Mindful Monday

Here’s the message for our Mindful Monday: Find the Good.

Here at our home in NZ, we did the olive harvest about a month ago, stripping the canes, shaking the branches so that it was literally raining olives, so everything fell into the wide skirt on the ground, which was then dumped into buckets, hauled to the truck, then poured out at the olive press.

But the olives in this pic were extra, picked from a separate trip out. I mean, the trees are in our back yard so that part was easy, although the process for brining and prepping is actually not.

1. you pick them
2. you wash them
3. let them soak in fresh water for 3 days
4. strain/rinse them again
5. create the brine (10:1 concentration)
6. (get the new buckets from our NZ version of Home Depot)
7. sort the olives by type
8. pour the brine into each bucket, cover, leave for a week
9. drain, rinse, throw in some more brine
10. Do this for 4 weeks, or until the olives are tender without tasting overly bitter.
11. only THEN do you add the flavorings in some oil (rosemary, chilly, thyme, etc), and let it all think about itself for another couple of weeks or so.

It’s a whole thing, and you could totally choose to see this process (getting the olives in shape to be eaten) as a complete PITA — especially when you could just run to the store and pick up a jar.

But a big part of mindfulness is about you, and what you choose to focus on. If you call the process of harvest, preparation, and weeks of brining + marinating a pain that’s too long, too hard, too inconvenient … then it will live that way for you and be a stressor in your life.

On the other hand, if you choose the “find the good”, and call the process an opportunity and a gift just to be able to participate in … then it will live that way for you.

Either way you go, the impact of your choice floods your brain with the neurochemicals you provide it: that are either positive and supportive, or negative and harmful.

BTW, the olives are just completing week1 of the brine, so it’ll be into late July before they’re ready, and then you’re all invited over, lol!