bich guitar, a cold beer and some sweet tunes. He also runs Learn-To-Play-Rock-Guitar.com, but you knew that already! Follow Learn To Play Rock Guitar:I welcome your feedback! Did you like today's message? What other topics would you like to see covered in my e-mails? Please let me know at: dave@learn-to-play-rock-guitar.com As always, please feel free to forward this email to a friend! I review products before recommending them. If you buy a product based on my recommendation, I will receive a commission. However, my emails also contain links that don’t require any investment on your part and are jam-packed with "juicy, guitar learnin' tastiness". We don't rent or share your name with anybody. Feel free to forward this issue to any friends you think would enjoy its contents. They will thank you. So will I.
|
