Paul Thomas

Yesterday I sat down to play the guitar for the 100^th time. I played through the three songs I knew by heart and looked up another song on guitar tabs and stumbled through it for a few minutes wondering why I wasn’t good at the guitar yet. I have sporadically practiced the guitar for the past six years and yet I still consider myself a beginner and I certainly don’t feel like I have a talent to share even with my immediate family.

I learned to play the piano and cello when I was younger. In the same amount of time I had become decently proficient at both. With guitar I’m not paying for a teacher, so that’s certainly a factor. But even so, there is so much information available on the internet. What am I missing?

After pondering the question for a while I came across an answer that’s a major piece of the puzzle. It’s intention. Simply having a specific aspect of an activity to focus on will cause leaps and bounds in your development. This is something we all understand intuitively even if we haven’t thought about it in this way before.

For example, think about two amateur golfers who both want to increase their average golf score by 20%. The first golfer goes out and plays a round once a week – every week for a year. The second golfer has the same goal, but he decides to go about it by focusing on straightening out his swing. He also plays once a week, but every time he plays, he has to make the conscious effort to keep his swing straight. After each game he keeps a journal on how well he kept his swing straight, and what during that round helped or hindered him. Of course the second golf is going to improve more.

But this begs the question, how do you know what to set as your intention? You might have glaring deficiencies that are obvious to you. Start with those. But if you don’t know where to start… then it might be worth it to buy a program, or invest in a coach, or even search the internet for advice from someone who has started where you are and is now where you want to be. Then, simply take their first steps and set them as your intention.

So what is it that you want to improve in your life? Whatever it is, try setting an intention every time you do it. If possible, track your progress. You’ll be amazed at how much you can improve just from that.