Jeff Stebar has been running for nearly 45 years and more than 50,000 miles! He believes some of life’s greatest blessings come through faith, fitness, friendship and creativity. Take a listen to hear so much more~
Hey y’all. Welcome to More Lovin, the podcast that brings more laughter, light, and love into everyday life. I’m LeAnn Austin, and around here, love isn’t just something we talk about, it’s something we practice through the More Lovin Method. MOVE. CONNECT. LOVE. Three simple choices that can change your day, and over time, your life. Let’s practice a little more lovin. Here we go.
Today’s episode #248: Faith & Fitness with Jeff Stebar
One of my favorite things is getting to know people who practice the More Lovin Method in their own way. It’s inspiring to see how MOVE. CONNECT. LOVE. show up in each person’s story.
We have the incredible Jeff Stebar joining us today to share some wisdom, encouragement, and more lovin. All right Jeff, tell us a little bit about you.
Wow, with that introduction, I’m not sure I recognize who you’re talking about. But, I’m a Detroit native, born and raised in the city of Detroit and around Detroit, and steeped in the car culture of the Motor City, and my parents were very Southern. They’re both from Appalachian Virginia. They climbed out of Appalachian poverty and, and moved to Detroit. My father was an engineer with General Motors and so that influence has always been with me. My parents were wonderfully humble, faithful, meek, powerful people that influenced me greatly.
And my wife and I have been married… Uh, best decision I ever made in my life, by the way, was marrying my wife Wendy. Are we 44 now? Yeah, 44 years ago. Oh, my goodness. That’s amazing. We have five children and a gaggle of grandchildren, just really enjoying life.
I’m an architect by trade, semi-retired, mostly retired now. But I was a partner in a firm named Perkins and Will, a global practice where we practiced major institutional projects all over the world. So it was a wonderful career of about 40 years. And now I’m trying to get used to this new rhythm of more leisure time and more, and less structured time.
So it’s quite a transition. Oh wow, you have an incredible life, and there are so many cool things about you I’m excited to dive into. That’s cool. Well tell us, how do you practice the More Lovin Method in your life or your business? What does MOVE. CONNECT. LOVE. look like in your everyday life?
Well, those were big questions. When you sent those to me and I read them, I thought, Wow, I could write a thesis on every one of those. But a few basic things I’ve learned over the years, faith and fitness, both physical and mental fitness, friendship and creativity are kind of my keys to, that I’ve learned about happy living.
Faith in Jesus Christ, of course, is the dominant, most prevalent, most prominent thing in my life. And fitness is a big deal to me too. I’ve been a runner now for, oh wow, 40… I’m coming up on my 45th running anniversary here in about three weeks, and so I’ve run a little over 50,000 miles in my life and just love endurance running.
There’s something about being outside under the sky, you know, whether it’s dark or light, in nature running, that is incredibly fulfilling to me. It’s been one of the great blessings in my life. It’s just an amazing thing. So faith, fitness, friendship, having good friends, being a good friend, is something that I value greatly.
And then creativity. You know, my profession was in the creative world. And there’s something to that. One of the most fulfilling things I’ve ever seen to me is where incredibly beautiful design is paired with spectacular craftsmanship. When those two things come together, man, that is magic to me That is so beautiful, and I’m blessed to see Jeff running now and then, and you are so… I do drop by sometimes.
Yes, and you’re so great to create a community to do that, and some of the runs that you’ve done, I don’t know, tell us your longest run, your hardest run, anything particular. Oh man, about that. The longest I’ve ever run are marathons, you know, 26.2 miles. Yeah, which are long. The hardest is, there’s no question, was the Great Wall Marathon in China. It was just a beast. It had almost 11,000 stairs on the course and parts of it so steep you had to use your hands and kind of crawl up these climbs. It was brutal. Wow, that’s number one by far. The most thrilling run I probably had was running Boston Marathon.
Wow. That was really exciting. But I just love being out and running. I mean, there’s something about it. I don’t know what it is. There’s magic to me and just that calmness, the peace of it, the rejuvenation of it just purges stress out of me and leaves me. After every run, I feel better than I did when I started.
I love that, and I think you’re spot on with the being outside, the sunlight, even if you’re running in the dark, it’s just that nature and everything like that is yeah, so calming. The last thing you asked was about, the method.
I’m sorry, I’m reading my notes. I’m not looking at you. Oh, no, you’re good. Yeah, you asked about the method in my business, in my life or business. In business, you know, I’ve always been blessed with great teams. I’ve always selected good teams. I led our firm’s higher education practice, which means, all the work that was on college campuses all over, and so we were very tied into the education world, the higher education world, and in the architectural world.
But leading teams, I always wanted a variety of talent. I didn’t want a bunch of mini-mes. You know, heaven help us if that was the case. But I never asked my team members to be able to do what I could do, and I never asked team members to be able to do something as well as another team member that might have a gift in that area.
But I did insist on one thing, and that is that everybody cared as much as I care. Aww, I love that. We had to care about the client, we had to care about the project, about success at the same level. When you have that, when you have that kind of, that’s the unity, I should say, that’s the unity I tried to achieve.
And I’ve learned over the years that leadership really requires, effective leadership requires three things. It requires vision, clarity of vision, it requires really good judgment, and it requires unquestioned integrity. Yeah. And when you have those three things, the vision to motivate, to direct; the judgment to make good decisions, to evaluate, to continue, progress, toward the vision; and the integrity, where people trust each other without questioning, that’s when success and real magic happens.
Oh, that’s amazing. Such good wisdom for people to take and implement. I love that. Well, tell us what’s something that you’ve grown to love and appreciate about yourself and why? I know this is your favorite question, right? Yeah, this is like, oh this is so tough.
I don’t like to think about myself being good at anything. I like to try to think that everybody else is better at everything, cause they generally are. No. I think I do have some types of, been given a gift, I’ll say, to bring people together. Yes, to create groups, to bring communities together, be they faith-based groups, faith-based groups, or be they running groups, as you mentioned.
I really enjoy that. I’ve got text groups that deal with different subjects that, you know, I’ll see something, Hey guy, have you ever seen… what about this? What about that? You know, and so I really enjoy getting together with people. And I really enjoy the challenge of ideas, the insertion of new thought.
I think one of the most thrilling things to me is when I go into a situation, be it a seminar or reading a book or listening to a podcast, and I’m thinking, Okay, I’ve got this all figured out. That way’s the correct way, and I come out thinking, Oh no, it’s that way. When somebody enlightens me like that or something enlightens me, be it scripture or be it sermons or be it, like I said, podcasts or somebody I’m running with.
Yeah. I love to be enlightened and realize, oh, that’s not what I thought it was, and to have a whole new kind of thought process. So that seeking for enlightenment, maybe, is another gift. I’ve always wanted to be smarter than I am. Uh-huh. Which it’s not a very high bar. Yes it is.
Yeah. Well, I love that you’re just open to other things, because I think that’s part of what creates connection with people, when we’re open to different ideas and things like that. That’s beautiful. Yeah. Again, but for the grace of God, I would be a mess. And so I give all the glory to God and to the Lord Jesus Christ. I bring nothing. I am nothing without them. Yeah. Oh, I love that. That’s tender. Well, tell us what’s your favorite quote about love, and how has it shaped your life and relationships?
All right. This was a hard one too, because I don’t really walk around going, Hey, here’s my favorite quote. But I did find one that I find very meaningful, and this was from a church leader named Jeffrey R. Holland. He said this: “The first great commandment of all eternity is to love God with all your heart, might, mind, and strength. That’s the first great commandment. But the first great truth of all eternity is that God loves us with all His heart, might, mind, and strength. That love is the foundation stone of eternity, and it should be the foundation stone of our daily life.”
To me, that is so powerful. I don’t know of anything more motivating than to feel the love of God in our lives. The quest for us to communicate that love or be a conduit for that love is like he said, the foundation stone of our daily life.
That’s what motivates me. I don’t walk around thinking this spiritually all the time, nor do I think this deeply all the time. But I do love the idea of being a conduit. Oh yeah. I love the idea of helping God in some tiny shred of a way, to shed His love on other people.
Ah, that’s beautiful, and thinking of it as a foundation stone, I loved how he worded it like that as well. Beautiful. Yeah, me too. I thought that was really powerful. That’s awesome. Well, when you hear the words move, connect, love, which one are you leaning into most in this season of your life and why?
Which one? Yeah, it’s interesting cause at my age, moving is always something you lean into. Yes. It just doesn’t come naturally anymore. You have to lean into it. But I would have to say, it’s the idea of love. Like I say, I’ve been pretty blessed over the … No, I’ve been spectacularly blessed over the years, to be, to have a gift of connection.
I’ve always been able to relate to people. I can typically find something with someone to connect with. I don’t care if they come from a different planet. I’ll find something that, you know, we can connect on. But the love that Jesus has for us, that infinite, perfect love, where there’s, you can’t love more, where, you know, there’s nothing we can do to earn more of His love or when there’s nothing we can do to make Him love us less. It’s just complete perfect love, and He’s commanded us to be like that, right? To don’t just love your friends, love your enemies, love those that persecute you and do bad things to you.
That’s the great quest of life to me. And that’s the great measure of success in anything if we can share that love with those around us. Even those that, like I say, that the Savior said even our enemies or our adversaries, I guess we might say today. That to me is the great quest. And so that’s where I’m leaning most into.
I love that. Oh my goodness, that is tender to my heart cause I think love is so encompassing, with everything, you know? And you are such a beautiful example of that. Yes, you are. And thank you for sharing that. Yeah, I love that. Of course. Thank you for asking. These are wonderful questions to think about. Yeah. Well, thank you.
Well, before we wrap up, is there anything else that you would love to share, and anywhere our listeners can connect with you or learn more about you if you want to share anything with them? Sure. Sure, one thing I would like to share, and that is, you know, I’ve been in the business world for a long time, and I’ve been relatively successful in the business world.
I’ve practiced architecture at some of the highest levels that can be practiced, you know, with great clients all over the world. I’ve done projects on four different continents… Wow, and just really love, dearly love that idea of creation, the idea of design, the taking an idea and making it into a reality, and then watching the craftsman bring it to life.
There’s few things in life that are more fulfilling than that. I mean, it is just magic to my soul. With all that said, life is all about relationships. Mm-hmm. 1,000% it’s about relationships. Yeah. We don’t take much with us out of this life. Okay, I’m not gonna take any piece of architecture out of this life. I’m not gonna take a car or anything else. But I will take several things. The things we get to take, we get to take our knowledge, we get to take what we know, we get to take our faith, and we get to take our relationships. And that’s, in my mind, that’s where we should be pushing.
That’s where we should be giving our best efforts. Our highest priorities should be in those areas, learning, faith, and relationships. And like you say, your podcast is well-named, and, you know, based on love, those types of relationships. Anyway, I did send you my Facebook. Jeff’s Facebook HERE. I’m not terribly active on social media. I use it just to kinda stay connected in our car community, in the church community, and those kind of things. But yeah, people are welcome to email me. I can send you my email address if you like, that’ll be fine too. I love to connect. Okay, and I’ll put that in our show notes as well, so I love that. Yeah.
Well, I hope today’s conversation reminds you that there’s no one right way to practice the More Lovin Method. We each get to live it in our own unique way. Thank you Jeff, for spending this time with us. You’re very welcome. And sharing your heart was so, so tender, so thank you.
Before we go, grab one thing from today’s conversation, and remember the More Lovin Method: MOVE. CONNECT. LOVE. Here’s to a little more faith and fitness, and a whole lot more lovin. You got this!
Thanks for spending part of your day with me. If you’re ready to put the More Lovin Method into practice and create more of what matters most in your life, I’d love to help you through one-on-one coaching. You can learn more at leannaustin.com
Because around here, more lovin isn’t just something we talk about, it’s something we practice. Have a good one y’all.