Dream Builders Day 1: Stop Sleeping on Your Goals!

Hello there. Um, yes, there is a barn-like property next to my house. Um, I am here because one of my favorite places to be serious about thinking about my life and trying to get a vision for my life is outside. Now I'm gonna get to a other place outside in just a minute, but I wanted to stop in here because growth, plants, and like plants, you are a living thing. Here's what we know about living things. What we know about living things is they need soil, they need water, they need nurturing. You've got to weed the soil around the plants. They need care. You have to pay attention. If you put a plant out here in soil— and y'all listen, I don't have a green thumb, but I sure am working on it— if you don't pay attention, here's what I know for sure, green thumb or not: not only will these plants not grow, but they'll be overtaken by the other things that pop up in the soil, because there are other things in the soil too. And most of us live our lives like that. We make a decision, we plant our foot in the soil of our life with a relational decision or a financial decision or a career decision or a decision about where we want to operate. And then we walk away. We quit looking at our lives. We quit paying attention. And then we wonder why weeds grow up or why our goals and dreams are choked out. We don't pay attention to the environment, to the soil where we're planted. We're not necessarily paying attention to how we're connected to the things around around us. But just like the plant would die and not be successful if someone wasn't tending to it, the same would be true of me, and the same is true of you if you're not paying attention to your life. So if you think that you're a living thing, and if you're breathing, you are, and if you believe that every living thing needs nurture, care, cultivation, and weeding, if you believe that things that are going to thrive need paying attention to, then you are no different. So my whole goal this week in giving you this Dream Builders Workshop and showing you the places where I dream is to show you what it looks like for me to pay attention, to give you an example of what it looks like for me to be planted, for me to be in the right environment, and for me to pay attention by noticing what I need. Um, if the soil isn't right, in the past I had to take a vial of soil to a local nursery and, um, they had to tell me what the soil was missing. And I had to take the time to have somebody look at it and say, this is what you need for this plant to grow. So what are we doing this week? We are taking the time to look at our soil, to look at our surroundings, and if need be, to get everything out so that you can be the expert of your own life. And spend some time with the Holy Spirit's power, y'all, to look at your life and say, wow, what do I need to thrive? And here's what I know to be true. The things that you pay attention to, even if you don't have a green thumb, they have a much greater chance of not only surviving but thriving. So welcome to this week's Dream Builder Workshop. And I hope this is the beginning. I know this will be the beginning of you paying attention to a life that thrives. Come dream with me. Well, hi! From a greenhouse to a bench. You have to decide. When you want to be intentional about creating a vision for your life and dreaming, um, no boundaries, no limits, to create an environment like I talked about earlier that makes it possible for you to get out of the everyday, get out of the weeds, no pun intended, and to um, think. For me, that always involves being outside. It involves water. If it's not an ocean, a creek will do. It involves trees. It involves grass, and prayerfully no ant piles where my feet are. Um, so I don't know where that is for you, but this is definitely one of my favorite places to think about my life. It's hard to go forward if you don't think about where you've been. And what we're going to be doing this week is, um, answering questions. My job is to ask the questions. Your job is to get a pen and a notebook or piece of paper of some kind and to write the answers. Now, the way this works is you write. You answer and then you keep writing. And then when you run out of things to say, you keep writing. Because at some point, the work that your frontal lobe does to get in the way of what you really, really want at a guttural level, at some point, your pen gives way to your soul, to your instinct, and to your gut. So I'm going to ask a question, and you may feel like Um, I've run out of words. Keep writing and watch the magic happen. We're gonna do this for about an hour. I'm gonna ask you 4 questions and then give you 10 to 15 minutes to write, and I'm gonna write along with you too. So let's look back a little bit. What has happened this year? That's all I'm going to ask you. What has happened this here. Good, bad, ugly, just start writing free-flowing. Where have you been? If you get really stuck, you can take out your phone. Don't get distracted by those notifications, okay? Um, and look through your camera roll, your photos, because that may give you a clue as to what you've done and where you've been. But where have you been? What's happened? What comes to mind? It's really easy. Where have you been? All right, get your paper, get your pen, let's write. You know, you either are probably wired positive or wired negative. And so I want you to pay attention to what you're writing, because if you are wired negative, you're probably saying not enough of this, too much of that, coulda, woulda, shoulda. And if you're wired positive, you're thinking about the highlights, which is amazing and an amazingly grateful way to live. But don't be too lenient toward one side or the other. Look at the whole of your life. Take it all in, bad and good, good and bad, so that you really get a picture of how you feel. And what you'll find too is the more that you write, your feelings will follow. Because as you think about your year, how you felt about those things should rise up. Pay attention to how you feel. Keep writing. Okay, how you doing so far? I have another question for you, okay? When you look back, if you think about the garden analogy I gave you earlier, um, if I'm going to plant new things, if you're going to put new things in your new year, you usually have to come through in a garden, in a raised bed, uh, in a container, and you have to pull out what was there before. You have to look at it and say, what's sitting there that was dead that needs to be uprooted? Or what's been there lying dormant? We're trying to figure out with this next question, what have you left on the table? What sat there that you meant to get going and you didn't? I want you to pay attention to that. I want you to pay attention to what you needed to do last year that you still need to do this year. So here's your question. What is lying dormant in your life that shouldn't be? What needs to be uprooted in your life because it shouldn't be in your life to begin with? And write it down. Okay, don't feel bad. Don't feel bad about what needed to be uprooted that hasn't yet been. Don't beat yourself up for what's been lying dormant that you should have gotten going. It's okay. You're still here. You're breathing. You get to choose. And the gift of going into a new year is the opportunity for you to think again about what's important to you and to dream again about what you're going to do. You've cultivated something. It might be something great like education. It might be something not so great like an addiction to social media.. But you have invested in something. Um, when it rains, it rains on the plants that you want to grow, and it also rains on the weeds that you don't. So something has been cultivated in your life, and I just want you to pay attention to what that is or what that has been. So what have you intentionally or even unintentionally been nurturing and cultivating throughout your life? Get your pen. It's time to write it down. Okay, um, one of the best practices for your life is gratitude, and one of the best ways for you to be grateful is to think about what God has been doing, um, faithfully in your life. The sun comes up every morning, the sun goes down every day. If you are watching this video, you might have spent a couple of days hungry, but most of you have not. You have been able to eat 3 square meals or more a day. If you are watching me on YouTube, then you have, uh, first world access to the interwebs, which means you've had entertainment galore, probably. So we can get so comfortable, though, with what's provided for us, what is given to us day in and day out, that we can forget to be grateful. And I want to have as a part of our time today kicking off this Dream Builder Series gratitude, because without it, then you risk coloring the glasses that you look at your life with however you feel about it, when in reality how God feels about your life is if you're still here and you're still breathing, he's still being gracious to you and faithful to you and caring for you and providing for you. And even if some things happen this year that you wish would not have, that does not mean that he has not been faithful to keep showing up and keeping you alive and moving forward. So if you have to look back at your year, and think about where God has been faithful. Even if it didn't turn out the way you want or move forward in the way you would have desired, where has he been faithful? Just let your brain run over with all the places and spaces that you have to be thankful. Okay, get your pen, get your piece of paper or your notebook, and let's write it down. Okay. You've spent this day with me, this first day of our Dream Builders Workshop, writing it down. You may be watching it live with me. You may be watching the replay. But whenever you are engaging in this, I just want to congratulate you for spending some time paying attention to your life. Okay. I know that this hour probably cost you something. There's something else you could have been doing. There's something else maybe you wanted to do, but you made the decision to join me in this so that you are a participant in cultivating the life that God has given you. We spent some time today looking back. The good news is the rest of the week will be looking forward, and I look forward to having you join me tomorrow. Same time, same place. That said, I also want to tell you that this is the beginning. Dreaming is the beginning, and a dream without a plan is just a wish. So my dreaming, whatever notebook the flavor of the year is, um, happens. And I use that usually to make a plan because I don't just want to have all the ideas fly up into the atmosphere and none of them come back to be planted where I live, work, and breathe every day. So This is the first week of our Dream Builder series. Next week, there'll be part 2, the whole week. The difference is only VIP people get to come. So I know you're wondering, who are your VIP people, Chrystal Hurst? Well, there are 2 flavors. One group of people are my Inner Circle girls. These are the women who have made the commitment on a monthly basis to not only invest in supporting the work that I do, but they also invest in themselves and their growth, receiving weekly coaching from me and engaging in community and connection with other, other women who desire to be connected to women of faith. The second group of people who get that VIP access and invitation are those who have purchased the Full Circle Planner. So this is simply my tool that I use. I made it, y'all, because I needed a tool that worked for me and couldn't find one. And so those women who have purchased the Full Circle Planner and want to join me next week to take their dreams and put them in a plan, those women will also receive a VIP invitation. Now listen, I hope you show up all this week and join me for this Dream Builders Workshop. And I hope that being given the space to dream and by the questions I'm asking you, that you create an idea of where you'd like to go and how you want to move through your life.. But if you want to take that next step to taking your dreams and making them into a plan so that this year you know what you're planning on doing to make your dreams a reality, then I invite you to join me next week as a VIP. You can get more information about how to do that by going to chrystalevanshurst.com/dream. Okay, I'm glad you joined me. I can't wait for tomorrow to go deeper, go further into your tomorrow. And to help you dream just a little bit more. I'll see you tomorrow.