My grandfather was already by nature very relaxed person.
And he was great at not listening if he didn’t want to. My grandmother was always complaining about it. How he does not care at all about anything beside his rum and Spartas (very strong kind of Slovakian made cigarettes).
And he really did not care much about anything. He had his interesting world of his own, where only his grand kids could enter.
Stress free work.
My grandfather got to work at 8 A.M. and he worked until 4 P.M. Never longer.
There were no deadlines at work, you just had to be doing something.
That’s how work looked like in communism.
Institutions, even if they didn’t need any workers, they still hired a bunch of them.
So there were times when my grandfather came to work and was told bury the same hole he dogged out the day before.
That actually reminds me boot camps where people pay a lot of money to get some exercise.
At 4 P.M. my grandfather just put the shovel down and left home. No homework, no stress, no deadline to catch up with.
After work, nobody was really thinking about the work anymore and my grandfather wasn’t an exception.
Now, people are over-worked, over-booked, over-committed, over-stressed, they can not sleep, they have anxieties from all that stress and all that mental pressure.
This kind of pressure did not exist in eastern Europe when my grandfather was in workforce.
Cool hobbies.
My grandfather had many passions in his life.
He grew all kinds weird flowers, even those that eat flies and other insect.
He collected pins from world war 2, he was always inventing weird gadgets in his garage and he also loved European futbal.
He couldn’t wait to get home and feed his plants, or get to the garage, or trade some pins. And of course to have a drink and cigarette.
Lesson learned.
Mental stress is a killer. There is so much of it around these days.
People are loosing perspective of what is actually important in their life’s.
Keeping an eye on your own well being, getting regular exercise, eating healthy diet free of processed foods and having time for your passions and relax is the most important thing you can do.
Why?
Because all this applyes to your health. Don’t do it and your health suffers. And than everything else suffers with it. Which doesn’t really make sense to me at all, why would you allow that.
Life is too short to waist it on stressing about work, meeting deadlines and neglecting our bodies by not exercising, not sleeping enough and not having time to eat balanced nutritional diet.
Hobbies and passions are great stress fighters. When you engage in yours, you loose track of time and you relax in the process.
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Thank you for the great blog! I like to smoke and have a few beers and I’m tierd of feeling guilty about it. I have a physical job, eat simply and have no stress. Your Grandfather lived a happy long life and I think I will too.