I had about 4 years of weekly lessons, but I became a much better player by teaching myself. Kim thayil of soundgarden once said 'If you take guitar lessons, you'll only end up sounding like your teacher.' And that prompted me, the angsty teenager, to do things on my own, and it ended up being the best decision I could make.
I'd recommend finding out who your guitar heros are and educate yourself on how they got where they are as players and try and emulate that (I have about 100 issues of Guitar mags). Try and learn material that is way beyond your abilities, ex -During my early years, I tried to go from Nirvana and punk to Metallica's 'Master of puppets' and it took me years to memorize and master all the parts but nowadays I can play it start to finish without blinking. By challenging yourself you learn faster and you get a huge boost of confidence when a piece of music changes from 'impossible' to 'piece-of-cake'. Nowadays I'll take a crack at classical pieces like 'Pagini's 5th caprice' or 'flight of the bumblebee' to keep the learning process fun and rewarding.
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