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Erin Ropelato

Using Floors, Stairs, and Ceilings with the 40-Day General Conference Challenge

40 DAYS!

Who can do something for 40 days consistently?

The 40-Day General Conference Challenge sounds overwhelming! 40 days is a long time  to participate in a challenge. Here are a few ideas that can make the 40 Day General Conference Challenge manageable and doable, no matter your circumstances.

Floors, Stairs, and Ceilings

On October 31, 2019, Brooke Snow, released a new podcast episode #61 “Floors and Ceilings”. It was so popular that she created a pdf download of the podcast episode entitled “Floors and Ceilings: The Secret to Consistent Habits”.  

Have you even heard of the concept of floors, stairs, and ceilings? Let’s dive in and learn what floors, stairs, and ceilings are and how they relate to the 40 Day General Conference Challenge and your personal learning styles.

Ceilings

Brooke defines ceilings as “your high ideals. It’s your big picture vision of a goal, a change, a new habit, some positive thing that you want to create in your life.”

 

Ceilings would be the best of the best for you. It would be the ultimate objective of whatever you desire to reach. Ceilings would be whatever your vision of your goal looked like if all the stars aligned for you on a particular day and what you would be able to accomplish with your goal.

 

Ceilings would never be something you attain every single day. Ceilings might be something you are able to do once a week, or once a month, or even once a year. Ceilings have also been described as end lines.

Floors

In contrast, Brooke Snow shared: “A floor is your tiny version of change. It’s your tiny version of a habit…It’s your bare minimum.” Floors are the smallest action you can take to work toward your ultimate desires. Floors are baby steps we can do every single day with hardly any effort. Floors are minute changes that help build consistency and daily habits. Base lines is another name for floors.

Stairs

Stairs are between the floor and the ceiling. Stairs are anything you do that is between your floor and your ceiling. Stairs start small and build as they move up to the ceiling and require increased time and effort as you move closer to the ceiling. There can be many stairs in between your floors and ceilings- even hundreds of stairs. Stairs are also defined as mid line.

Floors and ceilings and stairs in between

Now what do floors, stairs and ceilings have to do with the 40-Day General Conference Challenge?  Floors, stairs, and ceilings have everything to do when we begin a challenge or work on a new goal. Here are a few steps to take while creating your personal floor, stairs, and ceilings for the 40 Day Challenge while using your personal learning styles.

 

Floors

First you need to sit down and decide what is my floor–what is my bare minimum I am going to do each day of this 40-Day Challenge.

 

A floor could be as simple as just reading the title of the General Conference talk or reading the one-line summary statement of each talk. Just reading the title of a talk can give you something to ponder throughout the day. It can bring back thoughts or feelings you had when you originally heard the talk during General Conference.

Ceilings

Second, determine what is your ceiling –what would an ideal day look like for me during the 40 day challenge.

 

What would be the outcome of hitting my ceiling for the day? How much study would I want to do? In most cases, your ideal would not be reached every day.

 

A ceiling for the 40 day challenge could be that your read, ponder, and journal all your thoughts and feelings as you studied each General Conference talk. Your ceiling may be to listen to or watch each General Conference talk daily. You can decide what your ceiling is depending upon your season of life.

 

Stairs

Lastly, select several stairs between your floor and ceiling that you would enjoy doing to participate in the 40 day challenge. There are  lots and lots of stairs in between the ideal situation and the bare minimum.

A stair could be to listen to a talk while doing housework.

Another stair could be to just read the daily slides on social media that include a quote, an invitation, a promised blessing, a reflection question, and a learning style study idea. This will take 1-2 minutes and you could have a message to ponder throughout the day.

One more stair could involve looking at artwork that depicts the message from the General Conference talk or listening to a song or hymn that goes along with the talk (these are available on the individual General Conference blog posts for the April 2022 Conference HERE). 

40 Day General Conference Challenger Reminders:

A few reminders:

This 40 Day General Conference Challenge wasn’t designed to be an “all or nothing” type challenge. It is more of a “come and do what you can” type challenge.

Everyone is at different stages and seasons of life. Some days you have more time to read or listen General Conference talks than others. And to be honest, some days it doesn’t happen at all. That is OK! Don’t ever feel like you are behind or you can’t catch up. Just jump in wherever you can. The whole aim of this challenge is to help us come closer to Jesus Christ not to beat yourself up because you didn’t meet the “ideal”.

The concept of floors, stairs, and ceilings is liberating. It allows you and me the opportunity to do the bare minimum and to just do our best. Even though we are shooting for the ideal, we all have days where we do just the bare minimum. Let’s just do our best each and every day.

Don’t compare your floors, stairs, and ceilings to anyone else  Everyone has different wants, desires, hopes, experiences, and dreams. You have different hopes, desires and dreams than your friend, and your mom and your sister and the stranger down the street that seems to have it all together. Remember: No one has it all together-if someone had it all together—they wouldn’t be here anymore.

At the end of the day, ask yourself, “What did I do today that brought me even a teeny, tiny step closer to Christ?” “How did I feel the Spirit today?” “How did Jesus show up in my story today?”

Each person’s floor is different, everyone’s ceiling is different, and people’s stairs in between are different.  All of us can use a variety of learning styles to fill in the stairs, adding variety to how we study General Conference talks, and in turn find joy in our gospel study.

40 Day General Conference Challenge April 2022

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40-Day General Conference Study Guide April 2022
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Purchase a 50+ page workbook which will help you read, study, and record insights from each General Conference talk from April 2022 while using the 8 learning styles. Includes a page for each General Conference talk with reflection questions, a place for notes, and a learning style study idea (unique for each talk)

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