Recently I just picked up the book, Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Success,by Marcus Buckingham. The key idea of this book is to harness your strengths and make them stronger, and not to focus on getting better at where you are weak. The result of focusing on your strengths is innovation, higher creativity, and passion. While it is still necessary to work on areas of weakness, you will see more impactful improvement by focusing on your strengths.

With the main theme of GuitarPlayerZen.com being that of develpoing your own style and maximizng your potential, it is looking like this book is going to be a great resource to the visitors of this site, and I will be applying and relaying the information in this book towards music and guitar.

In the first section, Marcus emphasizes re-evaluating your beliefs and “busting” 3 myths that are holding you back from unleashing your potential.

Let’s take a look at what they are and what truths they should be replaced with:

Myth # 1- As you grow, your personality changes.

Truth- As you grow, you become more of who you already are

Your values, skills, your self-awareness, and some of your behaviors may change, but the most dominate aspects of your personality will remain the same. You get better at guitar over time the more you practice, but your core style only becomes more of what you are trying to express, rather than you trying to adapt your style towards something that has already been done. You don’t want to become the next SRV or Steve Vai, you want to become the first (insert name here).

Myth # 2 You will grow the most in your areas of greatest weakness.

Truth: You Will Grow the most in your areas of Strength.

If you do not eliminate this myth, your development and uniqueness as a guitar player will suffer, and you may not realize your own unique guitar identity. By constantly comparing areas where you are not as good as other guitarists and trying to catch up, you only become more like them, rather than spending the majority of your time building upon your own style.

You also will be most inquisitive, most resilient, most creative, and most open to learning in your areas of strength.

Myth # 3: A good team member does whatever it takes to help the team.

Truth: A good team member deliberately volunteers his strengths to the team most of the time.

A great team member (band mate) is not well rounded. The great team (band) is well rounded, precisely because each great team member is not.

This is why you don’t see members in bands change up their instruments between each other after every song. Although, it would look impressive, it really doesn’t utilize the band’s true potential. Obviously, the guitar player is going to be worse of a drummer (hopefully) than the actual drummer.

The same holds true in studio sessions. If you are not a country player, refer your friend to the producer who can play those chicken pickin’ licks. Sure you might want to money, and if you need it, then take it, but that referral can always lead to another one when your country friend can’t fulfill the heavy metal riffage that you can provide.

So what are your thoughts on these myths?

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