My eldest daughter wants to learn guitar.
Every day lately, Jess has borrowed my guitar to try to learn the basics. She practices with YouTube videos and is determined to learn.
I’ve had to tune it for her, and I really need to restring it. The dreadnought-size acoustic is almost too big for her, but she’s doing well.
Last night she asked me to show her a couple of chords to make sure she was doing it right.
Note: I’m not a good guitar player. I love guitars. I own guitars. I’m pretty bad at guitar.
So ... I played the chords in question.
“That’s not how the guy on the video said to do it,” she told me, confused now.
She showed me what he did, and I had to think about how I had played it. One of us was wrong.
It was me. No surprise. I was a bit irritated that what I thought I knew was incorrect, however.
How did I make that mistake on something so simple?
How long had I been doing it that way?
There was only one thing to do — insist I was right and insist she do it wrong, too.
No, of course not. The only right thing to do was admit I was wrong and tell her to listen to the guy who knew what he was doing instead of me.
How often do we remain rooted in wrong beliefs or wrong behavior even when it’s been revealed to us that what we were doing or what we believed was incorrect? Sadly, in my experience, people would rather dig in their heels and stick with what is wrong in most situations rather than “show weakness” by being willing to be corrected and to learn.
This kind of thinking and action will kill relationships — with God and with others — and could literally kill you in some cases. I have learned that quickly admitting I was wrong has helped me grow in every area of my life. It’s made relationships stronger and kept me from losing appendages or worse.
Maybe it’ll even help me learn how to play guitar the right way.
Now I’ve got some practicing to do.
