LIFESTYLE is a term used by many psychologists to refer to the stages of childhood. The concept of lifestyle is the most significant, cultural, psychological, and behavioral orientations of a person, group, or society. The word was first introduced by Austrian psychiatrist Alfred Adler in his famous book, The Case of Miss R. with the implied meaning of “the basic nature of a person as established early on”. For this reason, the term LIFESTYLE remains popular today, despite its very different interpretation from today’s standards and definitions.
As per Wikipedia: “Lifetime” (in English, the spelling is LIFETIME) “refers to the duration of life and has a specific reference to human activities”. Thus, Lifestyle can be defined as the habits, opinions, beliefs, and behaviors of people. This in turn, can be understood to be a complex network of values, practices, and social interactions of individuals who live in a specific and cultural mass culture. The existence of such a mass culture is evident in a variety of aspects of a person’s life, including education, beliefs, work, consumption, gender, relationships, leisure, sex, immigration, and death.
For Lifestyle to be defined as a definite life style, one would need to consider all the aspects of the life style of a single individual. These would include his/her personal ideals, values, beliefs, conduct, actions, policies, and other relevant aspects of his/her personality. It should be noted that the above definition may be very broad as it only includes the essential aspects of an individual’s lifestyle and not necessarily all the non-ideals or attitudes that exist in a person’s everyday life. This article will now discuss the four elements of Lifestyle.
A comprehensive definition of Lifestyle would include the following elements: Conscientiousness, grounded-inquiry, flexibility, creativity, emotional intelligence, and social intelligence. All these are crucial to defining a complete lifestyle. Conscientiousness refers to a person’s ability to use one’s mind in the context of his/her environment and Lifestyle is defined by a person’s ability to live up to his/her conscientious principles. This means that Lifestyle will determine what is the most important part of his/her life. This part will be grounded on the person’s beliefs, values, behaviors, and priorities and will be reflected in his/her behavior, beliefs, values, and actions.
grounded-inquiry is the process of reviewing one’s own beliefs, values, behaviors, and connections with other people. flexibility is necessary in light of the fact that different lifestyles will demand different methods of engagement and Lifestyle will help determine which is the best method. This process will also help identify whether Lifestyle is something that can be changed or improved upon (if it can be). Finally, emotional intelligence is the capacity to understand, evaluate, and control one’s personal and interpersonal patterns as they relate to Lifestyle.
The term Lifestyle is actually a combination of the elements listed above: grounded inquiry, flexibility, creativity, emotional intelligence, and social media. Max Weber effectively utilizes these elements in defining a lifestyle-based career path and practice. To review, Lifestyle is all about evaluating and changing oneself in light of changing environments and embracing greater responsibility for personal and social media consumption, as well as increasing your personal and professional influence through the promotion of a more responsible lifestyle.