Dreamgirl Summer!

Hey there! So if you're new here, bear with me because my official video will start in just a minute. I actually record the videos every week in my membership, Chrystal's Inner Circle, and then we share the edited, put-together versions here. But before I get to the edited, put-together version, there's something unedited that I need to share with you. So listen, this video is about how to live your best dream girl summer. And when I give the content that I create every week, when I share from my heart, um, sometimes with a bullet point here or there, often from the top of my head, just what's on my heart, I'm sharing because I want to encourage, because I want to give hope, because I want to give practical ideas, because I want to call you back to you. Listen, I'll be 50 in a few weeks, and I am more conscious than I've ever been, as you would imagine, of how brief life can be and whether or not I'm actually Am I really living life the way I should? Am I doing what's important? Am I doing enough of what's important? Am I using my time well? Do I have the people in my life that I want to have, and am I developing those relationships the way I want to? And I understand how overwhelming, how overwhelming it can be when you look at your life and think, this ain't it, this ain't it. And I shared this video this week about living your best dream girl summer. And at the end of the video, I felt like this was all great, but it just left me feeling a little flat. Have you ever done something and you thought, could that have been better? Should I have said something different? Should I have done that differently? Well, more often than you know, I feel that way after these videos, but sometimes it's because there's something else that needs to be said. And that's why I'm wearing blue. And in a moment you'll see me again wearing maroon. Because I'm intervening and interjecting here to tell you this truth because I'm thinking very much about life in going into this next decade of my life. It has me thinking about how I'm feeling and how you might be feeling too. And it doesn't matter if you're 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, or 70. Let me just tell you, you're gonna have multiple moments in your life where you just have to remember who you're supposed to be. And if you are not happy with what you're currently experiencing or with where you've been, you will have to dream a little bit. And the dream often will take energy. It may require a little fight on your part. I can't tell you how many women that I've talked to about remembering the girl in you that have said, I don't remember her. I have, I have no memory of what her dreams even were. Okay, we'll make some up. Recently in my own life, y'all, listen, I've got teenagers, okay? Teenagers will make you question your whole existence. On top of that, if you've been around, you've heard me talk about my husband's health challenges. It's an ongoing thing. And as I walked recently into a doctor's appointment with my husband and I looked around at all the people who were fighting for their health, okay? Thinking about not only those people, but the people who were with them and what they were changing in their everyday to make the doctor's appointments or to be, um, kind, to be a great caregiver, to change their plans or delay their dreams, or just operating in a season of life different than what they thought. You know, it's kind of what happens if you lose a job and you are unemployed longer than what you plan to be, or you get married, right? And he was not the one and you just did not see it coming. Or you have kids and those kids that you love so much don't love you back the way you wanted them to right now. It could be a variety of things. And when you find yourself in those circumstances in your life where You can't even locate the dream. You're putting your finger looking for the pulse of the dream, and you simply can't feel it. The palpitation you're hoping to discover with that bump in your neck, the bump in your mind, the bump in your heart— when you can't find it, you're going to question, what is my whole life? What is it? What is happening? 'Cause I can't even palpate my dream. It's not just that my life is not what I want it to be. I can't even find my dream. I just want you to know I've been there. Some days I am there. And, um, when I put this video together, I was thinking about what I could say to encourage you, but I don't want you to watch this whole video this time and think, well, that's great for people who have dreams. No, It's even greater if you don't think you have dreams, because what I need you to understand is you are the girl. You are the only one who can fight for the dream of you. And there is a dream, but you may have to hunt it down, dig it up, and discover it. And that's what I hope this video does for you today. In addition to me thinking about you when I share this video and even wanting to come back here and say, y'all, Just in case you are thinking this doesn't apply, I have days where I feel like it doesn't apply to me either. I want you to know that because my birthday's coming up and because the membership, we open the doors on July 1st. If you don't already know about it, you can check it out at chrystalhurtz.com/innercircle. But the whole reason that even exists is because I want to make sure that as I learn what it takes in my own life to remember who I am, to remember who God says I am, and to fight for the dream of me, despite the interruptions, despite the crazy kids, despite the lost income, despite the unexpected circumstances. When that happens to me and I am having to fight, because that's how I felt last night with them crazy kids. Ah, crazy kids. They don't know they have a crazy mother. But anyway, the point is, is that when I find myself going, don't give up, keep going. The stuff that we do with the Sister Circle and with the Inner Circle as the membership, it's so that when I remember that I have to fight, that I put content into the world that helps you remember to do the same. So as I roll up on this 50th birthday and I'm talking today about dreaming about you, what is your dream girl summer? I don't want you to think that I'm telling you that in a cute way. I want you to understand that I'm telling you that because I know what it is to fight for it. So this is for you. Don't just think about your dream girl summer. Don't just dream about your dream girl summer. You may have to fight for your dream girl summer. And if you have to fight, just know you're in good company. And keep an eye out. If you are not subscribed to my YouTube channel, do that right now. If you don't like me on Facebook or follow me on Facebook, do that right now. Because there's gonna be so many fun things that I'm dreaming up for you that you will see soon on those channels as we rev up for the opening of the Inner Circle. And rev up for me to remember the gift of me as I turn 50. Here we go. Hi, my name is Chrystal Hurst, and I am here week in and week out sharing content that I pray and hope will help you To live your life well, with intention, with purpose, and with less regret. Listen, if you don't think about your life, if you don't put energy into planning a little bit in your life, if you don't envision the life that you want to live, life will go by super fast, honey, and you will end up spending a bunch of days doing a bunch of things you didn't want to do. But you actually have the power to decide what you want to do with your life, and then making sure that what you intend for your life is actually what you experience in your life., and it just takes a little bit of thought. It is the summertime, y'all, and when I grew up during the summertime days, I remember going to my grandmother's house and being bored, bored, bored, bored, bored, bored, bored, watching cartoons all day long, eating grilled cheese and hot tea, going outside and swimming in that plastic swim, uh, swim little circle thingy that she used to pick up from Walmart or whatever grocery store had them stacked outside. No matter that if they cracked or got a little bit of a cut in them that they could actually slice your finger open. But they were great. We filled it up with a hose and we stayed wet because in Texas, y'all, it is stupid hot already and the summer is just getting going. Listen, I told my children the other day, turn off the, the TV, turn off the electronics, turn off the social media, turn off the video games and be bored. They said, what do we do? I don't know, figure it out. But I am challenged in my life to not only tell my children to be bored but to do the same for myself, to set myself up by turning off things, the phone, the TV, technology, not running errands or being in the street any more than I need to be. And for all of us right now, because gas prices are ridiculously high, being in the street is not where we need to be anyway, right? We need to be at home or as still as we can to save moolah. So I've been at home intentionally making some space to be bored, just sitting, just thinking. I saw one of my sons the other day rocking on the rocking chair on the front porch. Why are you rocking in the rocking chair on the front porch? I said. He said, because there's nothing to do. I said, so are you just sitting there doing nothing? And as he rocked, he said, I'm just thinking. Hmm, something that happens when you get bored, you just think. Here's another word that I used to say when it comes to being bored. I would tell my children, just go outside, get into the hammock, look up into the clouds or into the sky and just dream. Before we had a hammock, we had a trampoline, and they would tell me they were bored, and I would say, go outside, get some vitamin D, lay on the trampoline, look up into the clouds and pray. Let your mind wander. Think a little bit about what you really, really want. Well, I've decided that this needs to be a little bit of a dream girl summer. I turn 50 in less than a month, and if there's no better time to think about what you really want to do with your life, it's definitely at that mark. I don't think I'm experiencing any sort of, uh, midlife crisis, but I am experiencing a little bit of midlife desire to be intentional with my life. I'm always thinking about living intentionally and living with purpose, but of course, as the clock ticks, you start to think, what is it that I'm meant to do that I haven't done? How is it that I'm meant to live in a way that maybe I can live better? And in order to really think about what you want to do with your life, you need to make some time to be bored, to dream. And I know that for many of us, it's like, when am I supposed to do that between taking care of kids or working crazy hours on your job or double timing it because you're going to school and you're working a job? Or maybe you volunteer in 4 ministries at your church. Maybe you're also caregiving for a parent or an aunt or an uncle, and you're thinking, are you serious? When do I have time? Well, you have make time. This is the story of our lives for everything, isn't it? The good news is, is that if you haven't been dreaming about the girl you want to be, about the life you want that girl to live, it's never too late to dream or dream again. Do you know that you get to reimagine your life if that's what you want to do in the season? Well, no one is telling you that you can't, and the only person who probably gets in your way the most is you. With all the have-tos, the should-dos, the woulda, coulda, shouldas, and those often, the things you have to do or the things you thought you should have done in another season, keep you paralyzed from doing that thing right now. It's never too late to dream. So I've been dreaming up things I want to do for my 50th birthday. I've been dreaming up how I want to celebrate. I've been dreaming up what I want to do this summer, and honestly, what I want to do all year long. Dreaming means you get to be a little bit of a Who do I want to be? And I get to reimagine my life right now. And these are simple things, simple, simple things. For example, I like to experience new things in my life. I like to feel like I'm experiencing things for the first time. There's something about doing new things, even that aren't necessarily brand new to you, but doing them in new ways that keeps life fresh. So one of the things that I've been wanting to do this year is go to dinner at a new restaurant in my city. And so I ask my sister to find a new restaurant every month and let's just go try it out. Something that maybe she's done that I haven't done, something that maybe we haven't done, but we do it together. Because why? Dreaming about experiencing new things in my life, in my city, simple. Can we go and sit somewhere where they blow a mist on you, where the patio is somewhat cool, or we can see a new part of the city and enjoy something new. Dreaming about what I need to do in my closet, y'all. You know I hate clothes. You know I hate shopping. You know I'd rather wear black all day long, but in In this season of my life, what do I want to look like when I step out of the door? What colors do I want to wear? What new things do I want to do with my hair? Oh, my hair is a whole story, y'all. It's a whole situation. Listen, every summer, or at least sometime during the year, I just get sick of it. And if I don't put it in some braids where I don't have to think about it for the rest of the year, or the rest of a few weeks at least, I'm gonna cut it off, y'all. I'm gonna straight up go chop. Because I, after a certain point, I can't take it. I can't take it. It's just too hot. And I get tired of doing it. I don't wanna think about my hair. It becomes one less thing that I wanna think about. And because Black Girl Magic is a whole situation in a great way, that means that I have a million things that I could do with my hair to not think about it. And I'm so happy for that. But I had to fight to get my hair done, y'all, this week because I had a person who I had scheduled an appointment with and that person canceled. They're a little less than professional, let's just say that. So at the last minute, I was trying to find someone who could do my hair. So I'm pulling out all the stops, asking all the people, because what I dreamed of was a no-frills, no-fuss hair summer. I just didn't wanna think about it. And let me tell you, that's what happens often in life. We have a dream for what we wanna do with the summer of our lives or the spring or the fall, and then something seemingly cancels on us. A dream that we have seems to get canceled, a relationship gets canceled, A degree gets canceled, the job gets canceled, relationships get canceled, and we're sitting there thinking, now what am I going to do? Because this is my plan. And I was tempted to just not do anything because it seemed like it was going to be really hard to remake my plan. I literally had to get online. I said literally, literally, literally like 5 times, but literally I had to get online and ask people on my social media, can anybody please point me to somebody who can do my hair? I had to ask for help. I had to ask for help so that I could fulfill what I dreamed of, which was don't do my hair. Dream girl summers, listen, mean that you may have to, in a season of disappointment, decide that despite the disappointment, you're going to fight for the thing you've dreamed of, that you're going to ask for help, that you're going to ask for recommendations, that you're going to do it differently than what you planned. Then you may have to go and seek out people or situations or areas in your life, locations that you've never been to before, but you have a dream and you are willing to do whatever it takes to make it happen. But first, you have to dream. You have to sit down, often making space by yourself and saying, "What is it that I really want? What is bugging me? What do I want to change?" And then you have to outline a plan for making that happen. Dream Girl Summers mean making space to dream and then fighting for the dream that you had, that you have, or that you thought you would no longer have the opportunity to fulfill. Dream Girl Summers mean give yourself time to be bored. I looked at my son the other day and I said, listen, when he told me for the 19th time that he had nothing to do, I said, listen, we have a pool. Go jump in the pool. Go jump in the pool. And I saw him outside sitting in the pool floating on his back. And I said, what are you doing? And he said, just thinking. I'm so bored. I said, good. What does it look like to dream? It looks like going to a park, sitting down, looking at the trees early in the morning if you're in Texas, 'cause it's hot. It looks like going for your morning walk and not putting anything in your ears. It looks like getting on Pinterest and thinking about what you want your home to look like, what you want your closet to look like. It looks like going for a long drive by yourself with the windows down. I remember going for a drive with the windows down. We were kids. I think there was a while when my dad's car didn't have any air. And I remember just driving with the hot wind flowing in the car. My dad actually loves the heat, and that may have been it. Maybe the air wasn't out. Maybe it was just that he liked the hot air coming in the car. But I remember driving, sitting in the backseat, sweating a little bit with the hot air blowing across my face. Oh, that sounds like a dream right now. So guess what I do sometimes? I sit in my car. Listen, y'all, sidebar. I have a whole car desk. Listen, and you need to know about that. 'Cause sometimes in my car is exactly where I wanna stay and I wanna get something done. I wanna write in my journal. I want to get some work done on my computer. Who knows? But sitting in my car is great. But sometimes I will just drive off. My husband and my kids will say, "Where are you going?" "Just for a drive." And I may drive down the long road near my house that passes by the lake that's near my house. Get to the freeway, turn around and come back. 20 minutes, 21 minutes tops, with the windows down, allowing myself to feel free to dream. Where is your place to dream? Where do you literally spend time intentionally thinking about who you want to be in this season of your life? Journaling is another key to having your dream girl summer, your dream girl year, or your dream girl life. In order to live it out though, you have to dream it up. And often we have dreams that we have not had or thought about since we were little girls. And sometimes the dreams we had for our lives when we were little girls is the same dream that we have now, just not realized. Often it's changed because we've realized more about who we are, what we really want, what we really want in this season. But you have to allow yourself the privilege You have to give yourself the gift of dreaming and the space. So sitting down, doing nothing, going for a long drive, going for a walk with nothing in your ear, journaling, just letting the pen flow. Sometimes when you journal, it's not a— it's, it's not a goal-oriented what happened today. It literally is getting up in the morning and letting the pen flow. What is in you that needs to rise up and come out? Like literally, it's a stream of consciousness writing. It's not right or wrong. It's not oriented towards anything. It's not even thinking about what happened yesterday. It is what makes joy rise in you and noticing it. You can't have your dream girl summer if you've never even given yourself the space or time to dream. So when I, went outside recently and was walking barefoot in my grass. I tried to play down, um, all of the things that I was afraid of that could be in the grass. I tried to play down my fear of what I was going to step into— the ant pile. Maybe a dog had run over the grass and taken a dump in the yard, or maybe there was a tarantula running out there that was going sting me and I was gonna die from it. Or Lord have mercy, what if there was gonna be a snake? Ah! But you know what? Walking in the grass barefoot put me in touch with the girl who used to do that too. What did you used to do? Can you make some space this summer for you to do that? Dream Girl Summer for me means reading, reading, reading, reading, reading, getting lost, not in a book of how-tos or in a book of personal development, which that's great, but also a book of fiction, a book of fun, sitting there and enjoying the quiet tick of the house, the hum of the refrigerator, like the noises that houses make and nothing else and getting lost. In my fuzzy socks. You have to make space. And sometimes the dreams that you want to dream for your life are built off of the things that you realize that people are experiencing in their lives, other people. And you're like, that would be great. I have a friend right now, Nicole Staples, who is traveling the world. She is, uh, late 30s, early 40s, and she is a graphic designer, very talented graphic designer who can work from anywhere. She saved up her money and decided, starting in February, for the better half of 2022, to spend the summer in Europe. And I saw her yesterday on Instagram flying. She's in Switzerland right now, paragliding. Sounds wonderful. So I may not paraglide in Switzerland this summer, but watching her helped me to dream. The one good thing about social media sometimes is that we get to see what other people are doing in their life. And if we will not allow ourselves to compare ourselves to the people, but to ask ourselves, what is it about this person's life that makes something tingle in me? Instead of me comparing myself and saying I don't have What if I use that as an indicator to decide what I want to dream about having in my life or what I wanna work to create in my own life? If I see someone playing with their kids outside on a slip and slide and I think, "My kids are so complainy and they don't wanna do anything." Well, what if that was a part of my dream? And what if instead of saying, "My life is not like that," I took the power in my hands to say, "I can create that." I have the power to create it. That's the power of dreaming. That when you think of something that actually seems a little bit out of reach, if you can dream it up, what if you have the power to create it? So before we get to any of the other things that we can do this summer, when we become brave or when we decide to do new things and look at new things with fresh eyes in our life, what if you just took a moment to dream? You know, that's what vision is, right? When we talk about leadership and people who have vision, people who have vision that we can follow are people who can see things that don't exist. And then they believe that it can happen. We love following people who are leaders like this. My dad is a visionary. And he has, through our church, dreamed up the ownership of the property in the area in which the church is and dreamed up buildings and schools and institutes for learning. And locally owned banks and businesses and all these things that so many other people thought he was crazy because they couldn't see it. And then lo and behold, we see it now. You do realize that dreaming means I'm not even sure how I'm gonna make that happen. But even if you don't know how you're going to make it happen, you still need to make the space. To dream and then decide that some of the things that you dream of, that you actually have the power to make happen. So what would be in your dream girl summer? I've been dreaming up my list of things that I'd like to do, to change, to create, writing it down and then deciding which are the things I'm gonna use my girl power to make happen? And just in case you've forgotten, if you're a girl, if you're a woman, if you're a lady, if you're a young woman, you know you have the power to give life. That doesn't just mean birthing a baby. It means you have the power to conjure up, to dream up, to create, to formulate life-giving scenarios and experiences. You have that power to see. I just need you to not just use that power to see for everybody else and to every now and again use that power to see things for yourself too. So here's to your dream girl summer. Doing new things, seeing things in your life like you're a tourist in your city, reading books that you loved, maybe reading them again, watching your favorite movies for the 19th time. That's fine. Doing something new with a new person, looking at dream dreaming up what your life can look like just because you have the power to create. You know what the wonderful thing is about my grandkids? It was wonderful with my children, and it's wonderful with my grandchildren too. Everything they do is new. I bought an apple peeler the other day from Amazon. An apple peeler, y'all. I know how to peel apples with a paring knife, but I saw this apple peeler on Amazon because Amazon serves you up all the things you need in life, or so you think. And I stuck an apple on the end of it and started to turn it. And as that apple peeler peeled the apple, those kids lost it. Oh my gosh, look at the apple being peeled. And then we took the apple off and stretched it out and it was cored and spiraled. And they were like, wow, this is so cool. It's an apple peeler, y'all. It was new to them. And seeing things new in their eyes and the excitement that it brought reminded me, sometimes you just have to do old things in new ways. So dreaming doesn't have to mean conjuring up these crazy things. It can. It can also mean dreaming up new things that used to be old, but you dream up new ways to do them. So what can you do, Dream Girl, this summer? How can you take a new picture of yourself for this season? How can you do the things that you used to do and do them again? How can you create experiences that you, that you see other people have and you may even be envious sometimes? How can you create those for yourself? It's time to dream. To remember who you wanted to be, or to create who you want to be in this season. But in order to dream, you're going to have to create the space to do just that. So get by yourself, create a few minutes of space in your day, write it down, and decide who do you want to be. And guess what? The dream girl that you can be, that you'd like to be, she's just waiting on to dream her up. Listen, it's June, and until my birthday, I've got a few new who-do-you-wanna-be-girl things I'd like to talk about. So this week it's Dream Girl. Next week I'll talk about another type of girl. I'd love for you to tell me in the comments what you already know you've been dreaming of doing or being. Go ahead, type it up, put it in black and white, share it here, 'cause I bet you'll find that there's all kinds of things that we dream girls wanna dream up for our lives, and you're not the only person who's probably dreaming about the thing that you're dreaming about. So share it in the comments because let's dream together. There's power actually in dreaming together, and I'd love to see what you're dreaming up for you this year. So I hope that, um, video was helpful. I hope you felt the hope. I hope I got your brain to think a little bit. Don't forget, tell me in the comments below, what is your dream girl summer? What is the dream of you for the coming months? Months in 2022. I mean, I got this rhyming thing down, don't I? But also don't forget to make sure you subscribe to this YouTube channel or follow me on Facebook. This video was helpful. Share it with a friend. And then don't forget to keep your eyes peeled because I'm turning 50 and I intend to fight for my celebration. And as I celebrate, I want to celebrate too with you. See you next week.