Keep Playing No Matter What

I often say to beginning guitar students as we start to play a song, "Keep playing no matter what," because it's very common for beginners to strum a chord or two, hear a muted string, and stop playing entirely. Their reasoning is that they won't improve unless they stop and work on the problem chord right then and there. I feel differently. I think the way a person really improves his or her guitar playing is to play songs without stopping and let the sound be what it is. Be messy. Be sloppy. Enjoy the song--and if you do that enough, you'll have more and more fun playing guitar, and you'll also notice those muted strings disappearing as you loosen up and take the pressure to "get things exactly right all the time" off your shoulders.