Everyone who plays guitar tends to want to play guitar better. The problem is that most students have no plan to go forward and organize an efficient way to do that... 

I've seen over a thousand guitar students at my music school across two decades now, and almost all of them naturally want to get better as fast as possible. But, most do not organize themselves in the best ways to achieve this. So, the question is, how can this be done. And, the answer is, You need to, "Re-Program Your Brain to Play Guitar Better."

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In order to start re-programming your brain to play guitar better you need to understand the way that you're using your brain now to get the results you notice occurring day by day. Most importantly, you need to take a lot more stock in what is going on with you when you get exceptional results. How are you feeling? What is going on in your mind? Your body, etc.



WHERE YOU ARE NOW:
Most guitar players (who have spent a few years getting into playing guitar) tend to have a decent set-up for a "Practice Room," in their residence. They also generally have pretty decent gear, including (more than likely) a fairly nice guitar, a good amp, and maybe some recording equipment. However, players may still feel like no matter how much they study, they are more or less "floating along" day by day making the same strides of achievement. Why is that? How come success isn't happening a lot faster?

In order to understand this, you have to become a more tuned into what happens in those specific times when you've felt like you've learned a new idea on guitar quickly and easily.

When a period of exceptional learning takes place (and I'm sure that if you've played guitar for awhile, you've experienced this), in those times exceptional results occurred, when a new idea just clicked for you and you connected very easily to the new idea, (whether it was a; phrase, a scale run or a new chord pattern), what made the event special?

When there seems to be an uptake of information where things go differently, why do they go differently? Try to think back to when you had an exceptional learning experience, what happened, how did you feel, what was it that made it different?

Maybe you were inspired, maybe something amazing happened that day and you were in an incredible mood. Whatever it was, you probably noticed that your ability to process ideas in that moment was really dialed up. Your normal flow and sense of overall movement was quite likely up in a higher state and you probably felt different. Your creativity was probably up and you likely felt very clear and tuned into what you were doing in that moment.



WORKING ABOVE AVERAGE:
If we have exceptional learning experiences something is different. When this happens (when our minds learn things very quickly and easily) our mind is working better than average at that moment.

This means, that it is important to be on guard for anything that can slow down our mental reflexes which in turn will slow down our in-take of information. This includes how well we're learning to play the guitar. So, step one to reprogramming is awareness.

AWARENESS /ALERTNESS:
Take stock of what could be slowing you down. It could be drugs, (even Advil), or reactions to food, it might be pain, or how stress levels are making our mind feel clouded. What's important to understand is that you want to be clear on what could be slowing you down from learning faster with less stress. And, anything that promotes "Brain Fog," is a big factor to pay attention to.



SHAPE YOUR THINKING:
The next thing that you want to take into consideration is to consciously shape your thinking process. Too often people have a lot of issues that hold them back. Maybe they're disorganized, or they have social conditioning that causes them to behave in ways that won't allow for their bodies to get into a good state that releases the correct order and sequence of events that promote; learning, memorizing, planning (and for instrument players) movement.

The important thing here is to realize that you can "build in" a realization and a response that will help with shaping your thinking process. This is just as important to your study periods as owning a good guitar.

Learn to get into a state of mind that will promote learning by doing something that brings on inspiration before practice. It could be a; walk, a bike ride, maybe even just a trip out to the store and back. But, don't just jump into the practice of guitar. Instead, begin by first getting into a; motivated, geared up, inspired state of mind. Without having (owning) the right state of mind, you may not experience the ultimate learning period. A poor mental state can cause issues with focus, with mood and with memory. It affects all of the cognitive skills.



CLARITY OF VISION /PHYSICAL TONE:
The final point I want to make with respect to "reprogramming your brain to play guitar better" is what I'm going to refer to as, "clarity of vision balanced with physical tone."

What I mean here involves two concepts. One is basic clarity of thought. And, there's no better way to achieve this than to create a clear understanding from yourself with respect to specifically what you want to practice. And, this must be something that is attainable.

Saying something like; "I'm going to learn every solo on every Stevie Ray Vaughn album in the next 3 days," is unrealistic. It's doomed to failure... But, saying you're going to practice a specific number of measures from parts of the song, "Texas Flood," is realistic and attainable. It allows for a clear vision...

The other side of this is physical tone. Not guitar tone, but your own bodies physical state and how healthy that you're keeping yourself.

I'm not kidding. If your body is suffering, if you're eating badly, if you're smoking a lot, if you're not drinking enough water, or maintaining a balanced diet, if you're not exercising. It will affect your brains ability to get great "optimal" work done during your practice sessions.

Take as best care of your physical self as possible, eat well, exercise and replenish your body with what it needs daily, (especially water, it's surprising how many people do not drink enough water). As we get older many of us neglect ourselves and there's no need for it. Your body is your temple, keep it in as perfect condition as possible.



CONCLUSION:
That brings us to the end of this discussion. As you can tell, there are a number of ways to re-program yourself for better practice. But, I'm not going to kid you, this takes a lot of awareness to achieve, and you'll need to become very tuned into these techniques.

But, when done, this stuff is well worth learning because when you're well balanced and you know how to get better results, you simply learn faster and achieve a lot more every time you sit down to work on your music!

Thanks for joining me, If you want to learn more about what I do as an online guitar teacher, then head over to my website at creativeguitarstudio.com and sign up your FREE lifetime membership...

And, when you want more, you can always upgrade to either a Basic, or a Premium lesson package and start studying the guitar courses I've organized for the members of my website. I hope you enjoyed the above video, if you did, then give it a thumbs up and subscribe for more. Thanks again and we'll see you next time.