What’s My Lifestyle?

Setting the Stage

Lifestyle is an important aspect of the work-life relationship and underscores the importance of goal setting in the career development process. Some lifestyles are incompatible with some careers. Lifestyle goals, career options and personal values are closely related and when aligned, the odds at finding an appropriate career path is greater.

When addressing aspects related to lifestyle it is important to recognize that socio-economic situations will play a big part on the types of lifestyles students will report and relate. However, students should come to recognize that while financial ability can affect one’s lifestyle, many things that lead to a healthy lifestyle are either inexpensive or free (e.g., walking in a park, spending time with family and friends, etc.). Sometimes careers that have high financial rewards can create an unhealthy lifestyle. 

Many students may equate a high salary as equivalent to, or necessary for, a good lifestyle. While it is not always the case, people making high salaries often tend to work extremely long hours and may be “tied to their phones” even when on holiday. A key point to make is that high salaries do not always equal great lifestyles. Sometimes a person has to take steps to ensure their career does not result in an unhealthy lifestyle. Teachers could ask what things make up a good lifestyle and which are not tied to high salaries.

Material & Preparation

• Arrange for computer and internet access for students working in pairs or groups.
• Select career profiles for activity (optional)
• Ensure students have a good understanding of the items and actions that contribute to a lifestyle.
• What’s my lifestyle? reproducible [Google doc] [Word doc] [PDF] -1 per student)

What to Do

Prior to engaging students in this activity, teachers could select appropriate profiles. One strategy would be to select profiles with in a similar career cluster (e.g., all health care, all skilled trades, all university degrees, etc.) or to include careers across clusters. Alternatively, students could search for profiles on that align with their personal interests and post-secondary plans and use those to complete this activity.

The number of profiles chosen for this activity can range from 3 to 5.  Students could work in pairs to complete this activity. Alternatively, students could complete this as an individual activity and then partner with another student to share their thoughts on the lifestyles of the people in the profiles.

After students have completed this activity, the teacher could initiate a class discussion related to lifestyle using questions such as:

• What is a lifestyle? 
• What are different types of lifestyles? 
• Do lifestyles change as people get older? If so, why might this occur? 
• What is the role of work in achieving a desired lifestyle?
• How can work help you have a good lifestyle? 
• How can work get in the way of having a good lifestyle? 

Sample Career Profiles applicable for this activity

Skilled Trades

• Kevin Hill – Forestry Maintainer
• Clarence Synard – Vice President, NCC Development 
• Kristina Barranca – Hair Color Technician
• Kyle Corbeshely – Plumber & Gas Fitter
• Ethan Martin – Welder
• Jackie Frampton – Construction Electrician
• Schuyler Kahgee – Industrial Millwright

Health Field

• Rachel Gardiner – Optometrist
• Murray Clayton – Forensic Anthropologist
• Simon Cooke – Physiotherapist
• Nguyen-Vi Mohamed – Post Doctoral Fellow
• Mike McDonald – Founder/Executive Director
• Norbert Lake – Chiropractor
• Ben Sit – Dietician

Computers

• Shelley Sandiford – Founder, Sciconic Science Media
• Kelly Shkuratoff – Senior Manager, Salesforce
• Anissa Agahchen – Co-founder and CEO, Verably.com
• Jason Dunkel – Analytical Lead, Google