Thriving By Nature with Bethany Stone ~ The Importance of Music

Greg Dixon spoke with Bethany Stone – Montessori educator (23+ years), mindset & life skills coach, singer, dancer, podcaster, and founder of Thriving by Nature about the importance of music in her life.

Core Theme

Music isn’t just fun—it’s a soul-deep tool for learning, healing, connection, personal growth, and becoming your truest, most vibrant self. Bethany shares how music has woven through her entire life, from childhood performances to classroom magic to adult coaching, proving that songs stick forever and help us thrive.

Key Highlights & Musical Moments

• A “Sound of Music” Childhood in Swiss Style.
  Bethany grew up in a musical Swiss-immigrant family of seven kids. Dressed in dirndls and lederhosen, they sang traditional Swiss songs around Mom’s piano and performed across Idaho and Utah. These family sing-alongs became core memories of joy, togetherness, and unselfconscious music-making—exactly the kind of playful, group music vibe that lights up playing music with others!
• Montessori Magic + Music as a Learning Superpower
  As a longtime Montessori teacher, Bethany explains the philosophy: meet people (kids or adults) where they are, embrace their unique edges, and adapt instead of forcing them into boxes. Music fits perfectly because it embeds knowledge deeply—especially for neurodivergent brains. She sings her classic U.S. states song (alphabetical order, rhyming perfection—ideal for third graders!): “Alabama and Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas…” → all 50 states in one catchy tune. This demonstrates how group singing turns facts into lasting memories.
• Butterfly Life Cycle Song – A Classroom Legacy
  Bethany created an original song for kindergartners about the butterfly metamorphosis because no good one existed. Decades later, teachers still request voice clips—proof that kid-created songs become timeless legacies. Music = learning + creating + lasting impact.
• Coaching Through Song: Life Skills & Mindset Shifts
  Now a coach at thrivingbynature.com, Bethany helps busy entrepreneurs and leaders overcome burnout by building life skills in five “self-care buckets” (emotional, spiritual, physical, social, intellectual— inspired by “There’s a Hole in My Bucket”!). She drops fun musical mindset reminders, like her patience ditty: “Be patient, be patient, never in a hurry, for when you’re in a hurry, it only causes worry.” These tiny songs create big shifts—music makes wisdom stick!
• Affirmation Bear Hug Song
  A sweet, repeatable classroom affirmation turned podcast highlight: “Give yourself a bear hug because you’re strong. Give yourself a bear hug because you’re brave. Give yourself a bear hug, ’cause you’re important. Give yourself a bear hug every day.” (With breathing interludes—perfect for realistic, kind self-talk.)
• Embracing the Goo: Metamorphosis, Dancing & Staying Playful
  Bethany ties butterflies to personal growth: the uncomfortable “black goo” phase leads to beauty. Music, dance, hiking, skydiving, and silliness keep us from stagnating. We’re all big kids inside—it’s okay (and essential) to dance, sing, and stay light even on tough days.

Next Steps

Visit thrivingbynature.com for drop-in group coaching, one-on-one sessions, a free patience journal, her self-care course, and podcast episodes (including musical affirmations). Check her YouTube for more mindset tunes and nature-inspired wisdom.

This episode is a delightful reminder: keep singing, keep playing, keep growing—and never outgrow being a little bit silly. Music helps us become our butterflies!

Greg Dixon, Chief Cheerleader
Playing Music For Fun

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Transcript

Well, good morning, everyone.

This is Greg Dixon, the chief cheerleader for Playing Music for Fun.  And today I'm talking with Bethany Stone, who has an interesting story with music, has become a Montessori instructor, and now has a coaching practice called Thriving by Nature.  

So maybe you can just start by introducing yourself.  

Okay.  I'm Bethany Stone and I am a Montessori educator of about twenty-three years. 

 And I love music.

I grew up with music and I use music in my classroom and through my teaching and how I just have been. .just have music has been a part of me and life transition, and I  transitioned into coaching.  

And I still sing.  And I have a podcast called Triving by  Nature.  And sometimes I sing on them.  It just is because music, you resonate with music so much that it literally is part of your soul and who you are.  

It's a mantle that you just wear and just exhumes. I still sing for church functions. 

And sometimes I'll be asked to sing at other functions.  And it's just part of me. I love it.  

That's fabulous.  And I understand you had a bit of a Sound of Music childhood experience.  Do you want to talk a little bit about that?  

Yes.  So my dad immigrated to America from Switzerland when he was younger.  And my mom's mom also came from  Switzerland.  So Swiss culture was very...  very much so alive in our home.  Swiss culture was alive.  

And when we were younger, because my mom played piano, we just all sang.  And so when she'd play piano, we would sing.  And we would wear these little Swiss costumes. .would wear my little dirndl and the boys would wear lederhosen and their little Swiss hats.  

And we were asked to sing all over, and we would sing in Swiss songs and there were, seven kids, but six of us, the baby didn't sing.  

We would sing and we would practice in our little Swiss costumes.  And we were asked to sing, you know, in Utah, I'm in Idaho, in Idaho and different places.  We would just sing our little, little Swiss songs all over.  

And it was definitely one of my core memories of growing up is just practicing by my mom's piano, singing all these little Swiss songs, and then going around and performing them with my family.  

It was a really cool experience and something that, you know, I'm glad I got to experience with my family.  No, that's great fun.  

And so you've been a Montessori educator for, maybe you could just explain what the  Montessori principles are to some degree and how music fits into that?.  

Okay.  So Montessori is a philosophy.  Maria Montessori created this philosophy  in the  was one of the very first women doctors in Italy.  

And what she did is she learned that kids need to have a curriculum and have it  be adapted to how they learn.  

We don't need to put them in a box, and we don't need to sand down their edges to fit something.  They're great the way they are; we just need to adapt to how they learn.  

This philosophy has lived for a very long time, and it is all over the world.  And this philosophy is very holistic in the sense that you meet the child where they're at.  

And now, as a coach, I meet people where they're at, but how music fits into this is that we now have a population of children who, a lot of the time, are neurodivergent, and music speaks to them.  

Music spoke to me and I'm, and I'm probably neurodivergent too. I think we're all a little bit.  

But music embeds in your brain in a completely different way. I still remember things I learned as a child, like the Bill of Rights through music, and all of the United States through a song.  

You ask me, you know, if I can name all the United States, I will probably break out in music, because that's how I remember it.  

And so, going through my teaching career, there were times when I needed to teach a concept or something to these children.  And it was so much easier to teach them a song that they could resonate with and teach them that and put it into the curriculum and learn it on a deeper  level because after the papers are colored, the things are done, what's going to stick in our minds are the songs.  

Now that's great.  Montessori is quite popular in Canada.  We have quite a few schools in Canada as well.  

And, uh, yeah, that's, that's, that's really important.  I think everybody knows the alphabet song in the English-speaking world.  

Can you do your State Song?  

You want to know it?  Okay.  Sure.  Okay, I'll sing it.  

Alabama and Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, and Connecticut, and more, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, and Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, so thirty-five to go, Kansas and Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, good old Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, and Montana, then Nebraska twenty-seven, number twenty-eight, Nevada, Next, New Hampshire, then New Jersey, then way down New Mexico, there's New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, now let's see, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and there's Utah, Vermont, I'm almost through, Virginia, and there's Washington, West Virginia too, can Wisconsin be the last one, or is it forty-nine, no, Wyoming is the last one, and the fifty states that rhyme.  

That's fabulous.  Pretty good.  

There you go.  That is all fifty states right there.  And they are in alphabetical order and they rhyme.  So, I mean, if you're a third grader, learn this song because you have to write all the states, like in the U.S., in alphabetical order.  

That's one of the things that they do in third grade, usually.  And this song is how I did it.  

That's great.  So Justin Garini was on American Idol and he tells a story about he was singing  Route Sixty-Six, and accidentally he put  Alabama in there and then that threw him completely off because he had to figure out what to rhyme with it and then he just lost it.  He says, I lost it in front of thirty million people.  

That's crazy.  That's funny, though.  

Yeah, but that song has literally helped me.  

There's another song that I actually created for my classroom because butterflies are so when you are studying.  Just spring.  And you have all these insects and all these amazing things. .butterfly and moths are the coolest insects.  

And I could not find a song that was talking about the life cycle of a butterfly.  And I really wanted these kindergartners to remember this.  

And so I made a whole song for the life cycle of a butterfly.  And it's fun because, still today I'll have some schools that I taught at, taught at like  Ten, twenty years ago, I'll have some of their teachers be like, hey, could you do a voice clip of that butterfly song and send it to me?  

Schools are still singing my butterfly song because kids remember it.  And it's impactful because that is how music works.  

Music is learning.  

Music is creating.  

And music really lasts forever.  It's a legacy that is forever.  

We are still listening to songs by Beethoven and Mozart.  And these songs, they've lived forever.  

No, they certainly have.  And most people can remember the songs from their high school years and recite them.  

And my theory is that if you take almost anybody and say, okay, sing a song, they're likely to sing a Beatles song.  It's just stuck in their head somehow.

I think maybe if they're younger than a certain generation, maybe that's not true, but...  It was interesting during the Olympics  this year, how many commercials used Beatles songs as  part of the soundtrack.

A lot of people can resonate with that.  As soon as you said Beatles songs, I had Hey Jude.  

Anyway, so yeah, that's absolutely fabulous.  So maybe you can talk about your coaching, your life coaching practice and how all this...  fits into it.

I am a mindset and life skills coach so i teach the life skills that we need to incorporate in our lives so that we be good for our businesses and for our families.

I'm a business coach, but not the kind that you would think.

I'm business coach in the form where I help you discover what the invisible burn that is burning you out  

And we discover the life skill, we develop it, and then we work on your business while we're developing you.  

That's what I do.  And I love it.  

And I think that when you're developing a life skill, sometimes music is involved.  There's a song that sometimes I will sing, and I'm like, patience is a life skill.  And there is a patient song.  And I will sing it, and it goes;

Be patient, be patient, never in a hurry, for when you're in a hurry, it only causes worry.  

And when you remember these little tiny mindset shifts of being like, oh, okay, if I'm not patient, all I'm going to do is worry, that doesn't benefit everyone or anyone, right?  

So take a step back.  There's so much that we can learn from music.  And when we put it to song, it sticks with us, and we remember it.  

And even though it sounds silly, honestly, if you, I've told this before, I do a lot of speaking in, educational conferences and motivational speaking, and you are  

You feel like you cannot be who you are because, honestly, inside, we're all just big kids. 

Let's be real.  We're all just really big kids.  

Sometimes I'm like, am I old enough to do that? Still have those thoughts. I realize I am a full-grown woman with adult children.

I can do a lot of things, but we have this process sometimes where we, we're just children in our minds.  

And if we don't feel like we can still be silly kids, we can still dance a little bit.  

We can still just be ourselves.  

Then are we putting on a mask?  

Are we trying to be something that we're not?  It's okay.  

You don't always have to show up for everybody else and their expectations. 

It's very releasing to be able to show up for you and be who you are.  And that's okay.  

And if we're a little silly, that's fine.  

Yeah, Bonnie and I always say we're sixty going on sixteen, and we're not growing up anytime soon. 

 Yeah. I decided I don't want to grow up.  Growing up is so boring.  It's overrated.  

It is overrated.  

Yeah.  It's so boring to do nothing.  You give up your hopes and your dreams, and you just solidify this.  No.  I'm going to do it all.

I mean, I went skydiving a couple of years ago, and I would do that again.  

And my husband and I, we hike up mountains all the time because guess what?  When you go backpacking, and you climb a mountain, and you do something hard, that is an amazing feeling.  

Like, whenever you accomplish something hard, you realize that you can do more.  

And I run. Love to run.  And I keep challenging myself to run more.  

Don't stay stagnant.  

And when you do, you're not, well, it's kind of like my butterfly song.  You have to go through the metamorphosis to become a butterfly.  And it's not comfortable. .don't know if you know this, but when a cocoon, a butterfly or a caterpillar turns into a cocoon, inside that cocoon, they turn into black gooey yuck.  

It's like mush.  They turn in, they completely turn into black mush, like gross.  And then they redesign themselves to become a butterfly.  

And I think that's what music does is it makes you become, 

I think that's what coaching does. .think anything that pushes you to get past the gooey stuff, into something beautiful, helps you to become.  

And it's okay to be in the gooey stuff.  You just have to keep progressing.  

That's perfect.  So you can't see it here because of the green screen, but my background image is a butterfly on my phone.  And I've often used butterflies in graphics for things.  

Yeah, because they are amazing.  Like it is...  butterflies and moths go through a complete metamorphosis, and they're some of the only creatures that completely reconstruct everything that they are into .completely different creature almost.

It's amazing it really is so what does it look like to work with you?  What is the first step?

Well, I have a couple of different things.  So, because I also am a Montessori teacher, I'm probably not your typical coach because I understand business owners, and I  meet people where they are at.  

And when you meet people where they're at, it looks a lot different because I'm a business owner. 

Know that I do not always have twelve weeks to dedicate to coaching.  

I am busy.  My life is busy.  I'm also a mom and also teach bungee fitness.  

I'm also a ballroom dance instructor.  

I have a busy life, and a lot of people do, especially if you also have a business.  

So I have something that's unique, I think, to me, and I think kind of resonates with I'm.Montessori teacher, but I actually have drop-in group coaching.  

Whereas, whenever you feel like you need that clarity or support, you can just schedule a time on my website.  My website is thrivingbynature.com.  And you can just schedule a time.  

There are three times offered a week to be able to just drop in and do a group coaching.  

And then I have a course that you can take.  And with my course right now, it's unique in the fact that you can't find it unless you reach out to me.  

Yeah.  Oh, and right there.  Thank you. .have a free journal as well.  

You can download, which is a really good journal on patients, and it's a guided journal.  So that's on my website as well.  

That's so cool that you can just show my website like that.  And yeah, it says who I am.  

But, um, if you go back to the homepage, you'll see my drop-in coaching.  Uh, but yeah, it is a very unique thing.  Yep.  Right there.  If you click on that, you can just get right into my drop-in coaching. .also do one-on-one coaching and it is a process. 

And this is where you actually create your own better-me list.  It's like your becoming list.  

It's your butterfly list.  

And it is what you want to do to improve.  Like you discover for yourself, the life skills that you need to add to your life and practice every day so that you can become that butterfly and become that person that you want to be in every aspect of your life.  

Because I deal in five areas of self-care, your emotional, spiritual, physical, social, and intellectual life.  And these, I call them the five buckets of self-care  also because of a song, by the way, because there's a children's song called There's a Hole in Your Bucket.  

And I don't know if you know this one.  

There's a hole in your bucket, dear Lila.  Do you know this one?  This song, these kids, they put straw, mud, everything in this bucket, and they never fix it. 

So when I was designing this course, I decided that I wanted to fix these buckets.  And so how I'm fixing these buckets is each one of these buckets, they pour into the next one and you fill your buckets, and they're not going to have holes.  

So you fill your spirit or your emotional  bucket, your spiritual bucket pours in, then that pours into your physical bucket  and your physical bucket is right in the  center.  And that's where we do nutrition, and we do movement and we do hydration.

And environment.  That is in the center because you have to prepare yourself for that.  

And you need to create the foundation of the emotional and the spiritual to do that.  And then your physical bucket will then pour into your social self-care bucket.  

And then that one pours into your intellectual self-care bucket.  

Your social self-care bucket is your boundaries, your communication, your connection with people.  And then your intellectual self-care bucket is about how to continue to fan the flame of just wanting to learn.  Fanning the flame of pushing yourself, of growing.  

How are you going to continue to do  that for the rest of your life?  Because that is where I feel like we  start aging backwards, is when we can fan the flame.  

That's great.  Become the butterfly. I like that.  Yeah.  

You spoke with my wife, Bonnie.  And we met on match.com and her handle was Dance With Me.  

So she's been trying to make me into a dancer ever since.  

You can.  Dancing is awesome.  It's just another way of singing.  

It's, you know, when you sing, you feel so light, and you feel like music just is like light

I don't know how to explain it.  It's just wonderful. 

And when you dance, it's like your body gets to do it instead of your voice.  And I love dancing.  

It is such an amazing thing because even when I'm so exhausted, I'm like, this day sucked the life out of me.  This day was rough, and I have those days, but that night I get to go teach dance or I get to go dancing with my husband, that  feeds my soul.  

And I love it.  Dancing is just part of me as well.  

Yeah, that's fabulous.  

So I very much appreciate your holistic approach to this, you know, nature and music and art and dancing, all those things just to make your life beautiful.  

Beautiful.  Yes. I think that is what makes our lives beautiful. 

Let's go back to the Montessori philosophy here.

I think that so many people have the idea that we need to, and I think I told you this when we first talked, that we have to sand our edges down to fit into the mold and the box that people want us to fit into.  

And I do not believe that.

I feel like the people that are really making a difference and really making a change and really resonating with other people are the ones that really can see all of their edges and they embrace them and they're not fitting into any boxe.

They know who they are.  They know what their values are. They know what they stand for .

And they respond through that, through what their values and who they are.

And I think that changes everything because when you have that intrinsic motivation which Montessori creates, and does you are able to do things for yourself.  

You're not, you don't, it doesn't matter if you're getting hearts, thumbs up, all of the things that people are after now, just this outward appraisal and recognition, because when you do it for yourself, it shifts, and it doesn't matter.  

There was a lady who, when I was teaching, told me, "I'm going to tell you," that I was very frumpy-looking and that I should dress better.  

And granted, we were working with kindergartners, and yeah, I wore my hair in a ponytail quite a bit, and I didn't always put on makeup, but I mean, I didn't look frumpy in my opinion.  

And, but she was wearing clothes from  Nordstrom's and things working with kindergartners.  Very quickly.

I mean, that could have really hurt my feelings, like, what she thought.  And it did hurt. I'm human.  

Yeah.  That was like, wow.  

And I took that, and I went home, and it kind of hurt.  And I thought about it for a while.  

And I said, you know, it's so much more important for me to resonate with who I am and engage with these children.

I want to be on the floor playing with them. I don't want to be worried about getting paint or dirt or things on me, because that is going to resonate with these children.  And that's what they're going to remember.  And she would not get on the floor and play with the children.  

Well, the year went by.  The end of the year happened.  And she thanked me because I just kind of just let it roll off me.  

She thanked me.  

And I noticed that her outfits changed throughout the year.   

And she thanked me for holding true to who I was and being such a good example to her, which is very, very cool.  

And I thought about this story multiple times because I didn't worry about being what everyone else wanted me to be.  Because when I'm true to who I am, that is what is going to resonate.  

That's a good story.  Be true to yourself.  That's a good thing.  

Well, it is.  And, you know, girls can be mean. mean, even if we're grown-ups, they can still say super mean things. .mean, the mean girl thing doesn't actually ever end, which I thought it did, but it doesn't.  

So, I mean, it's even more important as you get older to be like, okay, how thick is my skin?  Is that going to bother me?  

Yeah, I'm probably going to drag Bonnie and my brother to watch Mean Girls one day.  The movie.  

Yeah. Mean, it's a thing.  Yeah, it's a thing.  

So thank you very much for coming to today.  

And if anybody's interested in unleashing their inner butterfly, go to thrivingbynature.com and book a free session.  

Yeah, I would love to meet you.  Or if you just want to just do drop-in coaching, either way.  Drop-in coaching.  

And you also have a YouTube channel with a lot of things there.  

Yes, I do. .do. .have my podcast there, and then I  do hot takes mindset from the sauna and don't look good in those.  It just is.  

I  saw something along the lines of a series of musical affirmations.  

Oh yes.  So my podcast, um, Do you want me to sing that song for you?  

Yes, please.  

Okay.  So I just put out a podcast.  It was last week, and it was the Affirmation  Podcast.  

But this is an affirmation song I'd sing with the children in my classroom.  It goes, 

Give yourself a bear hug because you're strong.  

Give yourself a bear hug because you're brave.  

Give yourself a bear hug, cause you're important.  

Give yourself a bear hug every day.  

Breathe in and breathe out.  

Hold your breath and let it out.  

Give yourself a bear hug because you're strong.  

Give yourself a bear hug because you're brave.  

Give yourself a bear hug because you're important.  

Give yourself a bear hug every day.  

And in my podcast, I talk about realistic affirmations because sometimes we do not give ourselves realistic ones.  

Okay.  That's the perfect place to end.  

Thank you very much for joining us today. It's been a delight.  

Thank you, Greg, for having me. I appreciate you.  

And we'll see you later.