Behind the Bluff
Uncover best practices to participate in life on your terms. Every week, hosts Jeff Ford and Kendra Till guide listeners with short conversations on trending wellness topics and share interviews with passionate wellness professionals, our private club leaders, and additional subject matter experts offering valuable tips. Each episode conclusion includes Healthy Momentum, five minutes of inspiration to help you reflect and live differently. Subscribe now and discover the keys to living your greatest active lifestyle.
Behind the Bluff
How to Change Your Life with Three Steps | Part 1
We explore the Staircase of Change, a transformative model for creating lasting change in your life. Through the steps of being present, getting direction, and taking action, we emphasize the importance of self-awareness and the concept of being imperfectly consistent.
• Understanding the Staircase of Change framework
• The significance of being present in life
• Self-awareness as a tool for growth
• Introducing the Five Fs: Fitness, Faith, Family, Finance, Fun
• Reflecting on each life dimension for balance
• The value of taking imperfect action toward goals
• The necessity of consistency in personal transformation
How's it going? Are you ready to live an active lifestyle? Welcome to Behind the Bluff, where we believe every moment of your life is an opportunity to pursue wellness on your terms. I'm your host, Jeff Ford, and I am joined today once again with co-host Kendra Till.
Speaker 2:Hello everyone and happy 2025. We are kicking off the new year with a special podcast series in hope of inspiring you to take action in all areas of your life. So Jeff and I will discuss his model, known as the Staircase of Change, which was shared on a TED Talk back in November of 2023 in Hilton Head, which was very cool. We were all there as a team to see Jeff present that. So, Jeff, before we share this first step, would you like to add a little bit more context for listeners?
Speaker 1:Yes, totally. I'm excited about this conversation because my mission in life is to help teams, people, programs create change. I'm all about change.
Speaker 1:Anyone who has worked with me knows that I like change and I thrive off of it, because in life it's going to become boring if you don't take steps to change or to tweak things and improve, and I think this model, this framework that we're going to share today, is a simple and effective way for people to go about their changes. Often, I've found over the course of my career, many people want to change. They even get started going about their changes, but they don't follow a specific, detailed framework to ensure that the changes stick. And we hear this every year. Every podcast out there right now is doing something on New Year's resolutions, but we're going to take this in a different direction from the perspective of giving you a guide that you can use any time of year. We want people to become imperfectly consistent in their lives, because this is what actually leads to long-term change and you feeling like you're fulfilling your intentions.
Speaker 2:I like this phrase imperfectly consistent.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Can you go a little deeper into like what do you mean by that?
Speaker 1:It stems from where we all struggle when going about a change. We feel like we have to be perfect and in this framework we're guiding you to get to a place of imperfect consistency. And the reason we want to go about this is because in the very beginning, when you take small steps, that's going to build momentum. We often set goals, we set intentions that are too intense, so we have to go in with the mindset that it's okay to miss a day, it's okay to not achieve that goal perfectly from the very beginning. Someone who's imperfectly consistent they're reliable, they adhere to their plan, but not all the time and the plan isn't always perfectly executed. The phrase imperfectly consistent stems to shun perfectionism. That's why it exists and it's why this framework is not only designed for you to become consistent, but it is so that you're consistent even when you screw up. You get back on the horse the next day.
Speaker 2:I love this. I can absolutely relate to what you're saying, for you know, you have this vision in your head and these goals and you're like I'm going to crush these, I'm going to do them. And you have this again vision in your head of what it's going to look like, and you get a little defeated when you don't hit the marks and have it exactly in your head of what it looks like you know, because life happens and then you fall off the horse and you don't get back up again.
Speaker 1:Don't get back up again, and I can relate to this. I'm so glad you can and I think so many people can as well. It removes judgment as another angle. We don't have to be so hard on ourselves, especially in the very beginning, and when we give ourselves that grace we go in with this perspective, we're going to be more successful.
Speaker 2:Especially when some people you know have really high and aspiring goals and which is amazing, but it's. It's a yeah, you got to make sure that you're consistent with it, but, like you said, you don't have to be perfect every single day.
Speaker 1:You just have to keep that consistency. And people who are living fulfilled lives aren't perfectly consistent all the time. True, they are 90% consistent, which is what we're going for with this framework.
Speaker 2:Love it. So how did you come up with this model? The Staircase of Change.
Speaker 1:It has been evolved over the years.
Speaker 1:So in my early 20s I worked at a program that gave me the opportunity to become a certified wellness coach and I started learning principles of positive psychology, behavior change, stages of change, and it set the passion that I have today. That change isn't just about showing up at the gym or eating the right foods. It's more about how do we get all these things to work with our lives and not against them. And at that time in my career I actually developed a coaching program that spans about 80 members in the program at one point and we had six coaches, and these would be weekly coaching sessions that we would do with folks leaving our program to help them stay accountable to the goals that they set while they were on site, and it was super interesting to just explore the themes and discover that where everyone would get tripped up is in the third step of change, which is take action.
Speaker 1:We'll go through all three here a little bit more and when those actions go the wrong way, after my time in my early 20s just learning wellness coaching, working with people more, this then became a weekly conversation that we would have at the retreat center that I was on the leadership team of, and it was the most fun I would have. Every single week it was a fresh group of people coming in and I was able to share these three steps and it would set the stage for their stay. It would get them thinking about what they actually wanted out of their stay and who they wanted to become, how they wanted to live differently. That's how the model has evolved over time, where we've been able to structure it in a way to help people be more successful.
Speaker 2:Love it. I love the simplicity of it and it sounds like it's been tried and tested. You know you've worked in it, worked with people and you've seen the success and it sounds like people get really excited about it, which is awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think we all have to go in with the understanding that a guide is one thing. A structure is one thing. If we don't have a structure then we run into trouble. I think it still needs more and more testing for the efficacy of it, but in my heart I believe it has benefited a lot of people in not only getting started but having a way to move through their checklists, if you will, for how they want to live.
Speaker 2:Love that. So let's dive in. What are these three steps with the staircase of change?
Speaker 1:Yeah, the three steps to the staircase of change are to be present get direction and take action. And the reason we call it the staircase of change is it's an analogy of how change works.
Speaker 1:If you think about it. Stairs are built in homes and buildings so that we can go up and down them, but not just once, again and again. And if we can keep that analogy in our heads, it goes back to the term living imperfectly consistent. You will have days where you have to take a step back down on your staircase and then you're going to have days where you take two steps forward. There's a great quote by Rory Vaden and it relates to this staircase model. He said success is never owned, it is rented, and rent is due every day.
Speaker 1:Taking the stairs means doing the work, embracing the process and choosing discipline over shortcuts. Let's key in on discipline for just a second there. This is where people go wrong. They think they have to be so disciplined all the time that they end up stopping their change. Oh, I wasn't disciplined today, so I can't do it tomorrow. We have to have discipline and we can't take shortcuts, as Rory Vaden says, but we have to remember that every day we're still going to have to go up the staircase. You don't get to a place in your life where everything's peachy. You don't get to a place where you stop taking the stairs, and that's why I love the power of these three steps is. It is all about how we go up and down, and that's just where kind of the model stems from.
Speaker 2:That's really inspiring. I can relate to that. I love that idea of you go up and down the stairs and you've got these options and opportunities. But, like you said with the quote, discipline is key. But I guess it goes back to what you were saying being imperfectly consistent through that too and just having that at the forefront of your mind as you navigate your staircase every day, the balance of discipline and grace.
Speaker 1:And I like what you said about you can go different directions on your stairs, you're not just a kind of pigeonholed to one staircase.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I think every year is a good time to assess am I going up the right stairs? Do I need to take a step back before I continue up this stairwell? And it can be very relatable right now, but you want to use this every time you feel like a storm. So for folks who haven't seen the TEDx talk, you can find it on YouTube.
Speaker 1:In the first step of change, which is be present, I use the analogy of a storm, and it's such a great analogy for life because you never see storms coming in life. You typically feel, especially when everything's going like the way you want things to be going. That's when the storm's going to hit, whether it's a situation with your family, situation with your health, lose your job, maybe you just feel like you're in a place of feeling depressed. We all have storms that pop into our life that make it difficult for us to see, and so being present when you're in storms is especially important. I use the imagery of being behind the wheel while you're driving down the road and you have rain pounding down so hard that you've got that like highest setting on the windshield wipers going and you still can't see in front of you.
Speaker 2:It's like a South Carolina summer storm right there, exactly. Yeah, for what? Like seven minutes?
Speaker 1:Yeah, just downpours, but it's scary.
Speaker 2:It is scary.
Speaker 1:And it's a great reflection for all of us to know that storms are going to come. But how do we handle them when they come? What do we go back to and what can we lean on when them? When they come, what do we go back to and what can we lean on when, even when we have those windshield wipers going as fast as they can and we still can't see? How do we respond then? Because those are the moments that you're either going to keep stepping behind you on your staircase or you're going to be able to just stay on that step that you're on.
Speaker 2:I love that and I even think about when you're in a storm. You have to be present.
Speaker 1:when you're driving you have to be so present you have to be so present, yeah, I remember from the talk.
Speaker 1:I used the story of camping with my family and I've got a lot of storm type memories. I actually remember driving through Hurricane Irene. This was when I was in college at Clemson and I was doing a lot of Ironmans these days and I had my Toyota Celica with my bike on the back of it, One of those bike racks that just like go over, yeah succumbs the whole car, and I was driving back from New Hampshire to South Carolina. Driving back from New Hampshire to South Carolina, literally it was me and truckers on 95. There were power lines going down like I should probably find a hotel.
Speaker 2:That's terrifying.
Speaker 1:That was a great memory of like hey, let's be present, there's no gas available at these gas stations anymore. You better find shelter. And I just find that storms are such a phenomenal analogy for life, as I said earlier, that we want to embrace them and we want to know that they are coming. Let's do everything in our power to be imperfectly consistent so when they do hit us, we know which way to drive that car.
Speaker 2:I love that, I absolutely love that. So, with the first step of being present, what else does it?
Speaker 1:mean to you. Yeah, I think we can go with what it means for a lot of people and take a couple of analogies here. For example, we all like it when others are talking to us, that they don't scroll their phone, that we're fully present with our teammates, with members, with our family, and this isn't easy to do. We all have full to-do lists, we all have a million things in our heads, and being present with other people in your life is truly a gift. I watch certain folks on our team do it and I am just blown away by their intention and their ability to connect with our members, and that's something that I would say.
Speaker 1:I personally am better at being present with my life Selfishly. I am worse at being present with human beings because of the passion and that that desire to achieve. So that's the balancing act here is is can we find a place where we're present with the people in our lives and can we find a place where we're present with ourselves? Caretakers, folks who just tend to be more givers, tend to be less present with themselves. So this is a good example for all of us, in my opinion. Example for all of us, in my opinion. So, yeah, that would be the first place to think about what being present means.
Speaker 2:I think a big one that I resonated with was just even the simple fact of being on your phone, I mean.
Speaker 2:I noticed that the other day, you know, when I was talking with my husband and I just had my phone and I scrolling through who knows what. Um, you know, when I was talking with my husband and I just had my phone and I scrolling through who knows what and I just thought what am I doing? And you just feel like you're again, you're not fully present, you feel like you're pulled in a different direction and I just this amazes me, how we're becoming it becomes more habitual to do that now to have our phones and to multitask, and it's just not good.
Speaker 1:Environment is powerful. Yeah, environment is a sneaky hindrance to our ability to walk up those stairs.
Speaker 2:Definitely yeah.
Speaker 1:I'd also add like being present means full engagement.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Focus, attention, uh, not only with what's happening with ourselves, but also being honest with ourselves.
Speaker 2:That's a big one.
Speaker 1:When I do the talk cultivating change on the power of these three steps, there's this powerful three word phrase that has really hit me over the years and I like to share it with audiences Honesty, grooms, consistency. You can't become consistent in your life if you're not willing to be honest with yourself, and I think when we're at our lowest, when we do feel like we're going backwards on this stairwell, usually there's a lack of honesty with how we're living. Feedback's hard. Feedback from anyone in your life doesn't feel good. Sometimes it's even the hardest when it's from the people closest to you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1:And I can have personally a handful of light bulb moments where someone I was close to helps me to be more honest with how I was living and with the actions I was doing or not doing. So that's what being present is all about. Maybe you do have to ask some questions to your family the people who know you best, uh and do some exploration before we start diving into taking action. Uh, so yeah, full engagement, focus and attention that's what being present is.
Speaker 2:Love it. I love that sense of honesty and just striving to be the best version of yourself. Really, that's awesome. Jeff, Thanks for for diving into this first step of being present, Um who wouldn't want to be the best version of themselves and anyone?
Speaker 1:listening we know you want to be the best version of version of yourself.
Speaker 2:Especially at the start of a new year. What better time to really take that action.
Speaker 1:Totally.
Speaker 2:So, speaking of action, how can someone be present with their life today and what can they do to help them achieve that?
Speaker 1:So let's take the first part being present with your life. Today, it comes back to asking yourself a lot of questions, taking some time to do inventory and reflecting so when we're workshopping this with folks, we're about to do this with our Healthy Momentum group. I'm super pumped. We've got a smaller group this year, so I think we can really dig into this framework. We, of course, in our Healthy Momentum program here at Palmetto Bluff this is a slight diversion, kendra we focus a little bit more on fitness bucket, which fitness can be defined in our terms as mental, emotional and physical. So most folks joining our four-week challenge, they want to improve nutrition, fitness, their mental health, their routines around this bucket of their life.
Speaker 1:Other ways of looking at bucket could be dimension, could be life account different terms for what we would say is an area of your life that's important to you. So being present and taking action on being present requires you to do an assessment of what we would term your five Fs. So we've already mentioned fitness. These aren't in any order and we'll elaborate on how to go about this and some context to them. Your five Fs are going to mean different things to different people, but we have fitness, faith, family, financial and, of course, fun.
Speaker 1:Those are your five Fs, and that's where we're going to take inventory first, in order to be present. We haven't brought up the term yet, but being present a nice synonym for it is self-awareness. Gaining self-awareness before you get direction and then take action is critical Because, like you said earlier, kendra, you could end up in the wrong direction if you're not self-aware of what really needs attention into your life. I use this other visual analogy a lot I was talking about this the other day, actually on a podcast that life is like juggling a bunch of balls. Yeah, and you've got to keep them all up in the air. That's the number one goal. Some are going to be juggled higher, some are going to be juggled lower. We all have to be in the circus of life. Life is a circus and juggling act is required. So the more self-aware you can be at the very beginning of your attempt of making change, the easier it is going to be to juggle those balls and to not drop them.
Speaker 2:Love that.
Speaker 1:Thank you yeah.
Speaker 2:Cool way to look at it.
Speaker 1:I think what's so fun about this conversation one we've been saving it.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:After I don't know 45 episodes at this point, and it's a conversation that's ongoing for myself, for the people that I am grateful to share it with.
Speaker 2:That's great, and, jeff, could you elaborate a little bit more on these five Fs?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's important that we define what all five of them have in common. So the difficulty in each of these Fs is that they're all competing for your most precious quantity, which is time, and it's also why we all struggle in at least one of these dimensions. There's always going to be another storm. So our goal is not to be perfect in all five Fs, but it's to get each F to a place where we're devoting the right amount of time to each and we're also able to jump on opportunities when they do arise. So you've got your Fs. They're in no particular order. The best way of understanding each of them is to number one. Look at them in your terms. We'll give you some quick definitions here, but what I think is best is to ask you a question that will help you think about each of these Fs. You ready, Kendra? I'm ready, All right, so we'll start in the order that I would personally put them, not to get too complex, but I think each person would have one of these. That is maybe most important to them.
Speaker 1:So let's start with faith. Faith could be organized religion or it could be connection to community. That is one of the five that could be most different and linear, depending on your perspective of it. The question for the faith life account is how connected do you feel? You can keep it that simple. Secondly, family. So in my case, faith comes before family and it kind of starts to grow from there. Family how strong are your relationships? Family is also reflecting on relatives, immediate family, friends, teammates. In my opinion, I think the working world these days is all about culture, so you're looking at all the people in your life and how strong your relationships are.
Speaker 1:A second question I like for this one is are you spending more time in the relationships that revive you or are you spending more time in the relationships that exhaust you? Famous author out there, john Gordon. He wrote a book called the Energy Bus and I think he describes some people as energy vampires. So if you're spending too much time with energy vampires, well you might be setting some goals around this particular F. So that's faith, that's family.
Speaker 1:Third, on our quick definitions and questions, here is fitness would be my third. The last three are a little difficult to organize Mental, emotional, physical. How consistent are you with your self-care practices? How consistently are you working out? How consistently are you slowing down, breathing, meditating? What does that look like for you? So, kind of going through the Rolodex of healthy living is where fitness could completely consume, and really making sure that you aren't just doing the same thing in this account is, I think, an important one.
Speaker 1:Fourth, we've got financial. Biggest thing that couples fight about finances, or one of the biggest things that causes couples stress, maybe not even a fight necessarily. The question for this account is do you have a plan? How sound is that plan? Are you sticking to the plan? I'm a big automation guy, so the more you can automate routines in your life, it allows you to upgrade to the next routine or to add a little bit to that routine.
Speaker 1:In this world of extensive inflation savings, being budget conscious, all that comes into play, no matter who you are. Say, you're someone who has a lot of money. Well, maybe you want to be able to give money to a cause that brings you a lot of purpose, a cause that you think will make an impact in other lives. So you can see that there's a lot of overlap here. We're not going to dig into it in this episode. But when one of these life accounts are off, you can be in a lot of trouble. That's why we've got to make sure these balls are at least juggling. And then, last but not least, fun. Great question here what plans do you have in place for fun in the next week, month and year With a five-year-old? It is important to plan when you and your wife can go out to dinner With a five-year-old.
Speaker 1:In my case, this is just an example, it's important to plan what vacations do you want to do? Because vacations they take a lot of time but they're also great memories that you're going to build so you can see fun and family. There's the overlap there. How can we even look at the fun account? Well, are you enjoying life? How much enjoyment is part of your world? For many people, work is fun. For many folks, faith is fun. So, looking at these dimensions, not falling into thinking that they're in silos, but understanding that you want to assess each of them and have a outlook on them that's in your terms, this perspective today just gives you a little bit feedback on how you can start thinking about the five Fs.
Speaker 2:Love that and it just helps to categorize life and I love this way of doing almost like an inventory on a temperature check where you're at with these.
Speaker 1:Temperature check.
Speaker 2:I like that when you're at with these five Fs, and because the aim here is to be more present, be more present, get some self-awareness. Right, right on. Yeah, that's the goal. Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1:And because I haven't mentioned, I just want to add before we wrap up we have a template. I will offer this to any listener out there.
Speaker 2:It's a cool template. I've seen it guys. Yeah, Jeff's going to send me a copy.
Speaker 1:If you would like to work this template at home, it's the perfect time to do so, and you can actually follow along with the next two episodes of this series. And by the end of the three five f's is a scale and also three terms. So, on the handout, and how I like to have people go about doing this is ask yourself in your family life account, are you always filling, fulfilling your uh sorry, your intentions, your goals? Are you fulfilling those routines imperfectly consistent? So, even though we use the word always, that's what we're going to equate with imperfect consistency. And if you wanted to put a number to it, this means you're a five out of five in this life account. The three in your life account would be, at times, I'm imperfectly consistent. And then the last word that you could use to give yourself an honest reflection would be never and that would be a one I'm never consistent with anything in this life account, with anything in this life account. Now, not all listeners out there will have a one.
Speaker 2:And yet.
Speaker 1:I bet everybody's got a two or three in one of these five apps. I know I do, but hopefully that makes sense to you, kendra like how to go about just giving yourself a score for each of these. Could be always, could be at times, could be never, could be a five, could be a three, could be a one, and then you could also do twos and fours, you could do half numbers. There's no perfect way of going about this, you know.
Speaker 2:Staying with the theme today, yes, but that gives you a way to have, have, have a benchmark for your life, Love it and I love that you've created a template for this and it's something that you can hang up or have on your desk and just always reference it throughout your day and throughout your weeks and months and use this as a as a guide to achieve and live, yeah, and if you don't see it, how can you expect to do it Exactly?
Speaker 1:I think we're even better at applying this in a business, setting a lot of time, but we just don't do it with our lives. So this is your chance.
Speaker 2:This is like I said what a good time to do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Awesome, jeff. Well, thank you so much for all of this. Listeners too. If you do get a chance to check out Jeff's TEDx Talk too, it's online, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, hard to find, not millions of views or anything, but if you type in the power of three steps. That would be a good. I think it was like 13 minute talk to check out that, these episodes we were just able to go into more detail, which was super fun, so fun.
Speaker 2:So yeah, if you get a chance listeners, go and check it out. It's pretty phenomenal. It was great to see you up there on stage doing that, jeff.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much. Yeah, the support was epic.
Speaker 2:I wanted to bring a big poster, but I didn't think that was allowed.
Speaker 1:You know, what I was a little bit upset about is no one brought me flowers.
Speaker 2:That was so weird.
Speaker 1:I didn't even think about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I guess you don really think flowers, flowers with a with a talk, a motivational talk what do?
Speaker 1:you give for like an amp up.
Speaker 2:Let's get our lives going yeah, we gave you a massage to hoping like more like relaxation afterwards but yeah, you're right, I was very grateful for that massage my apologies, I forgot about that that's all right, but next time, next time you do your next tedx, it's gonna be flowers okay, yeah, we'll make that happen. Yeah, All right listeners. Well, thanks so much for joining us on this first episode of the year. Make sure you hang around to gain some healthy momentum for the rest of your week.
Speaker 1:Earlier in today's episode, we went over this concept of striving to be imperfectly consistent and since it is most likely new for many of you, I want to share a few additional analogies and thoughts that will help you understand the importance of adopting this mindset. Think about the restaurants that you frequent and ask yourself every time that you go is everything absolutely perfect about the service? Do you get your food at the same exact time every single time after you sit down? I bet you'd say it's pretty close to on time when it comes to the food and perfect. Otherwise you wouldn't keep going back. But when you think about it, there is always something during a dinner experience, a service that could be better or could have gone better.
Speaker 1:I make the comparison to leading fitness classes. You see, in my career I've led thousands of fitness classes and every single time I teach one, I'm confident that the movement demonstrations could have been tweaked or better explained. I'm confident I could have corrected someone when I didn't, and I'm very confident that the class organization could have been set up slightly differently to improve the flow of the class. However, what I will say is at this point in my career, after teaching thousands of fitness classes, I'm pretty solid at running a positive group fitness experience. I'm pretty imperfectly consistent at this aspect of my job, and consistency fitness session to fitness session is absolutely critical.
Speaker 1:Let's round this out by thinking about a baker. A baker achieves imperfect consistency when the texture or taste of their muffins vary slightly from batch to batch, slightly being the key word. You can keep this in mind as a synonym for imperfectly consistent. We might have slight tweaks to the routines, the habits we lead, but the more we can get comfortable with these slight differences, the better off we're going to stick to the habit. So, for this week, think about how you can apply an imperfectly consistent mindset to the new goals you have set for 2025. And remember, consistency is key, but those who become truly consistent and build lasting routines don't always do the routines that serve them perfectly. That brings us to the end of this week's episode. We hope you enjoyed the conversation because we've got a couple more coming for you to help you create change in this new year. Until next week, remember to actively participate in life on your terms. Thanks everyone.
