The day I decided to get good at playing guitar

Sweden during October to march is just a big grey mass it’s dark when you wake up, and it’s dark when you finish work, and especially worse is it if you work inside somewhere with no windows.

It’s even very rare there is any sun, only clouds. It can get really depressing, trust me. Exept if we actually get snow – which nowdays is rare.

In October 2006, I had my second day at my first job, I was working at a postal order shop, I was packing orders that people had ordered online.

I had limited time to pick up all the orders, and if you didn’t do it in time you got to hear it from the boss, and since you had to do it as quickly as possible, there was a lot of mistakes on my part.

Well, I was new, but my boss didn’t accept that, and she gave me a hard time about it.

But let me back up for a bit.

As a teenager, , – I was just an entitled little s****

I didn’t make any effort at school, I skipped school a lot, was sleeping in, being up to late playing PC games, watching Family guy and what not.

I Didn’t have any goals or aspirations to be anything. I wanted to learn to play guitar, and I had started but I realized it required work… so uhm yeah – I didn’t really practice…

All I wanted to do was to play counterstrike 1.6 (PC game)

I was talented, I was on one of the top 3 teams in Sweden, and we even won some big LAN tournaments.

But looking back I was even LAZY with practicing my skills in this PC game.

One of my friends that I played became a professional, the reason is because he was better, and he worked harder at it.

Because he had a focused practice routine. I just played because it was fun. I practiced – but not like “specific” and I always stopped when I got bored of it.

So that’s how I ended up working at this job after finishing high school. I probably should’ve gone to collage for music or atleast some type of engineer, but no. I was lazy, so I ended here. (college is free in Sweden, so in a way there is not really an excuse for not getting a collage degree)

On my second day at the postal order job, I tried very hard to not make any mistakes on the orders I was picking up, this resulted me in now meeting the time requirements.

My boss, well she didn’t apricate that I tried my best to not make any mistakes, because I wasn’t doing it in the required time. Remember, I was new at this job – but still I had the expectation to do everything perfect and in time.

Now, when I made an effort – and still she told me it wasn’t good enough.

.. I thought to myself “I gotta do something with my life, I can’t work at a job like this”

“the only thing that interests me is music… I want to be able to write songs .. so I should get good at playing guitar”

I was picturing myself working these types of jobs the rest of my life and just being very unhappy.

I needed to take action, NOW.

I went home that day after work, signed myself up to lessons with a guitar teacher, and a vocal teacher and I bought a book about songwriting.

Then I took the money I had saved up and bought a decent guitar (an Epiphone Les Paul model) because I realized that my old guitar was really crappy and to be inspired I needed to have a guitar that sounded good to me

Then I started practicing 2 songs I wanted to learn (Have You Ever Seen The Rain & Behind Blue Eyes)

Deciding to get good at guitar is the best decision I’ve made in my entire life, playing guitar is such a relief for me as I’m a bit of an anxious person, being able to express myself with my playing, writing songs and being able to make a living by playing guitar is such a gift.

Since then I’ve toured the world, released 4 albums, had a single on top 13 on German radio. It gives me such a relief working on songs every day, recording playing and singing.

But actually, what I am the most proud of is being able to help 1823 people to reach their guitar playing goals.

I’m so grateful that I decided to get good at guitar, because I’ve met so many amazing people on tour and through my local and online lessons.

You can also get good at guitar, but skip 5 years ahead by learning the right practicing concepts and what is right for you!

This by checking out:

Total Guitar Mastery Training – at no cost.

Click here to learn how you can lessons adapted to your level