A portable terminal reflecting a user's environment and a method for operating the same are disclosed. The method includes: generating usage pattern information that contains pattern environment information of the portable terminal and function information corresponding to the pattern environment information; collecting current environment information of the portable terminal; searching for pattern environment information that is substantially identical to the collected current environment information; extracting function information corresponding to the searched pattern environment information; and configuring a graphic user interface (GUI) based on the extracted function information.