5 Ways to Notice Your Days

Do you ever feel like you're running out of time? Well, I do, and the truth is we are. Hi, my name is Chrystal Evans Hurst, and I'm here every week sharing content that I hope inspires you, motivates you, challenges you, and gives you practical tips for how to live well. You can make sure you do not miss a video by subscribing to my YouTube channel or following me on Facebook so that if I release a video or go live randomly, because every now and then that happens, you'll be sure to know about that. I am here to talk to you today about what it looks like to number your days well. Now, there's a lot of ways that you can number your days, but I want to give you 5 ways to number your days, 5 ways to make sure that you're paying attention to what you are actually doing with your life. These are simple things, they are easy to implement, but I can guarantee that if will be intentional about paying attention to the number of days that you have, you will use your days well. I recently went to a college visit with my son and a friend of his. As a part of our visit, we went to lots of different sessions. One of our sessions, we had the opportunity to meet a faculty member who, after the session, we went up to meet her and she put her arms around my son and his friend, two 17-year-old boys, and said, As often as I have the opportunity to help teenagers, as often as I have the ability to help teenagers move forward, I love this. I love my job. But as often as I have the opportunity to put both arms around two 17-year-old boys, I do, because I have two 17-year-old boys, but one of them is no longer with me. She said, you know, you have to number your days. You don't know how many days you have left. And whether you come to college here or go anywhere else, you need to know to It's so important to make every day count. My son's number, 17.3.10. 17 years, 3 months, and 10 days. He did not know that's how long he had. I didn't either, but I'm so glad for those 17.3.10 periods of time. He really, really lived well. He maxed out his time. He took every opportunity to do what he loved, to learn and to love others. And I want the same for you. And I looked at my sons and thought, oh my goodness, what happens if you actually learn that lesson young? Years ago, I was sitting in a, um, service where my dad was preaching, and he said, I'll teach you how you can number your days. You can take a jar and, um, count the number of days that you have left. Literally, he said, if you have 40 years left, you're going to multiply that times 365 days. And what I would do is take that number and take a bunch of paper and cut a bunch of paper up into tiny, tiny bits of paper, and then just ball them up and put them in a jar. That is your life. If you expect that you have 40 years to go because maybe you're 30 and expect to live till 70, or you're 40 and you think I have 50 years to go because you think you're going to live till 90, so whatever it is Put them in a jar, and every day take a piece of paper out of the jar and throw it in the trash. And over time, you will be numbering your days, looking at your time run out. There's a feeling of anxiety that I get when I see one of those sand timers. You know, you get them when you play Taboo and you turn it over and the sand runs from one side to the other, the sand in the hourglass, because you can literally see your time running out. Now, this is not designed to make you feel anxious about the time that you have left. I do want to be intentional about telling you to watch the hourglass, to pay attention. So whether you're using an hourglass to measure your day, whether you are using an hourglass to measure your hour, whether you're using the pieces of paper in a jar to measure your year, that's actually a great, um, a great activity to do with your family to see how much time you have left. Maybe that's something that you wanna use to, um, pace yourself to finishing that school year or that degree, or, uh, maybe it's the number of days you have left left on a certain job. But looking at it, going lower, looking at what you are losing— and time is always running, whether you're counting it or not, it's always running— paying attention to it is the name of the game. You don't know how much time you have left on this earth, but what you can do is say, based on your expectations, how much time you have left on a project, or in a home, or, uh, in school, or on a job, or for the year, or for the quarter. And look at it. The danger for most of us in how we live our lives is we live as if we have time, as if we have time to waste. But because we don't know what the number of our days is, we actually end up wasting time because we think and assume we have more than we do. So what I wanted to do was talk to you today about 5 practical ways you can watch the hourglass, 5 practical ways you can empty your jar, 5 practical ways that you can live intentionally looking at your time so that you're noticing how time is slipping away. Not so that you're stressed, not so that you're anxious, but so that you can be attentive and to use your time well. The first way is to see your soul, and the way that I love to do that is by journaling. To pay attention every day to the state of your soul, not just what happened today, although journaling is a part of that, but how you felt about what happened today, who you were in what happened today, what you learned about yourself, good or bad, what you learned about yourself that you wanted or desired. Because this is one of the ways to number your days, is to actually know what you want out of your days, to actively pursue that, to know what you don't want out of your days, to get rid of that. And most of us go from day to day not paying attention to how our soul engaged with our minutes, with how we felt about what we did, so that we can add or subtract from tomorrow what we want or don't want in our lives. How many times have you found yourself saying, I can't believe I did this this long. I can't believe it took me this long to change this, go after this, get rid of this. And I can guarantee you that one of the reasons why it took long is because you only dealt with it when the pain or the gain got so great that you couldn't ignore it. But the whole time, your soul is talking to you. Your soul because you're a human being, the Spirit of God because he lives in you if you are a believer. But either way, you have to pay attention to see the signs. You don't have to wait until the signs are screaming at you, until— just like you're going along a freeway, there'll be hints that an exit exit is coming. But you don't have to wait until the exit arrives to do a hard slide 3 lanes over to take your exit. You can see the signs and making— be making moves along the way to make sure that when the time comes, it is not a, a hazard for you to make that change in your life. See your soul, whether you journal long or short, whether you are putting captions on your social media. But pay attention to how you feel about your life, because how you engage with your life how you love it or not will tell you what you want to change about it. See your soul and you will learn better how to number your days. Another way that you can number your days is to pay attention to how you're spending your money. Listen, you are using energy every day to generate income, to make money or save money, to save the money that you have generated or someone else that has generated on your behalf in your family. So why wouldn't you pay attention to how you're spending it? It never ceases to amaze me how much of our lives we spend to, uh, make money or save money but we don't pay attention to how we spend money. You should have a budget, and you should pay attention on a regular basis to how you are living within the budgetary goals that you've set for yourself. Whether you are saving, whether you are putting away for a rainy day, whether you are preparing for that vacation, whether you are getting ready for, uh, you don't even know what— how you're preparing for school, how you're getting ready for the car that you don't need, how you are putting money aside that you don't need so that when God brings someone across your path, you have the money to bless another person. Pay attention to your money because your money is showing you how you're spending your days. It's showing you what you're using in your free time, whether you're spending it on cable or how much your phone bill is. It's showing you how you— how much of your income is going to your home. So are you using your home for what really matters since so much of your money is going to there? I know that you eat and sleep there. I know that you spend time with your children or your husband or your roommate there. I understand that. I understand that. But are you using it to be hospitable? Are you using it to create memories? Are you using it to bring people into your home them to actually see their soul and be a vessel of God in the giving of hospitality to someone else? Are you actually resting there, or do you spend so much time on the go that the place that you've created to be a respite for your soul— you're never home? Look at where you're spending your money, because that is how you're spending your life. And if your money does not represent what you want to actually do with your life, what you want to see that you've accomplished with the, with the wealth that you've been able to generate in your lifetime, then change how you spend your money. Look at your money, look at how you spend it. And I'm not talking about now why you should get out of debt and why you should save for retirement. Those are things you should do. I'm saying every month, what money is going out the door? And if you've never actually looked at it, tracked it, written down every single dollar you've spent, it's eye-opening. It's eye-opening how much money you're spending on food that not only is not good for you but is actually stealing time from you. Because if it's not good for you, it's not good for you. It's amazing when you see how much money is going to coffee, or how much money you're spending on Disney Plus and Hulu and Netflix and YouTube TV and DirecTV. It's amazing when you see how many subscriptions that you have that you aren't using. Look at your budget and say, how am I spending my life based on the money that I'm spending? And is that indicative of what I want my life to look like? Is that indicative of what I want to be prepared for later in my life? And if it's not, change how you spend, or work at developing a plan so that you can change how you spend. Paying attention to how you spend your money is also often paying attention to how you're spending your life. Take inventory of your time. We, um, multiple times in the Inner Circle we have done this. Even if you're on my email list, if you've been there for any length of time Every now and then we drop a budget for your time. We call it Manage Your Minutes. It's actually going to be a part of a planner that we'll be releasing later this year, where it's the same idea as taking advantage of looking at how you're spending your money and how, you know, monitoring your money is the same thing that you do when you inventory your time. You look at how am I spending my time? You track every single minute of your day. What am I actually doing with my time? And then you say, I want to actually budget my time. I don't want to spend that much time watching TV. I want to grow. I want to develop. So I'm going to exchange I'm going to exchange some of that watching TV time for reading time. I'm going to exchange some of the sleeping time for working out time. I'm going to exchange some of the time that I'm spending on my phone for time that I'm spending with my family. So when you look at your time, it's the same thing. You write down, how am I spending my time? So it's not just about numbering your days— how many days do I have on this earth? It is also about numbering your minutes, numbering your seconds. How am I spending my time in micro ways? It's eye-opening again, to look at how you spend your time and then to say, is this actually what I want my time to go to each and every day? And then set a budget for your time. Say, in order for me to be the person that I wanna be, I know that I have to spend 8 hours at work, but I want to spend this much time reading and developing. I wanna spend this much time developing me. I wanna spend this much time, um, with my family. I want them to remember me being attentive and available to them. I wanna spend this much time taking care of my body. And you backwards engineer how you spend your days. So that the days will add up to weeks, so that the weeks will add up to months, so that the months will add up to years. And then as you number your days, you can look back and see that what you've been spending in terms of how you manage your time will add up to the tale that you will tell about your time. One of the ways that you can live best with no regrets is to know what you will regret and get rid of it. So take an inventory of your time similar to how you manage your money and monitor how you're spending your dollars. I want you to notice your numbers. Notice your numbers. And, and this, I'm talking about your physical numbers. I'm talking about your body. One of the best gifts that I gave to myself in the '20s was a doctor recommended an extensive, uh, workup for me. Blood work, like beyond your normal, um, RBCs and your normal, uh, you know, hemoglobin and all that, but like a really in-depth, uh, scan of my blood, um, for a baseline. She said, you need a baseline. It's worth spending the money because as you get older, you want to know what young— what your baseline was. And if someone says to you, has your iron ever been low? The answer is yes. It's not chronic. It's not indicative of a problem. You need to know that you've been chronically anemic. And I've known that since I was a teenager. The point is I took a baseline of numbers. So in my 40s, and then as I move into my 50s, of course I'll be looking at my numbers because you want to make sure that everything is the way it's supposed to be. But what you want first is a baseline. Notice your number. So if you don't have the blood work from your 20s or your 30s to look at, go get it now. Go get it now. Go to your doctor and say, I want a solid baseline of any of the numbers that will matter to me when I'm 50. This could be your blood work, this could be your blood pressure. I know that when I was pregnant, my blood pressure was like 110 over 65. I had great blood pressure, so I've not historically had high blood pressure. So if I go and I look at my blood pressure now, I can compare it to my norm and know that yes, age sometimes takes a toll on some of our numbers, but I know that that's— I know what my history is. You need to know what your history is with your blood sugars. You need to know what your history is with your weight. I want you to know that you need to know your numbers because it is one of the best things in your life to be able to be an advocate for yourself when it comes to your physical body. You can have 5 different doctors and you are the connective tissue. You are the thing that doesn't change when you go from doctor to doctor, and they're going to see you on a different day and get different numbers and have different things. You need to know who you are before the doctors are looking and when the doctors are not looking. And it's never too early to start racking up your numbers. So again, an extensive workup, your blood work, your basic complete blood work, but plus extras. I would look at your minerals, your nutrition. What does your magnesium look like in your body? What does your vitamin D look like in your body? What does your ferritin level look like in your body? That is not a normal thing. I would say, take a look. I want you to know your number story. I want you to know your blood pressure. I want you to know your A1C. I want you to know your thyroid numbers. I want you to know when you're in your 40s and 50s, you don't have to wait until you have hot flashes. You should know your numbers. Are you in premenopausal stage or not? Ask your doctor. Uh, and if you don't know what the numbers are that are important for you right now, say, I really want to start paying attention to the numbers. So what do you think for a person of my age, are the things, the numbers that I need to be paying attention to so I can maintain them, keep an eye on them, and then know what my baseline is for the years to come. This is a way to, to take care of your body, to know where you are in space and time. It's similar to monitoring your money. It's similar to managing your minutes and taking an inventory of your time. It's looking at where your body is, knowing what works for your body, knowing what doesn't. So when things change, and they will as time moves on, you will know what's normal for you. You don't need to know what's normal for everybody else, always. You need to know what's normal for you. Once a year going to your doctor is not enough. You need to pay attention to your body ongoingly. And those are the basic things that I would say that you should look at so that you don't have, um, an issue when it's an acute issue that you could have been seeing in the change all the time. It's a great thing to know your body. The last thing I want to tell you is to pay attention to your prayers. Pay attention to your prayers. Why? Because when you pay attention, not just that I am like, oh God, I need you right now. Please God, fix this. Pay attention to your prayers, write them down, because when God answers them, living with a grateful heart, living with a heart of thanksgiving, coming back to say thank you will also teach you how to number your days. Because you will remember that you asked God for something 6 years ago and he answered. You will, you will realize that you mentioned something that you didn't even think was that crucial, but you said, hey God, it would be really nice if— and then when he does it, the gratitude brings you back to your timing. To the fact that even when you thought nothing was happening, that 6 years in, something was happening, and that God was working for you on your behalf. So don't just pray— pay attention to your prayers, write them down, and then be sure and come back and give thank you when God answers, to see that how he moves through your life over time is actually really happening, even when it's happening under the surface. I want you to number your days. No, none of us know when our days will be over, but what we can do is choose to live the days that we have well. So be sure and see your soul through the art of journaling. Monitor your money, pay attention to where your spending is going, take inventory of your time. Be sure and make sure that you are looking at your time every day. Notice your physical numbers and then pay attention to your prayers and know that as you do, the clock— while it won't slow down in real time, it will slow down in you time. You'll be looking at your life and that simply makes things become more visible and become more meaningful and memorable for the time that you have here on Earth. I hope this has been helpful to you. Be sure to hit the like button, be sure and subscribe, and if this video is meaningful to you, be sure and share it with a friend. And I will see you next week.