How learning guitar has shaped the way I perceive self-development
*Original article on andersonmatias.co
Playing a musical instrument is awesome. Among the several different benefits it may bring (which for me is mostly stress release and having a good time with friends), having a way to express and exchange feelings is one of my favorites. However, there are some non-intuitive aspects that are also to be considered. Let me use a personal example to make my point.
I started learning guitar and bass by myself when I was 13, some friends and I simply decided to form a band, without any previous musical knowledge or knowing how we would do it. Since then, I came to the conclusion that it was one of the best decisions I’ve made so far and this is basically because, on both personal and professional levels, it has given me the opportunity to figure out how to build up knowledge on any area without depending on standard or formal learning methods.
For starters, I had no computer, which would consequently mean that I had no internet. Smartphones didn’t exist. I remember going often to a newsstand looking forward to buying as many songbooks as my modest budget could afford. There you go, lyrics, chords, that’s it. That’s how most of my musical theory awareness was built on my first years of journey. The rest was essentially by figuring it out myself and based on tips from colleagues and friends, which is the aspect I’d like to focus right now.
You either know, know who knows or don’t know
Back in those days, I was really eager to any source of information I could get to make me better on playing the bass (my favorite, so far). I could spend up to 12 hours straight playing, experimenting, practicing and connecting dots. I’ve always been goal-driven, focused and self-motivated. Thing is, we almost always at some point reach the moment where we need help, where we are stuck and might feel frustrated about it. Does it sound familiar? “Who never…”, right? Well, that’s why it was very important to have contact with people that had more experience than I did and that could give some insight about how to proceed, how to do things. This is definitely not limited to music, it applies to absolutely every aspect of our lives. Knowing the moment to use your network’s help is key to our learning process. Don’t know something? Learn through others experiences, ask around!
A few years later, already working as an intern, although not that much dedicated to learning music at that moment, The mindset of taking control of my own learning process was still there. Some colleagues called me “the training guy” because I would not wait for my boss to point me any courses or training I should do, I would look it up myself and take every opportunity I could. Of course, I took benefit of the fact that there was a consolidated internal learning portal with free online courses available, but the message is that you are the owner of your own knowledge and the main responsible for making sure your learning curve is as steep as it can be. When you add knowledge to the vision of whom you want to become, is when you unlock a whole new level of self-motivation and performance, based on your own perception of aspirations and goals, not an external source. This mindset is what enabled me to get my Six Sigma training, this is how I’ve got my PMP certification, this is how I’ve been improving my German, as examples.
Of course, it does not apply just to training. It also applies to situations and experiences in life. Since very young I’ve always been an introverted and shy kid. By realizing the potential impacts of this behavior in the future, since high school, I’ve been consciously putting myself in several situations on which I could exercise my social skills and put to the test my defense mechanisms and break the line of thoughts that would drag me down. Speaking publicly, presenting your results to senior management on the company you work for, go talking to that pretty girl you are scared as hell to talk to…all this is also a learning process and you have control (although sometimes we feel we don’t), because you are the one that decides how you behave and which inputs you bring to the table.
“The secret of business is to know something that nobody else knows” — Aristotle Onassis
Now, still on the labor side, especially on big organizations, we have a lot of interface with different departments and teams. We are also normally very interdependent on those interfaces to perform our job properly. Regarding performance and self-improvement, there is something often overlooked by a lot of professionals: the processes of the interfacing area you work with or depend on. How knowing it can actually help? By knowing or at least having a high-level awareness of how your partner teams operate, you are able to understand their struggles, to support better on their needs and to more efficiently follow-up whenever you see things are not going as they were supposed to be. Linking it to the learning process, we tend to skip corporate procedures or manuals for it harms your ability to “do your job”, by occupying precious and scarce time. What I could notice, however, is that when you make good use of the time to understand what is around you and out of your box, you have a huge opportunity to boost performance and build better relationships on the long road. You struggle less, you deliver faster and better, you bring the interfacing team onboard by showing empathy for their needs. You become an asset within your own organizational structure when knowing processes and methods that (almost) no one around knows, acknowledges or put to use and you build interpersonal bridges that are harder to bring down through time. That is one of the main things I do whenever I start on a new position. I read as much as I can about my own department processes and the respective interfacing areas, I ask a lot of questions and make correlations with previous experiences, so I can settle in faster. There is no point to wait on your superior or colleagues to tell you which are the important info you need to consider, although their input is, of course, valuable and must be taken into consideration.
At last, it is extremely important to say that there is a downside of learning stuff on your own if you don’t cover your bases. Whenever you try to acquire knowledge without further instruction from external sources, there is always the risk of having gaps in some concepts and aspects on the long-term. To make sure it does not happen, interacting with people and having the curiosity of a “researcher” profile is key. This kind of learning process is empyrical in such a way, that if you don’t address these potential weaknesses, you may find yourself dealing with high expectations regarding the seniority of your skills after a long time and still have difficulties to process relatively simple tasks that depend on specific concepts you may not have mastered yet.
I ultimately came back to my music learning, having almost stopped several years ago, since college. I’m learning now how to play the keyboard and for the future, I have been getting some interesting ideas about purchasing a ukulele, a cello, a drum set or maybe a Sax. This is the beauty of learning, no reason to stop whatsoever, for us as human beings are learning machines, having the opportunity to acquire knowledge all the time, from everywhere, from everyone. So it is with music, business, sports, interpersonal skills and so on. We owe to ourselves the benefits of taking over the control of our learning process and what we do with it. The questions now to you are: what are you eager to learn? What motivates you to pursue knowledge? Which gaps will you cover next?
Think about it, and share with the world the answer. . .
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