Have you ever heard people say, “It’s not a hobby, it’s a lifestyle”? We’re not discussing hobbies or practices here. This article is about the idea of lifestyles and how people define theirs in many aspects and stages of their lives.
The word ‘lifestyle’ and the numerous things we attribute it to can often be an overwhelming concept. Since the concept has become so vast, many bloggers have shifted their focus to lifestyle and become “lifestyle bloggers.” Lifestyle bloggers blog and discuss anything from healthy living to food, creativity, inspiration, travel, etc.
Where Can We Get News/Discussions About Lifestyle?
Nowadays, there are a lot of lifestyle news websites, lifestyle magazines, forums, tv shows, podcasts, and a lot more. While it’s evident that lifestyle news and discussions are open to interpretation, it’s essential to consider the source and genre of information you are exposing yourself to. A particular type of information might seem appealing to you but may not be applicable or relevant to your circumstances.
Hence, it would help if you consider it rationally. Most information, news, and articles about lifestyle contain changes you can make to your daily routine, habits, perspective, etc. However, you need to understand which of these changes would significantly improve your quality of life in a relevant manner.
People carry a diverse range of lifestyles such as environment friendly or green, Christian, minimalist, vegan, etc. You could be a project manager, an artist, a traveler, a creative, a business owner, or an extreme adventurer. Whichever lifestyle you choose, it needs to be adequately defined with all the essential parameters.
I have maintained a workaholic creative lifestyle, and I love it. I could tell you more about what I experienced and how my perception of myself and life changed after adapting to this lifestyle. But for this article, let’s focus on how people from different backgrounds and arenas define their lifestyles.
What is a “Lifestyle”?
A lifestyle is essentially a combination of behavioral, professional, social, and recreational patterns. This pattern is repeated repeatedly as long as we are wearing that particular “lifestyle” for ourselves. It affects how people perceive us and how we perceive ourselves, and our identity.
Lifestyles are a collection of needs, wants, feelings, reactions, and motives. Our sense of peace and happiness is directly related to our lifestyle. In other words, we can describe a lifestyle as a collection of more delicate details of our regular lives accumulated to form a bigger picture that we wish to express ourselves as. Since we have only one life, it’s essential to make such decisions with utmost caution.
Too Many Lifestyles and Direction in Life in General
This is a concern since “lifestyle” has been getting increasingly popular. There have been instances where people end up overdoing it. Individuals might think having multiple lifestyles as their identity is “cool.” However, when someone affiliates their identity with too many things, it creates confusion around the actual person and their persona.
Communications and marketing can create lifestyles out of near about everything nowadays. That serves as the goal of promoting products – associating it to aspects beyond the tangible item. For example, suppose an exotic brand of passionfruit juice is promoted as an essential to living the life of an adventurous, nomadic travel writer.
In that case, it connects certain people with the brand who wish to have such a lifestyle and inspires values, feelings, and stories that compel them to buy the product.
Lifestyles have become somewhat like clothes in our closets. It’s as though we are putting on a different skin depending on the circumstances. In the pursuit of being anything we want to be, we are mostly losing our core identity and altering the general directions of our lives so much that we often feel lost with ourselves. Hence, keeping the lifestyle decisions relatable and rational is essential.
As a result, maintaining too many lifestyles translates to limiting the bigger picture or the full potential for each of the said lifestyles.
Can Lifestyles Get in Each Other’s Way?
Our lifestyles are all about priorities. For example, I prefer the creative lifestyle more than a writer’s. While maintaining these two, the writer’s lifestyle often gets in the way of the creative lifestyle and not the other way around since the creative encompasses a lot more.
However, I need to understand when I should emphasize which. For the most part, it depends on my needs at that particular point and not what people perceive.
Suppose you have two lifestyles, a businessman and a traveler. These two might contradict or obstruct each other if they are not individualized and balanced out appropriately.
Final Thoughts
Lifestyles can take you from really unhappy with your life to being content, proactive, and lively. It goes the other way around for some people too.
Hence, we must consider carefully and distinctively defining and assuming our lifestyles to maintain a harmonious life and avoid conflicts with our inner selves.
