Find the Mystery and Magic

A Game of Mystery and the Magic

When the Beatles were starting out, they didn't have all the answers and they weren't very good. John Lennon almost gave up the guitar after playing two lessons, finally learning some basic chords from his Mom using a banjo. George Harrison received a guitar when he was 13 and also bought a book on how to play guitar. Paul McCartney started on the trumpet and his father was a musician who taught him rudimentary piano. Only after trading in that trumpet did he teach himself how to play guitar. Ringo Starr was the only "professional" joining the Beatles and that was only be cause he'd been doing it longer. He started with drum sticks after a long hospitalization, and only received his first real drum set as a gift at 14, turning "pro" at 15. Everybody starts somewhere.

Bu the greats don't usually end there. Paul McCartney has discussed jumping on bus rides across Liverpool to learn chords from guys in guitar shops who knew how to play them. They also talked about dissecting chords and learning melodies by ear, emulating their heroes and practicing, having famously spent a year in Hamburg playing 116 nights, which amounted to four times per night on weekdays, five times per night on Saturdays and six times per night on Sundays. Hamburg turned Lennon, McCartney and Harrison from enthusiastic amateurs into professionals.

To be any good, you are going to have to put in the work, do the research and figure out it. There are those out there doing things you are not seeing, things you aren't hearing about, working in ways they don't, won't or can't publicize. They are working at it, but you aren't hearing about it. That's why success in anything is revered as almost magical. If everybody knew how to do it, and did it, standout success would be the average result.

It's not.

That said, it highly unlikely that they are using mysterious techniques, secret revolutionary methods or are genetically predisposed to greatness. It's all out there, and that knowledge should drive you to get up, get out there, open your eyes, search for answers, seek out techniques and apply them. Search for the techniques wherever you can find them, and do not under any circumstance confine your journey of discovery to this book alone. In doing so, do your best, do it better than you did yesterday, get some rest and with your last thought vow to get up and do it again better tomorrow.

In doing so, do your best, do it better than you did yesterday, get some rest and with your last thought vow to get up and do it again better tomorrow.

If it's good enough for the Beatles, perhaps it might work for you as well.