What is a Lifestyle Change?

A lifestyle change is a physical, mental or emotional change in the way your live your life. It can be any one of the three, or all three together. Its purpose is to make your life more pleasant.

Many men in their Autumnal years feel the need to change their lifestyle. To adapt to the aging process and try to lose some of the excess pounds they have accrued.

It is not surprising that the three largest themes for online marketing and site ideas, or services such as personal coaching / consulting are: health, wealth and relationships. If we could fix these, most of us would be happy.

I'm not going to pretend to be able to fix any of these with a magic potion. There are plenty of other sites out there that will promise to do that. But what I can tell you is that unless you want to, nothing changes.

So the change begins with you or, at least, some external factor that forces you to change.

The critical distinction is that external factors are the cards that are dealt to you. The only thing you have under your control is how you react that that hand.

Taking one of these, the proliferation of excess pounds, we can see that these pounds can appear for a variety of reasons:

• A sedentary lifestyle
• Office bound work
• A wife who measures her homemaking skills by the girth of her man
• Medical causes
• Sheer laziness

You can see how health, wealth (a well-paying job) and relationships (a loving wife) are all entwined in the symptom of weight gain.

We may well lose weight and try to restore that body we had in our 20s or 30s and that may indeed make us feel better about ourselves. But.....

....if we don't do something about the underlying reasons, the weight will come back on as soon as we stop the diet / gym routine / pill-popping.

So what does it mean to change your lifestyle? Concretely.

Like most changes, we first have to know where we are, what sort of lifestyle we are living now. It is no good aiming for a destination if you don't know your departure point.

Generally speaking, Western Men of Autmunal Age lead either dangerously sedentary or physically demanding lifestyles. These are often driven by financial need, the normal requirement to provide for ourselves and our families.

It is important to note that sedentary is not limited to office work, long-haul truck driving is pretty sedentary when you think about it. Yes, the concentration required is higher and for longer periods - and the consequences of a lapse in concentration far more serious - but in terms of physical health, driving is sedentary, sitting for far too long at a time to be healthy.

Best lifestyle changes

Broadly speaking we can change our lifestyles in three main areas:

• physically
• mentally
• emotionally

These three weave through health, wealth and relationships but they are the underlying themes. Health, wealth and relationships are symptoms, the superficial manifestations of our physical, mental and emotional states.

What, then, is a physical lifestyle change?

Most likely it will address physical ailments. You may feel the need to exercise more, or change your diet or move to a different climate. These changes have to do with our bodies and the environment in which we live. If you don't like the cold and it affects your joints, a physical lifestyle change might involve moving to a warmer climate, or stopping all the draughts in your existing house.

They can be very much practical and common sensical and may not even seem like a "lifestyle change". But they are.

What is a mental lifestyle change?

Our mental lifestyle has to do with how clearly we think.

It has more to do with outlook, how you see the world. I mentioned earlier that life and nature deals you a hand. Your mental lifestyle will help determine your reaction to that (though the reaction itself is in the emotional realm).

Your mental lifestyle could be portrayed on a scale of "Always Accepting" to "Always Critical". Most of us float between these extremes, usually settling on either side of the mid-point.

Always critical does not need to be negative, it could be an indication of clarity of thought. Similarly, always accepting is not necessarily a positive attribute; it could well indicate a lack of having one's own mind.

A change in mental lifestyle for the better would, for me, be a decision to try to think more clearly.

This, in turn, will help you to see the beauty in small things, see one positive thing per day or wrestle those random thoughts under control.

Emotional lifestyle changes are the hardest.

They need a balancing of emotions and emotions are where men are at their weakest. We just don't talk about stuff....

And this emotional weakness means that others can use our emotions to exploit us, for love or money.

Examining our emotional lifestyle allows us to learn about ourselves. They do not teach us about the world, that's the job of our mental capacity.

Equally, it is through our emotions that we make connections with other human beings. We either like or dislike what they say or do. Note this important point, our emotional reaction tells us about ourselves, it tells us nothing about the validity of the other's viewpoint.

So, in essence, a lifestyle change based on emotional mastery is a change to the way we interact with the world

This is not an easy prospect. Daunting would be a more apt descriptor. And it requires considerable strength.

You sit at your computer and type into Google, "What is a lifestyle change?". That tells me that you are searching, but not for something that Google can answer. Rather, the search is for something deep inside, the answer to which you already know.

You already know the answer, you just need to let it reveal itself to you.

And I understand, although you are seeking the answer, having it put before you may not be the most pleasant of experiences. So be prepared for that.

It may need some effort.

You may fail in trying to achieve it.

Do not despair, just keep at it.

Changing a physical, mental or emotional lifestyle is will worth the effort. You may lose some old friends, you may gain some new ones. But you will feel better in yourself, able to look yourself in the eye and be satisfied with what you see...