In real life, we tend to think in economics. We think of saving: saving money, saving time, saving effort. We want to invest where something flows back to us.

I can see that this way of thinking makes sense in many areas.
Where resources are limited saving makes sense. We show that we are responsible human beings when we try to save electricity, don’t waste plastic and when we fix a broken tap.

Human nature prefers short term saving over long term saving. This muddles up everything, because short term saving often means wasting long term.>>

Did you notice that in any field, no matter if you look in a company, in a sports group or in a large family there is gossip.
What is it about people that makes them want to gossip?

Even though in every walk of life there is gossip, not everybody gossips.
Many people do behind the back talking as a habit. But there are also people who just don’t engage in talking smack about absent people.

I recently read an article about the behaviour of lobsters (why are you laughing!?). And in fact the article pointed out that lobsters and humans show startling similarities.>>

All kinds of sports fascinate me. Not exactly the watching part – I hardly can sit still… ;o) But I like all the research and psychological study that gets put into it.

What we do in music resembles remarcably to what sports men and sports women do. We are “all in”, we work our tail off – but still there is no guaranty for outcomes.

Success in general is defined by three factors.
Two of them are out of our control.>>

Words are pure magic. We humans think in images – but still, it is words, that we pass from one person to another. We transfer images into words and share them. The other person decodes the words to again create an image in their mind.

In this way, words are like carrier pigeons. We tie our message on to their legs and let them fly. The recipient opens his window, let’s the pigeon in. He unfolds the message, reads it and let his mind paint the image.>>

Do you know these people that read loads of self-help books? The great How-to-books. How to …. (be slim and happy, be fat and happy, be more successful, be a fabulous lover, not hate your neighbour).
They read these books and after a while they tell us: “Nice book, but you know – these tips just don’t work”.

And yes, they are right. Of course they don’t!
Tips never work!

Why? Knowing without doing is completely useless.
Repeat with me:
Knowing without doing is completely useless.

Common cul-de-sac thought: Tips don’t work.
They don’t work.
YOU have to make them work.>>

Recently someone sent me an article about 3 key questions to get fearless and authentic. It was an interesting read. Here are the main questions the article suggests, readers should ask themselves:

How well do you prepare yourself for life’s tasks?
How well do you motivate yourself?
How effective are you?

I liked that these questions are specific and require honest assessment.
What I did not like was the feeling of: go get results, be effective, results are everything!>>

Here is a question I got from Marianne:
“Anselma, what would you do if you had a student that wants to quit playing the paino because she feels totally overwhelmed by life’s duties. She has been my piano student for 5 years. She feels a lot of pressure in school and from her ambitious mother.
Her mother wants her to pass a grade exam in piano before she quits. This girl would have to play 4 pieces from 4 different epochs but she barely manages coordinated playing with two hands.
I am at my wit’s end. Do you have any idea what I could do to motivate her?”

This is a great question and I feel that every teacher at some point in their career came across a situation like this.>>

Recently we went to a little town to visit a beautiful Austrian Hot Spring Spa. When we were back on our way home we went to the local train station. To our surprise there was no schedule anywhere that told us, when the next train would leave.

We looked around – outside of the train station building, we went inside.
There was NO schedule, NO timetable for the trains.

We were amazed how this is possible! We wanted to go by train, everything was there, a train station, a train station building – but no information about the schedule and when the next train would leave.>>

Everybody has a treasure inside. We can not see this treasure and so we sometimes forget that it is even there. But regardless if we notice it or not, this treasure is our very nature, our essence.

Carl Gustav Jung said the only relevant task in life is to create a relationship with the own inner Self.
And this makes sense to me. Musicians know this truth more than anybody else.

Music that has the capacity to touch others has to be done with the Self.
If music does not come from this inner Self, it is empty and meaningless to others.>>

Many years ago, at the University I sat in classes for pedagogics and what I learned there was: the best way to teach children is “constructive criticism”.
Basically a “that was great BUT…”-way of teaching.

When I started teaching I found something drastically different and well, I noticed that this idea is completely wrong.

What I found was that children are like traffic lights – for pedestrians. Green or red light.
Think of babies. Green light and RED light. They let you know when they get uncomfortable – whether you desire to know it or not.>>