How to End Your Summer Well

Hey there, I'm Chrystal Hurst, and I'm glad you're joining me. Let's talk about maximizing your summer. Yes, I know the summer is coming to a close, but this is the most important time of the summer for you to prepare for the weeks and months that are coming. So how do you have a great end to your year? You maximize the end of your summer to get ready for the fall. Let's jump in and talk about that today. What have you put off doing all summer long? And here we are about to wrap up the summer and head into the fall of 2025, and you still haven't done it. Where are you like, oh my goodness, is the fall already here? I'm not ready. What have you not had the opportunity to finish, um, or to begin and to wrap up? Well, it is that time of year, y'all, where the year is not over, But the summer is ending and the fall is coming. And if you're anything like me, when the fall comes, it demands a return to routine and rhythm and systems. And the fall can start sometimes like the beginning of a year can, where at the beginning of a new calendar year, I'm like, oh my gosh, the year started and I'm behind because so many things begin in the fall— school or church rhythms or Bible study groups, or, uh, when the seasons change. Other things begin. And many times we start the fall the same way. Oh my goodness, am I already back here? Am I ready? How did I not— how am I starting on my left foot, um, and not, you know, feeling like I'm in a good pacing? The fall is the mark of rhythms in your life. But to prepare for the fall rhythms, you want to use the end of your summer to do that. And if you're already thinking, oh my word, I cannot believe the end of the summer is almost here, well, this talk is for you. Is there one area of your life that you wish that you had more order in right now? Or maybe you had operated with greater intentionality during the summer season? What leaves you feeling like, wow, the fall is here and I'm not ready? I know there are a few things that make me feel like that. Um, one is decluttering my office and my home. Another is decluttering my closet. Another one is decluttering my finances, just things that I would like to be in order before I get into the busier fall season. They're not done. They should have been done. I feel behind. But here's the good thing. You do not have to wait until the fall season gets here fully in order to be intentional. What you do for the rest of the summer can set the tone for how you begin your fall. So I wanted to talk about 3 things that you can do in order to land the summer plane softly so that you feel ready, rested, and just prepared to face the rhythms that you need to have in the fall to then have the kind of fall that sets you up well for the coming year. Here's the reality, y'all. Every season that we live in, we are living in it, doing the things that we're doing in preparation for the next season. If you don't do in this season what you need done in the next season, the next season will come and you'll feel behind. So sure, there are some things you just do because it's time to do it right now. But in your right now, there should always be embedded something that you're doing to be ready for tomorrow. So the first thing is, before you even try to launch forward, before you even try to, um, get it together, girl, uh, you want to take the time to look back. Look back before you launch forward. So what does this mean? Psalm 90, verse 12 says, teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom. The ability for you to see clearly going forward is embedded in your ability to look clearly going back. What did you say you were going to do? What goals did you already have? What did you think your life would look like that it does or does not? And looking back, it will either set your heart and mind in agreement with what you've done so far, or your heart and mind will say, oh shoot, I have not been operating, um, in integrity with what I said I wanted to do. So in order to look forward well, look back and identify what you already knew that you now have or have not implemented. Because summer may be winding up, but it's a great time for you to take inventory. It's a great time for you to take inventory, for you to look back at your plans and at your goals and at the things that you had in your heart to do, and to ask yourself, Did I stay consistent? Did I reach those goals? Did I do what I said I was going to do? And if I did, what's the next move? And if I didn't, how can I use the last few weeks of summer to bring those things to a close, to a solid endpoint, or to bring them to the next step? Now, this assumes a couple of things. This assumes, first of all, that you have something to look back to, that you wrote things down, that you used your your planner or your journal or a sticky pad or a spiral notebook or your sermon guide, or, you know, the little tablet that you keep in your purse. It assumes that you have something to look at. Um, and if you don't, that's okay. You can look back at the beginning of the year and take a mind trip where you think about where you were at the beginning of the year. What did you do in January? What were you thinking? What were you saying? Do you have notes from a sermon? Do you have pictures on your phone? Where were you at the beginning of the year? And try to recalibrate with the vision that girl had for you and where you would be this year. So I can look back and I have some good news and I have some bad news. Uh, the good news is I plan to be working out, committed to my weight loss journey, changing food. I plan to, um, have some really deep and intentional conversations with my husband, with my children. Uh, we've been doing a lot of work in our communication at home. Those things are happening. I'm grateful for that. We have a long way to go. I have a long way to go, but they are happening and moving forward. Forward. I can tell you what else was supposed to be due. My book was supposed to be turned in. Now it's getting closer to being done. The draft is better than it was. I was supposed to be done with this in June, and I'm still working on it. So me looking back at what I intended to do says, okay, as I wind down the summer and plan for the fall, how do my past goals and desires fit into my present opportunity to move things forward or to set the tracks for the next season. Looking back tells you where do you need to get in line with what needs to happen now. Now, on my team, for our meetings, and listen, we all hate meetings. We, I try so hard to do things, to inject things into our meetings that make them better, because nobody wants to sit around in a meeting and just hold the phone while the Zoom call just passes around the room. But we have even strategies and rhythms for our meetings, because some of the meetings are daily check-ins. Some of the meetings are weekly touching base. Some of them are monthly deep dives. Some of them are quarterly strategy meetings or annual vision casting. The rhythm of looking at what you said you were going to do and then looking again and looking again and feeling out how do you feel about it, what should change, what are you going to do differently, how are you going to make space, the looking back is how you launch forward in a strong way. You want to think of life like a garden. If you never pause to look at the flowers or the vegetables or whatever that you're trying to grow so that you can see the weeds, you will never have the opportunity to pull the weeds that stifle growth. You have to look. So you can say, well, I planted those seeds and they're growing, but the way you'll make sure that those plants stay healthy is that you look again. And then if you see something that shouldn't be there, you pull it. Or if you see something that's not flourishing, you go to your local garden nursery and you say, hey, this plant is not doing well. What can I do to bring it back to life? But you have to look in order to make decisions for launching forward in your life. So reflection is a good thing. Okay? It doesn't have to be a sob story. It doesn't have to be you all in your mood. You don't have to do it in your therapist's office. You can, there's nothing wrong with that. But, um, looking back and reflecting on the decisions that you've made and how you got here is such an important key for how you get there. Um, there are many times when the fall season has brought with it an opportunity for me to re-engage with a goal or a dream or desire that I had, and just the shift of the seasons helped me to get with it. So one of those things would be a marathon. I ran my first marathon um, in December of 2014. And while I had been running a little bit in July, I really kicked it into gear in August. And I had been dilly-dallying, taking my time, really, um, kind of languishing a little bit and doing it but not really doing it seriously. And once I hit the end of July, the first of August, I was like, girl, if you're gonna run that marathon, you have to kick it in gear. And I, and I did. The shift in seasons was like This marathon will be here before I know it. And if I don't prepare and plan, I will not be ready. So that's one thing. Another thing is I'm thinking about all the chaos that's going to happen towards the end of October, November, and December because of the holidays. And I still had cards, Christmas cards that were sitting on my desk from last year. Well, I didn't want to go into the fall with a mess in my office so that when I create another mess with the holidays for this year, that I'm stacking that on top. I actually have 2 years worth of Christmas cards that were not organized to put away. So what does that mean? The changing of the seasons indicated— girl, fall is almost here. If you're gonna clean this up, you better clean it up now because you're not gonna have time to clean this up in October, November, and December. So the shift in seasons can draw your attention to something that you know you need to do, that maybe you stopped doing, or maybe you haven't taken the time to do, or maybe weren't sure that it applied to you, but now you're like Okay, now I wanna focus. Looking back teaches you what's coming around again because life is cyclical and also reminds you of how you can launch forward with that energy in mind. Another one for me is connecting with people. The change in the seasons or the shifting into schedules makes me go, okay, who do I need to see before the summer ends? Or who do I wanna see once they get their kids situated in school? Or what do I need to do to reconnect with friends before life gets busy again? So the shift in seasons has helped me run a marathon because I refocused, declutter because I knew this, the next season was coming, and also to connect or reconnect with old friends because I knew their schedules would be changing. You know, things are going to change when the seasons shift. So use this time to look back and decide how you'll launch forward well. C.S. Lewis said, you can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are. And change the ending. So we're not going to lament what you said you were going to do between January and June that you didn't do. Spilled milk, we're not crying over it. You can look back over it and say, this is what I was supposed to do. Is this still meaningful for me? And if so, plan that into your strong launch for the fall season. And how do you launch the fall season strong? You end the summer season well. The second thing you want to do is to reset and to clear space to hear and obey. Hebrews 12:1 says, let us throw off every weight that serves as an encumbrance, that hinders us, a sin that so deeply entangles. You've got to decide that the things that are not serving you, the things that are holding you back, I am getting rid of them. This is not taking me where I want to go. I'm stopping it. This is getting in the way. I'm going to replace it. There is a reset. If what you meant to do, you have not yet done, what was in the way? How can you clear the space in your life to make sure that the things that you want to put in your life, you have room for. So there is some decluttering that you have to do. Now, I am so excited about, um, our next journey in the Inner Circle. Um, at the recording of this video, we are in the middle of our No Spend Challenge, but on August 21st, we kick off our next last summer challenge to end the summer well. And this year we are decluttering our lives. And so we're going to spend one week decluttering spaces. One week decluttering time, like our calendar, and one week decluttering our mind. Because if your mind is not situated correctly, nothing else is going to go well. Um, so I invite you to join us if you'd like to jump into the Inner Circle for this deep dive in our personal growth. But the reality is, if you're not doing what you say you want to do, there is a monkey on the line somewhere, as my daddy would say. There's something that's not right, some habit, some thought pattern. But often what keeps us enslaved is is not anything deep. It's just a decision. It's just saying, I draw the line here and I'm gonna do something different. I literally, in cleaning out the cards that are from many cards, but also a lot of Christmas cards, I just had to say enough is enough. And I walked into the room and I took a stack of cards and I took them into my bedroom, a guest bedroom, and started laying them out and organizing. This is been sitting there for months, but I made a decision to reset and clear the space. You can reset by cleaning out your fridge. You can reset by cleaning out your closet. You can reset by journaling and emptying out the negative thoughts in your mind. You can reset by sitting down with your budget. You can reset by having a hard conversation with your spouse or a friend. You can reset by going to see your counselor. You can reset by sitting down with your boss. You can reset by cleaning out your drawers at work, at home, in your bedroom. Reset your kids' clothing by cleaning out their closets. Reset says, I draw a line and I do something different so that I don't go into the next season living the way I lived in this season. So it's important for you to know that waiting till the end of August or the middle of September is not the way to go. It's the end of July, beginning of August when I'm recording this. Start now. Before you launch into fall plans, reset your rhythms. Make some decisions for your space and soul to flourish. Resetting creates margin for better decision-making. When you say, I'm gonna, I'm gonna draw the line here, I'm gonna do something different, it recalibrates the way you're thinking about your time, your spaces, and your life. So draw a line, hit the reset button, make some necessary, needed, and maybe some difficult decisions. But once you look back and realize that you have the pain now of what you didn't do yet, don't go into this next season without hitting the reset button. Hey, if you didn't know, this year, 2025, is all about making your mark. You cannot, however, make your mark if you're not maximizing your time. Why? Because time is a limited resource, and if you're not using it well, You're wasting it. I don't want you to waste your time. So I've got two ways in the month of August for you to learn more about maximizing your time so you can live a life you love. Number one, I want you to come to class, thesistercircle.com/class. Normally our sister sessions, which are our classes, are for members only. And in the month of August, I'm inviting you to come in. Now it's free for our members, but if you want to join us, you can just go to thesistercircle.com/class. To be in the room. We're gonna talk about time blocking, your ideal week, and your ideal day. The second thing that you can do in the month of August is just come on in the Inner Circle. We are doing the Declutter Challenge, which starts August the 21st. And if you're in the Inner Circle, then the class comes along for free. So the Declutter Challenge in August, we're gonna organize our space, our minds, and our calendars. I want you to maximize your time because I really do want you to live a life you love. And to be satisfied with how you pass your days. In order to do that, you have to be intentional. And what am I doing in the Inner Circle? Helping you be intentional about making your mark. Come on in the room, y'all. thesistercircle.com/innercircle. I'm so excited about hitting the reset button in my office. I took the cards out, y'all, and all of a sudden it was like, oh my gosh, I can breathe. I cleared a corner and it was like, oh my gosh, that would be the perfect corner for a little chair. I literally I say literally a lot. Literally, literally, literally, literally. You can't say that 5 times in a row. But I had a vision in my mind of the kind of chair that would go in that spot. I'm not lying, y'all. Within a week, I went to Costco and guess what I saw? The chair I saw in my head. Now, I may have seen that chair and thought it was cute, but it would have never occurred to me to buy that chair and put it in my office had I not created the space. When you hit the reset button and make decisions about what you're no longer going to do, what you're no longer going to live, live with, how you're going to create the space for what's important, then the opportunities open up in front of you for things you can do with your time or with the space or with your mind. So this resetting is not just about, oh, let's have a clean start. It is about clearing the space that you need in your life to see what's right in front of you. That you don't see when your mind is cluttered. Anne Lamott says, almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you. The concept there is everything has a stopping point, including you, your spaces, your thoughts, your habits, and clearing out, hitting the reset button allows you to take the reflection that you do in looking back and then figure out what you do with it. Where it goes. So if you need to hit the reset button, just choose one area. Keep it simple. Don't make it deep. Don't set yourself up for failure. You can choose a calendar or closet or an inbox in your email or refrigerator or a drawer, your junk drawer in your kitchen. Maybe it's the Tupperware cabinet. Whatever it is, pick one thing and just do an easy reset, something that you know you can finish as an act of obedience, as an act of Exercising the muscle of moving things forward so that you can maximize your time for the fall. Let that one thing symbolize the clearing, the clarity that you're going to bring to yourself in other major areas. Okay? Okay. So the first thing is look back so that you can launch forward. The second thing is that you want to clear space so that you can hear and obey. Clear the table so God can show you what he wants to put in your life and in your space and in your mind. The third thing is you want to recommit. And plan with purpose. Um, not to panic, not to be stressed out, but to plan with purpose. Um, the idea of committing your time and your effort and your energy to God— some of us, if we knew we were making a commitment to God, we would take our commitments much more seriously. Proverbs 16:3 says, you should commit your way to the Lord in whatever you do. Why, y'all? This is so important. It's so key because he will establish your plans. You say, okay, I'm willing to do this, but he establishes them, seats them in concrete, lays the foundation, makes sure that the pathway is cleared. When you say, I look back, Lord, I see what I was supposed to do, what I wanted to do, what I meant to do, I haven't done it, so I'm going to commit by resetting the space. Now that I've hit the reset button and drawn a line in the sand, I'm committed. And I'm committed, and I'm telling you what it is that I'm going to do. I'm telling myself, I've written it down so that I can dig my feet in and move forward. Use this transitional season, y'all, to make decisions and make commitments. Make commitments. Don't roll into fall in reactive mode. Roll into fall recommitted. Recommitted to the vision God gave you. Recommitted to the dreams and the goals. Recommitted to the habits. Recommitted to the spending plan or the no spending plan. Recommitted to you and what God wants to do in your life. And you don't have to do everything, just the right things in this season. So you want to think about the fall for many of us like a train track, okay? A train goes down the track that's laid. The fall for you is gonna feel— for most of of us feels like a train because it's going and it cannot stop. We don't collect gold, we don't do nothing, we just keep going. So the best gift that you can give yourself, because that's how the fall moves, are well-laid tracks. Tracks that say what time you get up, what time you go to bed. Tracks that say how much screen time you have. Tracks that say how often you and your husband go on a date. Tracks that say when you're going to clean up your closet. Tracks that say what you're looking for, in your next opportunity. Tracks that say, this is what I'm gonna do with my time. This is what I'm gonna have my hair day. Tracks that say, I lay out my night, my clothes the night before. You don't have to do all of those. I'm just giving you ideas about the tracks that will make decisions fewer and fatigue lessened. What are the tracks that you need to have less to think about? Because what gets you in the fall are all these changes. It's a lot of changes. And then we're just scrambling to find any tracks, somebody's track, and we're jumping tracks trying to keep up. Lay your tracks now. What are the things that you're committed to? Because then when it's time to go, all you have to do is follow the yellow brick road. If you don't set tracks now, you will get derailed when life gets busy. Planning with purpose protects your peace and your progress. Hey there. If you enjoy learning from me by listening to me or watching me virtually, you're going to love joining me in the room. I want to invite you to come to Dallas for thesistercircle.com/live. Join me in person, me and other friends. We're going to be talking about what does it mean to make your mark and to have a mindset of abundance because the best time to plan for the new year is in the last quarter of the current year. And we're going to kick off your thoughts about your life moving forward when we get together in October. So go to thesistercircle.com/live today, because the prices go up August 15th. I want you to be in the room and I want you to get the best price. Register today. If you don't lay the tracks, you will constantly just be moving at the speed of light but not going the way that you should be going because the terrain wasn't fixed. You recommitting to terrain is you making the decision about where your time goes, how you keep your space, and, um, how you manage your mind. Tracks matter. You manage your mind by having the track of journaling. You, you manage your mind by having the track of enough sleep and mental well-being, or your counselor, your coach, your friend, or a therapist. You are laying tracks by deciding when you, uh, when you take care of your chores, or when you are going to clean your house or meal prep. You are laying tracks when you make a commitment to what you're going to do to manage your time and your space. In your heart, in your mind. The tracks are the commitments that you're making to you for the future you that will look at your calendar in December and say, I'm glad I made that change. This is not a time to give up. The end of the year is not a time to give up. It's a time to say, I've got 5 months left. What am I gonna do with them? How am I gonna double down? How do I need to reset the tracks for my life? Um, one of the things I have done in my fitness journey is get back to what worked before. So let me tell you what worked before. I would get up early and go to the gym. It's too early to eat. I wanted to have some fuel, so I'd grab an apple and I'd grab some water. I might boil an egg, um, or I might boil it and plan to eat it when I get back, but an apple and water. Now I now know that that was probably a little bit like a version of kind of intermittent fasting, because then I would come back home and not really eat until 10 or 11. But that one thing— Chrystal Hurst, grab an apple on your way out of the door, put your electrolyte drink together, pre-cut your lemon so it's easy in the morning. While you're getting dressed, turn on your eggs so that when you leave you can turn them off, and when you get back home you have a boiled egg to eat. That one thing is a track. It doesn't mean I can't have oatmeal. It doesn't mean I can't skip breakfast. It doesn't mean I can't have a frittata. It just means if that is the one thing that I do most mornings historically, because my age is different now, so we'll see, but historically that is a track. It makes it easier for me every morning. I do the same thing. And also it means that I'm helped on my journey to losing weight. So for my kids, Mondays is oatmeal, Tuesdays are smoothies and cinnamon rolls or some kind of bread, Wednesdays are bacon eggs, eggs with cheese, Thursdays is a hot cereal or choice. Y'all figure something else and cook it yourselves. Fridays I make pancakes and bacon. Sun— weekends, it's a free-for-all. You want to know what that means? That means every week I am not thinking about my menu. I'm going to be talking about that more soon, resetting the tone of your home and how you do that. But the principle here is recommit to something that works or something that you expect to work. Lay a track and stick to it. Most of the time, y'all, we, we fall off of our plans because it takes so much energy to lay the tracks while the train is going. You got your energy moving forward and you're trying to create rhythms and habits. Don't do both at the same time. Lay your tracks now. And the end of the summer is the perfect time to start thinking about it. What should change this fall so that you don't have the same crazy fall you had last year or the same crazy spring? What do you need in order to have success? So whether it's your health or your family rhythms or a business project, whether it's your team or whether it is, uh, a dream that you have that you're going to get back to working on, success is the sum of small efforts. And one of the best small efforts that you can engage in right now is laying the track of your rhythms and your pacing so that when the fall really is in full swing it takes less energy for you to do the right thing and move the needle forward in your life. So don't let these last few weeks of summer slip through your fingers. God is still doing something in this season, and he wants to engage his thing with you. So reflect, reset, and recommit, okay? And keep it simple. So I would love for you to take on this challenge. Okay. It's this simple. I want you to set some time aside and I want you to think about, by looking back at your journal or your photos, what did I say I was gonna do? What is going well and what is not going so well? And then I want you to take some time and I want you to create the space to hit the reset button. Whatever's not going well, why is it not going well? What would have to change in order for you to, um, flip the script? Okay. And then once you make the decision of where you're drawing the line, think about what are the new rhythms that you're going to commit to in the fall. For me, definitely about my workout journey. I'm currently touring 3 or 4 gyms in my area just because that's fun to have a free trial, a different place every week for a month. And then I'm going to pick one because when it rains, I'm still going to work out. That's a track I'm working on laying it and I'm having fun doing it. Another track, um, meal planning. We'll talk about that more when we talk about house stuff. Another track, I'm putting my writing time. On my calendar in block scheduling and assessing, did the last block scheduling work? And if it didn't, what do I need to change? These are the things I'm reassessing. I've got a, uh, I've got some goals with reading the Bible and I fell behind. So what is the track that I'm going to run on to make sure that that doesn't happen again? When is my time with the Lord? This is what I'm doing, looking back, looking forward, drawing a line in the sand, and then recommitting to a new season and to a new plan. So it's that simple, y'all, but you have to create the time and the space to do it, or else it'll be September 30th and you will think, oh good Lord Jesus, I only have a month until the harvest season is here and I'm behind. You don't have to be behind. Use the last few days and weeks of summer to set the tracks for the season to come. I want you to know that if you are feeling like, oh my gosh, it's August, September, and I haven't done what I said I was going to do, you have 5 whole months to get in gear and move things forward. That's plenty of time. It's plenty of time to make up time. It's plenty of time to set new things in motion. It's plenty of time to realize goals that you thought had fallen by the wayside. There's plenty of time for you to do that, and I'm encouraging you to do that. And don't get weary if you're running out of steam. Galatians 6:9 says, let us not grow weary of doing good, because in due season we will reap if we don't give up. Okay, so this is me telling you, don't give up. The fall is coming, and you have everything you need to make it the best fall ever. And why do you want to do that? Because the best fall of 2025 lends itself to a great start for 2026. 2026. And y'all, 2026 will be here before we know it. All right, y'all, hope that is helpful. Woosa! What is the one area of your life that you commit to working on as the summer ends and the fall begins? Where are you going to commit to laying tracks? So don't let the last few weeks of this summer slip through your fingers. Even in this season, God is still doing something in your life and you can still participate with him if you get in the game. Get in the game, girl, because it's important for you to end the summer with no regrets.