Running head: ACOUSTIC GUITAR PLAYING CAREER IMPLICATIONS 1

Self-Reflections on Playing Acoustic Guitar: Career Implications

John G. Ferreira

Bridgewater State University

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Self-Reflections on Playing Acoustic Guitar: Career Implications

A personal hobby I have is playing acoustic guitar. For four weeks, I journaled career

implication thoughts I had while playing my guitar. I will discuss my reflections on what skills I

was using and developing when playing guitar, what emotions I felt, and how my hobby

promotes my career path of becoming a career counselor. The journaled thoughts I can consider

to be part of my life’s narrative; from this new section of my life’s narrative, along with early

recollections, I applied Savickas’s career construction theory to realize I have a life theme of

creativity (Sharf, 2013). I will also discuss how playing guitar helps me maintain and enhance

my “creative self” and “essential self”, which are important factors of my personal wellbeing.

Having a strong creative self and essential self will help me feel that my career counseling skills

as an entry-level practitioner are effective and help dispel on-the-job feelings of incompetence

and low self-esteem (Puig et al., 2012).

Skills Used and Developed

When playing acoustic guitar, there are many skills that I use and am developing over

time. The skills are required for my amateur performances to sound more artistic and

professional. When reflecting on some of the skills the guitar requires me to use and develop, I

realized that some of the skills are also critical to counseling as well.

Muscle Memory

A critical skill to use with my hobby is muscle memory. Acoustic guitar techniques,

specifically the finger, hand, and arm movements, are artificial to normal human body motions.

My brain slowly over time needs to develop muscle memory for when I need to contort my

fretting-hand into unnatural shapes rapidly during split-second chord changes. Over the four

weeks, I had been practicing playing a new chord from a song I would like to perform in the
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future. The chord, d-minor-over-c-sharp, is the first time my fingers are required to stretch

across four frets’ width on the guitar’s neck. From practice, my fingers are learning to more

easily stretch the required distance and contort into the proper shape. After four weeks, I am

now able to completely sound all notes in the chord.

When reflecting on the development of muscle memory to allow for more skillful guitar

playing, I realized how this process is very similar to developing effective professional helping

sessions. When I took the Helping Skills for Student Affairs course, I realized that the more

times I practiced being a counselor, using helping microskills in a structured session, the more

effective my interventions became. To utilize professional helping skills and techniques, my

mind is somewhat forced to develop new types of conversations and interpersonal behaviors,

different from my natural styles. With practice, these new interpersonal methods will become

more natural, nuanced, and effective when I’m helping clients with their issues.

Applying Theory

Another skill I use when playing guitar is applying theory. I need to apply music theory

when I create my own rhythm guitar pieces. I created a new rhythm guitar song on March 4,

2019, which was a series of major, minor, and minor-seventh chords that I knew would sound

good together because the chords were all in the same key. The key in music theory is the

concept of the tonal center of a song. Each key contains specific scales and chords that sound

good when played consecutively in a piece of music (Schmid & Koch, 2002).

Once again, my counseling career requires the use of a skill that I also use in playing a

musical instrument: applying theory. In my Student Affairs Counseling graduate program, I

have been taught that effective counseling practice happens when the techniques used are

grounded in theories that have been proven to be effective through research.

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Professional Mentorship

Yet another skill I use when playing guitar is professional mentorship. I am a self-taught

guitarist, and do not have a teacher or any peers to ask for advice. When I have needed help with

various issues, such as indecision in selecting a guitar to buy, minor intonation problems, odd

finger pain, etc., I have researched the challenges in a professional online forum. The online

acoustic guitar forum that I am a member of is made up of professional acoustic guitarists, guitar

technicians, and luthiers.

I had to use my professional mentor community during the four weeks. On February 6,

2019, the middle-finger nail on my string-plucking hand tore off. I do not have calluses on the

fingertips of my string-plucking hand to sound strings without nails. So, I explored the online

forum to find out what professionals do when they lose a nail and cannot play fingerstyle guitar.

I learned from the professionals to glue on a piece of ping-pong ball and shape it with a nail file

as desired. I did not end up using this technique, and just flat-picked my guitar for two weeks,

however, I would have never figured out a solution to my problem without professional

mentorship. Professional mentorship is yet another skill that I utilize when playing guitar that I

also will use as a career counselor. Several of my Student Affairs Counseling graduate program

courses have emphasized the necessity of the skill of professional mentorship.

Emotions Felt While Playing

For the most part, I felt positive emotions while playing the acoustic guitar. Every single

day that I played the guitar during the four weeks, I felt happier while playing and after playing.

Internally, I had a feeling of satisfaction that I had completed a task that fulfills a need for me

that no other activity in my life truly fulfills. I also felt a sense of freedom when playing guitar; I

got to decide what songs I wanted to play and at whatever tempo I felt like.
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The guitar also helped me to regulate my emotions. Depending upon my mood, I may

choose to play major chords and scales, which sound very bright and happy, versus minor chords

and scales, which sound very dark and sad. In example, I was feeling joyful on February 3,

2019, when I found out that the therapy my mom is receiving for Alzheimer’s has slightly

improved her memory. That day, when I played my guitar, I chose songs that were in major keys

and rhythm guitar sections from happy-sounding, pop songs. When I can express and “let out”

positive or negative or mixed emotions through the various sound colors of chords on a guitar,

the process feels very therapeutic to me.

Life Theme of Creativity

When trying to understand how my hobby promotes my career choice of career

counselor, Savickas’s career construction theory can be applied (Sharf, 2013). Savickas

discusses having clients make career decisions by adapting to their specific environments and

challenges using their specific points of view. One of the major components of the theory is

clients’ life themes (as cited in Sharf, 2013). Life themes, a concept adapted from Adlerian

counseling theory, is the idea of central themes that run through the narrative of a client’s life.

These themes originate from the Adlerian concept of a client’s “lifestyle”. The lifestyle develops

in early childhood and can be identified by exploring a client’s early recollections (Sharf, 2013).

Sharf (2012) mentions that the lifestyle a client pursues can be observed through the five major

interrelated tasks in life, which are self-development, spiritual development, occupation, society,

and love (as cited in Sharf, 2013).

When applying Savickas’s theory to myself, I observe a creativity life theme running

through my life. Most of my earliest recollections involve creative activities. I remember telling

my mother I wanted to play the guitar or the violin when I was four or five. I remember doing
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conductor hand motions when classical music was played in the house. I also remember a big

part of my life being daydreaming and imaginative world-building, which I enjoyed more than

making and playing with friends.

My journaled thoughts about my current hobby of guitar playing are a continuation of my

lifelong theme of creativity in my personal narrative. Throughout my life I have been doing

creative activities, including playing piano and acoustic guitar, bonsai styling of plants, acrylic

painting, creating graphic arts, and creative writing. When focusing on the five major tasks of

life, I know that playing guitar is part of my spiritual and self-development, because I would not

feel satisfied and whole without playing the instrument.

When I become a career counselor, my life theme of creativity will be continued in my

personal narrative as well. According to Savickas’s theory, life’s major task of occupation should

allow for an individual’s passions to be expressed, through actions taken while working with

society (as cited in Sharf, 2013). Upon personal reflection, the occupation of being a career

counselor is grounded in my life’s theme of having a passion for creativity. I will listen to the

many different needs of my infinitely diverse clients and utilize my creativity to help them cope

with their individual issues. Each day at the office will have a unique set of challenges requiring

a unique set of actions to happen. The randomness of the job will fulfill my need to express

creativity.

Wellness and Guitar Playing

Puig et al. (2012) discuss how counselors work on improving the wellness of each client,

but a lot of times do not attend to their own. The researchers further discuss that one major

factor of wellness is the “creative self”, which helps counselors control their feelings, thinking,

and work management. Another major factor is the “essential self” which includes a counselor
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attending to their cultural/spiritual identity and self-care. The researchers found, especially for

entry-level practitioners, when counselors have low wellbeing factors such as one’s creative self

and essential self, they will have higher feelings of incompetence on the job and low self-esteem.

Puig et al. state that the feeling of incompetence can lead to ineffective work, and improper stress

management.

As aforementioned, playing guitar attends to my wholeness by actively engaging my

“creative” being. Therefore, when I play guitar, I am attending to both my essential self and my

creative self, which will promote my wellbeing, allowing for higher self-esteem and more

effective career counseling work. Actively engaging in leisure activities, such as hobbies, can

also help counselors cope with stress from their work (Puig et al., 2012). In my journaled four

weeks of playing guitar, I discuss that on more than one occasion I felt a lot of stress because of

an upcoming school assignment or a heavy workload in the office. However, playing guitar

helped to take away some of the stress because I was able to participate in a leisurely act which

makes me feel happy.

Conclusion

When I first started to reflect on how my hobby of playing guitar promotes or enhances

my career choice of career counseling, I was afraid there would be no correlation. However,

playing guitar has me utilize and develop some of the same skills I use in counseling, such as

applying theory and professional mentorship. Guitar playing is therapeutic for me and gives me

a feeling of control in my life. Acoustic guitar playing allows me to attend to my creative and

essential self, which allows for stress management and high self-esteem, leading to more

effective counseling work (Puig et al., 2012). The hobby is a part of my life theme of creativity,

which interconnects my spiritual and self-development, and my new occupation (Sharf, 2013).
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References

Puig, A., Baggs, A., Mixon, K., Park, Y. M., Kim, B. Y., & Lee, S. M. (2012). Relationship

between job burnout and personal wellness in mental health professionals. Journal of

Employment Counseling, 49(3), 98–109. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2161-

1920.2012.00010.x

Schmid, W., & Koch, G. (2002). Hal Leonard guitar method: Complete edition. Milwaukee, WI:

Hal Leonard.

Sharf, R. S. (2013). Applying career development theory to counseling (6th ed.). Belmont, CA:

Brooks/Cole.