Do you tire of your grandparents telling you how much better life was when they were kids? Well, as frustrating as it is to hear your grandparents talk about things you know nothing about, it seems that things they used to do weren’t just better, but they had a much better life as a result. A topic like health, you would think, is much more comprehensive now, and that we are living healthier lives now. In fact, obesity is much higher and although people are living longer due to modern medical marvels, it appears that the quality of life is nowhere near as good as it used to be. So, are there important lessons we can learn from our grandparents to live a happier and healthier life now?
They Didn’t Have Technology
This is the most glaringly obvious difference between us and our grandparents and great grandparents. Their technology was limited to the car, fridge, and television. As a result, they didn’t have the internet to keep them entertained if they were bored, they had to make their own entertainment. Of course, now, we’re seeing a major backlash of what social media is doing to people, especially young children, so maybe we can learn a lesson from our grandparents and stay away from social media and computers for limited period of time. By giving ourselves an opportunity to make do with what they had, such as the great outdoors, books, board games, and the like, then maybe we will give our over-wired brain the opportunity to slow down and relax.
They Appreciated Home Comforts
We seem to have the view that simple is just plain boring. However, simplicity gives our minds the opportunity to relax. Back in the middle of the 20th century, when rationing was in full force, our grandparents and great grandparents didn’t have as too much choice as we do now, with regards to food, items, products, and so forth. As a result they appreciated the simplicity of home comforts, from sleeping in a good bed to spending time with the family. Now, we don’t appreciate home comforts at all. But the fact is that home comforts will help reduce stress. We appear to be on the go constantly, so we need to find suitable methods to get to a simpler outlook on things. Luckily, in the modern age, we can find ways to relax very quickly. This is where we can harness the internet for all its power. Pop a simple search into Google for “home comforts,” and you’ve got a multitude of results, from how to guides, to the best quality mattresses for your money. www.Mattress-Guides.net/ is one of a million different sites that provides those basics in home comforts. But the thing with home comforts overall is that they are conducive to a happier outlook on life. Back in the 20th century, more items were handmade, meaning they had quality stamped all over them. Now, so many things are mass produced that they are pretty much designed to break right away, from mattresses, to wardrobes, to even some houses! This is an unfortunate by-product of living in the modern age and this does explain why vintage products, in all its forms, are so popular now.
They Ate Wholesome Food
With a lack of choice, it meant that they had to make do with the ingredients they had. As a result, they made every food item they had go as far as possible. For a lot of people, it’s perplexing how the majority of people back then stayed so thin, but they are fatty food stuffs, like butter. But now, we are seeing different diets do the rounds that thrive on a high fat content, such as the bulletproof diet, the ketogenic diet, or the paleo diet. The fact is, your grandparents were doing this way before it was fashionable! A food item like bone broth is so trendy now that there are stores opening up dedicated to selling bone broth, but it’s just something that your grandparents did anyway! It was using the carcass of the animal to make a soup! There’s some great recipes for bone broth online, and there’s a multitude of health benefits of having bone broth in your diet, which you can see on DrAxe.com/, and as your grandparents didn’t have access to preservatives and foods with long shelf life, they had to make their food go further and use their own preserving methods. But as the food they purchased was wholesome and organic, free from preservatives, it meant that they naturally ate healthily, with an abundance of vegetables, protein, but they also ate in season. This is something we can all benefit from in the modern world, and with the right diet, it will result in a far healthy lifestyle in comparison to the ones most people lead now.
And the final point to make with regards to what your grandparents did all those years ago is that they had to get up and go somewhere, on foot. Whether it was to the shops, or to visit relatives, the fact is they were more active than we are now. And it’s not hard to be more active, but with everything being accessible at the touch of a button now, we have naturally become more lazy. This is a fact of the modern world. Your grandparents were happier, even though they were going through wars, had less money, and less food! And if you dig deep into the health impacts of something like the depression of the 1930s, the health of those people were at an all-time high. This points us towards current trends like intermittent fasting for health benefits, but also, the fact is that we are eating more and moving less, our grandparents had no choice but to eat less and move more! These aren’t really health hacks, but maybe the answer is all about living a simpler lifestyle. They lived a simpler lifestyle and they were happier. So maybe we can all take a leaf out of our grandparents’ books?
