Meet Timothy Driscoll

We were lucky to catch up with Timothy Driscoll recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Timothy, we’re so appreciative of you taking the time to share your nuggets of wisdom with our community. One of the topics we think is most important for folks looking to level up their lives is building up their self-confidence and self-esteem. Can you share how you developed your confidence?

I believe confidence and self-esteem are like a high-yield savings account: the more you invest, the more benefits you are likely to reap but disaster could strike at any time and wipe out all you have. When I first started playing guitar (and more importantly, playing guitar in front of other people) I began to take certain risks in both my playing and my performance. The more varied approaches I tried, the more I could figure out what worked and what did not, and I could adjust accordingly. From there, confidence and self-assuredness tend to perpetuate themselves and I had a foundation upon which to grow. Preparedness and practice are key: visualizing a moment before it happens (along with healthy self-analysis after the fact) will often bring about the best results. Of course, some luck is involved, particularly when improvising, but the old cliche about “luck being the residue of design” has certainly held true for myself. Setbacks are guaranteed to occur but the idea is that by the time they do, you have enough “savings” (to extend my earlier analogy) to draw upon in order to recover.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I am a dedicated, studied guitarist of nearly 30 years and have found myself in numerous different musical neighborhoods over those years: rock, metal, jazz, acoustic music, and all intersecting points in between. With my work in A Good Rogering, I get to draw from all of those divergent points of inspiration. Our unpredictability is one of our greatest assets as well as our calling card. We expect to release new music later this year (we have several songs recorded and nearly ready) and are most excited for our next two upcoming concerts: July 28th at Sam’s Burger Joint in San Antonio, TX and August 3rd at Hanover’s Draught Haus in Pflugerville, TX. We will have a few surprises in store even for our longtime fans.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

1) Critical thinking. Have a healthy suspicion of most everything you hear and see, but develop a good sense of when someone or something is lying to or misleading you. Even if you come around to believe certain standard axioms, make sure that you yourself have arrived at that conclusion. Do not assume anything to be true or untrue based on its source or inherent biases.
2) Read everything, from comic books and Ringer articles to Plato to Marx to the Bible to Chuck Klosterman to Hemingway and beyond. You never know what might inspire you in a positive or negative manner. “Knowledge is power” is a well-worn cliche for a reason.
3) Understand how best to tell the differences between those who genuinely want to help you (or who can help you achieve your goals) versus those who want to take advantage of you or will otherwise get in your way of those goals. Easier said than done, but if you can master this, you will save untold amounts of time, effort, and heartache.

What was the most impactful thing your parents did for you?

The answer is twofold:

1) My father taught me the value of consistency, of keeping one’s word, and being unerringly dependable and reliable.
2) My mother taught me how to see the best in people while also not falling for lies or deception, and to strive for “what if” and not merely settle for “what is” or “what was.”

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Image Credits

Mathias Fau, Nola Brown, Jennifer Kendall, Aime Elise, Stacey Lovett, Necroblanca Photography, Kaili Rose, David Diaz

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