Last night, after our delicious Thanksgiving feast, I watched The Sound of Music with my son until past midnight. You might not think a 12-year-old boy would want to watch this with his Mom, but I explained that I thought it was an important movie for him to watch for several reasons. One, his history class has been studying the Holocaust and I thought it would provide another perspective on that horrid period of time; two, my son is very into music now and I told him he should have a good historical perspective on some of the music that others have built their music upon. I even mentioned that I know people go to The Hollywood Bowl every summer to enjoy The Sound Of Music Sing Along! Rodgers and Hammerstein have staying power.

It’s been decades since I’ve watched the movie – I’ve seen this movie at least 7 times in my life already – and last night I was again so moved by the wisdom and depth of the characters and the music. The songs resonated so much for me and while I so wanted to sing along (I didn’t to spare my son) I felt the goose bumps that come from the recognition that those characters were singing songs that are great reminders of things easy to forget. And that’s where the ‘corny but true’ comes in …
Sometimes I find that I have to remind myself, and my clients, of the words Maria so boldly sang – I am confident I have confidence in me! – when life gets so overwhelming, confusing and confounding and, particularly lately, scary. We have to regularly practice talking positively to ourselves – those of you who have lost your job or are worried about losing a job listen up here – it’s so important to think of the message of My Favorite Things. In fact, I recently was feeling the heaviness of the world’s turmoil, the sadness of some of my clients, and the frustration of not being able to fix everything! So I knew I needed to enrich myself and spent a few hours at a spa using a gift certificate I received for Mother’s Day. I had to remind myself of the things that are going well, spend some quality quiet time reading and listening to good music. I needed to walk around Santa Monica and people watch. And I even indulged in the best fix for low mood – I bought a new lip gloss. Ok, I know that might not work for 50% of you out there, but you get the idea. A few hours of self-care and reminding myself of a few of my favorite things had me feeling re-energized and re-inspired.

I hope you’ll do this for you, too. Clearly we all have many mountains to climb these days. And we usually learn the most from the times that we make it up those mountains. So here you go, just in case you haven’t heard (or seen) this lately or even ever …

Climb every mountain, search high and low
Follow every byway, every path you know.
Climb every mountain, ford every stream,
Follow every rainbow, ’til you find your dream!

A dream that will need
all the love you can give,
Every day of your life
for as long as you live.

Climb every mountain, ford every stream,
Follow every rainbow, ’til you find your dream!

From The Sound of Music by Rodgers and Hammerstein