Story Time: Mr K overcomes his fear.

I specialize in adult students because I was an adult beginner myself at 35. What I have learned is that adults (including me) can come with a lot of baggage that we have to unpack during the early stages of guitar lessons.

Take Mr K for example. He came to me in a vulnerable state. Newly retired, and he had lost his wife of 45 years very recently. In the first lesson, his voice broke several times as he struggled to hold back tears. His grief counsellor had advised him to take up a hobby like guitar playing.

His first few lessons were not at all successful. He stumbled through the exercises, apologized profusely and seemed extremely hard on himself, calling himself names and berating himself for every slip. This is actually very common, and it doesn't matter how much I reassure the new student, they rarely take my words of comfort to heart. Add a dose of grief and survivors guilt to the mix and it became almost impossible for Mr K to stay present with his music and just play.

So I gave him an exercise I often use to help adults through the very early stages of their training.

I ask them if they have any pictures of their kids or grand kids when they were toddlers on their phones. I tell them to pull one up and put it on the music stand. Now, every thing they are saying to themselves, good bad or indifferent, they also have to say to that sweet child.

Mr K was appalled. He couldn't say half the things he'd been saying to himself to that innocent child. It was an instant 'Ah Ha' moment!

And that's when I reminded him that his own inner child was DESPERATE to come out to play! By constantly berating himself, he was holding back his own natural love of music and of learning. If you want to learn how to play guitar (or any other instrument for that matter), you MUST let your inner child out to play!

Mr K is doing great now! He is making excellent progress and has learned to accept his mistakes as a natural part of learning. Does he slip back into a negative mindset from time to time? Yes, of course, he's only human.

But when he does, he pulls up the pictures of his beautiful grandchildren, takes a deep breath, and tries again.

(A true story. Names and other details have been altered slightly to protect student privacy.)