Thinking with the Olive Trees
Life has been moving at an intense pace lately. A recent health scare served as a wake-up call that while work and life appeared to be going well on the surface, I'd been treating my body like a machine. All that time with AI certainly wasn't helping.
I knew I needed space for reflection, deep thinking, and some intentional “not-thinking” to design a better path forward.
So I found myself as a guest at a personal development center in central Portugal, nestled among olive trees and rolling hills. Simple setting with the feeling of a large family farmhouse. I shared meals, sometimes cooked, meditated and participated in daily activities alongside international volunteers, part of a typical WWOOF program, but with an added layer of personal growth work.
Co-habitating with six strangers became a classroom for learning, sharing, teaching, and sometimes simply being together. Above all it was wonderful to be among like-minded people simply sharing about our humanity and interest in exercising and practicing it.
I spent time uncovering what truly stresses me versus what genuinely restores me, reconnecting with my deeper purpose beyond the daily demands. I worked on balancing my natural inclination toward selflessness with necessary self-care, reminding myself that sustainable service to others requires first filling my own well. I also practiced being more thoughtful about my strategist/planner/learner/future-reading nature, remembering that "the dose makes the poison" applies to information consumption and thinking as much as anything else.
Besides some 1-1 deep transformational work sessions, key moments came from the simplest activities. Stacking firewood became a form of moving meditation. Long walks among the olive trees observing their strong trunks and roots served as an inspiration. Watching the visiting dog lying contentedly in the shade, without a single care in the world, offered a lesson in embodying a truly restful mind state.
The olive trees, it turns out, are excellent thinking partners. They've been rooted there for decades, weathering seasons, producing fruit, requiring patience. There's wisdom in their stillness.
As someone passionate about empowering people to grow, I was reminded that sustainable performance isn't just a concept I coach others on. It's a practice I need to go back to embodying myself more fully. The irony wasn't lost on me. Imperfect humans…
What I discovered among those ancient trees is that sometimes the most courageous thing we can do is step away from what's urgent to reconnect with what's essential. Growth happens not just in the doing, but in the spaces between; in the pauses, the breaths, the moments when we remember who we are beneath all the roles we play.
The olive trees are still there, rooted and patient, continuing their quiet work of transformation. They've reminded me that the most sustainable growth mirrors nature itself: deep roots, patient seasons, and the wisdom to know when to rest and when to reach toward the light.
