Find out how your favorite players reached their goals. Often times this is hard to do since you can’t always sit down and talk to some very famous musicians. But interviews exist as well as a few biographies on some musicians (especially dead ones).

Surround yourself with better players (or at least with those on your same level.) When you started out playing guitar, everyone was better than you, but now you have grown and there are less people better than you than before. The better you get, the harder it will be to find others who are superior to you to hang around or jam with.

Remember that its ok to daydream and fantasize about where you are planning to go, but it can’t stop there. Don’t wish without planning! Don’t dream without doing! And always, always, have a strategy.

Create a strategy! You need a strategy that will layout exactly how you are going to reach your goals. Dreaming alone won’t take you anywhere. Telling yourself that you are going to play your guitar everyday isn’t enough. There is a lot more that goes into being an excellent player than simply playing your guitar.

Ultimately you should work backwards. State your ultimate goals (on paper) then make a bunch of short and medium range goals. Think of reaching your goals as a relay race, NOT as a marathon. Each short term and medium term goal is the end of one segment of your plan and the beginning of the next segment (just like a relay race.) There are many benefits of looking at things this way as you will discover for yourself in your own way.

But for many people, it is a very disconcerting experience. I have gotten letters from people who have read some things I have written, and become afraid to practice! They are so aware of, and on their guard against, excess muscle tension, and the devastating effects for the developing player, they are afraid to touch a string!

What I didn’t know was that even though I was learning to keep up with these chord changes, I had so much muscle tension in my arms and other parts of my body, that I was locking in tensions that didn’t have to be there, and would come back to haunt me a few years later as I attempted the classical repertoire, where you don’t really get away with things like that. As the years went by, and especially in teaching others, I realized that it doesn’t have to be that way for anybody! There is a way of going about it that doesn’t create or allow this situation.

Think about the masters of music. Mozart was probably most naturally gifted in only three of the musical areas: technical skill, a great ear (perfect pitch), a great musical memory. But he had to work hard at all the other areas of music just like everybody else.