Getting "Use To Failure" And Overcoming It (Weekly Encouragement)

[Jak Angelescu]

Hey guys and dolls!
I know I’m a little early on my weekly thing I like to do but I can’t help it. Last night I was practicing lesson 25 and there are a lot of things I realized I really need to work on. Things that I have been sweeping (perfect pun) under the carpet and ignoring. I’d like to address the concept of being “use to failing” and not “progressing” or “succeeding.” What do I mean by this?
Think about how many times you practice, and you mess up. Seriously. You miss a bend, your high E string snaps off the neck during a vibrato and makes a popping squeak sound, you miss a note, you fall behind, etc. And you will do this over and over and OVER again for hours. And you’re still messing up. How long does it take you to ‘mess up’ before you finally well, nail it? The ratio of mess-ups to nailing it is a wide range that is in the favor of mess-ups. I feel that over time this act of more ‘mess-ups’ than successes can make us feel overly “use to failing” to a point where we may shy away from things that are challenging and we don’t break out of our comfort zones. Our confidence breaks, we become profound perfectionists, and next thing we know we may feel we’ll never get where we want to be. We’ve become so “use to failing” that we don’t understand just how capable we are at achieving something.
I don’t want you to think like this.
I don’t want you to let the fears of failure to override the joy of success.
You owe it to yourself to succeed and be proud of it and be happy with your accomplishments.
Know that when you “mess up”, you’re not actually “messing up.” You’re actually improving!! Every little mistake you make is a step and is a learning and growing progress, and it’s in these mistakes is where you learn the most, and it is something to be proud of. I can’t even begin to tell you how sad I feel when I see guitarists being criticized for every little damn thing because we live in a society of photoshop, pitch fix, auto-tune, filters, crop and chop, cut and paste, edit and delete. Don’t succumb to the rat race of being the best at everything. Instead aim to grow and learn.
Much love to all my fellow Synners!!!

 

[Filip Tomiša]

“A master has failed more times than a beginner has even tried”
We shouldn’t be afraid of failure because everytime we fail we are one step closer to success.

 

[Jak Angelescu]

@filip that is some serious sound wisdom! I love that quote! Is it one of yours?

 

[Dan Shipway]

You are absolutely right Jak, before I started economy picking I always used to accept that I would never be able to do it and even though now im not 100% consistant I have improved more than I thought was ever possible. It’s all about that determination and knowing you have an end goal. Every time you mess up just focus really hard on the end result and how much better you will feel after finally doing it and you will stay motivated. Failing f**king sucks but giving up is worse than failing. If you fail you learn, if you give up you will never be more than what you are.

 

[Filip Tomiša]

It’s not mine, I randomly came across it and it just stuck to me and since then I look at the failure differently.

 

[Jak Angelescu]

@dan I am so incredibly proud of you. This is all so true!!
@filip well thanks for sharing it I’ve never heard of it before!!

 

[Guest]

I tell you what Jak, there are two points here. Long story short, if we are not failing, we are not trying hard enough. An analogy I like is, we fall off a bicycle, only to get back on. So we try again out of determination. What is ‘trying hard enough’? Well that depends on the individual and their own opinions.
Point 1:
We have to break out of comfort zones. And I mean this in every sense of the term. If we cannot experience a bit of ‘wrong’, we will never get anything right. So this does unfortunately mean, expect a small amount of ‘failure’. Only, do not view this ‘failure’ as negative, only absorb this information as ‘this is what I’ve done wrong…this is what I shall do right’. There MUST be set backs, not matter what you are studying. Because, using the analogy, we ‘fail’ to only get better.
(I wish I had the confidence to show you lot the amount of times I’ve failed with recording in order to post something I want to be awesome for the riff page.)
Point 2:
Often when people ‘Comment critically’, they do not know the definition of commenting critically. People will ‘critically comment’ through social media, stating various mean and often unintelligible comments.
An example of commenting critically is stating ‘This wasn’t good’ followed by the example solution ‘This is how to improve’. This is a basic example of how to be positive in being constructive. However saying ‘This isnt good’ and no follow up is an example of why people have their confidence knocked.
Critiques are EVERYONES worst nightmares, purely because a critique often has an opinion that they freely express. Lets take an example from a different industry. Lets say food. A professional chef may cook up the best god darn soup they have ever made. A food critique may turn around and say ‘Well its nice but its too much salt’. However, a huge fan of this chefs restaurant may turn up every Friday night to have the best tasting soup in the City.
Its all very frustrating.

 

[Jak Angelescu]

Ahhh Ben i loved reading every word of that. You summed up the entire reason why people are losing confidence and gaining self-hatred. Especially the chef analogy. That was great.
I wish you wouldn’t feel so scared to put up your flubs because knowing someone as good as you still makes mistakes is actually very cool to know. That we are all still human.
Much love, brother

 

[Guest]

Maybe I’ll post a video next time with all my mistakes. I have over a thousand videos added to my phone’s memory since I joined this community. 61 videos on here and 1000 on my phone. If it helps encouragement I’ll share. The chef analogy really is great, but I was thinking about food at the same time!