Self-Acceptance vs. Self-honor— On Loan From The Cosmos Zine

I an eating disorder survivor. I've experienced spiritual abuse. (from several directions, at various institutions, within the Evangelical Christian community.) I grew up with a lot of ironic or contradictory standards and expectations. I am a white American, cis-gendered female who has a lot of freedom and pleasure left to explore in the world. I also have an unfair amount of privilege that I try to use to make the world better.

All of this means that I've experienced my self-worth, gender, sexuality, physicality, belonging, and spirituality as a 5-corded rope.

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Conversational Acrobatics: How to Deflect Sensitive Topics in Social Situations — BESTSelf Magazine

4 Helpful tips for navigating social situations when you don’t want to discuss *certain* topics with *certain* people

What do you say when you find yourself at an office holiday party standing under the mistletoe with your cubical mate? How do you respond to your aunt who asks you about your biggest life goals and marital status while passing you the gravy? What do you talk about with a friend when you’re going through a particularly rough season of life?

There’s a long list of potentially awkward conversations surrounding our bravest seasons of life — divorce, getting laid off from your job, vehemently opposing someone else’s political leanings. This is why mastering the art of changing the subject can be one of your biggest survival skills as an adult navigating the seas of relationships.

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3 Skills Required to Build Your Bank Account — Badassery Magazine

I'm the kind of person who wants to know the answer to something. I'll do like spend countless hours researching the absolute best way to have lusciously bouncing curls of hair: use only clarifying conditioner, no shampoo, apply $4 hair gel to sopping wet hair while still in the shower, do not towel dry, instead wrap a t-shirt around your head, use a "praying hands" technique to scrunch after it eventually air drys. If that sounds more complicated than "buy this miracle product," you're right. But it's still the absolute best thing for my hair, believe me I've tried everything. Evvvverything. It also turns out that following my curiosity is the absolute best thing for my sanity too. 

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7 Steps to Setting Difficult Boundaries — Fons.com

How to hold your own, stand strong, and show up confidently.

If you’re reading this, most likely you’ve found yourself at one time or another feeling like a friend, family member, client, or student has stepped on your toes. Maybe a client is chronically late to their appointments? Maybe they go way over their allotted time with you? Maybe they have perpetually late payments? Or last minute and unreasonable demands? Maybe they talk over you while you’re trying to say something important?

Emotional boundaries, relational, or professional boundaries — getting those lines crossed does not feel good. Speaking from personal experience, it causes me to be the kind of person that I’m not always proud of (because I’m second-guessing myself, trying to catch my breath, or worse coming from a place of defensiveness and fear).

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How To Get Paid For Every Minute — Fons.com

Why My Craving for Stress-Free Living Fuels My Almost-Insane Productivity

I’m a productivity junkie. I really get a kick out of knowing that I’m not wasting time. I do this almost to a fault: making a list of errands in order of geographical convenience and logic is second-nature. I say all this, not to merely toot my own horn, nor to raise your eyebrows, but to preface this sentence…

I might be the laziest person I know. Hear me out...

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How to Bring Your Favorite Clients and Students to Your Door — Fons.com

Whenever small business owners gather together, especially ones that depend on having clients, patients, or students — a topic that always comes up is: “How do YOU get more [clients/patients/students]?!”

It’s a good question. It’s one every business should either be asking or already know the answer to. But not everyone knows the answer, which is why that question rolls off the tongue like water off a duck.

Here are my three favorite exercises to find clients, students, or patients…

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So, What Do *YOU* Do? Why Your “About Me” Is Never About You — Fons.com

“So what do YOU do?” It’s a nerve-wracking question, especially when you aren’t prepared with (or comfortable with) an answer. Before I knew these little secrets I’m about to divulge, that question always caught me off-guard. So much so, that my excuse for an answer was closer to the sound of sweeping crumbs under the carpet than an actual, engaging answer.

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How to Gracefully Turn Away a Mismatched Client — Fons.com

There will come a time in any small business owner’s career when they find themselves in one (or probably both) of the following situations: A) a current client has outgrown your services or B) a potential client has characteristics that might not mesh with you or your business

Turning money away at the door doesn’t seem like great business advice, BUT IT IS! Growing pains within a client relationship are natural, but when that client starts to groan with those pains, it’s time to let them go. 

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How to Stop Putting Out Fires: Time Blocking 101 — Fons.com

Going from Crisis to Calm with Your Calendar

So there you are: It’s the end of your week, the end of your day and for the life of you, you can_NOT_ remember what you actually accomplished and worse IF you actually accomplished anything at all. The day felt like a big one. It felt like you accomplished a lot, but there’s no record of any of it anywhere.

A similar feeling might occur when you crack open your calendar on Monday morning bracing yourself for a clean, fresh start, filled with potential and productivity… only to realize your time is officially no longer yours, every spare second has already been claimed by someone else: the dog, the kids, the clients, the employees, the spouse… Even though you love it all very dearly, you’re beginning to resent it.

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How I Minimized My “Admin Hours” To Almost Nothing — Fons.com

Are you spending an exorbitant amount of time working on things to keep your business going, without ever actually touching on your favorite parts of WHY you started your business in the first place? Yeah, I’ve been there too.

Here’s the deal: as your business grows, your systems and “admin hours” will grow too. Ideally, those systems will grow with you and not require any upkeep or modification, but not everything in life turns out ideally ;). Over the last decade of running my own teaching and consulting business, there have been a handful of instances where I’ve caught myself spending way too much time working ON my business instead of IN my business.

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How to Encourage Your Students And Clients, Without Giving Up Your Social Life — Fons.com

There are serious life lessons held within the weekly meetings I schedule for both my entrepreneurial clients and music students. I know this: if I’m doing it right, that weekly meeting alone can be life changing.

But there are some of us business owners, myself included, who know that “touching home-base” more than once each week is the “special sauce” on a student’s success. This is why I really enjoy surprising my students with a mid-week encouragement from time to time.

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How to Nurture a Love For Daily Practice — Fons.com

After teaching music lessons to both adults and kids for more than a decade, I know a thing or two about what works and what doesn’t work to perfect your students’ practice regime.

One thing to mention is that I’m a fully trained and certified Suzuki Cello instructor, so this post is supremely influenced by the admiration I have for my fellow Suzuki teachers, parents, and mentors, including Dr. Suzuki himself. The following quote pretty much sums up my #1 best practice advice for fellow teachers, students, and parents of students… “First character, then ability.” — Dr. Suzuki

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Why I Abandoned a Tuition Payment Plan Forever — Fons.com

I abandoned accepting regular monthly payments from my music students. I had all of them sending me a medium-sized check once each month for my tuition payment plan. Super simple concept, right?

Well, not really. There was a lot of emailing, texting and calling about scheduling and collecting payment. It seemed like I had a part-time job as bill collector. Yuck.

As teachers, we ask our students to practice (hopefully daily) so the notion of external and internal motivators should be a familiar concept to you. But, just in case, here’s a refresher…

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The Private Music Teacher’s Website Checklist — Fons.com

A Definitive List of Things Your Website Will Probably Need

It’s extremely rare that a music teacher won’t need a website. However, it’s not unheard of. Take, for instance, my very own mother who is a Wyoming piano teacher with a long waiting list of future students. She has no website. I was chatting with her the other day about this website subject and her response was: “Well, I asked all my students and their parents if my having a website would enhance their experience, they all seemed really ambivalent about it. So, I don’t think I’ll ever need one.”

The culture in her local economy doesn’t rely heavily on technology. For this reason, she gets most of her students like every other local Wyoming business gets their customers: through word-of-mouth. So, before you build up your anxiety over whether your website has everything it needs, do yourself a favor and triple check that a website is absolutely necessary.

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