“I just need to work harder” and other lies
If you wanted poppies, does that make these weeds? (Image by S. Hermann & F. Richter)
I’m a guitarist, but not a very accomplished one.
The complexity of electric lead guitar has always eluded me. I didn’t take to it naturally or quickly, and I never found anyone who was able to help me take my skills to the next level.
For years, I thought that if I just worked hard enough, I could play lead. That would have been especially notable in the days when it seemed like you could count on one hand the number of female lead guitarists in history. I wanted to be one of them.
I invested hours in this pursuit, albeit inconsistently, and always felt inadequate about my skills.
That’s too bad, because at the same time, I was showing strengths in other musical areas: Singing, songwriting, piano, and engineering. I was also good at acoustic rhythm guitar, especially to accompany vocalists (including myself).
But I undervalued these things because they came more easily and seemed like anyone could do them. I thought that the only way that I could make the music that I wanted to make was to learn to play lead guitar, and so I resolved to work harder.
This attitude seems really silly to me now. It turned out that I could just take my songs to my friend Michael McGill, and he would happily add the exact gooey, crunchy, delicious Les Paul goodness that I was looking for.
Nobody would be dazzled by my electric guitar prowess, but that wasn’t the point. The point was to make the music. I could have saved a decade or so of beating myself up for my lack of talent at electric guitar.
Of course, I was getting something out of that experience of beating myself up:
It was what I was used to, so it was familiar and comfortable.
I could always feel like I was doing something toward my goal; the work would never be done.
I never had to face the pain of rejection, because I would never get my work out there.
Focusing on working harder at the thing that I was struggling with meant that I didn’t have to change. I never had to do the real hard work, which was taking my songwriting from “very good” to “professional.”
I see business owners and artists make this type of mistake all the time. Not only do they undervalue the talent and skill that they bring to the table, they are often chasing something that they don’t have — something they feel that they should have. They don’t realize that someone else could supply this as easily as Michael can supply tasty rock riffs.
To disrupt this cycle, we have to let go of trying. We have to drop the belief that we need to be better. We have to stop working harder. Then, another person can step into the gap and use their unique skills and talents to support ours.
That creates a new cycle in which everyone gets to be awesome. As a singer and songwriter, I have exactly what a lead guitarist needs in order to bring out their best. This, in turn, inspires me to write more and better songs.
An entrepreneur might have the vision and sales chops to provide a livelihood for a half dozen people who will then allow him to build that vision and make more sales.
If I try to master a job that I’m not well suited to — or attempt to hog them all — I’ll get burned out. I’m much better off to do the part that I’m really good at, that is as easy as breathing, and let everyone else do the same. They’ll come up with ideas that I couldn’t even have imagined, benefiting us all.
To think that we need to just buckle down and work harder — that’s a lie. Ironically, that’s what will keep us small. If we are working harder and still not getting much of anywhere, that might be a clue that our energy is better spent working somewhere else. We can make space for a colleague to do the part they’re amazing at, freeing us up to do the part that we’re amazing at. Collaboration is what can get us the results we’re looking for, with less angst and more fun. It sounds a lot better, doesn’t it?
Trust me, with Michael on lead, it definitely will.
