To get good at something, you need to be willing to be bad first.
Recently I've started to take guitar lessons again. I was motivated by my friend, Kiffer Sikes, who recently found a great teacher. Kiffer told me that the biggest value he was getting was the encouragement to be a beginner, even though he has played for decades.
This is a great post by Austin Kleon on the willingness to be bad. In it he cites an interview with actor Jason Segel, who says: "I’m willing to be bad for as long as it takes, until I’m good….I don’t have a sense of shame. I just don’t. If I’ve hurt someone’s feelings, if I’m mean to somebody, I’ll lament over that for days. I’m that dude. I’ll lose sleep over mundane stuff. But I don’t really have the thing of, 'Oh, I’ve embarrassed myself.' I just don’t understand why I would stop trying to play piano even though I’m not good at it. I want to be good at it. So why wouldn’t I keep playing?"
Blog post: A Willingness to be Bad