Getting Back to Your Goals
Chrystal Hurst walks through a four-step framework for reviving goals postponed in 2020: break them into small pieces, write a script to counter self-sabotage, use resources you have, and assign each goal a spot on your calendar. She shares examples from her own life, including organizing 100-200k photos and writing a 50k-word book.
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Hey, thanks for joining me here either on YouTube or Facebook to catch me for my Coffee with Chrystal. You are watching a replay of my live Coffee with Chrystal that happens every Monday morning, uh, at 7-ish AM with the Inner Circle. And so if you would love to join me live, I would encourage you to check that out, chrystalevanshurst.com/innercircle. But you don't have to join me live to get this great content that I'm excited to share with you today. I'm going to be talking about what it means to get back to your goals. And I'm so excited about that because all of us, it's January. We need to talk about that. It is what it is. There are goals from last year that we are going to get back to and crush this year. But we have to be honest about the fact that some of the goals we didn't get to last year, because I mean, 2020, it is a whole sentence. I also want to remind you that if you are watching this, that January the 18th, Monday, is the beginning of the 28-day prayer journey that I am doing along with Faith Gateway, and I would love for you to check that out. It's faithgateway.com/obs. Okay, so I wanted to make sure you knew about those two things. There's one more thing I want you to make sure you know. So I will be sharing these replays on Sundays at 7:00 PM. While I'm not live with you, the experience at 7:00 PM will feel live because it will go live and you can chat with other people at the same time. So it's still kind of fun, even though hopefully I'll be preparing for my week and my Monday morning lives with the Inner Circle. But Sunday evening is when you can show up at 7 PM, and if you want to have that experience of chatting with other people, 7 PM is your time. It will be here, the replays will be here, you can watch them later. But if you want to join the fun, 7 PM Central is when you need to do that. The other thing I want to tell you about is there is a whole bunch of content, videos that have been put here from all of my recording in 2020, 2021. So beginning of 2021, and if you missed it, you can totally binge out. So be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel or make sure that you've told Facebook, I want to be notified of all the things Chrystal's doing. And somebody asked me, how do I know where that is on Facebook? So I took a picture so I could show you. So if you're on Facebook, right there in the bottom right-hand corner, there are three dots. So So the first thing you want to make sure of is that you've liked the page. The second thing you want to make sure of is that you've clicked those three dots and then it will say notification, notification of this, notification of that. And you can say notification of everything and then you won't miss a beat. And of course, again, YouTube is like and subscribe. So y'all, without further ado, let's talk about getting back to your goals. Okay. So welcome this morning where I am talking about getting back to your goals. If you are like me, You have goals that you're setting for 2021, but they are goals that you had for 2020. I mean, let's be real. Some of the things that we intended to do in 2020, we got done. Let's celebrate that. Make sure you celebrate. But there are a lot of things for a lot of us that are our goals for 2021 that also were goals for 2020. And we didn't do them. We didn't do them at all, or we didn't finish. And so there are some tips that I'd love to give you for getting back to your goals. Goals. Because if they still are important to you, it's something you still want to do, you should get back to it. You shouldn't waste too much time feeling bad about yourself. You shouldn't waste too much time lamenting what you didn't do. You shouldn't allow what you didn't finish last year to impact what you do finish this year. Um, if it's in you to do, if it's a desire, if it's something that you are wanting to in your gut, in the soul of who you are, to still work on, you should work on it and not let the voice of you weren't going to finish that anyway. The voice of negativity, the voice of insecurity, the voice of unworthiness steal away the desire that you have. So it's time just to get back to it, and, um, I'm here to support you. So I wanted to give you some very specific things that I actually sat around last week and talked to the girls in the office to say, okay, help me help you, because I— in order for me to give some of my best content, I really need to know that what I'm saying is useful, that it's actionable, that it's absorbable, and that it, um, it turns on the light. And so I sat here with the girls in the office, we talked about it, we made a list, uh, we took notes, we, we turned on a voice recorder to say really what is here that is useful. And my hope is that our discussion from last week in the office is helpful to you. So there are 4 things that I want to tell you about to help you get back to your goals. Number 1, number 1, I want you to set small goals, okay? Even if you have a big one. And actually, right now, um, in the Inner Circle, one of the things that, um, that we're doing in the Inner Circle right now is working on our, our 90-day goals. Um, and in fact, let me put that here up on the screen. Now, the Inner Circle, the upper levels where we're doing that work, um, where we're working on us, those levels are actually closed. However, the Inner Circle is always open for the entry level. It's the co-producer level. Which would mean you get to watch me do these live and enjoy community live. But the Inner Circle, when we open and close it, it's because we— when we close it, it's because we want to do some work. We want to work on a project, we want to work on a challenge, we want to do a course together. We are working on 90-day goals right now. And so even if you have a big goal, the first thing that I want to challenge you to do this year in 2021 is to make smaller goals to achieve. So if you want to write a 50,000-word book, and you want to write that over 50 weeks because 52 weeks are in the year and 2 weeks, you know, you don't want to write because you don't want to write when you go on vacation, then that would mean what? 1,000 words a week. Okay, so easy enough. Well, if you're going to write 5 days a week, what does that mean you're doing every day? That means every day, 5 days a week, you're writing 200 words a day. So guess what? If you write 200 words a day, 4 days a week, because at least 1 day a week there's a day when you fall off the bandwagon, you still have 800 words a week, which multiplied times 50, uh, would be 45,000 words, uh, or 40,000 words in a year. 40,000 words in a year is nothing to cry about. So if you set small goals, and even if you fall off the wagon sometimes and you don't always meet those small goals, you still have gone somewhere. And so what I want to challenge you to do is to set small goals, because even if you don't do it perfectly. Goals that you can meet and feel good about, that you can work on often, will help you to get where you want to go. And so, um, you can Google— I mean, I always say that the stuff we do in the Inner Circle, um, that people either are in because they want to support the work we do, uh, through our Patreon page, or because they actually want to do the work themselves and they want to invest in themselves— I always say, listen, the stuff that I'm doing, Google it. Like, Google it. You can look up setting goals on the internet. You can look up 90-day goals on the internet. You can look these things up. Um, the benefit when we do these things together is that you have the benefit of community, which is always helpful. But set small goals, and the reason being is because even if you don't make it to the big goal, you still will have made progress. I am slowly unpacking my home, but here's the confession that I have to make. I have to confess that because some of the stuff that we had in a storage situation before we moved, we were trying to get all that stuff cleaned out. It was either like, it's coming with us or it's not. And so I was trying to declutter because I didn't want to bring the junk, uh, the stuff that had been in boxes for 3 moves. I did not want to bring that stuff with me to our new house. I have to confess that some of that stuff is still in storage, and I've thought about it for a second. I thought I should just bring it over here so I can quit having to go back and forth. Nope, it's still the goal to only bring over the things I love, the things that I need, the things that we're going to use. So I've made a major dent in it. However, I'm not done. So the small goal is that at least once or twice a week I'm going over there to go through things, to give them away, to have them picked up, and to decide what comes with me. And the goal of decluttering so that I don't bring clutter to my new home, um, is still my goal and I'm still working on it. I was talking to the Inner Circle before I actually started the record button for you all, and I confessed that I've still got weight to lose. I've also still got Christmas cards to get out, but they're no longer Christmas cards or New Year's cards. But what's my goal? My goal is to make sure that family and friends get to see a picture of my family. So I'm going slower, but we're still getting them out. So setting smaller goals or shifting the goal into a place where you can go is okay. And here's what I want to tell you. Here's your takeaway for this. Slow is a good speed to go. Just because you move a little slower than what you planned, just because you're not doing it in the rhythm that you thought, just because the method that you chose for last year is not the method that worked, slow is a good speed to go. And often the things that we do too fast, we can't sustain. Anybody who's lost weight really fast will tell you that, that you can do it really fast, but if you have not actually changed who you are in the process, you won't be able to maintain that change. Slow is a good speed to go. The second thing I want to tell you about— the first one was setting small goals. The second one is overcoming disappointment. Okay, now you need to have a script in your head to overcome the disappointment that you're going to feel. Listen, there are— the reason why there are goals that you've had that you haven't been able to achieve, um, they could be external reasons or internal reasons, but let's talk about the internal reasons right now. That often you are your own worst enemy and that you self-sabotage you. That there are voices in your head that when you start a new thing, they're already telling you what you can and can't do. You know, if you've ever watched that movie Inside Out, you've got Joy and then you've got Sadness and then you've got Anger and you've got all these different emotions, or all these different historical thoughts that have been with you all of your life. And you're trying to change a pattern, you're trying to do something different, and those voices, those emotions, those thoughts still are in you. They're still in there. And so they will come up and say, you're not who you say you are. You, of course, you failed because you've never been able to do this. So what made you think you're going to be able to do this now? Overcoming disappointment means you have to overcome those voices. You have to actually have a script when you have a familiar voice that comes up that says to you, you're not the one who can do this. Okay, so let me give you an example of this. All right, in my head, if I don't send Christmas cards out because the inner voice says in my head, girl, you're just not that together, like the people who are together send their Christmas cards out, and if you haven't been able to send it out, you posted it on social media, that's good enough. No, that's not my goal. My goal is that I actually want to put a physical picture and a note from our family in the hands of people that we know and love in real life. That's my goal. So just because I haven't done it before, just because I didn't make my goal this year, just because I'm kind of frustrated and disappointment— overcoming disappointment says no, that's not my goal. And even if I get it done late, even if I get it done in a new timeline, that still achieves my goal. Also, I am not a failure because I didn't get it out in what would have been an ideal time. I'm actually still going to be a success because I'm doing it in a time that works for me. This year, this time works for me. You kind of have to have a little bit of tell yourself off, kind of. Even with me, um, losing weight, one of the things I'm actually talking about in the new book that I'm writing— I actually got permission from a lady, uh, that I have known of for years, and I heard her talk. She, she said this to herself. Now, she said this to herself on a microphone in front of a group of women because she was about to give a talk, okay? This woman struggles with her weight. It's very obvious she struggles with her weight. She'll tell you she has struggled with her weight all of her life. And it's very clear, like, it wasn't like, you know, I'm a few pounds over. She really struggles with her weight. But she stood in front of a microphone before she was giving a talk at an event, and this is what she said: I stand before you today, and I stand before you— she said, she said, and I'm telling you as I tell myself— I stand before you today as the best me. I can be today. Now let me tell you what she said. She said she— she— and she's beautiful, okay? She's beautiful, absolutely beautiful. She said, I did the best I could with what I was working with that day. So I got my makeup on, my hair was just freshly done, I bought myself a new outfit in a color that I knew would make me look good. And then she stood before us and she said, listen, I stand before you knowing that there are some things that I need to work on. And before I even open my mouth to help you work on you— because she's a counselor to help you work on you. I just want you to know that I'm aware of what I need to do to work on me. But today, as I stand before you to give you the best that I have to offer, I am standing before you as the best me that I can be today. And basically, she charged herself up and gave herself the authority that she needed to acknowledge what she hadn't done, what she's still working on, but also to say, I'm here with some information you need. And I'm doing me today so that you can have something that you need. You have to kind of stand up on the inside of yourself to overcome disappointment and to say to yourself, self, today, I know I tried this 15 times already, but today I stand up trying it again because this is the best of me living my life today. You have to be able to tell yourself, self, it doesn't matter that I didn't finish it last year. It doesn't matter that I didn't get to the good stuff last year. It doesn't matter that I'm still struggling with the same thing I am from last year. Today, I am the best me that I'm going to be today. And because I'm the best me today, this is what I'm going to do. That's what I'm going to do today. And there are examples of this, you know, in the Bible where people failed miserably, right? David had to keep moving forward being disappointed, right? So he's been announced king, 1 Samuel 13. He's been announced king, and then for decades, He's gotta run for his life. Okay. He had to keep telling himself, and these are what the Psalms are all about. He had to keep telling himself that the goodness and the loving kindness of the Lord was following him. He's like, it's chasing me down. And he asked the questions and he struggled and he was depressed. How long, oh Lord? You know, will this go on? Because this is hard, right? But then he kept charging himself up. But I believe in the goodness of the Lord. I believe in the loving kindness of the Lord. I believe that he will answer and hear my cry. I believe that I can run into him as a strong refuge and be safe. He had to kind of keep charging himself up with what he believed God was doing in his life, even when he was disappointed that what he was expecting to happen hadn't happened yet. So here's an example of this in real life. If God has told you that you are supposed to have a career that you love, that you're supposed to make a difference in people's lives, and maybe you're in school working on a degree to do that, or you've gotten certifications to do this on your job, or you've been faithful on your job waiting for the raise, but right now you still in school. Right now you're still on the same job working for the same boss that's driving you crazy. Right now you haven't gotten a raise in a couple of years. Right now you might even be unemployed. So here's what overcoming disappointment looks like. You know what? Right now I thought I'd have the job. I thought I'd have the degree. I thought I'd be finished with all the things that I needed to do to get promoted. I thought the last time that they went through and gave, uh, and gave raises and promotions that I was going to be on that list. I'm so disappointed that I'm still in the same place. But you know what? That must mean that God is preparing a way for me. You know what? That must mean that there is something I'm supposed to still learn, that I will be— and I be— and me being faithful in the season that I'm in will help me to be better, better prepared for the platform that he's going to give to me when I'm ready for it. You know what? There may be some things he's still trying to teach me. Maybe he's just trying to teach me patience, and that means I will be a better person when that change comes. You know what? I must be going through my degree really, really slowly, but at the end of the day, as long as I get it, as long as I get it done, what difference does it make if it took 4 years or 5 years in the grand scheme of my life? And if me doing it at a pace that I can sustain while I'm also faithful to my church and have time for that, while I'm also able to do a good job at my job because I have time for that, while I'm also able to be present with my kids— I thought I'd be done with this degree by now, but me going slow is a good speed to go. Do you see how that charges you up to say, I'm disappointed, but let me look for the gold in here. I'm disappointed, but let me look for what God is doing in my heart in here. I'm, I'm a little frustrated, but let me look at how I'm changing in this process. So overcoming disappointment means you got to get a script that's a winner. You may need to think about it, you may need to write it down, you may need to rehearse it, but when you start to feel that way, you need to be able to encourage yourself. Okay, so set small goals, overcome disappointment, know that you are already equipped. You have what you need to keep going. Even if you've got to get on Google and figure it out, you have what you need. And what you don't have, here's my encouragement to you: you can figure out where to get it. So if you don't have any script for overcoming disappointment in your life, here's one that I'm giving to you for free: I have what I need to keep going. And what I don't have, I can find, figure out, or discover. Everybody who is getting it right in your opinion, everybody who has been able to, uh, to achieve what you want to achieve, whether that is financial goals or relationship goals or, uh, you know, career goals or just hobby goals, everybody that's doing what you think you want to do, they do not have a magic pill. They don't have something you don't have. Now, may they have had a head start? Maybe a parent teach them about money and investing and they knew that and you didn't know that. All right, okay, let's acknowledge that. Let's be disappointed about it. Let's acknowledge that it may take you a little bit longer, but slow is a good speed to go. Let's overcome the disappointment of I wish I had known that. Let's overcome the regret of man, I wasted time. With this, I have what I need to keep going. And whatever I need in addition to this, I can find out, figure out, or discover. Do you see? Do you see how that changes the script? And do you see why it's so important to overcome discouragement by, uh, by encouraging yourself? All right. Now the last thing I wanted to tell you about— so setting goals, overcoming disappointment, and prioritizing your goals. Last thing I wanted to tell you about is prioritizing goals. Now we— when I was talking to the girls about this, This really could be its own whole thing. So I'm just gonna scratch the surface. And of course, you all who are watching, who are in the Inner Circle, you know this is true because we had a whole 2-hour situation with me walking you through, um, the goal setting process. And so it really is more intricate, or it can be more intricate, but this right here is the top level. And if you just will start with what you know, you'll get somewhere. Now you want to put the things that are in your life in categories, right? Because we all have probably multiple goals, and you want to put the things that are in your life in categories because, um, you can't get to everything all the time with equal energy. You can't get to everything all the time with equal energy. You have to prioritize where your energy will go first. First, let me give you an example about— of this. You probably are aware that, um, there are certain things that if you try to do them late in the day, it's not a good idea. You know what I mean? There's a certain point in the day, like for all of us, even if you're a night owl, for all of us, that after lunchtime dip, you know, where you start getting sleepy at work, or, you know, and when you were in school, even as a student, you know, those afternoon classes weren't the best. Even as a homeschool mom, I decide we do math in the morning. And the reason why we do math in the morning is because my kids, their brain is working the best in the morning. And I realize that as they go through the day, their energy is going to flow differently, and it may dip and it may come back up, but their energy is going to flow differently. So I prioritize what comes first because I want to make sure that the best of their energy gets given to the thing that's probably going to require the most of their energy. Okay, you have to decide what comes first, because you do not have equal energy all day long. You don't have equal energy all week long. You don't have equal energy all year long. So if you don't decide what comes first, and if your goals don't have a priority order, you'll get to things that are urgent today that really don't have long-term importance in your life. Okay, and the problem is that most of us, when we are goal setting, the reason why we don't get to the most important things is because we get distracted by other things that are important, that are— that need to get done, but they only need to get done urgently today. And we are only driven by the urgent, and our energy goes to the urgent, which means we don't have a priority system for dealing with the important. And the important things normally, um, the important things for many of us will never be urgent. Let me say that again. The important things for many of us will never be urgent. They just add up to, if you don't do them, you have regret. Let me give you an example. If you never prioritize time with your children, it's never urgent. You know, it's never urgent to have dinner with your family. It's not urgent to read your children bedtime stories. It's not urgent to hang out with your teen at the coffee shop. That's not urgent, but it's important. And if you don't build relationships with your children, you will regret that one day. They talk about the major regrets that people have. There are only a few that people— that, that are common to most people on their deathbeds, that they didn't spend more time with the people that they loved, that they didn't spend more time doing what they loved, and that they didn't, um, that they didn't take risks, that they didn't try things. Okay, these are the things that are not urgent. They're not urgent, but they're important. So you have to detail your goals and decide what's really important. Okay, you have to put your goals in categories, and that's one of the things that the planner that we have walks you through. And, um, I guess I'll put that here on the screen if I can, but the planner that we have is, um, it is— and see, I didn't even plan on doing it, so I'm looking for it. I'll just tell you what it is. It's chrystalevanshurst.com/shop. chrystalevanshurst.com/shop. It basically says, what do I have to do right now? Because really I'm late. I need to turn on my car insurance, flip that over because I didn't, you know, I was going to move it and now I either got to pay the old people or go to them. Okay. That's urgent. All right, we have no bread in the refrigerator. I need to stop on my way home from work today, or I need to send one of my driving kids over to the store and get bread. That's urgent if I— if they have to make sandwiches to go to school. Okay, that's urgent, but that's in the urgent category. But you have to put time into saying what's in the important category that you're going to work on this year or that you're going to work on someday. Okay, you're going to work on this year that you're going to work on someday. And then you have to backtrack and figure out how am I going to work that into my next 90 days, my next month, my next week. The book is a great example. Book is not urgent unless you have a deadline with a publisher, which I do right now, which it means it's urgent. Ah, okay. But, uh, if, if writing a book is a goal of yours and you don't have a deadline, first of all, you should set a deadline for yourself, but That is a goal that you could say, I want to write a book someday, or I want to write a book this year. Then you have to figure out how does someday translate into your time this year or your time this quarter. That's how you backtrack the things that are important into your life. They have to have a home. In my house, I tell the children all the time, things that really matter in your life need to have a home. I don't want to see your technology on the floor. Somebody's going to step on that, and you spent money for that, or probably I spend money for that. It's important. So even if you're not using your piece of technology right now, I need that thing to get up off the floor and have a home, because it— when it has a home, that's where it is incubated, that's where it's protected, and that's how you know where it is when you need it. If you give your writing a home— I know that 1,000 words a week is my goal, and I know where I'm going to write when I do, and I know what program I'm going to write when I sit down to type. These are the things that give it a home. These are— this is the place on my calendar that I get up every morning at 5 AM, and for 90 minutes before I get the kids up, before I get ready for work, I'm going to write my 200 words. You've given it a home, and that means that you won't wake up late because you had an appointment with yourself. You had a home for your important goal. If you don't give it a home, you're going to wake up late, you're going to sleep in because sleep feels good, You're going to not get around to it because, you know, there's always something else to do. I gotta write checks for this, I've got to pay bills early in the morning, I've got— mm-mm. Your time for your important goal written into your schedule is how you prioritize, okay? Every goal needs a home. How are you going to work on it? When are you going to work on it? What time are you committing to it? Okay? And you have to give all of your goals a home. Someday? This, this year, this quarter, this month, this week? What day? And when you give it a home, here's why prioritization comes in. When you give it a home, you realize what you don't have room for. You want to know how people get major things done in their life, and you're looking at them like, okay, why can't I get this done? Why is it such a struggle for me? You want to know why? Because you're trying to put everything in your 24. We only all have 24 hours. So if you are admiring people who are accomplished pianists or who have recorded their record album or who have been able to get their YouTube views up or who have done a great job raising their kids, or they, they look nice and their clothes are put together. Let me, let me tell you something. If somebody has their closet together, they put time and energy into that. They spend an hour before they— this is why I don't want to do it. I don't want to spend an hour or 30 minutes even in front of the mirror before I go somewhere. I want to throw on something that feels good and walk out the door. When you— and I have a friend, when we say we're going out, she's like, I'll meet you in an hour. I'm like, an hour? She's like, yeah, I gotta get together. She has decided that when she goes out, she builds in time. When I plan in an appointment on my calendar So I'm an iOS person, I'm an iPhone person, and it gives you the option to check the travel box. So if you put in the address of where you're going for your appointment, it says travel box and it calculates the distance, or you can plan to put in to your appointment time 30 minutes to an hour ahead of your appointment time. So it blocks off travel on your calendar. Many of us are late because we have, hello, because we have the time for our appointment on our calendar, but we don't build in the travel time. We don't plan for what it takes to get to the destination. We just say we want to get to the destination, but you have to plan the travel time. You have to plan for what it takes for you to get there. And the, and the, and the problem is we want to plan for the goal without planning, um, for the process that gets us to the goal. We want to plan for the goal without planning for the getting to the goal. And both of them matter, and both of them need a home. Okay, so, um, so prioritizing means putting your goals in boxes. Is this urgent? Is this important? And important in what time frame? And then you make sure that the important things that are not a part of your everyday get a home. How do I take that goal and back that into today? If I'm gonna— if I want to work on that this week or this month, or maybe I'm not going to work on this month. You know what, in order for me to actually clear my slate for writing Here are all the things that I've got to get done. In order for me to clear the slate for losing weight, here are all the things that I'm, that I'm not, that I got to get done first. So I'm not even going to focus on that until February so that I can focus on getting these urgent things off my plate. It's okay to operate like that. Prioritizing says I only have 24 hours in a day and here's how I'm going to make room for what matters, what's urgent and what's important. So let me give you a couple of examples about this. Photo organization. Y'all have hundreds of thousands of, uh, of photos on my phone and on, on hard drives and all the things, probably like between 100,000 and 200,000 photos. It's ridiculous. And my goal is that I want to make sure that my children have memories, that they're not all stuck on my phone and on hard drives where they never see them. Okay, so that is important to me. Having photo albums is important to me because with my mother gone, she was really disciplined about every year printing out her photos and putting them in photo albums. And she always put them in photo albums at Christmas time. So my desire is to leave a legacy of memories with my family. It's overwhelming to me because there's a lot of photos that I don't need to, you know, we take a million photos to just get one. This is the day and age of digital photography. But what it means is that I've got to work on it a little by, you know, a little by little. This often gets bumped. Photo organization often gets bumped because it's not urgent. It doesn't have anything to do with me putting dinner on the table. It doesn't have anything to do with me meeting my book deadline. It doesn't have anything to do with me moving, but it's important because if I don't leave my family photos in photo albums, digital or physical, it doesn't matter. I'm not gonna like that. I want to give them that gift. So I have to give it a home, right? I have to give it a home. And so we've been working on getting photos, album photos organized little by little. My first goal was to get all of my photos in one place. Then I put them on a hard drive. I actually paid a lady $50 for her time to teach me how to, the system for how to do it. Miss Freddie, you can find her on Instagram. And it was like, just tell me how to, 'cause I'm pretty, pretty tech, technologically oriented. I just was like, I don't want to spend any time figuring out the process. What's your process? Tell me how to do it. I took notes. So we got it. Then I needed to get rid of duplicates because over the years, putting my photos on different, on different computers and different phones and different devices, some of them were duplicated. And then I needed to know, Okay, how do I get rid of the duplicates? So then we did that. So now all of my photos from 2018 through 2000 are now organized mostly on a drive by month, by year. They're still not in a photo album yet, but I'm working on it. So you have to see that there's a rhythm to prioritizing your goals, and you have to make room for it, right? And so it's on the list of things that I work on every week, and I just keep making a dent in it. Another example would be the quilt. I took a class with Charis when she was in high school We worked on a quilt. I wasn't interested in sewing, but she was. So we worked on that quilt and, um, I didn't finish mine. I didn't finish it. Um, it sat in my closet 4 years unfinished. The border was not finished. And one year for Christmas, she finished the border and she gave it to me. Okay, just because you've made progress on a goal and you haven't finished it and you sat it on the shelf doesn't mean you should throw it away and say to yourself, I'm never gonna get there. Okay, I'm never gonna get there. Sometimes it sits on the shelf for a while until you get back to it. And it's okay to say that there's a goal that I have that's not a this year goal. There are some other things I got to do first before. So this is a 5-year goal. This is a someday goal. Sit it on the shelf. Just write it down so that you don't forget about it. My grandmother, uh, did not get a degree from community college until she was in her 70s. And the reason for that is she kept taking classes based on what she was interested in and She kept like changing degree plans. And then finally in her 70s, my sister went to the dean and said, uh, I, I want you to figure out, is there a degree? Surely my grandmother in all of these years with all of the things that she's done, all the classes that she's taken, surely in all of these years there's a degree that she has earned. And they actually— there actually was one. And so she got a degree in her hand, but all these years she just been taking classes because she loved learning. Okay. And then after a while it was like, okay, let me gather these things together and put a, put a title on it. There are things you're going to work on your whole life and you don't even realize right now that you're working towards something because it's not a goal that you have for yourself. It's a goal that God has for you. And so often prioritizing what's important to us, y'all, isn't even about a goal. It's about being obedient. It's about doing what God has put in your heart to do. For this season, and that is okay. If you— there are things, and some people get stressed out because they're like, well, I don't have goals, but I just know that this is what I'm supposed to work on right now. So I just want to encourage you, if you are teaching that Bible study, it's not a goal, it's just something you feel called to do, keep doing it. If you are at home with your kids, there's no goal associated with that other than I want to raise, you know, adults, and I feel called to be that stay-at-home mom. Okay, do it. The goal is this is what you're supposed to do right now, and you just want to be faithful. The goal is being faithful with what you feel that you're supposed to do. So sometimes we don't even know why we— why we're doing things other than it's a passion, it's a— it's something we feel called to, it's something we feel obligated to. If God is in agreeance with you, if the Holy Spirit in you is agreeing with the cry of your soul, then do it and be faithful. And don't feel like you got a goal set and be this a driven person that has 5-year goals in order to make movements in your life. But be intentional about what you do. So let me go backwards and review. So setting goals, getting back to your goals means don't feel too bad about it, just move forward. Set small goals, have a script for overcoming disappointment, uh, in you and in your, in your circumstances. And then learn how to prioritize. Know that you're not going to get to everything right now. And that's okay. I want you to know that if you need to listen to more about this, you can go to my website, chrystalhurst.com, and then just search for the episode, what, um, what you wear matters. I actually talked about getting dressed and why focusing on that was important. And I talked to the inner circle a little bit about that this morning, how me getting dressed and my, my box for delivery, my Stitch Fix, my Stitch Fix box, why that's important to me and why I have a box that comes to my house on a regular basis that sends clothes to me because I don't like to shop, because that's a goal and I don't like to shop. So you know what I did? I just said, somebody send me a box of clothes. We actually, I think, shared some really good ideas for where we could shop online while we're still trying to be safe. But the bottom line is this, that's a goal, is me getting my wardrobe together.. I don't want to apologize for that. I don't want to spend 40 hours a week on it. It's kind of an ongoing goal. And the way I get there is getting that box delivered to my house. However you need to get to your goals, get there. If you want to hear more from me, again, that episode is episode 13, uh, Why What You Wear Matters. And then here this video is. So if you need to play it or replay it and play it again, then do that. But it's 2021. Whatever you didn't finish in 2020, don't cry about it. It's over. Learn from it and move forward. Give your goals a home. Set small goals. Have a script for when you feel disappointed. Don't lay on the floor too long. Sadness from inside out, get up. And then prioritize your goals, because we only all have 24 hours in a day, and you can make the most of them and do a lot with your life. You can, and I wanna encourage you to get back to your goals. All right, y'all, thanks for joining me. See you next week.
