In this article you will see what lifestyle is, how contagious it is, learn about its different types, as well as discover how lifestyle can influence your life.
Lifestyle, in English “lifestyle” is a modern expression, widely used on social media, but what does it mean anyway?
According to the World Health Organization, Lifestyle “is the set of habits and customs that are influenced, modified, encouraged or inhibited by the prolonged process of socialization.
What is a lifestyle – The origin
How can we know what lifestyle is?
If we are the origin of the term lifestyle, we can also attribute meaning to this expression to make it even easier to understand.
To understand its origin, let’s start with the word style
Style is a word that, depending on the context, has different meanings.
Coming from the Latin stilu(m), this word referred to a rod used for writing, it was like an ancient type of pen.
In association with this idea of writing, different meanings of style emerged, such as:
- The way the individual wrote.
- The way he developed his text, romantic, didactic…
Furthermore, as many people at the time were illiterate, the word style gained a new meaning linked to refinement, something of good taste.
This gives rise to the idea of a stylish man, stylish clothes, etc.
It is worth considering that the word still (m) also has other meanings closer to its origin, such as a stylus, that instrument with a very thin blade often used to cut leaves.
However, for the widely accepted meaning of “lifestyle”, the association with style was those first two, the form or way in which the individual wrote his text.
The meaning of life
The meaning of life has already been partly addressed in another of our articles on what it means to live well.
Living talks about physiology, the condition of being alive, therefore, we can understand that life is the experience of living.
In other words, the entire development of organisms from its beginning to its end.
Knowing all this, it’s time to answer: What is lifestyle?
What is a lifestyle – Putting the words together
Great, now that we have defined the words “style”, and “life” and we know that “de” is a preposition (class of words that connects the words themselves), we just need to put everything together to arrive at the meaning of lifestyle.
As we said above, the sense of style that is popularly linked to life refers to the way or manner in which the individual wrote their text.
In the case of lifestyle, how individuals experience their lives.
Therefore, a possible definition of what a lifestyle is in this context is:
Is there only one type of lifestyle?
Not, all people experience their lives in very different ways, thus forming different types of lifestyles.
In large part, the reason for this is due to the contagious power of lifestyles.
The contagious power of lifestyle
Remember to consider that due to the social nature of human beings, as well as the influence of perceptual relevance generated through interpersonal communication, lifestyles become contagious.
In practice, this means that by living your life and expressing it, other people are influenced and can start to adopt lifestyles similar to yours.
This effect propagates religions, political ideas, consumer behaviors, habits, ways of relating, cultures, and much more.
This becomes even more powerful when communication is global and fast, as is the case with the internet and social networks, propagating lifestyles much faster, as is the case today.
When using a social network you see videos and photos of how people live their life experiences, often being influenced by them.
The important thing is to know how to distinguish what living well means for you, so that you don’t simply look for what living well means for others and end up frustrated living a life that isn’t yours.
If you want to know more about this subject, read this article:
Okay, now that you know what lifestyle is and how its contagious effect spreads, here’s the question, what lifestyles are there?
Who has never asked themselves: What lifestyle would I like to have?
To inspire you to find the way of living you want, we have selected below some lifestyles for you to discover and, who knows, adopt!
Types of lifestyle
Knowing that: lifestyle is the form or way in which one or more individuals experience their lives.
Therefore, it is clear that it would be impossible to define how many types of lifestyles there are, much less mention them all here.
However, as stated in the WHO definition at the beginning of this article: “lifestyle is the set of habits and customs that are influenced, modified, encouraged or inhibited by the prolonged process of socialization.”
Therefore, it is possible to look for patterns of popular customs and habits to bring examples of lifestyles.
We have separated 7 lifestyles and some peculiar characteristics of each one, see if you identify with any of them, remembering that your lifestyle may be a mixture of them.
Healthy lifestyle
What is a healthy lifestyle and what are its characteristics?
A healthy lifestyle seeks forms or ways of living that preserve the individual’s health.
People with a healthy lifestyle have the habit of practicing physical activities, eating well, drinking plenty of water, sleeping well, maintaining good relationships, in short, carrying out actions in their lives that promote their health.
These actions often also include avoiding harmful behaviors, processed foods, toxic relationships, and high consumption of sugar or other drugs.
Unhealthy lifestyle
After all, what is an unhealthy lifestyle?
It is simply antagonistic to a healthy lifestyle and can bring several health problems into your life.
However, be aware that an unhealthy lifestyle is very common.
An unhealthy lifestyle does not have a preference for health-promoting behaviors, in addition, it has habits and customs that are harmful to health.
People with an unhealthy lifestyle tend to be sedentary and have a diet rich in bad fats, fried foods, and excess sugars, in addition to the frequent habit of drinking alcoholic beverages, cigarettes, and other drugs in excess.
Minimalist lifestyle
What is the minimalist lifestyle:
The minimalist lifestyle, originating from the minimalist artistic movement, has the habit and custom of accumulating the smallest number of unnecessary things in your life.
This idea aims to provide more freedom, lightness, and simplicity to life.
Some common habits of minimalists are having few pieces of clothing, just the essentials, so it becomes easier to know what to wear and save time for other more important tasks.
Minimalists also tend to decorate their homes more simply, this means less is more, less trinkets more space.
This same concept can even reach your digital life, eliminating unnecessary applications from your cell phone, for example.
Balanced lifestyle
What is a balanced lifestyle?
A balanced lifestyle does not opt for extremes, normally this lifestyle is a mix of all the others.
In practice, this means that a person with a balanced lifestyle can have healthy habits, but occasionally mix them with an unhealthy lifestyle.
Furthermore, those who have a balanced lifestyle may have areas of their life with a more minimalist style while others opt for excess.
Exaggerated lifestyle
What is the exaggerated lifestyle?
People who live an exaggerated lifestyle are those known as 8 or 80, which means they have a habit of living in extremes.
Those who live this lifestyle are generally very intense people who dive headlong into everything, because of the exaggeration they are more likely to have problems with excess.
By overdoing it with unhealthy habits, they can drink excessively, smoke a lot, eat compulsively, etc.
Therefore, they can end up developing everything from being overweight to diabetes, among the illnesses resulting from drug addiction.
Exaggerating healthy lifestyle habits can also cause problems, imagine that overdoing it or underdoing everything, therefore, exaggerating in physical activities can lead to an injury.
They can also go overboard with minimalism by reducing their things to the point that they end up missing even essential things in their lives.
Sports lifestyle
What is the sports lifestyle?
People with a sporting lifestyle may have a strong relationship with a healthy lifestyle, however, they have a great connection with the world of sports.
They may even have good nutrition, however, the focus is usually more associated with performance in their sports, rather than health itself.
People with a sports lifestyle may or may not be competitive athletes, after all, they are often passionate about their sport and practice it several times a week, however, they do not compete.
There are several variations to the sports lifestyle, which may include characteristics specific to each sport, water sports, extreme sports, etc.
People with a sports style often develop the habit of watching their sports in competitions and buying specific clothing from their teams among other sporting goods.
Furthermore, it is common for them to develop a social cycle where they interact with other people with interests similar to their sports.
Business lifestyle
What is the business lifestyle?
Also known as business lifestyle or even entrepreneurial lifestyle, it is the name given to the lifestyle where people place work as the center of their lives.
A phrase that defines this lifestyle very well is: “ I work to live and I live to work.”
People with a business lifestyle have a great interest in their professional development, thus developing contact with others interested in the same form of growth or who help them to grow.
Even the name given to meeting people with a business lifestyle is networking.
What is the best lifestyle?
As we said before, there are different lifestyles, so many that it would be impossible to mention them all here.
Likewise, considering that each person is unique, with different interests in life, there is no ideal lifestyle that suits everyone.
However, one thing is a fact, if you know how to use the concept of living well to your advantage, it will be easier to be aware of the lifestyle you are living and change it if it is in your interest.
Therefore, once again we recommend that you read our article:
What is lifestyle – Conclusion
In this matter, through the study of words, we concluded that lifestyle is the form or way in which one or more individuals experience their lives.
It has also been demonstrated how lifestyles are contagious and create other styles, cultures, and behaviors in society in general.
Furthermore, you can learn a little about 7 different lifestyles.