The quality of our lives determines how happy and contentful we feel about ourselves and therefore the quality of our life largely depends on the lifestyle we adopt. Being mindful of the lifestyle we’ve is extremely essential for us to understand where we are and where we are headed. A healthy lifestyle is detrimental to one’s success and overall happiness in life. Success can mean different things for different individuals. Your Lifestyle is thus the Innate You!
Life is but an accumulation of experiences
However, a sense of contentment and fulfillment one can draw from their success depends on lifestyle. As rightly said by a famous proverb – “Life is but an accumulation of experiences”. What we choose to experience and what we choose to not experience is a decision that we make based on our lifestyle and hence, the quality of our lifestyle truly defines the quality of our lives! Your Lifestyle is at the core, the Innate You! That’s why it is so important to be mindful of the lifestyle we are following and to also assess it from time to time.
What is “Lifestyle”? How do we develop a “Lifestyle”? Find your answers to these questions and more in this write-up.
What does “Lifestyle” mean?
In layman terms, Lifestyle simply means the way an individual lives his or her life. Lifestyle is the opinions, interests, behaviors, thinking patterns, and behavioral orientation of an individual. Put it simply, the way or sort of living is mentioned as one’s lifestyle. In essence, one’s lifestyle may be a combination of several tangible and intangible factors.
Tangible factors influencing lifestyle
Tangible factors talk about the demographic and geographical factors that contribute to an individual’s lifestyle. For example, People living in rural areas of the country are bound to have a different lifestyle as compared to living in the suburbs or urban counterparts. Such tangible factors contribute to one’s lifestyle for the most part of it – for instance: people living in the rural areas are early to bed and early to rise as opposed to the people living in the urban metros who generally go to sleep during the late-night hours.
Intangible factors influencing lifestyle
On the other hand, the intangible factors are comprised of the psychological contributing factors like one’s belief systems, philosophies, personal values, preferences, prejudices, opinions, and outlooks. These are formed based on the surrounding environments where an individual has been bought up and the people who’ve raised them.
For instance: Children brought up in the Western part of the world are more exposed to the ideas of liberalism than the ones that are brought up in the Eastern parts. Additionally, as an individual grows up to be an adult, he or she realizes their identity and choose the belief systems and values they want to stand and abide by. So, lifestyle is a combination of both the aspects and largely differs from one individual to another although it might appear to be the same on the outlook.
How do we develop a “lifestyle”?
For the foremost a part of it, we develop our lifestyle fundamentally from the environment we’re surrounded with. Parents undoubtedly are our first teachers and we tend to pick up our habits, routines, eating patterns, sleeping patterns, the importance we give to health, leisure, art and philosophy, and everything in between from our families.
Later on, as a child turns into an adolescent and later into an adult – he or she picks up their own preference of lifestyles depending upon one’s individual life experiences.
How our lifestyle is expressed in our work, leisure, health, attitudes, opinions, motivations, and everything in between…
Our Lifestyle typically roots from the core beliefs and philosophies we have and develop over time. In essence, lifestyle is more of a dynamic nature and not a static one because our beliefs and philosophies keep changing and evolving over time, as we grow up and we’re more exposed to different kinds of environments.
Our work is an extension of our own mind
Our lifestyle is evidently reflected in our work style and ethics. Our work is an extension of our own minds. Thus, our lifestyle is sure to be reflected and expressed in and through our work. For example: If a person follows a “Green Lifestyle“ meaning adopting living patterns that minimize our ecological footprints, he/she will strive to cut down on plastic usage at our house and at work and an attempt to find ways to reuse and recycle things at work. Similarly, a person following a “Taoist Lifestyle” which means living in absolute harmony with nature and natural order, tries to minimize arguments and misunderstandings at work and strives to promote uninterrupted workplace ethics, creating work environments that hurt none and treats everyone equally.
Our macro and micro day-to-day activities are influenced by our lifestyle
examples evidently draw out how one’s Lifestyle reflects in one’s work. But in essence, it goes way beyond this point and everything that we do, both at macro and micro levels is innately influenced by our lifestyle. What we do in our leisure time, for example, defines our affinity towards hobbies, art, and philosophies. Someone who believes deeply within the art would like to spend their leisure doing things that put their creativity to check. They’re generally seen making things – from cooking to painting, to crafts and DIYs to composing music then on. Similarly, someone who is passionate about philosophy will be seen generally spending their time with books, or having conversations with people, and so on.
Similarly, other aspects of our lives – from how we behave, our activities, interests, attitudes, opinions, values to more niched down parameters of life like our economic decisions, relationships, motivations, needs are all manifestations of our lifestyle, expression, and extension. Here are some instances that explain the same in brief:
- People living in rural areas might not spend their hard-earned money on travel and adventure as compared to their counterparts living in urban areas who would love to pay higher prices in exchange for an excellent experience.
- People who believe “Minimalistic Lifestyle” will attempt to hamper unnecessary costs in buying things that don’t serve a fulfilled purpose. Also, they don’t value hanging out with a large bunch of friends every weekend at an expensive restaurant as much as they would value hanging out with a close circle of friends doing more simple things. Therefore, their idea of fun is defined by their choice of lifestyle.
- People who follow a “Sophisticated Lifestyle” would love to fill their days with various activities that give them an elite experience – from working at great corporate spaces to indulging in sports like swimming or badminton, and indulging in recreational activities like fancy spas and massages. Their idea of how their day should look stems from their lifestyle choice of keeping it as modernistic and sophisticated as possible.
These are just a few examples that demonstrate how one’s Lifestyle is expressed thoroughly in every aspect of life – from recreation to work to relationships and economic or financial decisions. Creating a life that you simply want starts from creating a lifestyle plan that suits the type of life you would like to measure and stick to the present lifestyle plan. It might be necessary sometimes to make changes to one’s lifestyle in order to ensure we’re headed where we want to and taking time to do this at regular intervals pays off such a lot within the long run! At the top of the day, our lifestyle is by large the part and parcel of who we are and thus – Your Lifestyle is actually the Innate You!
