The Psychology of Personal Growth and Better Relationships

1Lifestyle and Life Tasks

What Is Lifestyle?

Although lifestyle wasn't touched on in the Prologue, it is an integral concept in Adlerian psychology. When you hear the word lifestyle, you may associate it with the societal trends surrounding how you live your life. But in Adlerian psychology, lifestyle is more closely associated with how each individual lives their life—how they exist. So why does Adler specifically use the term lifestyle in this way rather than character or personality?

Each person's unique way of thinking, feeling, expressing emotions, and taking actions based on their considerations, feelings, and conduct is called their character. Adler believed the word character had a sense of weight and immutability to it. So, in order to convey a broader meaning than character, including the belief in one's self and the world around them, he used the word lifestyle.

It seems that Adler believed from the beginning that even one's character could be changed. Sydney M. Roth, one of Adler's disciples, once asked him around what age it was too late to change one's character. Adler's reply was “Probably one or two days before death.” Adler, who didn't place much emphasis on definitions, called the pursuit of one's goals the law of motion. Adler also called this lifestyle. After Adler's passing, this was accepted as a basic definition in the continually developing Adlerian psychology: ...