397: When Consistency Clicks: A Client’s Transformation Journey

Transcripts are auto-generated.

Courtney Townley 0:01
What if the secret to showing up for yourself more consistently wasn’t about finding another diet or exercise program, but actually changing the way you think about consistency itself?

Courtney Townley 0:12
Well, in today’s episode, I am joined by a dear client, Stephanie Lord Johnson, who is going to share with you her experience of doing just that and how it has changed the way she cares for herself and the way that she runs her life. So if that sounds good to you, stick around, because that’s where we’re headed.

Courtney Townley 0:30
Welcome to the Grace and Grit podcast made for women who want their healthiest years to be ahead of them, not behind them. Join your host Courtney Townley right now as she breaks down the fairy tale health story you have been chasing all of your life into sensible action steps and lasting change.

Courtney Townley 0:50
Welcome to the Grace and Grit Podcast. I’m Courtney Townley, the hostess of the show. Thank you so much for being here. And in case this is your first episode, we are in the middle of a six part series leading up to the launch of my new book called The Consistency Code. And The Consistency Code is a course I’ve been teaching for years.

Courtney Townley 1:17
Today, I am joined by one of my students, one of my dear clients, and also someone I consider now a dear friend, Stephanie Lord Johnson, and she is going to share with you a little bit about her experience with the framework and how it has helped to expand not only her health, but also her life. So let’s get to it. All right.

Courtney Townley 1:40
Steph, welcome to the Grace and Grit podcast.

Stephanie Lord Johnson 1:43
Hi, Miss Courtney,

Courtney Townley 1:44
is this your podcast debut?

Stephanie Lord Johnson 1:46
I believe it is.

Courtney Townley 1:48
Yeah. Well, hey, there’s a first time for everything, right?

Stephanie Lord Johnson 1:48
Yeah, got to do it at some point.

Courtney Townley 1:53
Absolutely. Well, I really appreciate you coming on, and I’m especially excited to have this conversation because I feel like you’ve been in the ecosystem of grace and grit for a really long time. And I know before we hit record, we were just talking about, when did you come in? Yeah, and I think you were in one of my very first rounds of The Consistency Code,

Stephanie Lord Johnson 2:11
which we actually found you when you were only doing fitness, which did you really Yeah, I think I found you. And then, like, it must have been through an email chain. Then we finally got to more of this level of coaching, and, yeah, that’s when I actually engaged. But I think I actually had seen something way early on,

Courtney Townley 2:29
which I love so much, because you’ve, like, really seen the full evolution of, yeah, that that type, how my coaching has changed, right? And how my approach has changed, which I think is pretty awesome. So you, you’ve definitely been in the ecosystem for a while. And you, you came in through the door of consistency code, which is kind of what I want to lean into today, because we’re, we’re kind of in that, in that conversation leading up to the book. But you’ve also from consistency code, you came into rumble and rise, and you’ve been in that membership space for, I don’t know how long it’s been several years,

Stephanie Lord Johnson 3:01
two or three years, two or three years, because I didn’t attend the first two retreats, right, right?

Courtney Townley 3:07
You didn’t, yeah. So it’s been, yeah, it’s been at least. This is my third year running a retreat. So that’s right. And then this year you did come to the retreat in Portugal, which was amazing and so incredible to have you there. And you’ve been doing a year of one to one coaching with me, so you’ve kind of just, you know, kept evolving and kept growing, and it’s amazing. You’re still hungry for it this many years later, which I love so much. But I do think the level of work we do in the space it kind of requires that, like we’re not ready for the conversations you and I are having now you weren’t ready for when you first came in. Would you agree with that?

Stephanie Lord Johnson 3:44
Yeah, no, no, no, it’s grown over time. Yeah, right, for sure,

Courtney Townley 3:48
grown. Okay, before we get too deep into this, let’s share a little bit with listeners about who you are. Just what do you want

Stephanie Lord Johnson 3:56
people to know? Let’s see, what do I want them to know? Oh, you know, I think, really honestly, even coming from the coaching retreat, like, I think it’s like, I’m pretty classic type, a achiever, got a great life, and just searching for ways to make it better. I’m an architect. I’m 57 love my job, great husband. Like, there is. There’s not a thing on paper that is not fantastic. And I think that actually, when you know, led me to, why did I join life coaching? I’m like to make life great, right? Like it’s all there is. So what was missing from it feeling as great as it reads on paper?

Courtney Townley 4:37
Yeah, yeah. And that’s so interesting, because I was just talking about that with someone the other day, that, you know, we can have all of the things like we have the life we’ve literally aspired to live, and yet, often we feel like something is missing. Yeah, and I think that a lot of the work that we do kind of reveals what that missing something might be. So you originally came in. To the work through consistency code, and what was your reason for doing that? Because that was kind of the focus was a little different when we first started The Consistency Code, and maybe your reasons were different. I’m not sure. I don’t want to

Stephanie Lord Johnson 5:11
put words in your mouth, but I’m just curious. It’s hard to quite remember specifically five, six years ago, but I’m going to go base with the basics. Overwhelm too much stress, yeah, and how do I get to? It’s, I mean, probably the things we’re still working on, how do I get to, the more ease of life, right? Like, what am I, where am I getting stuck? And I think it was primarily because it was like, Well, how do I get over some of these little humps?

Stephanie Lord Johnson 5:36
And it was a methodology, and not a do this program, right? Like, but it was four weeks. You could kind of sink in, get a taste for it all. It wasn’t like an epic endeavor. So it felt like something manageable when you’re already feeling like, Oh, I’m overwhelmed. And I think I’ve been listening to your podcast quite a bit at that time, yeah. And so it was a real Oh, okay, I how do I actually do some of these things I keep hearing about, and it was overwhelmed, I think, in stress, just how to manage that? And up level,

Courtney Townley 6:09
yeah. Up level, yeah. You’re my kind of people, right? The kind that just keeps searching for, like, how do we keep growing and evolving with grace and ease? Because that’s really, that the aspiration, I think, for most of us, because we want to evolve and grow, but we don’t want to suffer our way through it, right? We don’t want to struggle unnecessarily. So when you first came in, do you, what do you what do you think the relationship with your body was at that time?

Stephanie Lord Johnson 6:35
Um, I would say six years ago, I probably didn’t hurt as much as I do now. Yeah. Sorry, wrong, wrong direction there. But it was more of a forcing right, like I probably was still running a lot. It was, if I do this program, or I do that thing, I’ll get, I’ll get to be, it was the mindset of a 3040, year old, not a 50 year old, yeah? What it can do? And if I just push it hard enough, it’ll be it’ll recover,

Courtney Townley 7:02
we’ll be good. Yeah, it was like telling the body what to do rather than listening to it. Oh, I

Stephanie Lord Johnson 7:07
should do one more workout program. You know, if I do that program, it’ll all be better. Yeah, right, absolutely. Or one more diet six week, yeah, this six week program will solve it, yeah.

Courtney Townley 7:18
What would you say the relationship with yourself was like six years ago, and I know that’s hard,

Stephanie Lord Johnson 7:23
yeah, it’s, it’s tricky to answer, but I would say to some degree similar, right? Like a lot less grace to myself, and if I just push a little harder, I’ll figure this out. If I work just a little more, or if I just do this one more thing that is, I’m so exhausted, but I just need to do one more thing. And I think that that was probably where I was sitting when I started.

Courtney Townley 7:49
So approaching your body in your life like that, with more pushing, right? That was always the answer. More pushing, more doing another program, another something. What do you think the cost of it was to be approaching it that way.

Stephanie Lord Johnson 8:04
It wasn’t joyful, right? It just Yes, it wasn’t joyful. And, you know, as we’ve worked this whole year, it certainly wasn’t ease. It was just really trying to and very masculine energy, right? Like, how do I do this one more thing and push one more time? And it just less listening to the body and more telling it, you know, Do this, do that and the heart, right? Just do this. You’ll be fine. Ignore that symptom and just push over it, right, instead of learning to work with Why am I feeling that? Okay, well, how do I work with that, instead of just ramroding over it,

Courtney Townley 8:43
yeah, it’s more of what I always call like that dictatorship with the body, right? We’re telling it what to do with very little consideration for what it’s asking from us, yeah, yeah. And that can get us into a whole host of trouble. So okay, so consistency code, obviously the word consistency is in the title. And everyone obviously has a way of thinking about consistency when you first came in, or even maybe before you did this program, when it came to health and well being like, what do you think? What did consistency mean to you? And how has that definition changed by doing the work that we’ve done?

Stephanie Lord Johnson 9:17
You know? I mean, as we were saying, consistency was do the six week program perfectly, whether flawlessly, don’t mess oh my god, you need to commit to this for the whole six weeks. And if you miss a day, yeah, or you do it on the other day, it’s wrong if you eat one thing outside of this food group. Or, oh my god, I can’t do these six weeks because I have three weddings and something else to do. So I can’t even get started, because I’m not going to be consistent, right? I know I’m going to fail even before I start, because life is going to be life, and I can’t do it. So it was a much more rigid definition of consistency, like it has to, you know, if that’s the running schedule, you better follow that running schedule,

Courtney Townley 9:59
otherwise you have failed. Failed, and if you can’t do it 100% full out, you might as well not do it at all. Yeah, don’t

Stephanie Lord Johnson 10:05
do it because, you know, you’re not going to get anything out of the six weeks if you missed three days. Yeah, which? But that really was, I think more of it is just all of it had a much harsher tone to it for consistency. It definitely wasn’t a role with what life brings you. It was just fine. This one program that’ll really work with who I am, and I can follow it, yeah, well, and

Courtney Townley 10:29
I think I think in that respect, you’re a lot like me, in that I’m really good at the grit, right? Like forcing it, pushing it, working harder, doing more, proving myself like that is as unhealthy as I know it is. It’s really easy. It’s easy for me to go there. It’s almost like my my home base, because I lived there for so long, and so extending myself, the grace, the kindness, the consideration, the gentleness, the bending, like that was so foreign.

Stephanie Lord Johnson 10:58
Yeah, yeah. Very, very foreign. And also just, you know, even to the stage of like, people are like, I tell people all the time, I work with a life coach. They’re like, what? What’s this vacation you did in Portugal? I’m like, Oh, that’s a life coaching group. Like, what? Like, oh, it’s awesome. You should

Courtney Townley 11:13
get one. You should get one. Everyone really, really good. They’re super helpful, yeah. So I’m curious, like, even now, would you say that, like giving yourself the time, the space, the grace, the gentleness, is still uncomfortable?

Stephanie Lord Johnson 11:31
Yeah, that’s still work, yeah. I mean, you know, year, it’s definitely always the challenge. Because, like you said, home bases push a little harder, and so to let go of push a little harder is a really hard thing to do when you’ve had 50 odd years of living that way and achieving great things, right? It’s not like it wasn’t successful, but it didn’t bring the Can I just enjoy a day, right? Like it just that was harder to find.

Stephanie Lord Johnson 12:02
So it’s still a practice every day to find that grace like maybe that’s why it’s grace and grit right, to find the ease and to allow there to be some humanity to yourself, because I’m really good at giving it to others, but to actually turn that in on yourself when something goes wrong is still a work in progress. So I think, you know, if we go back to grace and grit and starting it for consistency code, like there were tools, right, I’m like, so I’ve got to do all 10 worksheets Courtney gave me,

Courtney Townley 12:35
right? I got to be the perfect student.

Stephanie Lord Johnson 12:39
Yeah, and you don’t. I mean, if I do any of them, I don’t think I really do any of them, but I will journal around every one of them, right, in some way or other. But when I started, I printed out the worksheets, and I had a special notebook, yeah, right, and I’m going to write it all in there, so it was very much in tune with that person, part of the personality.

Courtney Townley 12:58
I think a lot of people come at it that way. They think that, okay, I’m going to study the framework, I’m going to do the exercises, I’m going to do all the worksheets, and at the end of this four week period, because consistency code is normally taught in four week cycles, right, that at the end of four weeks, I’m going to be magically forevermore, just consistent. And it’s like, oh, no, no, you’re just beginning the turning of the wheel.

Stephanie Lord Johnson 13:19
Yeah, yeah. The worksheets aren’t going to solve the problem, but they just will. They’ll introduce you to

Courtney Townley 13:24
it exactly. I want to circle back to something you said, because I think it’s so powerful, because we open to this conversation, talking about how you built this amazing life, and yet you also felt like there was something missing, and then what you were just speaking to was that inability to be present with what you created, because we’re always moving on to the next thing. We’re always aspiring to accomplish the next thing. Push harder, do more, scale the business, more, all that stuff.

Courtney Townley 13:50
And I think that lack of presence is for so many of us, the missing link. Sometimes, and then when we allow ourselves to slow down so we can become more present, we have so many stories about what that means. I’m lazy, I must not be serious. I’m going to fall behind. I’m going to lose my business, right? Like, whatever, whatever those stories are,

Stephanie Lord Johnson 14:10
I’m just not that person, right?

Courtney Townley 14:12
I’m just not that person. That’s not who I am. Oh,

Stephanie Lord Johnson 14:14
my God, that’s not who I am. Yeah, I mean, that story is like, geez, I love that.

Courtney Townley 14:20
You’re bringing that up, because we talked a lot in The Consistency Code about, you know, your habits, your behaviors, become your identity. And so when people say, That’s not who I am, yes, there’s some truth to that statement if you haven’t been practicing that, but it doesn’t mean that that’s who you have to stay. Yeah, and that’s the invitation of The Consistency Code is, what do we need to change here?

Stephanie Lord Johnson 14:41
Yeah, and make it, you know, and make it so simple, right? Like, I was just, that’s just been huge, because I’ve been rumble in this week with some budget things at work. And I’m like, what is one habit you could do stuff simple that might change it, yeah? And also just, and then, right? Like, I mean, just from The Consistency Code, the thought modules. I’m like. Okay, what don’t like, Okay, you’re beating yourself up. I can write a one page thing in my journal. Like, okay, well, that’s your thought process. Is that really helpful? No, yeah. And I think it just takes that edge off so much, right? That’s a thought. That’s not a definition of who you are forever and ever,

Courtney Townley 15:19
absolutely. And what you’re speaking to here is the the ultimate practice of the framework is self coaching. It’s learning how to be your own cheerleader, your own problem solver, your own your own everything, really. And it doesn’t mean that, I mean you still have a coach, right? Doesn’t mean we don’t still work with professionals that can kind of guide us and give us tools. It just means that you’re living with yourself every minute of the day. I’m not living with you every minute of the day.

Courtney Townley 15:46
And so being really like Montana, I know you could all you’re always welcome to come here and visit me absolutely. But I love what you’re saying there, because you’re you’re identifying when you’re rumble, when you’re having those hard moments, and then, because of the skills you’ve been practicing in The Consistency Code, inside of rumble and rise, you’re able to coach yourself through it. Yeah.

Stephanie Lord Johnson 16:08
I mean, I think that is the gift, right? Six years, if we put that as the number of working with you, I just see you can catch that moment, whether it’s a rumble, whether it’s an epic, oh my god. I totally achieved this. When my husband’s like, oh my god, normally you would have been like, we need to get home. We need to get home. I need to be home Sunday because I got stuff to do and I got to get ready for Monday.

Stephanie Lord Johnson 16:27
And instead, I’m like, oh my god, let’s just sit here for like, 20 minutes. This is awesome, yeah. And he’s like, who are you? There’s 20 minutes. I mean, that he noticed it was really pretty powerful. So in the flip side of like the rumble or the really nice moment of actually finding that moment of ease, like, No, I actually can choose. It’s going to be fine. There’s nothing I’m not doing laundry at 10 o’clock on Sunday night. Let’s just sit here

Courtney Townley 16:53
well. And there’s a difference between looking at the rumble, the hardship, the challenge, and using it to help yourself pull out of it, versus pushing yourself deeper into it. Because you’re bullying yourself. You’re beating yourself up. You’re telling yourself What a loser you are. Whatever it is we’ve all done, I

Stephanie Lord Johnson 17:12
got to do this to the nth degree. Yeah. The the other part of that, I actually thought was funny, because, like, what I’m trying to change is a weekly practice at the office of how I track budgets on my projects, and I’m like, Oh God, it’s just like, losing weight, it’s going to show up in three months, right? Like, I have to do everything now, and the muscle won’t be there for three months and the weight loss, right? But it was really helpful. Just be like, yep, you can do it this Monday, but it won’t be better for another couple months. So let me

Courtney Townley 17:41
ask you this. By just doing the thing that you decided to do with the work budget, I bet you felt better. Oh, way better after doing it even that day, even though you’re not going to get the ultimate payoff until three months from now or four months from

Stephanie Lord Johnson 17:52
now. Oh, sure, yeah. And it just to make it a habit like, oh, well, good lord, I can do that. That’s just a 20 minutes different in the morning on Monday. That’s, that’s it. That’s all you have to do, don’t you don’t have to be a financial whiz. You don’t have to confront people. Just take it to the simplest step, and then you can build and so we’ll see what that habit is six years from now. But that was really helpful. Just, you know, like, that’s what they’ve been journaling on of just, Okay, switch the mindset, find the habit, yeah, and, gosh, turn it, be consistent about it, yeah,

Courtney Townley 18:25
and acknowledge the wins, right? I think that’s a big part of what you’re speaking to, too, is you’re not just acknowledging the hardships, like you’re acknowledging like, Oh, I did that thing, and I did that thing I didn’t want to do, and I I found a new solution, or, like, whatever you’re celebrating. I think it’s such an underrated skill, but we practice it a lot in the in the community, because we know that it helps you to feel good, and when you feel good, you’re probably going to do more of whatever the thing

Stephanie Lord Johnson 18:50
is, absolutely, absolutely, yeah, so how do you look at

Courtney Townley 18:54
consistency now, like now that you’ve kind of been practicing the framework for all these years, and you’ve been learning all these tools,

Stephanie Lord Johnson 19:02
you know? I mean, it’s just the like, it’s kind of so I have a meditation practice. Sometimes I meditate 20 minutes and journal, you know, some days it’s two minutes. Some days it’s, oh, I just took a walk and I breathed for three minutes and just said, okay, just just sit here for a little bit, but give yourself something each day that’s a quiet moment so epically different from well, if I’m not meditating for 45 minutes, am I getting anywhere?

Stephanie Lord Johnson 19:32
You know, it doesn’t have to be those things, and it can feel different at different seasons, different times. You know, workouts are the same.

Stephanie Lord Johnson 19:41
Even getting my steps in, I try to hit my 7000 every day, and every now and then there’s days I just don’t hit it. And it’s like, I think, like you always say, is there a good reason why? Yep, I’m fine with that reason. That’s an okay reason. It wasn’t because I just wimped out and didn’t get off the sofa. It’s there was a true reason that didn’t happen. Yeah.

Courtney Townley 19:59
Okay. Yeah, there’s days we don’t like our reasons too, and that’s a great thing to look at as well

Stephanie Lord Johnson 20:03
like, but when you look at it, it’s so now I’ve walked whatever, you know, six months and I’ve missed five days. Yeah, well, that’s way better than being upset that I missed five days and now I’m 25 days because I didn’t want to look at my watch again, and it didn’t get the steps.

Stephanie Lord Johnson 20:21
So there’s a lot more ease around what something might mean to be consistent and to try to read when when I can push myself or when I can let myself back off a little bit of what that goal is. And that’s a little bit of a dance always, right? Like, but consistency is definitely that it changes pictures. It doesn’t have to be the exact workout or the full six weeks Perfect. Well, I might sign up for a six week program, and it took me 12 weeks to finish it, because that’s how life went.

Courtney Townley 20:53
It’s meeting yourself where you’re at and honoring that. Unfortunately, we just don’t have the same resource availability every day. Yeah. And yet you’re also committed to doing something versus nothing. Yeah, and, and I think this is a really important point, because I think that some people hear the title The Consistency Code and they think, Oh, it really is doing the same thing with the same energy and the same resources in the same way every day until you die. And it’s like, no, that’s not at all what it is, what we talk about, and what what we practice is consistent, self honoring. And man, that does not look the same every day. No,

Stephanie Lord Johnson 21:29
it doesn’t look the same at all. I mean, even from, like, the last call, right? We were all laughing because Wendy was talking about her juice glass of water. And I’m like, Well, maybe that’s a great place for you to start each morning stuff. Just have juice glass of water, right? Like, yeah, it’s about drinking the water. And when we give little challenges, those I really think are helpful too. Of like, just trying to get a habit built in so understanding that inconsistency, well, maybe there is a three week push to do something, yeah, very regularly, to try and figure out, where is it hitting a bump?

Stephanie Lord Johnson 21:57
And that’s a big piece of The Consistency Code too. Like, what is the bump? Where are you going to fall off, and how are you going to deal with it when you do? And so I think like that, like, Okay, well, go back to the beginning. Yeah, you’re not drinking your water. So I’ve got my handy dandy. Yeah, let’s go back to your 32 ounces on your desk exactly, and go back to those habits that you know, get you back on track, so then you don’t have to think so hard about it. So I think that’s two

Courtney Townley 22:23
things I want to highlight about what you said, because they’re both powerful. Is number one, the anchors, like we all have anchors, things that help us to feel resilient and strong and awake and just more powerful in our life. And they’re all a little different for all of us, but there are certain anchors that are very consistent through the human experience, like you said, drinking your water, getting sleep, eating some food, like these are things that help us to re energize ourselves.

Courtney Townley 22:51
But the other thing that you said that I think is important for listeners who may not really understand, obviously, this framework to the depth that you do is when you consider the gaps in your life, like the things that you aren’t really showing up for, and you would like to be showing up for them to feel better. It can be overwhelming, because there’s so many there’s a lot of things we’re usually falling short on.

Courtney Townley 23:13
And so it’s really asking ourselves the question, well, what am I focusing on for now? Like, where is my focus going to be for the next week or two weeks or the next month, and that seems like such an overly simplistic exercise, but it, I think it can’t go understated, because when we choose, we decide hard what our focus is going to be for a period of time. We know what the thing is that we’re constantly circling back to, versus just getting lost in all this minutia of what I could and should be doing,

Stephanie Lord Johnson 23:44
yeah? Yeah, for sure. I think those, you know, even just like, I think I, when I started, I was like, 5000 steps a day, and then I finally figured out how to get that consistently, yeah, then I went to seven, yeah, sometimes I can hit 10, but it’s like, okay, well, oh, I built that all right.

Stephanie Lord Johnson 24:01
Okay, I know if I didn’t move by this much by this time of day, then I better go for a walk in the middle of the day, because I’m not going to get any movement in so it like, now it’s not something I really have to track. It’s just something that’s like, oh yeah. That’s Oh, good lord, you didn’t move at all today. You’re gonna have to go for a big walk later. So it finding those little things that they do become more ingrained. And it doesn’t feel like, oh, I have to hit everything perfectly. It’s like, now, right now? Oh, I didn’t get walking in for a week. What happened? Okay, let’s come back to the basics

Courtney Townley 24:34
Well, and what I hear in that is it’s become a part of who you are. And you know when someone says, like, I’m a reader, right? That’s a part of who they are. It doesn’t mean they read every single day, the same amount of time, or the same pages, right? Or the same amount of pages. They’re what they read and how much they read and where they do it, and how they it’s always different, yeah. But because they do it consistently, to some degree, it’s a part of their idea.

Courtney Townley 24:59
Identity, and that’s what I hear in you talking about the walking, is it’s like, yeah, it’s not always 7000 or 10,000 steps, but because I know the general amount that makes me feel good and what I’m aspiring to, it’s a great thing to like, just look at, like, how far from that am I? And am I at least getting out and walking in the day?

Stephanie Lord Johnson 25:18
Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I set a different goal for weekends in general than I do for a weekday, because I know I can walk more on a weekend and just be active. So yeah, that’s been a really easy way for me, like always and back to consistency, right? Well, nobody cares if it’s 7000 a day, but what am I getting for a week? What am I getting for a month? Yeah, that’s really what I’m after, maybe more so, so that becomes more, you can figure out then, oh, that’s where consistency comes into play. So today, I’m walking a bunch, I can get 12, and tomorrow I’m sitting in a car for six hours. It’s going to be real hard, right? Yeah,

Courtney Townley 25:57
like different days you have different amounts to give exactly. So can you share an example of how the framework has maybe helped you to stay anchored in a period of your life where you felt anything, but where it was so easy to get pulled away or taken away, whether it was a busy period with work or anything, you

Stephanie Lord Johnson 26:18
know? I mean, I think partly just because, like, I said, like, I say, like, I’m just rumble with this little thing with budgets at the office, right? Yeah. And I What? What the ink knowing, right? Like, okay, now I’m aware, all right, I’m emotionally upset. Okay, I didn’t do what I wanted to do. And so there it just starts with this like, oh, well, no wonder you’re stressed. And what is the thing? Okay, well, what do I now? I’m thinking terrible thoughts about myself. Well, that’s not going to help me solve anything. So thought module, right? I might be doing these in the wrong order, but it’s like the thought you’re describing yourself out is not going to help you get out of this. Okay, I am capable of doing this. This is something I’ve been asking for, actually.

Stephanie Lord Johnson 27:01
So, okay, how do I take something that was maybe a negative, turn it to a positive? Yeah, put a habit, something I can actually physically do. Not just what is a physical action I can do that makes me feel better. I also even use body chemistry, right? I don’t. I put in a YouTube binaural in my head, binaural waves, yeah, for the task, because I also know my body chemistry. If it’s agitated, yeah, you’re not. I’m not going to bring my best to the table to doing this task. I don’t even like, and it really it like, okay, 20 minutes. Headphones on, yeah, help my body chemistry, do what it needs to do, and then to know, okay, well, at the end of the year, I’ll look at it again and go, did that really work? Do I need to do it every day? Do I need to do it once a week? So it’s like, it’s each one of the processes come into play where, okay, I know I’m agitated, uh oh. What do I want to do? How do I need to think differently about

Courtney Townley 28:02
it? What’s something to organize yourself differently? What’s

Stephanie Lord Johnson 28:05
something little I can do? Don’t I don’t need to change my entire personality? Yeah, I just need to do something little that’s different, that is would move the ball forward, and then to know, like I said, Yeah, I’m not going to see the benefit for three months, so don’t go looking for it on Monday, it won’t be there. It’s really helpful to take the edge off and just take the pressure

Courtney Townley 28:26
off all of it, right? Yeah, and so you and also so you can keep moving forward and making progress, and not living in that state, which I always call integrity pain, where I’m I’m feeling all this turmoil, but I’m also spinning out in it, and I’m not doing anything to get myself out of it, which we seem to be really good at as humans, to do that, but I want to go back and really highlight what you just said, because you explained it so beautifully. Like, first and foremost, I hear you saying, like, I’m really good now at identifying when I’m misaligned, and that’s what that agitation is, yeah, right.

Stephanie Lord Johnson 28:58
Like, go ahead. Well, you knew, I mean, this year was a big thing about being uncomfortable, so now that feeling is not nearly as scary. Oh, wait a minute, I’m uncomfortable.

Courtney Townley 29:10
Well, because you’ve done a lot of work with learning how to feel emotion, embrace emotion and not retreat from it and run from it, because we can

Stephanie Lord Johnson 29:17
do that every day. Is never going to be all happy, right? Like that’s just not, that’s not the world, and that’s so being less, it comes right to the first word awareness, right? Like, oh, this is what I feel like when I’m uncomfortable. I now know it

Courtney Townley 29:32
pretty good this year. I know I love it,

Stephanie Lord Johnson 29:35
so that’s really helpful. Oh, I’m really agitated. Now I’m being short with people, I’m sure, with myself, and so seeing that, knowing that feeling, is really helpful, and not being so scared of it and trying to run away from it. But how do you move through it instead of, I just don’t want to feel that, if I don’t have to feel that, then it’s all going to be okay. Nope. You’re always going to feel that. It’s part of

Courtney Townley 29:58
life, and there’s and my gosh, we live in a world that. Giving you so much opportunity to not feel it, because you could drink alcohol, you could eat food, you could take drugs, you could do 1000 things to not feel it. Look at my phone for hours totally, scroll social media for them, because that’ll make you feel so good. I’ll feel great. But again, this is beautiful. So it really starts with misalignment, right?

Courtney Townley 30:17
Like then we come into the framework, because we know on some level, we’re misaligned, and usually it’s because we’re feeling an emotion that’s like, Ooh, what’s this about? I don’t like that. Yeah, but then we have to be brave enough to be awake to it, like be present with that, be accepting of it without retreating. And that’s hard when you’ve spent your whole life like retreating from emotion or telling yourself that certain emotions you shouldn’t feel because if you do, you’re going to fall into a pit and never get out. So we start with misalignment. We move towards awareness, staying in the room with whatever’s really going on.

Courtney Townley 30:50
And you just gave this beautiful example of the budget, feeling agitated about it, and then also starting to notice, like, how am I contributing to this agitation? And you’re contributing what I’m hearing you say you’re contributing because you have the self narrative that’s really making you feel worse, yep, right? Like this, I don’t know what’s your narrative around the budget? Well, like, when you were feeling bad, what was

Stephanie Lord Johnson 31:10
it? Oh, I’m not good at project management. I go home so that

Courtney Townley 31:15
you’re not good at project management, right?

Stephanie Lord Johnson 31:17
I’m not well financial, yeah, I don’t have to the financial side, right? Like, I don’t like I don’t like to confront people if I have to do ad services. Well, that’s not valuing myself. That’s not valuing what I do. It’s not valuing what my team does. How did we get here? Okay, yeah. So it really, yeah, exactly, yeah.

Courtney Townley 31:34
So you then you take responsibility for how you’re contributing to your own suffering, which is an amazing personal growth piece, and then we get to kind of reorganize ourselves. We get to reorganize the way we’re tackling whatever the Rumble is, mentally, emotionally, behaviorally. And I hear you doing all of that work using this budget as the example. And then what happens is we usually feel better for a while, until we get misaligned again, because it’s coming. Misalignment is just a thing. It’s a part of life. It doesn’t ever go away completely. And so the framework, I mean, I love how you’re using it, because that’s really what it’s intended for. It’s, it’s a practice of realigning ourselves faster and continuously along our journey, because so many things don’t go the way we expect them to.

Stephanie Lord Johnson 32:20
Yeah, exactly. I mean, it’s great, right? Like, I mean, even, like my partners and the people I’m working with, right? Like it, if you could just identify it at the start of the week that we’re bearing Off, off track with, where we had budget our time and our money, well, we can fix it. You don’t need to come at fix it. You just need to identify it. Then we can all as a team figure out what we’re going to do, yeah, and it takes the burden off of the individual as well. So instead of like, I have messed up, I must fix my problem. I’m terrible, right? It totally how I think about it switches around when I can get out of the I’m a terrible person. This is I’m no good at this. I can’t do this. This isn’t my skill set. Yeah.

Courtney Townley 32:59
Or worse yet, how many people ignore the problem because they don’t they feel so much shame, yeah, and then it festers and it grows, and six months down the line, it’s like, Oh, shit. How did I get here? Well, it’s no wonder.

Stephanie Lord Johnson 33:11
Yeah, six months, six years of coaching, right? I’m like, I don’t need to feel this way again. What do I need to do different? Like, it really was a very quick flip for this one in particular, right? It’s really, I think, in this last year that’s really happened so much quicker, which is, well, what do I need to change? Yeah, okay, all right, there’s things I can just change. Oh, that’s good.

Courtney Townley 33:33
It’s that proverbial log in the fire, right? I’m always using the campfire as the analogy for your process, that when you initially we work really hard to kind of learn the skills and to get ourselves online and aligned with our life, and inevitably, life is going to pull us away in some way, right? It’s going to distract us, or we’re going to get misaligned. And it’s kind of like that campfire dying down, and all we have to do is pick up a piece of wood and throw it in the fire. Pick, like you said, before, pick a small action that can reroute me in the direction I intended to go. But that’s not what we do. We let the campfire die all the way down, and then with the wood gets wet, we got to start all over. And I’m

Stephanie Lord Johnson 34:14
terrible at building fires. I always do it wrong.

Courtney Townley 34:18
Yeah, exactly. But what I hear you saying like you’re getting better at a realigning faster, because you’re just picking up wood and throwing it in the fire. When you see it going down, you just you’re fueling your own fire and that that that is the way of it. That is the whole point of it. Yeah. So good. So let me ask you this, what surprised you about The Consistency Code, the kind of that framework compared to other approaches that you’ve tried.

Stephanie Lord Johnson 34:48
You know, I think it. I don’t know if I’d say it surprised me. It takes a minute to go, God, what are all these

Courtney Townley 34:53
steps? What am I supposed to do? Sure it’s like going to a foreign country.

Stephanie Lord Johnson 34:57
Yeah, I don’t. I’m when do I do that one? And do. I have to do that every time. Oh, my God, you know. So I think you have so many tools in the tray that it was, it took a little bit for me to figure out what resonated, yeah, with me. And now it’s like, it becomes shorthand. So I mean, even, like, for today it was, or when I did the headphones with binaural beats, I could feel that I was agitated. What is going to calm me down? Right?

Stephanie Lord Johnson 35:27
I’ve been walking more just okay. I’ve done three straight meetings. I need to go get my body chemistry down so I can go do what I need to do next. So I think some of that surprise is just maybe in just the good awareness and the simple habit that you can flip something with doing something as simple as putting headphones in to get my heart rate to come down so I can actually write a letter from a better place, that I can go clear my head for 10 minutes so I can come back and do the next task.

Stephanie Lord Johnson 35:56
And I think it’s that is back to that ease and grace the task normally isn’t the problem. It’s being tired or overwhelmed or not wanting to do it, and knowing that body chemistry also okay. Are you really thirsty? Are you really tired? Yeah. What do you need? I just need, right? This is agitating to me. What do I know calms me down that I can do in the office. I can put in headphones and listen to quiet music and pretend this is a soothing exercise. I’m just going to roll through it. So those are the things I think the fun, the gifts are so little. I don’t need to be a different person. It’s just such a little thing to realign. And I think that is probably the biggest gift. Like, yeah, I

Courtney Townley 36:38
don’t so I want to speak to this because I think what you’re you’re saying something that I hear often, and I think that it’s kind of the way we’re conditioned in our education system, and I don’t know just as people living in the modern world, which is you come into like, even, even reading The Consistency Code, or doing the course, or coming into rumble and rise and seeing so many resources available to you, there’s a part of our brain that’s like, okay, there’s a right way to do it, and I want to do it the right way, which also means there must be a wrong way.

Courtney Townley 37:16
And when we think that there’s a possibility to do it a wrong way, we’re less willing to experiment. We’re less willing to find just what works for us. And like, I always invite people to just consider, it’s that The Consistency Code is kind of like, choose your own adventure. You know? It’s like, take the tools that work, take the tools that fire you up, but also stay really curious about the stuff you’re avoiding, yeah? Because there’s something to that,

Stephanie Lord Johnson 37:41
right? Yeah. I mean, like, as kind of, you know, we’ve been talking earlier with the loss of my partner, I’ve been feeling really like, Oh, I’m not good at this one. And that’s a work partner at this skill, yeah? And I was like, Oh, this big bump I just hit gives me an opportunity to hit that, like, come at it from a different way and rise up instead of running away from it. And I’ve been really lucky that I let my two partners deal with something, yeah, and now I’m like, guess what? You get to deal with it. You’ve been asking for it. It’s right here at the table. You made darn sure it was at the table.

Stephanie Lord Johnson 38:13
So now just approach it and you know, you can do it. So I think it’s that quick little shift of just looking at it differently, in the same way you were saying, like, I had a great thing of, like, camping. Well, do you like to car camp? Do you like a tent? Do you like a Luxury RV? Are we glamping? Like, what kind of camping Do you like? They all count. It’s all camping, yeah. But you might be more suited to one than the other, or this one might be great now, but really, I like that one, right? And that really just helps take some of the pressure off. To you, you don’t camping can be done 90 different ways. Yeah, which one looks to you most? And

Courtney Townley 38:51
nourishment to one woman is going to look like going in the woods by herself and sleeping in a tent, and to another woman that’s staying at the Four Seasons like and that’s okay, right? But they all count. Did you they all count? Because there’s that radical honesty. What is true for you? Are you saying yes, just to please everyone around you and just to, like, avoid discomfort of other people not liking what you really want? Or are you okay saying, You know what I really need right now? Yeah, because you can’t self honor if we’re not willing,

Stephanie Lord Johnson 39:21
you know, it’s and it’s funny, because it comes back to all the little things. Like my husband, we were at the cabin, and he’s like, Let’s go for a walk. And I’m like, Oh my God, I need to take a nap. Yeah? And I was like, I was asleep before he’d even shut the door. And I stayed in a nap on the porch until he got back. And he was like, Dear God, I guess you really did need a nap. I’m like, and I normally would have gone for the walk, right? I’ll push to it. I need to get my steps in. All the things. The whole point is to take the nap. And so to be able to do that now is, like, it really is helpful.

Stephanie Lord Johnson 39:57
And I mean, that’s what I mean, they’re like, the smallest, small. Things, instead of doing what you think you should do, what would be the right thing? Oh, my God, how are you not going outside on this beautiful fall day? Well, because I’m tired, yeah. Well, and then I had a great after that. I had more energy. We did other things, but if I had not taken a nap, I would have just gotten crankity Right?

Courtney Townley 40:20
Yeah, and everybody would have suffered for it, not just you, but your poor husband would have suffered for it

Stephanie Lord Johnson 40:24
too, right? Yep, yep, but we, we are about not to have any fun.

Courtney Townley 40:31
And what I hear in all of that is that you’re better. You’re listening more acutely to your body signals and to what your actual needs are, versus someone saying you need this many hours of sleep and then you need to do this much exercise. Like we’re very prescriptive. As a culture, we love prescriptions. We love Tell me what I need to do, tell me the formula, tell me the dose, tell me all these things so I don’t have to make any decisions. Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s how deep health really is born. It’s born from you being like, Yeah, I know.

Courtney Townley 41:02
I just signed up for this intense exercise program, and everything in my body is telling me that I need to do some yoga or go for some walks, and this is not going to help like that. That’s deep, I think, self honoring, okay, what would you say to a woman listening who feels like she’s tried everything and nothing’s worked. Like, why would you advocate for The Consistency Code in terms of her reading the book, in terms of her like, just finding out more about it?

Stephanie Lord Johnson 41:28
I think because, if you’re looking at it, you still have hope that there’s another way to do this. Yeah, first off, and you don’t have to do it Courtney’s way. You’re gonna find what works. Please don’t do it right? It won’t work. Right?

Stephanie Lord Johnson 41:41
You know? I mean, it comes back to whether we’re talking about the camping, right, or drinking the water. Do you like to do it from a juice class? Do you want to get the 84 jug? Whatever speaks to you? Yeah, the whole point is that you get to figure out what brings you joy, where your bumps are. And there’s a bazillion tools for whichever way your brain works, if you’re visual, yeah. Is it a game? Is it a task? Is it a winning an award? What?

Stephanie Lord Johnson 42:06
There’s so many tools that you get to try them out and find, ah, that’s the one that works for me really nicely. Or I’m really not getting over it. Let me try this so it, I think that for me was the nice part. Like it wasn’t, Oh, I paid all this money to do this, course, yeah, and it didn’t speak to me how I live at all. Yeah, because it’s never about that. It’s literally Okay. These four practices can look different, but the methodology is strong. And if you want to change how you’re feeling about things and not have it be so epic. It’s a really great way to have tangible things you can change. Yeah, that don’t require you to be a different person.

Courtney Townley 42:53
Yeah? And also put you in the driver’s seat. Like, it’s not about like, I never, rarely, sometimes, once in a while, I might tell somebody what to do, but mostly I’m just asking people a lot of pointed questions and giving them a lot of tools for self inquiry, because that’s, that’s the work is, is you getting straight with like? What works for me? What do I like? What do I not like? What is my tolerance level? Yeah.

Stephanie Lord Johnson 43:16
And I think even in that right with the impossible, and I don’t think impossible goals are necessarily a part of The Consistency Code, but that’s okay. Where do I want to stretch, or what do I want to do, and how do I start building to that? Because I think, you know, even just from a retreat in Portugal, every woman in there was like, holy moly. Like, why are you in a coaching group? I know you’re an exceptional human being, and I know, I think all of us like you say society, we are all built for that. But I think when if I was looking for something still, it’s that, how do I bring the best of myself out? This is what I’m trying to do, and do it joyfully and with ease, because it’s already going to be bumpy or hard, like we say, like agitation is where you find Ouchie. And can I find some tools that make this more fun, joyful and easy? Well, God, that’s a win. It’s not another thing that I just have to do. Right?

Stephanie Lord Johnson 44:10
It doesn’t matter if I do a thought module once every six months or three times in one week. That’s not the point of the program. So I think that gift to yourself of yet there is a different way of doing it, and you’re only going to strengthen yourself once you kind of buy in and like we, we’ve been talking like it just gets richer over time, yeah. Not like, Oh God, I still have to do this. It’s like, oh, this is going to open this door now I can open a different door. I didn’t even know I wanted to open that door. I didn’t know that door was stuck. So I think it’s about those kind of things that really just bring more joy. And I think most people that come here it is because you’re you let a spark die, and now you want to bring it alive again. And what are different ways I could do that?

Courtney Townley 44:55
Yeah, I love, I love that you’re kind of wrapping up with that. Because I think that that’s the ultimate, at least, my belief is that, you know, deep health is a state of being able to be a fully expressed human, whatever that means for you. And it’s so interesting. Like every time I run a retreat, I bring in a lot of other facilitators to obviously help me run, you know, classes and things like that. And the thing I always hear is, Who are these women, like, Who are these women having this level of conversation and this level of like, self inquiry and and because it is, it’s just such a vibrant, amazing group of people, and I truly believe it’s because everyone is doing different work, but we’re all speaking a similar language, and we’re all using similar tools, and we’re all taking radical self responsibility and that, I mean, it’s sad to say, but I think it’s rare.

Stephanie Lord Johnson 45:52
Yeah, it’s really easy. Yeah, you always it’s somebody else’s fault,

Courtney Townley 45:56
right? Like, oh yeah. I mean, it’d be really nice if it was something,

Stephanie Lord Johnson 45:59
if I could only, oh, if I only had this or that, but I think it’s really like just that richness of life, right? Everybody in there, like you said, it always has something so magical. If you just talk to them for a few minutes, you’re like, Whoa. How cool is that? And I think The Consistency Code just really helps you find what that is for yourself. Yeah, keep opening the door, right? Like, how cool is that? Okay? Well, I started, I’m sure, because I wanted to leave, I bet I wanted to lose weight, right? I’m sure I started well, and that’s

Courtney Townley 46:28
why I asked a question. Because almost everyone I’ve ever worked with has made when they first came to work with me, it was about fixing their body. And my argument and my work is all about fixing your life, yeah, right,

Stephanie Lord Johnson 46:38
yeah, yeah, for sure, right. But it was really more because, why am I not fixing my body? Because I’m overwhelmed and stressed out. But I’m sure I started there, and that’s like the least interesting part to say, you know, like, really, are we still on this?

Courtney Townley 46:51
But you’re spot on that, that The Consistency Code, I think, is that it’s like the corner the cornerstones, right? It’s the foundation that allows us to do kind of the deeper work that we do in rumble and rise and whatnot, and kind of be have these more expressive parts of ourselves come alive, but without those basic skill sets, it’s it’s just we get so we stray so far from ourselves, yeah? And and then we lose ourselves, and we lose our goals and our the things that light us. I love the way you said at the spark, like you let the spark die out. And so I think that the code is really a great way to figure out where you are responsible for putting out your own spark and how you reclaim sparks.

Stephanie Lord Johnson 47:36
Yeah, and it’s way less of a I’ve got to do this. It’s not a pushing through. No, that’s like, right? It’s not one more thing to add to my plate. Like, anytime something feels like, oh God, do I have to do that? Like, I don’t want to add more to my plate. I really want my plate just to be like, I think you were saying the whelm I don’t want to be overwhelmed or underwhelmed. But it’s just like, I don’t want it to be an obligation. I want it to be something that livens my life. Is one more thing I have to do. I think that’s the difference, right? Like I want to, it helps me constantly. Where do I make my life better? I

Courtney Townley 48:10
love it so much. Well, I immensely appreciate this conversation. I think there was a lot of juice in here, and I’m sure listeners are going to reap a lot of value from it. I would encourage anybody to join. It’s marvelous. Well, thank you. Yeah. And I hope, I hope listeners will really be fired up to buy the book too, because that’s, you know, the reason I wrote the book was because there’s so much into the code, right that we work on in the course, and then the rumble and rise is like a whole nother layer of that work. And I wanted to have an easy entry point for people. I wanted it all to be consolidated in one place where it’s like, oh, I don’t have to listen to 400 episodes of a podcast to figure out what the hell this is all

Stephanie Lord Johnson 48:48
about. Yeah, yeah. Well, I think that was, I mean, honestly, like, when I signed up, Oh God, it’s four weeks, right? Yeah, sweet. I can try that out. I don’t feel like I’ve committed a year in my life to something, and I don’t even know if it’s gonna work for me. Yeah, that’s huge, right? And having a book is even better. So I’m super excited for that. Me too.

Courtney Townley 49:04
Thank you for your support in it, by doing this interview so people can find out more about it. I really appreciate it. You bet. All right. Steph, well, thank you so much for your time, and I will be seeing you again very soon.

Stephanie Lord Johnson 49:14
Yeah, I’ll be back. Thanks, Courtney, thank you.

Courtney Townley 49:24
Thank you for listening to the Grace and Grit podcast. It is time to mend the fabric of the female health story, and it starts with you taking radical responsibility for your own self-care. You are worth the effort, and with a little grace and grit, anything is possible.