If you’ve been anywhere around the blogosphere, I’m sure you noticed lifestyle design. It’s the new/old it thing, where someone can live however they choose (or how their skills put them) on just a bit of money, usually made by selling you a pdf file of how you could do what they are doing.
This obviously isn’t the only way to lifestyle design, and I’d like to share a story from someone I know who has been a ‘lifestyle designer’ way before you needed a blog (or quit your job) to be a lifestyle designer.
Competitive Swimming
I grew up in the same area as my mom and most of her family, so when it was time to join a year round swim team when I was in middle school, she took me (and my sister) to her old swim coach, Greg. Since Greg was a family friend, he had known who I was for quite a while, but I never recalled meeting him. On the way over, mom told us stories about how all of our aunts and uncles used to swim for Greg, all the places that they were able to go to compete at swim meets (like sunny Arizona!) and all the fun that they had. Naturally, I was slightly skeptical because it was a new environment and was supposed to be a step up, with harder workouts and more serious teammates. I dont really recall what to expect of my new coach, but I quickly started to learn.
After swimming with Greg for a few years about 3-4 times per week, I started to get better (thankfully, because I was working hard), so when I started high school, I got moved to a new practice time with a smaller group of swimmers who were also in high school. I had expected it to be the exact same as what I was used to: go to practice, swim, go home – but it was completely different with Greg when I was older. Gone were the times I got sprayed with the hose because I didnt get into the pool right away, and in came the talks before we got in.
Of course, since I was in high school and I knew everything, I figured that it was just Greg going off about one thing or another for about 5-10 minutes before practice once a week. He would sit us all down and talk to us about swimming sometimes, but usually it was something corollary - our eating habits, how much we slept each night, the amount of alcohol we were consuming, why he didnt eat red meat, why he followed the teachings of Buddha and a whole bunch of other things.
After about 2 years, this stuff started to sink in – I mean Greg was in his 60s (He would never tell anyone when his birthday was because he didnt want to make a big deal of it) and didn’t look that old, never once got sick and always seemed to be in a pretty good mood (I heard him say 1 bad thing about someone else 1 time). I figured if Greg was this healthy when he was three times my age, maybe he was doing something right with his life.
