Videoholic: If it\'s an electric guitar you can sometimes switch to lighter gauge strings to give your fingers a break. Of course they often put very light strings on new guitars anyway so there may be nowhere to go with it. I use rather heavy gauge strings myself. Steel stringed acoustic guitars are sometimes build for a specific amount of string pressure, so making big changes in the string gauge can have undesirable effects on the neck. It usually doesn\'t matter as much with electrics.
If it\'s a nylon stringed classical guitar, they usually build them with very high action anyway, so there\'s not much you can do. Make sure you\'re using the tips of your fingers when fretting, and the edge of your finger when forming barre chords and such. That works better and it\'s safer on your hands than using the fleshy part of the finger like where your fingerprint is. If the action is impossibly high, you can have it lowered, but that can result in buzzing if you\'re not careful. It\'s always a balancing act to set up a guitar properly.
