{"liveEvent":{"data":{"id":"193","type":"liveEvent","attributes":{"attendeeLimit":1000,"createdAt":"2025-09-22T22:52:30.710Z","description":"Let’s Build Your Guitar Success Path with Lieven. Reflect on what you’ve achieved and plan your next steps—set goals, mark milestones, and stay inspired as your musical journey unfolds!","ended":true,"eventType":"club","level":1,"reference":"Motivation-Club","scheduledDate":"2025-12-07T19:00:00.000Z","subtitle":"What is YOUR guitar path?","surveyUrl":"","title":"Motivation Club #28","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNaIPIZbVhE","videoUrl":"","youtubeArchiveId":"jNaIPIZbVhE","recap":"

Welcome to the Motivation Club #28!

Let's get started. We have a lot to think about today. Because a year is passing, I thought this final session of the year would be a good moment to recap what you have done. How do you feel about it? How do you want to continue? And how does continuing your journey work towards your biggest goals and your first dreams? That is what we have on the menu.

Your guitar path can change all the time. You might have been playing for a few years already and think, "What I want now is different than what I wanted when I started." It could be that your goal is still the same. It could be that you are approaching some goals and are not sure how to continue. Either way, everybody has to occasionally set and reset their goals, but we are likely all still working towards the same North Star.

Today we will be looking back at ourselves. We will discuss how to assess our progress (referring back to one of my previous sessions), how to keep playing fun, how to stay motivated, and how to create the intrinsic drive to stay in that "flow" state. That flow is very important.

Reconnecting with Your Dream

Most things have a beginning, and so does your guitar playing. It probably started with a very nice dream you had. Do not be ashamed of it; it's not silly. You might still be a beginner, but maybe you've always dreamt of playing in a band, performing in front of people, or being able to put music to your own text. It could be a lot of things, and none of those things are silly because they are very personal and deep.

One of my goals when I coach people is to get them back in touch with that original goal—to make them feel: "Yes, I can actually do this." It will take some time, but the journey towards it will be rewarding. You will pick up a lot of things, and your path might go a whole different way than you imagined, but you are still working towards that dream.

For me, as a boy, I thought: "Wow, being in a band and being on stage, that must be real fun." But I kind of locked that dream away for a time. I thought it wasn't realistic. I thought I needed to have a "normal" life, a normal situation, and a normal job. It turned out you can do both!

So, I work towards those goals. I am still realigning my goals—not resetting them entirely, but aligning them—and still working towards what I want to do, which is playing live and performing in front of people.

It is possible. It is not silly. It is something deep, and I respect everyone's goal. The fact that you are here today means that you have a certain goal and you want an efficient way to get there. But you also want a fun way—a way that you can keep track of, keep doing, and get energy from. All your goals are valid. They are not set in stone, but they are valid. Some might be very ambitious, some less so, but they are all good ideas.

The Pyramid of Skills and the Fork in the Road

If we were to combine all of your individual goals together, we would find many common milestones. The closer you are to the beginning of your journey, the more goals you have in common with others, and the more things you simply need to get under your belt to build your pyramid of skills and experiences.

But as you progress and go through the learning curve of playing guitar, you will hit plateaus. You will reach points where there is a fork in the road: "What do I need to do first? Do I need to do this or that? Do I need to do both in parallel?"

These are all good questions, and these are some of the questions I received leading up to this session. You might ask: "Do I need a plan?" Well, I am not your mom, so I'm not going to tell you what to do. Do you need a plan to succeed? No. Does making a plan help? Yes. Does that need to be a complex plan? No, you can make it as simple or as complex as you want.

I'll show you some ways to come up with the elements that should be in your plan.

The Emotional Perspective: Looking Back

First, I want you to put on your emotional glasses and look back at the past year. Even if you only started playing recently and haven't played for a full year, it doesn't matter.

Ask yourself: * How do you feel about it? * Do you still feel as invigorated as when you took your first steps? * Do you still think it's fun? * Have you learned new songs, and how do you feel about those songs? * Did you do any performances? How did they go, and how did they make you feel? * Do you want to do more (and better) performances after this? * Did you meet new people or musicians thanks to music? * Did you undergo a change in mentality, or did your goal change?

As you look back from this sentimental perspective, consider what changed and what value it had for your journey. What did you learn from it?

Some of you might not have noticed any major changes yet, and that is not that important. But I do hope that all of you feel this year has been a net positive for your music. There will always be less pleasant things, like sore fingers or a gig that went sideways—we've all been there; that's how we learn. But if it was a net positive year, consider that a win and cherish it. It is important to use that warm foundation before you take a rational view to plan your next steps.

Acknowledge what you have reached! Did you learn new chords? Did your strumming and rhythm improve? (Which is important, because rhythm is king!) Make sure you list these achievements and be thankful for them. It sounds a bit fluffy, but you should always start and end goal-setting with something warm and sentimental.

Embrace Imperfection and the SWOT Analysis

As you start thinking about your progress, you will inevitably encounter things that weren't perfect. Nothing ever will be! Embrace that imperfection. Always be wary of perfectionism; it will halt your progress. It doesn't fit the iterative way I teach you to learn songs—starting basic and layering upon that.

Embrace imperfection, and view the new year as a fresh start to turn failures into opportunities. A calendar year is an arbitrary chunk of time, but it is a good moment to pause, be grateful, and see where your path is going.

Speaking of opportunities, I want to refer back to Live Session #13 ("Set Your Guitar Goals"). In that recorded session, I gave an expanded explanation of how to use a SWOT Analysis for your guitar journey. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

Strengths and Weaknesses speak for themselves. Opportunities are harder to define. They are things you can take up next year based on your unique circumstances. For example: "I just found out my neighbor is a drummer!" That is an opportunity! It could lead to jamming or starting a small band. (Although reaching out and networking can be a hurdle for some people, it is still a great opportunity). Or perhaps your opportunity is discovering that you really enjoy fingerpicking. (Someone in the chat says: "I am glad my neighbor is NOT a drummer!" - Well, that is an opportunity for peace and quiet!)

Then there are Threats. A typical threat is a bad habit. If you build upon a bad habit, it becomes harder and harder to unlearn. Be wary of bad habits, and if you aren't sure if you have them, ask for feedback! It is always good to involve people, share things, and ask for feedback. Reaching out isn't always intuitive, but sharing really helps.

1. The Mind Map Assessment

In Session 13, I introduced a mind map exercise to help you explore your inspiration. You start from a central theme, take the topics you have been working on (or want to be working on), and break them down into smaller pieces. You split them into subtopics, and then into even more subtopics. For example, your first circle might have major categories like Music Theory, Chord Work, and Songs. From there, you split them up further and further.

If you want to do a serious self-assessment on where you are right now, I highly recommend checking out Session 13 in the Live Club archive for exactly how to do this exercise. If you ever want more information on this, you can always email me, and I will provide you with some info and links. Perhaps we could even set up a session where I can help coordinate you through these steps!

As I said earlier, I am not your mom. This is your path. You are the owner of it. You decide what it looks like, where it goes, what you want to do with it, and when you want to change it. I am just giving out some ideas and handouts on how to approach it. I am not here to preach about the "right" way to do things.

This is an inspiration session. Take what you think is valuable for you, apply it as you think is useful, and take ownership of it! Being the owner of your plan—however concrete or vague it is—and shaping it yourself is a crucial part of the process.

2. The Rational Perspective

Let's take the same recap we did earlier, but instead of the emotional perspective, let's turn on the rational perspective. We will be a bit more critical about what you did over the last year.

Were the things you did okay, but could have been done better?
Should you be doing something more, like practicing your rhythm?
Should you be learning a few more songs?
Should you be spending more time playing, or trying to play every single day?
Should you be doing things completely differently, or starting them sooner?

Look back at what you have done. If you could improve it, drop certain things, or add new things to your routine, what would those things be? Try to take a rational, critical view.

(Before I continue, a quick word from our sponsor! Just kidding. But there is a very cool sweepstake running until December 11th. It is not a playing competition; everyone has an equal chance to win some very rare Pink Floyd "Wish You Were Here" merch. All you have to do is learn the intro, record it, and upload your take! One of the prizes is even a unique "Wish You Were Here" fire extinguisher modeled after the cover art. Only 150 were ever made. I'll drop the link in the chat for the technical details!)

Resetting and the Hierarchy of Goals

Okay, let's continue because we are always short on time!

You might find yourself needing to reset some goals. You might have done this exact assessment last year and set goals for which topics you wanted to touch. But things change! You might have joined a band, your music taste might have changed, you might have discovered new techniques, or you might have enrolled in the BLIMP program. Because of that, resetting is often necessary.

I believe there is a hierarchy in goals.

Remember that dream you had? Maybe it was performing in front of people, or simply sitting on your porch feeling free to cleanly express yourself in music playing whatever your heart tells you. (I think that is a very noble goal to pursue!). Or maybe your dream is joining a band.

You might be ashamed to tell other people about those dreams—but you can always tell me!

That dream is sitting far along the horizon. It can feel very distant, especially when you are just starting out. You might think, "How am I ever going to get there?"

You get there in steps. Think of The Lord of the Rings and Frodo taking the ring to Mount Doom. They planned to walk in a straight line, but they didn't do that at all! They had to constantly change their plan along the way as events happened and environments changed. But through it all, they always had that North Star to guide them.

You can change along the way, but you always have that North Star to follow.

Strategies vs. Tactics

If you build strong strategies, they will prove elastic and wide enough to fit whatever happens. A strategy gives you main guidelines to follow. It acts as a filter. When you want to do something new, you hold it up against the light of your strategy and ask: "Does this suit my strategy? Does it deliver value that actually gets me a step forward in this direction?"

Underneath those strategies are your tactics. Over time, some tactics will get less attention, and some will get more. But your strategies will always keep you working in the right direction. The more experience you get along the way, and the more you build upon your pyramid of skills, the easier it becomes to naturally select your path and make choices.

Every strategy acts as a hanger for you to hang your individual tactics on. (I know this sounds a bit abstract right now, but I will give you a concrete example shortly!)

These tactics that you hang upon your strategies will literally define the categories of your daily practice routine. We often see questions asking: "What should I practice? How much should I practice? How many different things can I learn at once? Is this too much? How wide should I go?"

The answers to those questions should be the direct result of the plotting exercise I am about to show you! It is not up to us to tell you what your schedule should look like. The categories will naturally speak for themselves as soon as you have thought out your own plan.

Defining Milestones

Working on these tactics will help you define specific milestones. A milestone might be learning a specific number of songs, learning a scale shape, or learning an E-shape barre chord.

But what does "learning" a barre chord actually mean? It isn't just learning how to put your fingers down. It means doing clean changes to other chords, keeping your rhythm going, and actually using that shape in real songs. That is your basic foundation. It decides the order in which things happen! You cannot practice "embellishments" on an E-shape barre chord if your milestone for learning the basic shape hasn't been met yet.

The Plotting Exercise: Eating the Elephant

So, we are going to do a plotting exercise. We start all the way at the beginning with your big goal, and we break it up into smaller pieces.

As we say in Dutch: "How do we eat the elephant? By cutting it into little pieces."

Breaking your goal down into pieces will instantly give you inspiration on what to do next, and it quickly turns into a brain dump. You will encounter other ideas along the way. Make sure you write them all down! You should do this on paper, or use a method that lets you register ideas really fast. These days, simply dictating a brain dump into your phone or a Google Doc works really well. Dump it all in, and don't worry about formatting—you can always throw it into ChatGPT later and ask it to format it for you!

Doing this creates a hierarchy. Imagine your long-term goals are: 1. Playing live shows with a band. 2. Being able to freely express yourself with music. 3. Performing in front of people.

These are three very noble, fulfilling dreams to chase. But if you look closely, you will notice that if you placed them on a timeline, they actually demand a certain sequential order!

Being able to freely express yourself is the necessary first step to performing in front of people. In turn, being able to perform in front of people is the necessary step before playing live shows with a band. So, you place them on a timeline. First, you work on basic expression. Then you work on getting comfortable in front of people. Then you take that to a band.

It is not a strict sequential line! While you take up the next step, you are still actively refining the previous one. Getting better at expressing yourself will serve playing solo gigs, but it will also heavily serve playing in a band. This is a prime example of how one goal supports the next as a layer in your pyramid. It indicates that the "expression" part might be something to start focusing on sooner than the "performance" part. Again, I am not your mom, but I think this is very intuitive!

Connecting Strategies to Goals

If we break these long-term goals down, what are the pillars we need to support them? What strategies do we need to firmly follow?

An excellent strategy would be: Build a Repertoire. Get songs under your belt, and have a setlist of things you can confidently perform. Another strategy is: Make Songs Your Own.

Notice that I try to start these blocks with action verbs (Building, Making, Becoming, Expanding). What does "Becoming a performer" mean? If I want to perform in front of people, or play live shows, I need to know how to perform! So, "Becoming a Performer" is a crucial pillar to support that dream. "Expanding your knowledge" is still pretty vague, but it serves all of these goals.

You start to intimately connect your strategies with your long-term goals. The more connecting lines you can draw, the more solid your plan is.

But what level are these things on? If I say my goal is "Learn the E-shape barre chord," that does not belong in the "Strategy" tier. That is a Tactic. You might learn many tactics revolving around the E-shape barre chord (playing rhythm with it, using it as a reference for improvisation, doing embellishments on it). They are all distinct tactics within a larger strategy.

When you come up with these ideas, write them down on Post-it notes on a wall (or use a digital equivalent). Eventually, you have to actively create an order for them.

Your strategies are still abstract and open to interpretation. They are not tightly scoped. There will be overlaps, and a bit of ambiguity is completely fine! "Becoming a Performer" mainly serves the goal of performing in front of people, but it also serves playing in a live band. "Expanding Knowledge" and "Making Songs Your Own" helps you be able to express yourself in music.

These are the most common denominators I see when I coach people. Your strategies should naturally echo toward working on your main goals. It is not a random plan at all!

Drilling Down: From Strategy to Measurable Goals

Let's go a step further. We focus on the goal of Freely Expressing Yourself. We connected two strategies to it: 1. Making Songs Your Own (gaining control of the song). 2. Expanding Your Knowledge (so you aren't doing random things).

What are some Tactics that fit into "Making Songs Your Own"? * Layering your songs (coming out with a Minimum Viable Product of a song and building layers upon it). * Adding embellishments. * Learning a specific song like Hotel California (but treating it as a platform, not just a checkbox). * Transposing songs (which overlaps strongly with Expanding Knowledge).

What are some Tactics for "Expanding Your Knowledge"? * Learning the A-shape barre chord. * Improvising in the A-minor pentatonic scale.

Once you have your tactics, you fill them with concrete SMART Goals. (Session 13 talks about SMART goals; the 'M' stands for Measurable). We haven't talked about measurable goals yet because they are a level deeper than tactics.

"Improvising in A-minor pentatonic" is a tactic. A measurable goal would be: * Being able to confidently go up and down in one shape. * Being able to play random notes in one shape at exactly 60 BPM.

These measurable goals come in a distinct order of difficulty. First, you need to learn the basic shape. Then you need to become expressive within it. That defines the concrete categories in your daily practice schedule!

Tips for the Plotting Exercise

When doing this mapping exercise, try to break everything up into smaller goals and categorize them under strategies.

You do not need many goals! It could be just one main goal, and that is okay. You won't automatically be a better guitarist if you arbitrarily define more strategies or goals. You just need to see the broad pyramid forming in front of you.

I recommend working on a large piece of paper. The stereotypical image of a brainstorming workshop is a glass window covered in sticky notes. This is an application where that actually works! Put them on a wall, or even put them on the ground. Or just use a digital tool.

If you have no inspiration, look up "brain dump" methods. Write everything down, no matter how big, small, or ill-defined it is. You will group them into themes later. Do not worry about writing down too much; you can always park low-priority items or throw them away later. It is much easier to wipe out a rough scratchpad than to start with a blank page.

Balancing Songs vs. Exercises

One of the questions I often get is: "Is it better to exclusively learn songs to practice a skill, or should I do specific isolated exercises, or should I mix them?"

This is a very good question. I strongly believe that songs are an excellent platform. Exploring songs will naturally improve your technique, and improving your technique will serve the song! Practicing theories will serve the song.

Not only are songs fun to play, but they are the actual product we are performing for people when we seek to express ourselves. The "Song" is a very strong, important entity for a musician.

I think mixing them is the best strategy. Balancing it 50/50 is usually a great idea, though you need to feel out the exact ratio for yourself.

Always try to find opportunities within songs you are already playing. If a song features open chords, but you are currently working on learning barre chords, that is an opportunity! Start forcefully exchanging the open chords for your new barre chords. You will learn new places to play them on the neck, and you will learn to make barre chord changes in a real, musical context rather than just a dry exercise.

You should always be practicing the song as it is. Ask yourself: "How does it sound when I'm playing it?" You will get familiar with the chords and memorize it at the same time.

However, some techniques are best practiced away from the song in a very small, mechanical fashion to train your muscle memory. Breaking things down into smaller pieces is vital. As I discussed in a previous session about singing and playing together, you need to practice these things separately. You cannot bring them all together successfully if you haven't internalized the separate parts first.

As you get more experienced, this gets easier. Eventually, you can grab a song and start playing and singing it right away. But in the beginning, you must train these things separately.

The same rule applies to techniques. Doing just one single thing, doing it slowly, recording it, and checking it later allows you to focus purely on listening. Doing that will reveal more mistakes than you ever heard while you were actually playing! I am certain of this because I notice it myself. I'll record a song, think it was okay, and then listen back and realize: "Hmm, this wasn't good. This was a bit flat." You do not hear those things when you are playing because your brain is already occupied with too many other tasks.

So, find a balance. Practice techniques within songs to find real-world opportunities, but also practice them in isolated, mechanical ways. Approach them from as many perspectives as you can imagine. Playing it within a song is only one perspective. Try playing it slower, playing it over a metronome, playing it over a drum track, changing its feel, or changing its genre. If it is a specific technique, try to write different licks while learning it! You'll build up a little lick library. That is an opportunity!

Using Songs as Platforms

Songs act as platforms. For example, if your goal is learning Hotel California, the song becomes a platform to: * Improvise over the minor chord progression. * Transpose the song to fit your voice (which determines the key and the minor pentatonic scale you use). * Learn a format to memorize long song structures. (Check out the 'Memorizing Songs' session for more on this!). * Add layers and new techniques. * Learn the A-shape barre chord, because many versions of this song require it.

You can clearly see the relationships within these tactics. You need to learn the A-shape barre chord before you can do embellishments on that shape. But you can do embellishments on open chords right now! So, learning open chord embellishments is a stepping stone. As you learn the A-shape barre chord, you aren't just learning a physical shape—you are enabling yourself to build future embellishments on it.

Doing this exercise breaks your goals down. You start with "Embellishments", break it down into E-shape and A-shape, and then break it down further into Major and Minor variations. Very quickly, your goal-setting exercise begins to look like a Mind Map!

You could have made a Mind Map of all these topics beforehand. If you put your Mind Map next to this structured plan, you will see exactly where they overlap. The overlap highlights the things you find interesting that also actively serve your goals. Those are valid things to put in your plan! There will be stuff in your mind map that might be less important right now, and that's fine.

Non-Linear Progression

Remember, this is not one big linear structure! The end result of this exercise is not a sequential line of items lined up like a big train. We don't learn songs that way, and we shouldn't structure our practice schedule that way either.

You will be working on several tactics at once because they all have connections to each other. When someone asks, "What should I do first?" the easy answer is: "A bit of everything at once."

But you still need some focus to find out what serves your goals best. You are making a fluid network of goals that has a rough pyramid shape, but there is still plenty of wiggle room to shift things around.

If you want to know what goes "first," look at the relationships. They will give you an indication. If you want to be able to express yourself with barre chords, you need to learn them first. What barre chord should you learn first? The E-shape barre chord is the typical starting point. Figuring out what serves the next step will give you a clear indication of your order.

(And let me tell you one thing: The simple fact that you are here, working on this, makes you a musician. If anyone ever asks if you are a musician, say "Yes." Yes, you are. There are no other conditions!)

SMART Goals: Realistic Steps

When picking goals, look for the nodes that have many connections. If a tactic supports multiple goals, it is an important node to work on!

If a goal feels like a priority but is physically too far away from your current skill level, try to break it into smaller pieces. Find out which of those pieces is closest to where you are right now.

In SMART goals, the 'R' stands for Realistic. The best goals are on the smallest, most granular level. They should be a challenge, but close to your current skill level. It is much better to have 10 small, connected goals that follow each other than to have one massive goal (like "playing a scale at 160 BPM"). If the goal is too big, you will give up halfway through because you aren't working with small, realistic steps. Break the elephant into smaller pieces.

When Do I Know "Enough"?

I frequently get the question: "When do I know enough of a topic to move to the next stage?"

Given what I just told you about the non-linear network of goals, you should realize there are many paths you can walk down simultaneously. If you find you are progressing a bit slower on one topic, you are still actively working on other topics in the meantime! They will pull you forward.

If you work on just one single thing and it slows down, it will demotivate you. You had the opportunity to gain momentum in other areas, but you didn't use it. That is a terrible waste! You should always try to maintain forward momentum.

If something is frustrating you or going slowly, do not give up on it. Try to assign it shorter practice times, but practice it more frequently. Spread it out over several days. Let your brain store the information during sleep, and recall it the next day. This repetition heavily serves your long-term muscle memory.

If you aren't sure you know enough of a topic to move on, don't worry! Keep working on it, but ensure you are still working on your other goals too. The stuff you learn in your other tactics will naturally enrich the part you are struggling with, and you will maintain your forward momentum.

Because you are working on other tactics, you maintain your intrinsic motivation, and that forward momentum will assure that this tricky topic gets dragged along with you. As long as you have enough topics on your practice schedule (which are your tactics), you shouldn't be afraid of not knowing "enough" yet.

(Luxie in the chat says: "I must respond. I absolutely do not feel it." - I didn't feel it either during my first few years playing! But I am telling you—in this case, I am your father giving you permission—you ARE a musician!)

Measuring the Immeasurable

Some goals are hard to measure. You can easily measure the number of songs you have learned, but it is much harder to mathematically measure how successful your "networking" is right now.

If a goal is hard to measure, try to break it down into smaller steps. (Notice a theme here? The answer is almost always to break it down!). In professional settings, they use "Agile" working with "stories". If it is hard to define when a big project is done, you break it down into smaller, measurable stories.

Do the exact same thing here. "Building a network" could mean a lot of things. It could be: * Joining an online community and participating there. * Sharing your music online. * Attending live sessions in your neighborhood. * Going to see local music acts. * Talking to a sound engineer at a local venue. * Going to open mics and trying to become part of that specific community.

If you break it down into these smaller pieces, it becomes incredibly easy to put checkmarks next to them! It also makes it easier to track your momentum: "Oh, doing this naturally enabled me to do that!" It turns your long-term plan into a form of gamification.

It is not easy to plan a whole year in advance. That is why we started the session by measuring the past year emotionally (how did it make you feel?), and then rationally (how would you score your progress based on your tactics?).

Which tactics did you pursue?
Which ones would you add?
How would you redefine them by adding SMART, granular goals? (Like defining exactly how many chord changes you want to do per minute).

Create goals that are close to your current skill level, but still present a challenge.

A year is no hard deadline! It could be any period. You can put your plan aside for a few months and randomly decide to recap. Adapt your plan and your goals as much as you want! There is no penalty attached to changing course. It is just a tool to help you decide: "This looks interesting. Should I be doing it or not?"

Hold it up against your strategies and tactics. Does it fit within the action verbs you wrote down? Yes? No? Maybe? That gives you a clear indication of how valuable it will be for your specific journey.

The Paper Coach

As long as you feel progress and stay inspired, it doesn't matter if your plan is just 20 words scribbled on a piece of paper. A simple plan is easier to follow.

You do not truly have to follow your plan rigidly. Instead, treat the plan as your "Paper Coach". What does a coach do? A coach asks questions!

Looking at your piece of paper acts as a coach asking you: * "Are you actively building your repertoire?" * "Are you making songs your own?"

You look at the paper and answer yourself: * "Yes, I am making songs my own... by doing this, this, and this."

Then your Paper Coach asks: * "What could improve that tactic?" * "Ah... by adding this entirely new element over here."

Whatever format works for you is the right format. My hope is just to give you inspiration on how to think about this. Maybe your dream feels silly and far away right now, but it is not silly. It is the reason you are playing music! Define the steps to get there. If you want to climb Mount Everest or reach the North Pole, you have to decide which continents to cross, and how to tackle each one. Do that for your guitar journey.

Finding Your Flow

What does finding your "flow" mean? Flow is something magical. It is the moment you are doing something and everything feels entirely effortless. Time flies by. You actually gain energy by doing the task, and doing the task is its own reward! You get things done quickly, feeling like you accomplished a week's worth of work in a few short hours.

Most importantly, the silent critic within you goes quiet. You can no longer hear that hyper-critical voice. You're just doing, and it feels great.

Where do you find this flow? It is closely connected to the SMART goal principle: working on something that is very close to your current ability, but still presents a fresh challenge. It is so close you can almost smell it! Like an animal stalking prey, you took your time to get close, you have a clear, scoped vision in front of you, and then—bam!—you pounce! You get into a deep flow for half an hour or several hours.

The Power of Rituals and Habits

It often helps to have certain rituals to trigger this flow state. For me, my ritual revolves around my coffee machine. I turn it on. It takes a little while to warm up. While it is warming up, I start thinking about my practice session. I envision what I will do. I project myself into the practice, just like I mentally project myself into a live performance. By the time I have clearly envisioned my goal for the session, the machine is ready. I press the button, coffee comes out, and it acts like a physical "charging meter" for me. I grab the coffee, and I instantly start. It is a deeply ingrained habit that pushes me directly into the zone.

I frequently refer to the book Atomic Habits by James Clear for this exact reason. The first few chapters are incredibly valuable. They discuss stacking certain habits in a specific order to significantly lower your internal resistance to doing a task. You might hate doing a certain practice routine, but stacking it under existing habits makes it much easier.

These rituals will not inevitably work 100% of the time, because external factors always exist, but they heavily ramp up your chances of hitting a flow state. Find out what your rituals are! Many of these same routines work wonders during live gigs to physically shake off nerves, channel stage fright, and revert anxious energy into positive, expressive performance energy.

(Yes, the book is called 'Atomic Habits' by James Clear. There is an audio version available on Spotify, which is very useful!)

Embracing Play and Seeking Feedback

An important component of the flow state is allowing yourself to play. A playful nature is vital.

Allow yourself to freely experiment! If you are in a deep flow state and things are going great, and you suddenly feel the urge to play a random song... do it! Give in to it. Because you are in that flow state, you will be vastly more expressive. It will be much easier to show genuine vulnerability, even if you are just playing alone in your room.

If you are practicing and feel the flow, give in to where it takes you. You can always return to your rigid practice schedule later.

Finally, actively seek feedback. Involving other people feeds your motivation. By sharing your music, you don't lose anything. In today's digital age, sharing just means creating a copy! You put yourself out there, but the music is still yours.

Involving people starts a conversation. It builds your network. Most importantly, it gets you used to receiving and processing feedback. That is a skill you must deliberately train! You need to know how to appreciate feedback, and how to mentally reframe feedback that initially feels overly negative. Learning to do this sets up a powerful iterative loop: Imagine → Create → Play → Get Feedback → Imagine again.

This feedback loop doesn't even have to come from other people! It can just come from self-assessment. Record yourself and give yourself feedback.

If someone else gives you feedback—saying, "Perhaps try singing it in a slightly higher key, your voice might shine better"—you don't have to feel obligated to follow it. But it is incredibly useful information. You try it, you record yourself, and because you are just purely listening to the playback, you can be a better judge. You might realize, "Wow, this is better!"

This opens up a brand new opportunity! Changing the key means the chords are voiced differently, which means you can suddenly use entirely different, creative embellishments that you couldn't use before.

Once again, opportunity creeps in. Make sure you spot it and grab it!

Consistency, Exploration, and Off-Days

I try to plan at least five minutes of practice every day, no matter what. If you only have five minutes to fit it in somewhere, play for those five minutes! Usually, it ends up being longer anyway. If you planned to play an hour, play an hour, but always set the baseline at a minimum of five minutes.

It is better to have your practice time spread out over every day of the week rather than doing it all at once. Play, recall, refine, and sleep on it. The magic is in the repetition!

Also, make sure to listen to and explore other people's music—especially if you want to learn certain songs. How do other people play them? Grab inspiration from them! Copy what you want to copy, and do things differently where you see fit.

You will also have "off-guitar" days. What do you do on those days? Perhaps try writing some lyrics, refining your goals, or researching new songs to learn. Having a notepad close by always helps.

Most importantly, be kind to yourself! Remember why you are playing. Remember the dream that started this journey, no matter how far away it seems right now. You are getting closer to it every day, and picking up very cool things along the way. The classic cliché that "the journey is the destination" is entirely true. Once you get closer to your long-term goal, you will naturally start setting new goals that are even further away. You wanted to go to the North Pole, you get halfway there, and you start thinking about taking a rocket to the moon!

Your goals are not set in stone, so keep it fun. You will never actually feel "done" or 100% accomplished, and that is a good thing!

Seeking Guidance and Maintaining Focus

(Someone in the chat asks for my email. It is lieven@justinguitar.com. Make sure to put your questions there, or if you want to plan a session with me to go over your goals, we can do that! Try to map out your plan yourself first, and then I can use my outsider perspective to help you plug the holes).

Consider revisiting your goals frequently. Keeping some kind of journal or a checklist gives a great sense of accomplishment. Find graphic or visual ways to track your progress—if you are an artistic person, this can be very fun to do!

Also, consider seeking contact with a teacher or a coach just to check up on your progress and strategy. Learning autodidactically at home is great, but having somebody look over your shoulder once in a while can reassure you that you aren't doing it entirely wrong.

Another question I got was: "How do I maintain focus with all these distractions?"

It's okay to branch out! It's okay to explore new things that catch your attention. But hold those things up to your plan. Find out if they fit into your strategies, and how well they fit. If you saw an inspirational video about using the guitar as a percussive instrument and you feel inspired, try to incorporate it! Map it out just like everything else. How does it relate to your other tactics?

Distractions are not always negative; they are often opportunities.

Audience Q&A

Q: Next year, you should teach us how to record ourselves!
A: Recording techniques and gear is definitely a topic for next year! One of my students recently asked about this, and I realized I've never really talked about it. What is a basic setup? It doesn't need to be expensive—you might already have a lot of gear that can help you without even knowing it! Very good idea, Carlos, I will definitely take that up.

Q: How do I stop forgetting complex pieces of music?
A: Repetition is key. If you are not going to perform the piece live anytime soon, you do not need to practice it every single day. But you do need to establish a pattern of playing it once or twice a week. Check out how fast your memory is dropping off. Do you need to add more repetitions, or is it holding steady? Use paced repetition. If you practiced it heavily and spread it out over a long period with plenty of sleep cycles, it will be deeply ingrained in your permanent memory and won't degrade easily. Maintaining it just takes a soft version of that spread over time.

(Carlos says: "Am I a musician?" - Yes, you are. I'm not your mom, but I am your dad telling you this: you are a musician! If you are thinking about this stuff, creating a plan, and making music, you are definitely a musician!)

Wrapping Up

We are already past our time, and there is so much more to talk about!

If I missed something, or if you have any random questions, feel free to drop them in the Community topic for this session, or send me an email. I will link the slide deck so you can remember how to approach everything.

This session is recorded, so it will be available for you to watch again.

Until next year: have some great holidays, whatever you are celebrating! Keep it fun and warm. I hope I got your mind spinning today. Grab a piece of paper and get busy mapping out your path! You have time to ponder on this. You don't have to wait until January 1st to begin; you can start thinking about it right now.

Make sure to check out Live Session #13 to review the SWOT analysis, SMART goals, and the Mind Map exercise, as it complements this session perfectly.

See you next time, and Happy New Year to all!

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