By Matthew Gibbons
Have you ever felt trapped in your routine, even if it’s by the things you choose to do?
Changing your lifestyle can be difficult because a lifestyle is largely (though not exclusively) formed by habits, and habits are derived from the limits and inclinations of a person’s environment.
Environments, the physical spaces we inhabit – and the people in them – set limitations on what we can and can’t do, or at least soft boundaries on what decisions we might feel inclined or allowed to take, rather than hard rules. These rules can be bent, broken, and changed, but they form a basis of behaviour that subconsciously separates actions into those that are approved of, and those that aren’t.
Generally, people’s lives are structured around three places – the home (where we sleep and spend time alone and/or with family), the workplace (whether that is an office, a restaurant, or even a university lecture theatre), and at least one social space (the pub, the sports centre, even virtual environments on social media or video games). These environments each have implied ‘rules’ that determine our habits, what we do and don’t do in each one, and what we deem acceptable or unacceptable to the people we spend time with there. For example, if you are a person who works a job until late hours of the evening, or socialize with people in other time zones who aren’t online early in the day, or live with family members who also stay up late, and – crucially – don’t have to be somewhere or have anything done before noon…Without some kind of concerted effort to get up early, you will probably adopt the habits of a ‘night owl’ lifestyle. No one is telling you to do this, but because of these environments, the places and people in your life, it is easier to choose staying up late and sleeping in, especially if there is no immediate negative consequence for doing so.
Humans are creatures of habit, and we usually choose the ‘path of least resistance’. Small decisions, repeated frequently, form a lifestyle that dictates our energy levels and focus throughout the day, which can impact on all areas of life. It takes sustained initiative to try and make lifestyle choices that counter our combined environmental factors. In the aforementioned scenario, the person could talk to their manager about working different hours, talk to their family about shifting their sleep patterns, and contact long-distance friends on weekends only, but this of course creates further complications that might not be feasible for everyone involved.
Habits formed from environments can also clash, and create problems – let’s say that, in addition to the above, a person also has a 9am class and an 11am meeting. Even just once, this scenario would leave a person lacking time to decompress and sleep between the late night and the morning because of the lifestyle they’ve adopted as a result of habits derived from environmental factors. Now they’re inclined to make new, additional lifestyle choices that reinforce these habits and make it harder to change their lifestyle, such as spending more money on caffeinated drinks or sleeping during the daytime, both of which would keep this person awake at night. The potential domino effect on productivity, personal finances or even health could create problems long term, but in the short term alone they have been trapped by their choices.
This is without even acknowledging taboos and habits that, however minor, might be perceived as lazy or selfish, and judged negatively by our peers. Whether they are justified or correct in that assessment, there can also be problems with relationships because of clashing environmental factors. Investment in one environments that affects you in other environments, such as late night socializing leaving you less focused and energized at work in the morning, could make you appear lazy or grumpy to people who only interact with you in that context, and influence how they treat you. Spending time in an environment that glorifies behaviour which would be deemed antisocial in another (such as questioning ‘dark’ or ‘edgy’ jokes with a group of friends one day, only to be deemed offensive when telling the same jokes to another group of friends the next) would give rise to awkward moments that could make you appear boring to one group and inconsiderate to the other, even if neither is true. Environments have social norms that differ and can clash in ways that cause problems.
Lifestyle choices can be diametrically opposed. Even in low-stakes scenarios without hard rules, compromise is essential. No lifestyle is perfect, but it takes more skill, effort and energy (physically, mentally and emotionally) to manage lifestyle choices that go against social expectations in the environments you commonly inhabit, and/or diametrically opposed environments you frequently visit. In some instances, change is virtually impossible, at least in the short term, and this is why people can feel ‘trapped’ in their lifestyle, even if it’s technically a result of their choices.
So, lifestyle is largely the result of consistent and relatively long-lasting habits informed by environmental factors. Of course there is much more to lifestyle than environments and habits, but a large part of the food and drink we consume routinely, the shopping choices we make, and even how we approach special occasions are all implicitly informed by the ideas, suggestions and opinions we inherit from family, friends, colleagues and others in the environments we live in. Small, everyday habits become lifestyle over time, so like the weather is to the climate, habits are to lifestyle.
Furthermore, the perception of a person’s lifestyle can influence that person’s identity. A person can adopt very different lifestyle choices, not all of which are visible, or intuitively ‘match’ because they are practiced in different environments with different ‘rules’. A student may drink heavily at the club out of peer pressure from their friend group but hardly touch alcohol at home because of the expectations set by parents/guardians. What this means however, is that the person’s identity becomes subjective to the experiences of others around them – to their friends, this person is a drinker, but to their family, they’re a non-drinker. Not only are these different, but they are opposite – and people can act differently and receive different treatment based on their lifestyle, whether genuine or not for any of the people involved. Lifestyle choices, whether intentional or caused entirely by environmental factors, can influence how we are perceived, and thus affect our identity.
Identity then becomes a subjective concept unique to every individual you know: colleagues at your university may see you as a studious, old-fashioned professional, whereas a sibling’s friend group might only know you as the sarcastic jokester of the group. These are crude examples, and they’re not mutually exclusive, but because sarcasm and jokes are much less likely or common in a professional setting, and you don’t have the chance or even the want to present your studiousness in a social setting, aspects of your identity are filtered through a limited range of the habits you engage in – the limited range that are implicitly ‘allowed’ in each context.
What this ultimately means is that by accepting and conforming to people’s ideas of what you are, you genuinely become that to yourself. You can take the unintentional perception of yourself from an environment and intentionally make it your identity. If that wasn’t a real part of your identity before, it is now.
Essentially, your environment(s) influences your habits, which influences your lifestyle, which in turn forms your identity, or at least the perceptions of your identity…but what if it also goes the reverse way?
Perhaps, if we think outside the confines of our environments, and form new habits based on our thoughts without necessarily adhering to the expectations of our environments, we can change our lifestyle and break free of being trapped in routines. How much of the limits of our lifestyle are tangible factors that we cannot control, and how much are imagined, perceived and within our power to reshape? If identity can change because of the environment…maybe environments can change because of identity.
Photo by Ngo Ngoc Khai Huyen on Unsplash